The Han Kuang Exercise is an annual military exercise by the ROC Armed Forces in preparation for a possible attack from the PRC. Photograph Source: 總統府 – 05.25 總統視導漢光33號演習 – CC BY 2.0

The New Year did not begin with hope or joy, except for the arms dealers. More precisely, for the military-industrial-media-academic-NGO complex that feeds on permanent war. Orders are flowing, profits are booming, and blood has once again become a growth sector. For any normal society, pirates belong in adventure films, not in the civilian power corridor. Yet Venezuela, more precisely, its legally elected president Nicolás Maduro, became the first trophy of the New Year.

A week after the grotesque “spectacle” of assault and kidnapping, analysts remain confused. It is not because the facts are unclear, but because they are often imprisoned by prefabricated narratives, many of which they themselves manufacture. Such is the “Taiwan issue” for quite some time. About Venezuela, much has already been said in a brilliant and insightful way. But let’s focus on the rest of the story. Much of it was delivered by Trump personally, with no shame and no restraint. In a grotesque parody of Kant, he openly declared himself “above international law,” constrained only by the ‘moral law’ within. To invoke morality and Trump in the same sentence—under the shadow of Epstein and ICE death squads—is not irony but obscenity.

Yet even as Venezuela is under tremendous pressure, this modern Nero is already drafting the next targets in what increasingly resembles an imperial suicide note. Names roll out like betting odds: Cuba. Greenland (dragging NATO and the........

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