https://www.mobilize.us/mayday/event/881039/

From Palestine to Venezuela: Chevron Profits From U.S. Imperialism

On Saturday morning, Trump bombed Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, and forcibly captured President Maduro in an illegal military operation conducted without congressional authorization. The U.S. military killed dozens of civilians, military personnel, and officials in the strikes.¹

Trump isn’t even hiding why he bombed Venezuela. At his press conference, he said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela, “rebuild the oil infrastructure,” and “take out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”² He openly discussed U.S. oil companies going into Venezuela to extract and sell the country’s oil—the largest proven reserves in the world.³

This war is about seizing Venezuela’s wealth and handing it to Big Oil corporations like Chevron, which are already being enriched by rising stock prices after Trump’s attack.⁴ All in the interest of U.S. imperialis

https://toad.social/@PimentoMori/115854603923972703

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I guess I could see that if you believe Trump became president (a second time) based on his own merit and skill.

    I believe he’s president because some very wealthy individuals sunk a lot of money into advertising, gerrymandering, and purchasing whatever parts of the legal system they could in order to get him elected. They call it project 2025, but they started planning all of this a very long time ago.

    And long before there was a project 2025, a mandate for leadership, or even a Heritage Foundation, there were some very shady actions that occured following WWII regarding American support of Israel (while simultaneously the precursor to the CIA (the OSS) was secretly helping Nazi war criminals escape justice, allegedly without even the president’s knowledge in the beginning).

    It’s kind of strange that in 2025, it all seems to come back to oil, wealthy conservatives across the globe looking out for their own interests, and the CIA. Probably just a nonsense “conspiracy theory.”

    As World War II ended, capitalist competition was rapidly globalizing. The United States was an emerging superpower, hungrily eyeing the Middle East’s newly discovered and vast oil deposits. A 1945 State Department memo described these deposits as “a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

    As much as the US ruling class wanted that oil, invasion and colonization wasn’t an option. That would have required ongoing direct rule, which would have been fantastically difficult — and expensive — to support from thousands of miles away. Additionally, in the late ’50s and early ’60s, Arab nationalism was sweeping across the Middle East. In Egypt, President Gamal Abdel Nasser struggled to throw off British imperialism and unite Arab countries. Anti-imperial struggles erupted across the region, threatening to expel Western powers. These uprisings meant a highly unstable region, which made for a terrible investment climate. Still worse from the American point of view, many of these nations were moving closer to the Soviet Union.

    The United States was forced to seek allies in the region. To pull Arab countries into its orbit, it argued that capitalist democracy was superior to Soviet Communism for their development.

    • SillyGooseQuacked@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      I take any political win by anyone in our system as a both/and story - both the politician(s) have the skills to meet the moment for public appeal and private industries have preference(s).

      Obviously winning without money is ridiculous, but it’s also clear from the historical record that money is not all that’s needed to win; iirc Trump and co spent less than Clinton and co in 2016 & Biden and co spent less than Trump and co in 2020.

      I do not really subscribe to the “it’s all about the oil industry” theory, mostly because of the Trump admin announcing a renewal of the Monroe doctrine. Like, oil is part of it because it is a resource, but determination to do imperialism in south america and north America to the point of announcement outright (the “donroe doctrine”) does not solely on oil depend.