Empire, again

I cannot imagine – indeed, I do not even want to begin to imagine what it is like to be entombed under the rubble of the earthquake in Venezuela. Alive. But unable to be rescued. Surviving the original quakes, only to die from lack of recovery.

So much has been written and spoken about the response. But few write about one of the major reasons so many people have and will die. 

The effects of decades of crippling US sanctions against a country that elected democratically, four times, a leader that the Empire did not approve of. 

A path taken so many times by Empire in the global south. Sanctions. Assassinations. Backbreaking poverty, leading to civil war, resulting in a flood of immigrants trying desperately to find a safe life, only to be spat on and out by the very same Empire that seeded the poverty and wars.

The ridiculous horror show of a president (no capital P for this one) boasted about being in charge of Venezuela when he illegally abducted the President of Venezuela to face a sham trial. But, as usual, he lied. He cares not a wit for the people of Venezuela. No white knight rush to the rescue. He cares only that Venezuela, and all of Latin America, bend to his will in all things. 

Along with the lack of machinery needed to move the rubble, which the country had not been able to afford because of sanctions, not political mismanagement, as the media seems to prefer to say. So easy is it for Empire to point to political mismanagement rather than the brutality and violence of sanctions, which kill between 400,000 and 1 million people a year. (See the recent study from The Lancet) 

As Nate Bear says, Empire has once again committed mass murder, this time as a secondary effect of its hegemonic perversion.

The cruelty of Empire knows no bounds.

But the migrants are the problem, cries Empire. We are looking at the wrong 1%.

Published July 2nd 2026. Photo taken July 2nd 2026