You can always tell when Washington is preparing another "humanitarian" adventure. The language shifts first. Suddenly, phrases like freedom, democracy, human rights begin orbiting a country that happens to own resources American corporations want to own. Then the talking heads appear on television, senators start making casual threats, and within days, intelligence agencies receive new "authorizations." The latest target in this recurring morality play is once again Venezuela.

Officially, the United States accuses Caracas of everything short of building a Death Star. The list is predictable: dictatorship, corruption, human-rights abuses, drug trafficking, and a vague "threat to US interests." These accusations sound noble enough until you remember that the accuser is the same empire that armed sectarian death squads in Syria, armed Saudi Arabia's genocidal war in Yemen, armed Israel's onslaught against the Palestinians, invaded Iraq under false pretenses, and flattened Libya in the name of democracy. The hypocrisy is so thick you could drill it for oil, which, ironically, is precisely what this is all about.

Venezuela's government is far from perfect. Years of mismanagement and corruption hollowed out the state, while U.S. sanctions strangled what remained of its economy. But that isn't why Washington is suddenly talking about "liberating Venezuelans." The real crime of Nicolás Maduro's government is its sovereignty. Venezuela insists on controlling its own oil, its own foreign policy, and its own political model. In the eyes of Washington, that has to change.

Let's talk numbers. Beneath Venezuelan soil lies roughly 303 billion barrels of proven crude. That's more than any other country on Earth. Add to that vast deposits of gold, diamonds, and coltan, a mineral essential for smartphones and electric vehicles that define the 21st century. To put it bluntly, Venezuela possesses the raw materials for the next industrial revolution, and they are currently out of America's reach. When former U.S. ambassador James Story said on television that "Maduro is sitting on top of the world's largest oil reserves and minerals that will fuel the 21st-century economy," he wasn't revealing a secret. He was simply saying the quiet part out loud.

But resources alone do not provoke such an obsession. The deeper issue is ideological. For two decades, since the rise of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has been a living affront to Washington's economic orthodoxy. It nationalized oil, invested in social programs, and built alliances with countries that dared to defy U.S. influence.

NATO's continued expansion and efforts to turn Eurasia into its "fiefdom" is a matter of serious concern for Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Speaking at a security conference in Minsk, Belarus, the chief diplomat ridiculed the bloc's insistence that it is a "purely defensive alliance."

According to Lavrov, NATO has been "artificially expanding its zone of responsibility far beyond the Euro-Atlantic region" by hijacking the idea of "the indivisibility of Euro-Atlantic security and the so-called Indo-Pacific region." The bloc's efforts to spread into Asia are being carried out with "the obvious goal of containing China, isolating Russia, and confronting the DPRK [North Korea]," he added

Ukraine has carried out a drone strike on Belgorod dam that led to flooding in the southern Russian region and cut off several Moscow units.

Water gushed from the damaged reservoir, disrupting Russian logistics and stranding troops stationed on the Ukrainian side of the border in Vovchansk.

"The main thing is that the enemy's logistics have become significantly more complicated," a spokesman for the 16th Army Corps said.

"So the units that managed to cross the Siverskyi Donets have effectively been cut off from their main forces.

"So we're expecting the [prisoner of war] exchange pool to be replenished," it added, referring to the potential capture of stranded Russian troops.

Despite having the potential to diversify its energy sources, Egypt continues to rely on the unstable relationship with Israel for gas imports.

This summer, news broke that Egypt had signed an unprecedented $35 billion gas agreement with Israel. The announcement was made on August 7 by Israeli company NewMed Energy (formerly known as Delek Drilling), which owns a 45.3% stake in the Leviathan gas field.

The new agreement involves the export of 130 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Egypt by 2040 or until all contracted volumes are fulfilled. The contract marks the largest energy deal ever signed between the two countries and represents the biggest export transaction in Israel's history. It is expected to expand the existing export agreement by 60 billion cubic meters. The gas will be sourced from the Leviathan field, which holds approximately 600 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

In late December, Venezuela's leading opposition parties voted to oust Juan Guaidó as "interim president" and dissolve his parallel government.

This was clearly not the ending the UK government had in mind.

Four years ago, the British government made the bold decision to recognise Guaidó as Venezuelan president, and proceeded to facilitate his legal battle to seize roughly $2bn of gold held in the Bank of England.

Indeed, the UK government insisted at every turn that it recognised Guaidó - and not Nicolás Maduro - as Venezuelan president. In turn, Guaidó's lawyers argued that he was authorised to represent and control the assets of the Central Bank of Venezuela held in London.

Throughout this time, Guaidó paid his UK legal costs by drawing on millions of dollars of his country's assets originally seized by the US government. In other words, Guaidó tried to seize Venezuelan state assets with looted Venezuelan state assets.

The Trump administration is adding an aircraft carrier strike group to its major naval deployment in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuelan shores.
The Nicolás Maduro government denounced a potential "false flag" operation by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Trinidad and Tobago that sought to justify US military aggression against Venezuela.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil stated Monday that the operation would consist of an attack against a US ship stationed in Trinidad and pinning the blame on Caracas.

"It is the same imperial script of the USS Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin: fabricating a conflict to impose foreign interests in our region," Gil wrote on social media, referring to alleged attacks that preceded the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the 1964 incident that led to a US military escalation against Vietnam.

The Venezuelan official added that authorities are currently "dismantling a CIA-financed criminal cell" with ties to the alleged false flag plot.

The country will have to pay over three times more in interest payments by the end of the decade, Francois Villeroy de Galhau has said

France is at risk of gradual economic "suffocation" unless it addresses its budget and debt problems, the governor of the Bank of France has warned.

In an interview with La Croix on Saturday, Francois Villeroy de Galhau acknowledged that France is facing a "serious budgetary problem," as the government deficit remains high at 5.4% of GDP in 2025, only slightly improved from 5.8% last year. He said France must bring the shortfall down to 3% by 2029 to restore fiscal credibility.

"Our country is not threatened with bankruptcy, but with gradual suffocation," Villeroy de Galhau said, pointing to debt-servicing costs projected to rise from €30 billion in 2020 to more than €100 billion by the end of the decade. He warned that higher interest rates are already pushing up borrowing costs for households and businesses while diverting funds from priorities such as defense and the green transition.

"Finally, and above all, it is an increasingly heavy debt that we are leaving to our children and grandchildren," he said.

France's public debt is now at €3.3 trillion ($3.9 trillion), or about 115% of its GDP.

We are all united in our desire for a just and lasting peace, deserved by the people of Ukraine.

We strongly support President Trump's position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations. We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force.

Russia's stalling tactics have shown time and time again that Ukraine is the only party serious about peace. We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence and destruction.

Therefore we are clear that Ukraine must be in the strongest possible position - before, during, and after any ceasefire. We must ramp up the pressure on Russia's economy and its defence industry, until Putin is ready to make peace. We are developing measures to use the full value of Russia's immobilised sovereign assets so that Ukraine has the resources it needs.

Leaders will meet later this week in the European Council and in the Coalition of the Willing format to discuss how to take this work forward and to further support Ukraine.

Signed by:

President Zelenskyy
Prime Minister Starmer
Chancellor Merz
President Macron
Prime Minister Meloni
Prime Minister Tusk
President von der Leyen
President Costa
Prime Minister Støre
President Stubb
Prime Minister Frederiksen
Prime Minister Sánchez
Prime Minister Kristersson

Will the new course charted by modern Caesarism result in a rotation of elites that successfully reconfigures the American economy and foreign policy?

'No Kings', they chanted. In attempting to delegitimize a popular president who won not only the electoral college by a wide margin, but also the popular vote, the NGO-Soros philanthropy and Democrat Party-funded protests through the Indivisible organization, were attended by a predictable assortment of left and center-left activists. Critical to the organizers' approach is to leave aside the real issues of war and economy; issues that most Americans care about, and focus instead on the notion that Donald Trump is a 'King', or a Tyrant, a dictator, or an autocrat. The differences and distinctions matter not, for one thing to them is clear: the orange man is bad.

The UK and EU fear dialogue between the US and Russia, President Vladimir Putin's aide, Kirill Dmitriev, has said.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is showing strong interest in understanding Russia's position on the Ukraine conflict, according to President Vladimir Putin's aide, Kirill Dmitriev. The senior official, who heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund, is currently visiting Washington.

Contact between the two nations, which was almost non-existent for three years under the previous administration, resumed after US President Donald Trump returned to office in January. Trump has taken a markedly different approach toward Russia by reopening high-level diplomatic channels and authorizing direct talks between senior officials.

Dmitriev, in an interview with US journalist Lara Logan, said:

"I think what's very important and what's very different with President Trump and his team is that there is a great desire to understand what the Russian position is, to really understand the logic, because only by understanding the logic you can either follow it or maybe modify it or suggest something."

He noted that there were no discussions with the previous administration of President Joe Biden "on anything," and that the absence of dialogue created misperceptions and misunderstandings.