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    Trump says he will meet Venezuela opposition leader Machado, and threatens drug cartel land strikes

    Trump was once dismissive of María Corina Machado but said it would be a ‘great honour’ to accept her Nobel peace prize if she made the offer Donald Trump has said he plans to meet Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, days after launching an attack that resulted in the capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and threatened land strikes against drug cartels in Latin America.In the aftermath of that operation, the future governance of the South American country has remained an open question, with Trump over the weekend dismissing the idea of working with popular opposition leader Machado, saying “she doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” Continue reading… More

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    Morality, military might and a sense of mischief: key takeaways from Trump’s New York Times interview

    Trump sounds off on Venezuela’s future, Taiwan’s security and his aims for Greenland, days after operation to seize Nicolás MaduroJust days after launching an unprecedented operation in Venezuela to seize its president and effectively take control of its oil industry, Donald Trump sat down with New York Times journalists for a wide-ranging interview that took in everything from international law, Taiwan, Greenland and weight-loss drugs.The president, riding high on the success of an operation that has upended the rules of global power, spoke candidly and casually about the new world order he appears eager to usher in; an order governed not by international norms or long-lasting alliances, but national strength and military power. Continue reading… More

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    Some US media are cheerleading Trump’s Venezuela raid. That’s not their job | Margaret Sullivan

    An almost admiring feeling pervaded the early coverage – and not just among right-leaning outletsIf you believe the early public opinion polls, Americans are uncertain about last weekend’s raid on Venezuela and the seizure of the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.But many in the media seem to be trying to move that wavering needle to approval.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading… More

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    Don’t dignify Trump with talk of a ‘new world order’ – there’s nothing new or ordered about this chaos | Aditya Chakrabortty

    The US president’s grotesque theatrics on the world stage are an opportunistic distraction from his falling domestic ratingsOf all the commandments for living under Donald Trump, the first is always this: don’t believe him. Nothing he says can be taken at face value; everything should be fed into a polygraph. Those of scrupulous courtesy can wrap it up in red ribbon, or uncork that aphorism about how the man must be taken seriously but never literally. All the same, scratch a Trump promise and underneath will glint a pretext. Scrutinise his grand plans and you find only shabby tactics.The Manhattan Democrat turns into a Florida-dwelling Republican; the troll who demanded Barack Obama’s birth certificate will hem and haw over releasing the Epstein files. From real-estate deals to Trump University, all that this guy swears is solid gold soon settles into so much bullshit.Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist Continue reading… More

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    On the ground in Venezuela after Trump’s ‘operation’ – podcast

    Which forces are vying for power now that Nicolás Maduro has been removed from Venezuela? With Tom Phillips“I’m a bit of an insomniac. So at almost 2am, I was awake, actually, and the first explosion, I swear I thought it was an earthquake.”For Anna (not her real name), a journalist based in Caracas, it took some time for the realisation to dawn on her that the US had attacked Venezuela’s capital. “But then when the explosions continued in the following 20 minutes, one after the other, something deep down told me, you know, it’s the Americans.” Continue reading… More

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    The role the Caribbean played in helping the US to depose Maduro

    Support for US action in the region seems to have laid the ground for regime change in Venezuela• Don’t get The Long Wave delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereHello and Happy New Year. We have started 2026 with a geopolitical shock as the Trump administration ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and imprisoned him on US soil. As many western governments struggle to respond to this violation of international law, for Caribbean countries, this is not an awkward diplomatic spot but a real moment of political fear, uncertainty, and regional fracture.One remarkable aspect of the Venezuela raid is how Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, has openly aligned with Donald Trump. Dr Jacqueline Laguardia Martinez, a senior lecturer at the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies, told me that Trinidad and Tobago – one of the founding members of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), a regional grouping of 15 member countries – has “openly endorsed US actions under the pretext of combating transnational crime”. One way that has happened is through military cooperation. On 28 November, a radar appeared in a coastal neighbourhood of Tobago, described by the New York Times as “a state-of-the-art mobile long-range sensor known as G/ATOR, or Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar, that is owned by the US Marines and is worth tens of millions of dollars.” Along with the sophisticated equipment, US military jets and troops arrived on the island, which is only 7 miles from Venezuela. Continue reading… More