Venezuela, Even More Than Palestine, Is the Linchpin of a Consistent Radical Left in The Era of Global Neofascism Led by the U.S.
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 07 Jan 2026
Solidarity with Palestine tests morality, but solidarity with Venezuela tests politics. The recent U.S. intervention demands a radical left move beyond symbolic outrage to a material confrontation with its own state.
Palestine is the moral heart of global anti-colonial politics. It exposes the brutality of settler colonialism in its most naked form: land theft, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and white supremacist domination. For many on the left, solidarity with Palestine has become a defining ethical commitment. But while Palestine functions as a moral litmus test for individuals and organizations across the political terrain from left to right, Venezuela is a structural and political one.
Recent events in Venezuela have dramatically escalated the stakes of anti-imperialist politics in a way that cannot be ignored. On January 3, 2026, the United States launched a large-scale military operation with the objective of kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and transporting them back to the United States to face federal charges. This marks a decisive escalation in the forms of subversion and interventionist tactics that have characterized U.S. interventions in recent decades.
It also became a game-changer for radical politics inside the empire. The turn toward overt military force and the forcible removal of a sitting head of state signals a return to the raw practice of colonial domination — a form of power not seen so explicitly since the 2004 removal of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide by the George W. Bush administration.
The Empire has dropped the mask.
The question now is whether the left will continue to speak in the language of “liberal critique” and “class collaboration,” or whether it will finally confront bipartisan-supported imperial power in its most direct and unapologetic form.
Venezuela is the issue where anti-imperialism stops being a slogan and becomes a confrontation with one’s own state. It is therefore also the issue where U.S.-based radicals should unapologetically affirm Venezuela’s right to self-determination and openly oppose the U.S. imperial project in Venezuela. If they are not prepared to do this, it demonstrates unequivocally that their radicalism was never serious — that it was always symbolic and selective, which made it ultimately safe for the empire.
The Venezuela situation also reveals another now-normalized feature of “left” politics: the divergence between a left that is formally anti-imperialist and a liberal/left that remains fundamentally U.S.-centric and social imperialist. When this current turns to international events — especially cases of U.S. intervention — its position is shaped less by opposition to imperialism than by its assessment of the internal character of the targeted state. The legitimacy of intervention is thus implicitly judged according to whether the society under attack conforms to what amounts to Western “liberal” expectations and not the conditions and imperatives of revolutionary social transformation.
In practice, the actually existing efforts at socialist-oriented economic, social, and political development are almost always deemed inadequate, flawed, or authoritarian. This judgment then becomes the pretext for withholding solidarity. The predictable result is that these “left” forces find themselves aligned with U.S. imperialism in both analysis and effect, even as they insist that their position is informed by a “left” critique.
This is not a minor theoretical error but a political failure. It subordinates the principle of self-determination to ideological gatekeeping, and it replaces solidarity with conditional approval. In doing so, it converts anti-imperialism into a posture rather than a commitment — a language that can coexist comfortably with empire so long as empire speaks in the idiom of liberal democratic reformism and white saviorism!
Examples of this approach have emerged since the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife where sections of the collaborative left adopt the language and assumptions of U.S. policy makers about Venezuela — condemning Nicolás Maduro’s personality, legitimacy, or policies — but then attempt to separate those “left” condemnations from the brutal consequences of imperial intervention.
The first example is the familiar move: “I oppose U.S. intervention, but Maduro is an authoritarian who brought this on himself.” This framing accepts Washington’s narrative that Venezuela’s crisis is primarily the product of internal leadership failure rather than external economic warfare, sanctions, and destabilization. By centering Maduro’s alleged illegitimacy, this position reproduces the moral logic that makes intervention appear reasonable, even if the speaker claims to oppose the intervention itself. This position turns anti-imperialism into a procedural objection rather than a principled one — objecting to methods while accepting the white supremacist, colonialist premise that the U.S. has the authority to judge and discipline other societies.
The second example is the appeal to “human rights” as a neutral justification: “The U.S. shouldn’t intervene militarily, but something must be done about human rights abuses in Venezuela.” This treats human rights discourse as politically innocent, ignoring its long history as an imperial instrument used selectively against disobedient states and never against compliant ones. This framing erases the massive human rights violations produced by sanctions, economic strangulation, and political isolation — forms of violence that are invisible precisely because they are bureaucratic.
In both cases, the liberal/left position preserves U.S. moral authority while disavowing U.S. violence. This is not a contradiction but a function: it allows empire to operate with legitimacy. By accepting imperial categories and merely disputing their execution, the liberal/left becomes not an opponent of empire but one of its most useful managers.
The kidnapping of President Maduro is not simply another foreign-policy episode but a textbook case of imperial domination. In the present international context of imperial lawlessness — characterized by a form of global fascism led by the United States — it signals that these methods will be used again to attack and assert control over other sovereign nations.
Venezuela thus remains the linchpin for an authentic radical left precisely because it tests whether anti-imperialism is a principle or merely a fashionable posture. This moment demands that those committed to justice confront not only the moral obscenity of settler colonialism in Palestine but also the raw mechanisms of material power deployed abroad and domestically by their own state. Opposing empire only when it is directed at states that meet the Western left’s criteria for deserving solidarity will always fail, because such “perfect” states do not exist in reality. This logic explains how the U.S. “left” can normalize anti-anti-imperialism while continuing to present itself as radical.
“Actually existing,” concrete national projects of social transformation will always be imperfect. If the standard for solidarity is grounded in fantasies of Bernsteinian peaceful “democratic” transitions in a neocolonial context or even more idealist visions in core imperialist societies like the U.S., in which state power is seized on Friday and society becomes stateless and self-managed by local peoples’ assemblies by Monday, then no real struggle will ever qualify. These expectations function less as political standards than as mechanisms for disqualification.
The birth of new societies and their development within a disintegrating global capitalist order — and in the face of an international bourgeoisie committed to violent state terrorism and subversion to maintain Western white supremacist imperial power — constitute the objective conditions that shape the politics of those societies and should inform anti-imperialist politics in the metropoles.
Only by naming and opposing the full spectrum of imperial violence — from financial warfare to overt military conquest — can a radical left aspire to be consistent and consequential in the objective conditions we find ourselves in.
Venezuela’s struggle today lays bare the essential question: Do we oppose oppression only as distant abstractions, or do we confront empire at its most aggressive and normalized expressions?
Opposing empire in Venezuela is critical because the Venezuelan experiment at national survival with the lessons it has learned was beginning to expose the fact that even with “maximum pressure,” the possibility of an alternative political and economic trajectory outside neoliberal capitalism and U.S. hemispheric dominance was possible.
Venezuela’s ability to sell its oil, even at a diminished level after years of sanctions that resulted in its inability to reinvest in critical infrastructure, represented a critical win for its people and for all states that possessed critical resources. Its successful attempts to trade oil outside the dollar system — including in Chinese currency or digital alternatives — are significant not mainly because they threaten U.S. energy security, but because they undermine U.S. financial and geopolitical control. The real concern is the precedent: that a major resource-holding state can defy U.S. authority, weaken dollar-based systems, and still survive. The issue is thus about maintaining hegemony, not just securing fuel.
Palestine reveals the moral horror of settler-colonial domination, while Venezuela reveals the operational logic of contemporary empire abroad and in its’ domestic politics. If radical politics cannot confront that logic at its source — in the policies of the U.S. state itself — then it risks becoming a politics of outrage without consequence. Venezuela is the linchpin not because it is more important than Palestine, but because it tests whether the left is willing to oppose empire where it is most normalized, most respectable, and for some, most difficult to name.
For many U.S. radicals, this will be very difficult because the price might be too high. Unequivocal support for Venezuelan self-determination means defending a state targeted by your own ruling class, being accused of supporting “authoritarianism,” a charge that functions as an ideological weapon to discipline dissent that will result in losing access to mainstream legitimacy.
This is precisely why Venezuela is the site where left politics becomes dangerous, subversive and its practitioners materially punished — which is exactly why it is the real test of radicalism.
The charge of repression coming from a state in the grip of neofascist consolidation and a liberal/left represented by “progressives” such as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani – who will not only condemn the Bolivarian process but the revolutionary people and process of Cuba – illustrates perfectly the rightist convergence of the fascist state and the social democratic managerial “left.”
Venezuela’s Bolivarian project cannot be explained by the simplistic focus on supposed internal dysfunction and authoritarianism but by its geopolitical disobedience — the refusal to submit to the U.S. assertion of the Monroe Doctrine and the global neoliberal order. For the imperialist white supremacist policymakers, that refusal had to be punished through economic suffocation and political destabilization.
Yet, Venezuela’s ability to survive, to demonstrate that it could exist outside of the structures dominated by international capitalist financial institutions, ironically posed an existential threat to U.S. hegemony not only because it was uniquely dangerous, but because it could be contagious.
https://blackagendareport.com/venezuela ... ism-led-us
Black Agenda Report Venezuela Reading List
BAR Editors 07 Jan 2026
Black Agenda Report contributors have focused analysis, reporting and interviews on Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution for many years. We hope that this list, which is not exhaustive of BAR’s coverage, will assist our readers in understanding why Venezuela was and is seen as a threat to the U.S. state and why independent anti-imperialist journalism is so important.
Glen Ford
May 28, 2014
Black Caucus Members Shame Themselves, as South America Warns U.S. Not to Sanction Venezuela | Black Agenda Report
Danny Haiphong
March 25, 2015
Obama's War Plans Against Venezuela: Another Act of Imperial Desperation | Black Agenda Report
Glen Ford
September 30, 2015
Blacks Cheer Venezuelan Leader – But Still Support Democratic Party Terror | Black Agenda Report
Ajamu Baraka
February 21, 2018
Venezuela: Revenge of the Mad-Dog Empire | Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley
August 28, 2018
Freedom Rider: The United States Destroys Venezuela’s Economy | Black Agenda Report
Glen Ford
January 31, 2019
The Racist, Imperialist War on Venezuela | Black Agenda Report
Glen Ford
March 14, 2019
The Imperial Racist Saga Comes Home, Where It Began | Black Agenda Report
Danny Haiphong
April 3, 2019
American Exceptionalism is at the root of the Fake News Epidemic Attempting to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution | Black Agenda Report
Lauren Smith
May 8, 2019
Venezuelan Embassy in DC Under Siege by Guaido’s Racist Mob | Black Agenda Report
Roberto Sirvent
November 6, 2019
BAR Book Forum: Dario Azzellini’s “Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela” | Black Agenda Report
Glen Ford, Kevin Zeese
February 10, 2020
Embassy Activists Face Prison in Trial Based on Trump Venezuela Fantasy | Black Agenda Report
November 4,2020
Open Letter to the Africans of Brazil, Colombia and Guyana | Black Agenda Report
Roberto Sirvent
June 2, 2021
BAR Book Forum: Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger’s “Extraordinary Threat” | Black Agenda Report
Ajamu Baraka
November 10, 2021
Class Warfare and Socialist Resistance: Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela as Existential Threats to the US | Black Agenda Report
Jacqueline Luqman
May 3, 2022
Venezuela Continues To Be the Model for True Democracy in the Americas | Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley
August 2, 2023
The U.S. Plot to Finalize the Theft of Venezuela’s Oil | Black Agenda Report
Tamanisha John
November 29, 2023
Guyana and Venezuela: The Crisis of Imperialism Currently Unfolding on South America's Caribbean Coast | Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley
December 22, 2023
Alex Saab Is Free | Black Agenda Report
Ann Garrison
January 31, 2024
Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire | Black Agenda Report
Clau O’Brien Moscoso
February 14, 2024
Peoples to Peoples Encounters: Venezuela’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America In Dialogue with Local Organizations and Social Movements in New York | Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley, Ajamu Baraka
July 31, 2024
Don't Believe the Hype: Venezuela is a Democracy | Black Agenda Report
Ajamu Baraka
August 7, 2024
U.S. Rejection of Venezuela’s Democracy Vindicates Trump Contesting the 2020 Election Result | Black Agenda Report
Roger Harris
August 20, 2025
US Human Rights Report on Venezuela Doesn’t Pass the Mirror Test | Black Agenda Report
Mafa Kwanisai Mafa
September 24, 2025
Venezuela, Imperialism, and the Global Struggle for Sovereignty | Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley
October 15, 2025
Nobel War Prize | Black Agenda Report
Gerald A. Perreira
October 15, 2025
No to US State Terrorism in the Caribbean Sea No to US Plans for Regime Change in Venezuela Caricom Must Act Now | Black Agenda Report
Chris Gilbert, Cira Pascual Marquina
October 22, 2025
‘Fishing Provides for Everyone’: The Palmarito Afro-Descendant Commune (Part III) | Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley, Gerald A. Perreira
October 31, 2025
U.S. Threats Against Venezuela Target the Entire Region | Black Agenda Report
Clau O’Brien Moscoso
November 26, 2025
The Lima Group and “Peaceful Transition”: the Neocolonial Role in US/Canadian Sanctions and Militarism Against Venezuelan Sovereignty | Black Agenda Report
Ajamu Baraka, Dimitri Lascaris
December 3, 2025
US Attack On Venezuela Would Cause 'Chaos' In The Region w/ Ajamu Baraka | Black Agenda Report
Gerald A. Perreira
December 3, 2025
Hands Off Maduro/Hands Off Venezuela | Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley
December 3, 2025
The Double Tap on Venezuela | Black Agenda Report
Djibo Sobukwe
December 17, 2025
Five Reasons Black/ African People Should Be in Solidarity with Venezuela | Black Agenda Report
Ajamu Baraka
January 7, 2025
Venezuela, Even More Than Palestine, Is the Linchpin of a Consistent Radical Left in The Era of Global Neofascism Led by the U.S. | Black Agenda Report
https://blackagendareport.com/black-age ... ading-list
(See link)
STOP the killers!
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence 07 Jan 2026
Burlap bags stuffed with tuna and blue marlin.
Catch of a lifetime! Juan’s already counting the
cash in his head. Visualizing pawn shop guitar
for Gabriel, his 10 yr old son, graduating to guitar
from ukulele. Gabriel’s greeted morning rooster-
like— since age 3— with “Let’s practice, Papa!”
Before pushing off to sea Juan bought the computer
Rosario wished for from a journalism student he met
at the fish market training fishmongers to compute. He
also bought the bicycle Maria longed and stashed it at
a neighbor’s house. Juan was out to make his young
family’s Christmas the best ever.
BOOM!
Bloody mess below his waist. Juan’s a strong swimmer. But
he can’t feel his legs. He quickly grabs on to fiery flotsam.
Is that Javier hanging on for dear life across from him?
He hears his children’s joyful shrieks. Sees them jumping
Up and down with joy. He kisses Lourdes long and tenderly …
BOOM!
A pomade man has amplified orders of
his demented Don into “Kill them all!”
Laughing, they dub it a “double-tap
strike —”
like some cool dance step
signaling mad moves to come …
© 2026. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
https://blackagendareport.com/stop-killers
******
Behind the DOJ’s politicized indictment of Maduro: a CIA-created ‘network’ and coerced star witness
Max Blumenthal·January 5, 2026
The US Department of Justice indictment of Venezuela’s kidnapped leader, Nicolas Maduro, is a political rant that relies heavily on coerced testimony from an unreliable witness. Despite DOJ edits, it could expose more Americans to the CIA’s own history of drug trafficking.
The January 3 US military raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores was followed by the Department of Justice’s release of its superseding indictment of the two abductees as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello. The DOJ has also thrown Tren De Aragua (TDA) cartel leader Hector “Niño” Guerrero into the mix of defendants, situating him at the heart of its narrative.
The indictment amounts to a 25 page rant accusing Maduro and Flores of a conspiracy to traffic “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” relying heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction. It accuses Maduro of “having partnered with narco-terrorists” like TDA, ignoring a recent US intelligence assessment that concluded he had no control over the Venezuelan gang. Finally, the prosecutors stacked the indictment by charging Maduro with “possession of machine guns,” a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.
DOJ prosecutors carefully avoid precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the US. At one point, they describe “tons” of cocaine; at another, they refer to the shipment of “thousands of tons,” an astronomical figure that could hypothetically generate hundreds of billions in revenue. At no point did they mention fentanyl, the drug responsible for the overdose deaths of close to 50,000 Americans in 2024. In fact, the DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump’s watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.
By resorting to vague, deliberately expansive language larded with subjective terms like “corrupt” and “terrorism,” the DOJ has constructed a political narrative against Maduro in place of a concrete legal case. While repeatedly referring to Maduro as the “de facto… illegitimate ruler of the country,” the DOJ fails to demonstrate that he is de jure illegitimate under Venezuelan law, and will therefore be unable to bypass established international legal precedent granting immunity to heads of state.
Further, the indictment relies on transparently unreliable, coerced witnesses like Hugo “Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan general who has cut a secret plea deal to reduce his sentence for drug trafficking by supplying dirt on Maduro. Carvajal was said to be a key figure in the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” drug network which the DOJ claims was run by Maduro. If and when he appears to testify against the abducted Venezuelan leader, the American public could learn that the “cartel” was founded not by the deposed Venezuelan president or one of his allies, but by the CIA to traffic drugs into US cities.
As sloppy and politicized as the DOJ’s indictment might be, it has enabled Trump to frame his lawless “Donroe Doctrine” as an aggressive policy of legal enforcement, emboldening the US president to levy further threats to abduct or bump off heads of state who stand in the way of his resource rampage. This appears to be the real purpose of the imperial courtroom spectacle to come.
Weaponizing the “narco-terror” hoax
The bulk of the case against Maduro rests on the accusation that the defendants “engaged in… drug trafficking, including in partnership with narco-terrorist groups.” According to the DOJ, Maduro conspired with TDA, as well as the Mexican Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels to traffic drugs between 2003 and 2011. However, these cartels were not designated by the Trump administration as Foreign Terrorist Organizations until February 2025, a move obviously designed to justify Maduro’s kidnapping and juice up his indictment.
In its bid to convict Maduro, the DOJ will undoubtedly struggle to overcome the conclusion reached in an April 7, 2025 memo by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that the Venezuelan leader did not control TDA, which he effectively dismantled through a massive 2023 military-police raid on the Tocorón prison that served as the gang’s base of operations. A report in the State Department-funded outlet InSight Crime also complicates the DOJ’s case, finding that “the few crimes attributed to alleged Tren de Aragua members in the United States appear to have no connection with the larger group or its leadership in Venezuela.”
In fact, many of the supposed crimes for which Maduro is charged took place outside the borders and jurisdiction of the United States. The DOJ alleges, for instance, that in September 2013, “Venezuelan officials dispatched approximately 1.3 tons of cocaine on a commercial flight from the Maiquetia Airport to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.”
In 2018, five British citizens were convicted in a French court for orchestrating the drug shipment with help from gang members from Colombia and Italy – but not Venezuela. At the time of the incident, Maduro’s government acknowledged corrupt lower level Venezuelan officials had allowed the drugs to pass through airport security. Caracas ultimately arrested 25 people, including members of the military and an Air France manager – a salient fact omitted from the DOJ indictment.
The evidence of Maduro’s involvement in the scandal, according to the DOJ, was that the drug shipment took place “mere months after [Maduro] succeeded to the Venezuelan presidency.” No other proof is offered to demonstrate his culpability.
The indictment goes on to allege Maduro “facilitated the movement of private planes under diplomatic cover” to avoid law enforcement scrutiny as they landed in Mexico. Citing coerced testimony from a Venezuelan government defector, it accuses Diosdado Cabello of coordinating a shipment of 5.5 tons of cocaine on a DC-9 jet to Mexico. None of these claims should hold water in a US court.
As public defender and legal analyst Eliza Orlins explained, “Flights that occur wholly within Venezuela do not cross U.S. airspace, do not implicate U.S. customs territory, and do not, standing alone, violate U.S. law. The indictment attempts to bootstrap these domestic movements into U.S. criminal jurisdiction by asserting that the cocaine involved was ultimately destined for the United States. Intent does almost all the work here.”
Because most of the specific incidents cited in the indictment occurred within Mexico under Presidents Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Pena Nieto, the DOJ inadvertently implicates these three pro-US administrations, who shaped their drug policies in coordination with Washington. In fact, the top cop during the first two of these governments, former Federal Intelligence Agency chief Genaro García Luna, was convicted in a US federal court in 2023 for presiding over a multi-million dollar conspiracy with the Sinaloa cartel. Former US ambassador to Mexico Robert Jacobson acknowledged that the US knew all about Garcia Luna’s cartel ties, but insisted, “we had to work with him.”
The Honduran double standard
The DOJ also implicates the pro-US government of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, referring to Honduras as a “transshipment” point “in which cocaine traffickers operating in those countries paid a portion of their own profits to politicians who protected and aided them.” Hernandez was convicted in a US federal court in 2023 of trafficking over 400 tons of drugs to the US, but received a pardon this December from President Donald Trump following a lobbying campaign by top Trump donors seeking to maintain the deregulated crypto haven of Próspera off the coast of Honduras.
During his January 3 press conference announcing the abduction of Maduro and his wife, Trump aggressively defended his decision to pardon Hernandez, claiming he’d been “persecuted very unfairly.” Yet the same DOJ prosecutor who authored the original 2020 indictment of Maduro, Trump loyalist Emil Bove, was responsible for the indictment of Hernandez. In contrast to the case against Maduro, the Hernandez indictment contained concrete evidence of his collaboration with major transnational cartels, including video and photographic exhibits, as Anya Parampil and Alexander Rubinstein detailed for The Grayzone.
Hernandez pleaded his case to Trump in a 2025 letter claiming he’d been subjected to a “rigged trial” and convicted “based on the uncorroborated statements of convicted drug traffickers.”
His questionable claim could also apply to the DOJ’s prosecution of Maduro, as many of the most dramatic allegations contained in his indictment are sourced to a convicted drug trafficker who struck a secret deal with US prosecutors to reduce his own sentence in exchange for testimony against Maduro: former Venezuelan Gen. Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal.
Coerced “star witness” strikes secret deal with US prosecutors
The head of military intelligence under the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez from 2004 to 2011, Carvajal is cited seven times in the January 3 DOJ indictment as a witness to alleged criminal acts by Maduro and his inner circle. Carvajal was first arrested in 2014 in Aruba on drug running charges, but was returned to Venezuela to the chagrin of US authorities. In 2017, as he faced a pair of indictments in the US, the general suddenly turned on Maduro, who he denounced as a dictator. Carvajal went on to openly endorse the regime change project of US-controlled “interim president” Juan Guaido in 2019, fashioning himself as a courageous defector while proffering his supposed knowledge of the Venezuelan deep state to Washington.
That same year, as Carvajal sought asylum in Spain, the US formally demanded that Madrid hand him over. Now facing the prospect of extradition, he delivered a series of tell-all interviews to legacy outlets like the New York Times, doing his best to legitimize virtually every charge the Trump administration sought to weaponize against Maduro.
Then-Senator Marco Rubio could barely contain his excitement about the prospect of squeezing the Chavista insider for testimony in a future case against Maduro. Carvajal “will soon be coming to the US to provide important information about the #MaduroRegime,” Rubio tweeted on April 12, 2019. “Bad day for the #MaduroCrimeFamily.”
It was not until 2023 that Carvajal was finally extradited and placed on trial in the Southern District court of New York. After he pleaded guilty to “narco-terrorism” this June, the Miami Herald reported that he had struck a plea deal which would grant him “a considerable sentence reduction if he provides ‘substantial assistance’ to US investigations.”
Carvajal’s still-secret plea deal gives away the game he’d played since he first emerged as a defector. His allegations against Maduro had been delivered under duress, all designed to satisfy his would-be jailers in the US. He has since indulged one of Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories by alleging in a June 2025 letter to the US president that Maduro manipulated Venezuela’s Smartmatic voting systems to rig the 2020 US presidential election in favor of Biden.
Carvajal’s shameless pandering to Trump and secret plea deal should obliterate his credibility as a witness against Maduro.
In its January 3 indictment of Maduro, the DOJ claimed Carvajal and Diosdado Cabello “worked with other members of the Venezuelan regime” to “coordinate the shipment” of 5.5 tons of cocaine from Simon Bolivar International Airport to Campeche, Mexico in a private jet in 2006. This incident remains the source of intense intrigue, as the ownership of the DC-9 jet by two shadowy American companies points in the direction of US intelligence.
While details of potential covert US government involvement in the 2006 drug shipment remain murky, it is an established fact that the CIA founded and operated the “Cartel of the Suns” which the DOJ now accuses Maduro, Cabello and other top Venezuelan officials of controlling.
Cartel of the Suns: created by the CIA, weaponized by the DOJ
In the original indictment of Maduro, the DOJ explicitly accused Maduro of leading a narco-trafficking cartel called “Cartel of the Suns,” referencing it over 30 times.
The revised DOJ indictment of Maduro unsealed on January 3 states, “Starting in or about 1999, Venezuela became a safe haven for drug traffickers willing to pay for protection and support corrupt Venezuelan civilian and military officials, who operated outside the reach of Colombian law enforcement and armed forces bolstered by United States anti-narcotics assistance.”
It continues: “The profits of that illegal activity flow to corrupt rank-and-file civilian, military, and intelligence officials, who operate in a patronage system run by those at the top-referred to as the Cartel de Los Soles or Cartel of the Suns.”
The informal network of corrupt military officials was in fact established by the CIA under pro-US Venezuelan governments during the 1980’s and ’90’s. Americans were introduced to this inconvenient truth not by some dissident muckraker, but by the New York Times, and by Mike Wallace in a 60 Minutes exposé broadcast in 1993.
Three years earlier, US Customs officials in Miami had intercepted a shipment of 1000 pounds of pure cocaine from Venezuela. But they were soon told by higher-ups in the US government the shipments had been approved by Langley. According to the Times, the CIA sought to allow the cocaine to “enter the United States without being seized, so as to allay all suspicion. The idea was to gather as much intelligence as possible on members of the drug gangs.”
“I really take great exception to the fact that 1000 kilos came in, funded by US taxpayer money,” then-DEA attache to Venezuela Annabelle Grimm remarked to 60 Minutes. “I found that particularly appalling.”
To organize the shipments from Venezuela, the CIA recruited generals from the Venezuelan National Guard who were trained by the US. Because officers in the National Guard wore patches on their uniforms bearing the symbol of a sun, the informal drug network was branded as “The Cartel of the Suns.”
In the years after the CIA-run cartel was exposed in US media, it disappeared from public view entirely, only to be revived when the US government began hounding Gen. Carvajal, who may soon appear as its key witness against Maduro. While corruption is still present in the Venezuelan military, there is little evidence of anything resembling a Cartel of the Suns in its ranks.
As Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, told CNN, “Cartel de los Soles, per se, doesn’t exist. It’s a journalistic expression created to refer to the involvement of Venezuelan authorities in drug trafficking.”
A former senior US official echoed Gunson, describing Cartel of the Suns as “a made-up name used to describe an ad hoc group of Venezuelan officials involved in the trafficking of drugs through Venezuela. It doesn’t have the hierarchy or command-and-control structure of a traditional cartel.”
The official told CNN that the DEA or Defense Intelligence Agency had supplied Trump with a “purely political” assessment of the cartel to support his assault on Venezuela.
Discovery granted to the defense in the trial of Maduro and Flores risks severely embarrassing the US government by extracting further evidence of CIA drug running. This may be why the DOJ softened its language about the Cartel of the Suns, referring to it in the January 3 indictment as a mere “patronage network” rather than as a cohesive criminal syndicate, and mentioning it only twice.
During his first appearance in court earlier that day, the kidnapped Venezuelan leader was only able to speak for a brief moment. “I am innocent. I am a decent man. I am President…” Maduro pleaded before being cut off by his lawyer.
https://thegrayzone.com/2026/01/05/indi ... k-witness/
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Adelante, Venezuela, perimeter of the emerging multipolar world
Lorenzo Maria Pacini
January 6, 2026
The socialism of the Bolivarian Revolution has represented one of the most significant attempts in the 21st century to rethink the relationship between the state, the people, and resources in Latin America.
Why the powers of the old world dislike Venezuela
Venezuela has always occupied a privileged place on the list of bitter enemies of the old world, the collective West. Why is this? The answer is simple: Venezuela represents a bulwark of resistance to Western imperialism, both European and American; it represents a concrete bulwark against nationalism of all kinds (neo-fascism and neo-Nazism, but not only); it represents an experiment in practical socialism. None of this can be to the liking of those who, on the other hand, plan the forms of political power manipulated by the hegemonic octopus.
The socialism of the Bolivarian Revolution has represented one of the most significant attempts in the 21st century to rethink the relationship between the state, the people, and resources in Latin America. Born out of the historical experience of social exclusion, economic dependence, and oligarchic concentration of wealth, the Bolivarian project sought to restore centrality to the Venezuelan masses, placing social justice, national sovereignty, and inclusion at the heart of politics.
With Hugo Chávez’s rise to the presidency in 1999, Venezuela began a profound transformation of its development model. Chávez interpreted socialism not as an abstract ideological dogma, but as a pragmatic tool to respond to the concrete needs of the population. Through the nationalization of strategic resources, particularly oil, and the redistribution of energy revenues, the so-called “social missions” were financed: programs aimed at literacy, free healthcare, access to housing, and higher education. Millions of Venezuelans, historically excluded from essential services, saw a tangible improvement in their living conditions.
Bolivarian socialism also took the form of authentic anti-fascism, understood not only as opposition to authoritarian far-right regimes, but as a structural struggle against inequality, social racism, and economic imperialism. Chávez advocated a multipolar and solidarity-based model, founded on the self-determination of peoples and cooperation between states of the global South, breaking with decades of subordination to external interests.
After Chávez’s death, Nicolás Maduro inherited a complex legacy in a profoundly changed context, marked by economic crises, international sanctions, and strong political polarization. Despite obvious difficulties, Maduro has continued along the path of pragmatic socialism, seeking to preserve fundamental social achievements and adapt the Bolivarian project to new conditions. Policies to support food supplies, defend wages, and maintain public services have continued to be pillars of government action.
The Bolivarian Revolution embodied a vision of politics as a tool for collective emancipation. Beyond its contradictions and challenges, it showed how socialism, in concrete form and rooted in national reality, can become a practice of social justice, popular dignity, and anti-fascist resistance in the contemporary world. And all this, we repeat, is not to the liking of the collective West.
Who benefits from Maduro’s fall?
Just look at who rejoiced at what happened on January 3, 2026. President Maduro was arrested… no, that is not the correct term: in law, a person can only be said to be ‘arrested’ when specific legal conditions are met. Arrest has certain prerequisites, including flagrante delicto (caught in the act, immediately after or following investigations that have produced clear evidence), and is ordered by a judge, who must have jurisdiction. So, the question that arises in the case of President Maduro is under what jurisdiction the American watchdogs dared to violate Venezuela’s sovereignty, enter the country, capture its president, deport him to the US, and subject him to American law. We are already familiar with this American modus operandi.
Now, returning to the main topic, it was, coincidentally, the collective godchildren of the West who rejoiced at Maduro’s downfall.
Israel was the first to rejoice, even congratulating Donald Trump and hoping to be able to intervene in the country’s financial and trade policies, right after the American president declared that from now on the US will be “very present” in Venezuelan economic policy. A warning, or rather two, goes to real gangsters. Now “the greatest democracy in the Middle East” can celebrate another victory, securing wealth, influence, and power even on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean… and who knows, maybe they will also claim Venezuela as “God’s promised land” for their great, indeed gigantic, Israel!
Why did they want him to fall? The reasons are perhaps few, but very clear.
Maduro maintained the break in diplomatic relations with Israel, originally severed in 2009 under Hugo Chávez, throughout his presidency since 2013, describing Israel as a “colonial regime.” He also established and strengthened diplomatic ties with the Palestinian National Authority, including formal recognition and support for the Palestinian state. He has publicly condemned Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “genocide” against the Palestinian people, particularly in statements made in May 2025 in the context of the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. He even denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the Hitler of the 21st century” in June 2025, in response to Israeli attacks on Iran. He condemned Israeli attacks on Iran as “criminal” and ‘immoral’ in June 2025, calling for an immediate end to the aggression. He made a direct appeal to the Israeli people in June 2025 to “stop Netanyahu’s madness,” calling Israeli policies aggressive and urging internal opposition.
Venezuela, incidentally, is a country that has no Zionist-run banks. Maduro has supported anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, including voting in favor of measures condemning Israeli occupation and actions in Palestine, such as the December 2025 General Assembly resolution welcoming the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the issue.
He has aligned Venezuela with anti-Israel alliances, including close ties with Iran, which have been “a source of concern for international Jewish organizations.” He accused “international Zionism” of orchestrating protests and unrest following the controversial 2024 presidential elections in Venezuela, blaming Jewish influence for manipulating the media, social networks, and satellite technology to weaken his regime.
With these positions, it was clear that Maduro could not remain in power for much longer.
What lies behind the early statements?
Among his various statements, Trump made another one with a strong impact: according to reports, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez had already been in contact with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, expressing a certain openness to collaboration.
The crucial point, however, is not so much the veracity of this information. At a time when a president is effectively neutralized, the chain of power is being questioned, and the local media remains confused, making such assumptions is tantamount to detonating a political bomb.
On the one hand, this could weaken Delcy Rodríguez’s position in the eyes of Venezuelan public opinion: officially critical of the United States, but ready to negotiate behind the scenes. Her own allies could exploit this narrative to oust her from the political scene, should they deem it appropriate.
On the other hand, Trump’s words seem to be an implicit message about the direction the vice president should take: comply with Washington’s instructions, avoid ending up like Maduro, and perhaps even manage to retain a central role in the country’s leadership. This interpretation is reinforced by the statements about Maria Corina Machado.
In this way, with such positions, Washington could hit several targets at once: fuel divisions among Maduro’s possible heirs and, at the same time, push some actors to the negotiating table, discouraging them from implementing strategies aimed at causing permanent instability and widespread conflict.
Marco Rubio plays a central role, having immediately exposed himself, or been deliberately exposed, as one of the main proponents of what happened. His renowned ambitions
If the United States succeeds in its intent, it would then have a free hand: acting from a position of clear advantage, it could easily disregard any commitments made, as has happened several times in the past.
Because one thing is certain: the US lies. Lies are their ‘truth’ on which they have built their world.
State banditry, exceptionalism confirmed
The United States has once again confirmed its identity. State banditry is once again legitimized and becomes the norm. The US is exceptionalist, deciding by force and violence to break the rules it wants and impose its will on others.
The only response to piracy carried out by a member state of the United Nations, and therefore fully legitimized in every respect, active and passive, by international law, is to invoke a principle that in February 2022 found widespread support and recognition among a significant part of global public opinion. There is an aggressor and an aggressed, as we have learned to say.
If yesterday’s Iraq or today’s Venezuela were truly defined as “rogue states” or led by “rogue governments,” there are legitimate and universally recognized international institutions to which one can turn to report any wrongdoing and seek justice: from the International Court of Justice to the United Nations General Assembly to the Security Council. When these solid and shared legal and ethical paths are abandoned, everything becomes permissible and we plunge into a jungle where the only law left is that of force.
Venezuela was an existential perimeter for the old world with respect to the multipolar world. Too extensive, too risky, too dangerous for the old hegemony. Geographically, too, it was a thorn in the side of the renewed Monroe Doctrine 2.0 and the interests of the old empire.
But all is not lost. The example of Venezuela and what is happening there must be a stern warning to the whole world: either we understand this sad but harsh truth, or we risk falling into an abyss of no return for the whole world.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/ ... lar-world/
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Africa voices outrage against US invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Maduro
Following the shocking invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, African states, social movements, trade unions, and political parties have responded with strong condemnation of the action, while expressing solidarity and support for the people of Venezuela.
January 06, 2026 by Nicholas Mwangi
Mass mobilization in Caracas, Venezuela on Sunday, January 4 rejecting the US military action in Venezuela. Photo: Rome Arrieche
The United States’ military invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores on January 3, 2026, has led to a wave of sharp condemnation across Africa. Governments, political parties, trade unions, revolutionary movements, and solidarity networks have denounced the action as a flagrant violation of international law, a return to imperial “might makes right”, and a dangerous escalation threatening global peace.
From official diplomatic channels in South Africa to socialist parties in Zambia and Tunisia, and from militant trade unions to anti-imperialist platforms across the continent, African voices have responded with unusual clarity and unity.
South Africa, in a formal statement, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation called for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council, stressing that the invasion constituted a “manifest violation” of the UN Charter.
The country’s head of diplomacy, Clayson Monyela, expressed alarm and asked publicly:
“Where’s the ‘international rules-based order’? Are we back to the law of the jungle now?”
Venezuela’s ambassador to South Africa, Carlos Feo Acevedo, described the attack as “clear criminal and terrorist acts” by the US administration.
Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also released a press statement, saying they were alarmed at the unilateral and unauthorized invasion of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by the United States of America and the subsequent abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Expressing strong reservations against the unilateral use of force, they strongly deplore such acts that violate the Charter of the United Nations and international law, as well as the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of states. Noting that attempts at the occupation of foreign territories and apparent external control of oil resources have extremely adverse implications on international stability and the global order. Also of concern to Ghana are statements by US President Donald Trump that the US will “run” Venezuela “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition” and that large US oil companies will be asked to “go in”. These declarations are reminiscent of the colonial and imperialist era.
Trade unions and working-class movements
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) issued a press statement, NUMSA condemned the invasion as an illegal regime-change operation aimed at strangling the Bolivarian Revolution and seizing Venezuela’s oil and mineral wealth.
NUMSA framed the assault on Venezuela within a broader pattern of US imperial conduct, linking it to sanctions, trade wars, and economic aggression against Africa itself. The union recalled US tariffs on South African goods, the collapse of AGOA benefits, and punitive trade measures against countries like Lesotho as evidence that Africa, too, has been a victim of Washington’s coercive power.
Calling the kidnapping of President Maduro an international crime, NUMSA demanded urgent action by BRICS, urged mass resistance to imperialism, and warned that unchecked US aggression would push the world toward barbarism.
“The world is today faced with the stark choice: capitalist barbarism or socialism,” the statement concluded.
Socialist and communist parties across Africa speak out
Across the continent, socialist and communist parties reacted with striking ideological coherence.
In Zambia, Socialist Party President Dr Fred M’membe condemned the strikes as a war crime, describing the disappearance of President Maduro as a dangerous escalation. Saying that the operation was motivated by Washington’s inability to tolerate a government that prioritizes social welfare over multinational corporate interests.
In Tunisia, the Workers’ Party denounced the attack as an act of “banditry and state terrorism,” warning that the assault on Venezuela opens the door to international arbitrariness and mirrors ongoing wars in Palestine and the Middle East. The party framed the invasion as part of a wider imperial strategy to reassert U.S. dominance over Latin America, long treated as Washington’s “backyard”.
The Communist Party of Swaziland described the bombing of Venezuela as barbaric and reaffirmed solidarity with the Venezuelan working class and peasantry, declaring that the struggle against imperialism is inseparable from the struggle for global liberation.
Anti-imperialist and Pan-African solidarity
Revolutionary and anti-imperialist platforms also mobilized rapidly. The World Anti-Imperialist Platform called on its members worldwide to organize protests at US embassies, issue statements of condemnation, and strengthen international defense brigades in solidarity with Venezuela. Invoking the legacy of the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War, the platform raised the slogan “No Pasarán!”, declaring unwavering support for Venezuela’s resistance.
In Morocco, the Democratic Network in Solidarity with Peoples announced mass protests in front of parliament, condemning what it described as US and Zionist imperial arrogance and warning that the kidnapping of a sitting president represents a direct challenge to the entire international system.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Antifascist International denounced the attack as an imperialist attempt to destroy the revolutionary legacy of Simón Bolívar and Hugo Chávez, calling for global unity against capitalism and imperial domination.
Guinean activist Oyé Beavogui, speaking as part of the African Democratic Revolution currently, described the abduction of President Maduro as “state kidnapping” and a historic insult to the dignity and sovereignty of Latin American peoples.
In a statement, Pan Africanism Today declared its unconditional solidarity with the Venezuelan people, the organization affirmed its support for the Bolivarian government and President Maduro, stressing that the Bolivarian Revolution is a mass popular movement of millions of people rather than a project centered on one individual. And the attack was motivated by Venezuela resources. Drawing historical parallels, Pan Africanism Today compared the situation in Venezuela to NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya. It argued that similar tactics, economic sanctions, international propaganda, and military force, were used to dismantle Libyan sovereignty, leading to long-term instability across North Africa and the Sahel.
The West African Peoples’ Organization (WAPO/OPAO) also condemned what it described as an unacceptable act of aggression by the United States against Venezuela, following reports of a military attack and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
WAPO said it “strongly condemns this act of aggression, which is contrary to all international norms and principles, particularly the respect for the sovereignty of independent states.”
The Socialist Movement of Ghana also put out a statement of solidarity with the people of Venezuela against the aggression, saying that this is a defining moment that demands clarity, courage, and action. The defense of Venezuela today is the defense of all peoples resisting exploitation, domination, and imperialist control. “History teaches us that silence in the face of imperialist aggression only emboldens it. We have witnessed the consequences of the interventions in Libya, Iraq, and Syria: shattered states, hundreds of thousands dead, refugee crises, and the flourishing of terrorism. Our collective protest today can be the deterrent that prevents a full-scale war.”
In East Africa the move was condemned widely by social movements and parties, including the Tanzania Socialist Forum, which said the aggression constituted a clear violation of international law. It cited Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of any state, as well as Article 51, arguing that Venezuela posed no threat that could justify claims of self-defense by the United States.
The Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPM-K) issued a statement of solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The party expressed “militant and unshakeable solidarity” with the Venezuelan people, the country’s armed forces, and the Bolivarian government led by President Nicolás Maduro. The statement said Venezuela is facing an imperialist assault aimed at undermining its sovereignty and political independence.
A common African message
The African reactions converge around several key demands:
1.The US invasion of Venezuela is widely seen as a gross violation of international law and sovereignty.
2.The kidnapping of President Maduro is described as state terrorism and an unprecedented escalation.
3.Many African actors link the attack to resource imperialism, particularly Venezuela’s oil wealth.
4.There is deep concern that global institutions, especially the UN, risk irrelevance if such actions go unchallenged.
5.The assault is viewed as part of a broader pattern of imperial violence, from Palestine to Africa and Latin America.
For much of Africa, this solidarity is crucial because Venezuela’s fate is not a distant Latin American issue, but a warning of how imperial power continues to operate against any people who attempt an independent path in defense of their resources and sovereignty.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2026/01/06/ ... nt-maduro/
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Lawyer Who Represented Julian Assange Takes on President Maduro’s Defense, Presidential Couple Injured
January 6, 2026
Renowned criminal lawyer Barry Pollack, who defended journalist Julian Assange, has taken on the defense of Venezuela’s constitutional president, Nicolás Maduro, in New York. Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were kidnapped and taken there following the US attack in the early hours of Jan. 3, when military forces under orders from the White House carried out bombings against Caracas and several states, killing dozens of civilians and military personnel.
Amid their illegitimate detention, President Maduro and Cilia Flores were taken this Monday to the Southern District Court of New York to begin a trial for alleged links to drug trafficking. This process reveals its political nature after months of unsubstantiated accusations by the Trump regime to publicly blame the Chavista leader for ties to drug trafficking.
Pollack gained greater notoriety after helping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reach a plea deal in 2024 that allowed him to leave prison. Assange faced charges of conspiring to obtain and release classified US documents in connection with the largest leak in US history in 2010, which included nearly half a million documents about the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. This leak exposed crimes against humanity committed by US troops against civilians during their invasions of both countries.
Associated with the firm Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler LLP, this trial lawyer has more than 30 years of experience in complex criminal cases and many other offenses, according to US media. He is also listed as a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a member of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers, and a former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Cilia Flores, for her part, will be represented by Mark Donnelly of the firm Parker Sanchez and Donnelly. He is a lawyer specializing in economic crimes who worked for over a decade at the Department of Justice.
While both were brought before Federal Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who is presiding over the case, thousands of citizens opposed to US actions outside the courthouse demanded the Venezuelan presidential couple release and condemned the military aggression against the South American nation. Washington’s vile aggression against Venezuela took place a month after Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison by the same Judge Hellerstein for proven drug trafficking offenses.
Adding to this scandal, other questions are piling up against the White House tenant, such as the extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean (after attacks against alleged drug boats), the military operations behind the backs of the prerogatives of Congress, the consequences of the hunt for migrants and the deportations, and even Trump’s links with the pedophile and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Flores injured
Venezuela’s First Lady, Cilia Flores, suffered “significant injuries” during her kidnapping along with President Nicolás Maduro early Saturday morning, amidst the US military assault and bombing of Venezuelan territory.
Flores’s lawyer, Mark Donnelly, revealed that his client suffered “significant injuries” including possible fractures and a severe rib hematoma. “The injuries are visible,” Donnelly stated, urging a comprehensive medical evaluation of his client.
(a little more at link, character count issue.)
https://orinocotribune.com/lawyer-who-r ... e-injured/
The Armed Forces have been put on high alert, and a “military regime” has been introduced for workers in the oil industry and a number of other key industries.
"An immediate mobilization of the national armed forces throughout the country and the use of available national power potential to repel foreign aggression are ordered... The militarization of state infrastructure, the oil industry, and other major state industries. The staff of such enterprises will temporarily be under military regime”, - the document says.
