KEPW News covers US takeover of Venezuela

Presenter: KEPW interrupted its regular programming Saturday morning for a news bulletin. Here’s Sam Broadway:

Sam Broadway: Hi, I’m Sam Broadway, interrupting your regular programming this morning to bring you this updated breaking news from the KEPW Newsroom. 

President Donald Trump said the United States successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured and flown out of the country.

The announcement on Trump’s social media platform came before 4:30 this morning, a few hours after several explosions were heard in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas. Photos and videos show plumes of smoke and a large fireball in the sky. Trump said the operation was carried out in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement and said he would hold a news conference at 11 a.m. from Mar-A- Lago.

President Donald Trump: Late last night and early today at my direction, the United States Armed Forces conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela. Overwhelming American military power, air, land, and sea was used to launch a spectacular assault. And it was an assault like people have not seen since World War II.

It was a force against a heavily-fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas to bring outlaw dictator Nicolás Maduro to justice. This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history.

Sam Broadway: There are no immediate reports of U.S. military deaths during the operation. However, Trump and Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said some Americans were injured and that a helicopter was hit.

The Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores will soon face the full wrath of the American justice on American soil in American courts on a slew of charges in New York, including narcoterrorism conspiracy and cocaine importation conspiracy, as well as weapons charges.

Maduro has faced these charges in New York for several years. A federal indictment against Maduro and his family was unsealed Saturday saying he was at the forefront of a narcoterrorism conspiracy and that imported tons of cocaine into the United States. The indictment handed up last month by a federal grand jury in New York accused Maduro of allowing cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit, the benefit of the members of his regime, and the benefit of his family members. 

The indictment named two of the family members, including Maduro’s wife, Cilia, and his son Nicolás, as part of the alleged conspiracy. And in total charged six defendants with narcoterrorism conspiracy.

The operation that led to Maduro’s capture was carried out by the Army’s Delta Force and the CIA had identified the leader’s precise location, according to two people familiar with the operation. Trump told Fox News he watched every aspect of the operation from Florida and said Maduro tried to escape. 

Maduro was taken by helicopter to USS Iwo Jima and will be transported to New York.

In a brief phone interview with the New York Times, Trump celebrated what he called the success of the mission to capture Maduro, who the U.S. considered the head of a foreign terrorist organization since the November designation.

The news conference, which is going on right now as we speak with the president, the secretary of state, the head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretary of war, all of them are in there. And the president said during this press conference that we will be running the country of Venezuela in the interim until a new government has been set up and it’s not certain who will take the place in this situation.

Let’s reiterate our breaking news here, the United States has bombed and struck Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro and his wife Celia, and are transporting him as we speak to New York to face multiple charges in an unsealed indictment from the U.S. Department of Justice.

And that the president has iterated in a statement that is going on in a news conference that the United States will be taking over Venezuela.

President Donald Trump: We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.

So, we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. 

Sam Broadway: This is Todd Boyle, our chief videographer of KEPW, that covered much of the protests this year. And we’re happy to have him as part of this breaking news. 

Todd Boyle: My reaction is, almost, at this point, after all the wars that we’ve been through, honestly, I was not the least bit surprised or even interested. This just doesn’t even seem out of the ordinary. It’s just business as usual for a gangster state.

Sam Broadway: Todd, do you think this is just a ploy to take over the oil there in Venezuela?

Todd Boyle: Well, yeah, that’s obviously, what this is about is the oil.

You know, every time there’s a war, they have like the same three scripts. One is that the guy is an evil demon and has to be taken out, you know, and, number two, it’s a humanitarian obligation to, you know, for the people of that country and it’s a threat to us in one way or another. You know, the people who make up these lies, these, you know, they get all these scripts all lined up beforehand.

Sam Broadway: I think we’re going to see actions here locally and throughout the country. I’m sure this is not going to sit well with the general public here, and most people can see through this as a distraction from the Epstein files and Trump’s general failures as a president in this country over different things.

It should be noted that the administration, including the president, said all political and military figures in Venezuela should understand: What happened to Maduro could happen to them.

Again, this is KEPW breaking news. We are on the air because the United States has attacked, a large-scale strike early Saturday, and its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife have been captured and flown out of the country after months have stepped up pressure by Washington, and this has been going on for a while.

We have blown up several boats, killing over 100 people that are used looked like fishing boats thing described as narcoterrorism boats carrying tons of drugs to the United States, though that’s almost impossible to happen because the length of the span between Venezuela and the United States is quite a distance. A small boat especially would’ve to refuel several times in order to get here.

And that would take quite a bit of time for one of these small fishing boats if they were carrying drugs to get here. Trump has also described that 300 million people have been killed because of the drugs. There’s not 300 million people in the United States, so, this is all Trump. No pun intended, but this is all trumped-up stuff.

Presenter: Right after broadcasting that news bulletin Saturday morning, KEPW News interviewed Rob Fisette of the Party for Socialism and Liberation: 

Rob Fisette: We are having an emergency action at the Eugene Federal Building, 211 E. 7th Ave., to respond to the lawless attacks on Venezuela that happened in the middle of the night last night, the kidnapping of the president and his wife.

Polling shows that over 70% of Americans are opposed to war in Venezuela, and 70% is a lot. You can’t get 70% of Americans to agree on hardly anything most of the time, but they agree on that. We’re all opposed to this war.

We all understand that the reason that we can’t have things here like health care, food, child care, housing, because all of those resources are tied up in going into these terroristic wars to undermine the sovereignty of other nations, to steal their minerals and oil and wealth.

And, people are seeing through that now in ways that we haven’t always, and that’s why it’s necessary for us to stand up and say so, so we’re having an action here today in Eugene. There are actually actions today in over a hundred cities, around the country, and I’ve already seen reporting of, actions going on around the world, in Cuba and certainly in Caracas itself. 

You know, the policy of economic war against Venezuela is deeply bipartisan, has been going on during Biden, was going on during Trump 1, was going on during Obama.

So, you know, the sanctions and economic war against Venezuela is total and perpetual—because they had the audacity to try to exercise self-sovereignty. Now we don’t need people to agree with that to be against invasion and to be against war in Venezuela. But this is simply like the fact that they’re out there saying, and that even in his, in his press conference earlier today, he made it clear that, you know, we, the U.S. will run Venezuela.

We will, our companies will go in, we have the greatest oil companies in the world. They’re going to go in and they’re going to take what is theirs? Like, he just comes out and says these things, so there’s no possibility to confuse it anymore.

Of course they’ve been very clear in their national security document that they just released, for example, that the Monroe Doctrine is on, the Monroe Doctrine is on in North America, hard and fast—the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that the resources everywhere in North America are ours to control, and anyone who decides to exert their own control about them will be replaced or will be attacked and replaced. So that said, that’s simply their perspective.

That’s why it’s like our necessity to build the strongest, broadest, widest, coalition of forces, you know, throughout all sectors of society, to show up and demonstrate that we oppose this war and that that understand our role in how that develops. 

You know, it’s not just that Trump can say, and the administration can say and do whatever they want. No, there are forces that are acting on them. The American people are one of those forces, and it’s necessary for us to do everything that is in our power to show up and to be as strong as we can. 

Todd Boyle: I’m just wondering, what the hell is this other than a big distraction?

Rob Fisette: You know, the answer is always that these things are distractions and they’re not. There are specific reasons that it’s happening right now. One of the reasons is that Trump’s domestic policy, domestic agenda is extremely unpopular. It’s extremely unpopular and failing.

Therefore, you know, at all times in the modern history of the U.S. when you have extremely unpopular domestic policy, it’s often possible to get people to line up behind you with a shiny new war. 

Todd Boyle: Yeah, because, you know, if you don’t go along with the war, then that means that you’re supporting the evil regime, you know? (Exactly.) Like, why do you love, why do you love these evil dictators? (Sure.)

Rob Fisette: It is definitely intended as a distraction at this exact moment from the failure of Trump’s domestic policies, the unpopularity of them.

At the same time, regime change in Venezuela has been a desire of the U.S. ruling class for a long time. And so the fact that there’s an an opportunity to sort of opportunistically do it right now, while it might also be able to have these other benefits of lining up people behind it, who otherwise are totally against everything that Trump is doing 

It’s clear that people are seeing through it more this time than before.

And so as part of the movement, that’s our role is to kind of be bringing that to the forefront and include anti imperialism, alongside our fight against Trump’s domestic policies at all times. We need to create a movement that is not co-opted by these things like targeting some foreign head of state, demonizing them and saying, ‘Well, therefore we actually have no choice, it’s a good thing, a progressive thing to go and take them out.’

This is simply the pattern that’s happened, with Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Maduro, Chavez, Noriega, Iran, anytime the U.S. wants to go in and take over a country and disrupt what’s going on in the country, it starts by the total demonization of the head of state.

And we don’t have to have an opinion about any particular head of state to recognize the pattern and to simply not fall for it. And a lot of people are not falling for it. This time to be clear, the truth is available for anyone who seeks to find it. And it is easier to find it these days than perhaps other times.

You know, just about a month ago, in anticipation, seeing that the Trump administration was ramping up its rhetoric against Venezuela, anticipating that this might happen despite its unpopularity, people have been mobilized during the Trump administration, for example, against ICE and against a lot of the domestic attacks that the administration has been visiting on people here against immigrants, against trans people, just against the working and poor in general.

You know, people have been in the street mobilized about this, and when you’re in the street, it’s easier to draw the connections between those problems that we’re experiencing here at home and the way that the U.S. empire operates abroad.

Nov. 18, we hosted at the Art House theater, with several other groups including the Pacific Green Party and Extinction Rebellion and Veterans for Peace, we hosted a screening of Abby Martin’s new film, Earth’s Greatest Enemy, which is essentially about, this is about the environmental cost of the U.S. military.

That’s via the death and destruction and carbon emissions and just the killing of life, non-human life everywhere around the planet. We had several different groups including, UO Climate Justice League and the Veterans for Peace, and of course the PSL.

It was really valuable that the UO Climate Justice League was eager to get involved. Extinction Rebellion has been involved in a lot of the anti-war action as well, and the Planet Versus Pentagon the group locally has been doing this for years and years and years trying to highlight the connections between, the state of the Earth climate and these endless wars.

And this reflects a very broad coalition of forces. Not all socialists. You don’t have to be socialists to oppose war. And that’s kind of the message that we’re trying to bring. But certainly socialists too as well. And that’s been a message that’s resonated with a lot of people. 

The fact that there’s such a broad consensus across even those organizations, that were founded—like 50501, let’s say, was an organization that was founded in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election, primarily as a mechanism to fight Trump’s domestic policy.

And to see the consciousness of those organizations and the people involved in those organizations developing through the fight to understand that the fight against us imperialism, and these forever wars and attacks on the sovereignty of other nations is part and parcel of the same fight against the Trump domestic policy is, you know, it’s a really heartening, for those of us who’ve been organizing for a while, where sometimes it can feel like you’re screaming into the void.

You still do the work because it’s necessary, but I think it’s clear in this moment that there are massive quantitative advancements in consciousness happening around the nature of the U.S. empire and the U.S. ruling class, the nature of our democracy here, and that these are building, and you know, those quantitative advancements build until you have some sort of qualitative change, which is, that’s just science.

That’s coming at some point, you know. You can heat water for a while and it’ll seem like nothing’s happening and eventually, but it’s getting hotter. Those are quantitative changes, building, and then at some point it boils.

Presenter: KEPW News also asked Rob Fisette about Venezuela’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado. Here she speaks about her aspirations for her country: 

María Corina Machado: We will open Venezuela for foreign investment. I’m talking about a $1.7 trillion opportunity, not only in oil and gas, which is huge, and you know that the opportunities because we will open all, all upstream, middle stream, downstream to all companies, but also in mining, in gold, in infrastructure, power.

You know, Venezuela has 2,800 kilometers of pristine Caribbean coastline ready to be developed. So this is going to be huge. We will bring rule of law, we will open markets, we will have security for foreign investment and a transparent, massive privatization program that is waiting for you.

Our cause, the Venezuelan cause, is also the Cuban cause and the Nicaraguan cause. Liberating Venezuela will mean that Cuba and Nicaragua will soon be free again and for the first time in history, we will have the Americas free of communism, dictatorship, and narcoterrorism.

Presenter: In that Jan. 3 interview, Rob Fisette:

Rob Fisette: I think it’s really important to highlight how much awarding the Nobel Prize to Maria Carina Machado contributes to the manufacturing of consent for this project, the manufacturing of international consent, it was part and parcel of the same project.

Without that, there would be even less legitimacy for these kind of actions. Like the legitimacy as it is, is like hanging by a flimsy thread, trying to skirt through on certain extremely obvious lies. But that’s absolutely a big piece of it. The fact that a massive institution of apparent respectability awards this prize to a person who is calling for this exact thing.

It just sows confusion among the people of the world, possibly enough to stop them from an outright revolt when we see things, behavior, which is absolutely lawless, just the going in and kidnapping of a head of a sovereign state in the middle of the night.

Sam Broadway: Again, this is KEPW 97.3 FM LP in Eugene and streaming online at kepw.org. You are listening to breaking news on KEPW and we will be back if there are more developments that become available. Thank you.

Presenter: You can hear Sam Broadway and KEPW Newsday Tuesday through Friday afternoons at 12:30 p.m. on 97.3, Eugene’s PeaceWorks Community Radio.