Nascent Yemen

Venezuelan Military Stands with Acting President Rodriguez After US Kidnapping of Maduro –

Venezuela’s military high command on Sunday formally recognized Delcy Rodriguez as the nation’s acting president, following the lawless abduction of democratically elected leader Nicolas Maduro by US forces – Al Masirah report.

Venezuela’s government has declared unwavering unity behind President Nicolás Maduro following his shocking abduction by US forces in an unprecedented act of “imperial aggression.”

Al Masirah report

Latin America should unite or face being ‘treated as slaves’: Colombia president warns after Trump threat –

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has warned that Latin American countries must unite or risk being “treated as servants and slaves,” following a series of threats by US President Donald Trump that included the possibility of a military operation in Colombia.

Petro’s remarks came after Trump publicly threatened the Colombian leader while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, a day after US forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, during a military attack on Caracas.

During the flight, Trump described Colombia and Venezuela as “very sick” countries and accused Petro of running a government involved in cocaine production and trafficking to the United States. Referring to Petro, Trump said, “And he’s not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you.”

When asked whether he was referring to a similar US military attack on Colombia, Trump responded, “Sounds good to me.”

In response, Petro issued a lengthy post on X, calling on Latin American nations to stand together. “The US is the first country in the world to bomb a South American capital in all of human history,” he wrote, referring to the attack on the Venezuelan capital.

Petro said Latin America must unite and become a region capable of engaging with the world on its own terms, trading and cooperating globally rather than looking “only to the north.”

Trump also escalated rhetoric against Venezuela, insisting the United States was “in charge” of the country, despite the Venezuelan Supreme Court’s appointment of Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as interim leader following Maduro’s abduction. He reiterated threats to send US troops back to Venezuela if the country “doesn’t behave.”

Maduro and Flores are due to appear in court in New York on Monday on what Washington has called “drug-related charges,” following their detention by US forces.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Venezuelan officials to make the “right decision” or face increased military, political, and economic pressure from Washington.

Rodriguez, meanwhile, condemned the US attack in a televised address, calling the abduction of Maduro a violation of sovereignty and demanding his immediate release. She said a National Defense Council had been formed and vowed that Venezuela would “never again be a colony of any empire.”

She also said governments around the world were “simply shocked” by the unlawful aggression on a sovereign nation.

Trump repeats threats against Cuba, Mexico

Trump further claimed that “a lot of Cubans” were killed during the US raid on Venezuela and said military aggression against Cuba was unlikely because the island appeared “ready to fall” on its own.

“Cuba literally is ready to fall,” Trump said, alleging that Cuban Americans would be “very happy” with the situation.

The US president also issued warnings to Mexico, saying the country needed to “get their act together” over “drug trafficking” and claimed that drug cartels were “running Mexico.”

This is not the first time Trump has issued such menacing comments concerning the two nations.

Trump’s threats towards Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico came amid renewed US assertions of dominance in Latin America, following the revival of what the president has described as a modern version of the Monroe Doctrine — a US foreign policy position that seeks to cement Washington’s self-described sphere of influence in the region.

PressTV report

Global South bullied and discredited by the Global North.

Spain and five Latin American countries have censured unilateral US military operations in Venezuela, warning that Washington’s actions endanger sovereignty, international law, and the country’s natural resources.

In a joint statement issued on Sunday, the leaders of Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay rejected the US military aggression that resulted in the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

The statement warned that Washington’s actions breached core principles of international law, including the ban on the use of force and the obligation to respect territorial sovereignty enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The signatories described the operation as reckless and destabilizing, with serious consequences for regional peace.

“These actions constitute a dangerous precedent for peace, regional security and pose a risk to the civil population,” the statement said.

The leaders stressed that any internal problems in Venezuela must be resolved through dialogue and in accordance with the will of its people, without foreign interference and in line with international law.

“We emphasize once again that the circumstances in Venezuela should be addressed solely through dialogue and in alignment with the desires of the Venezuelan populace, free from external interference and in compliance with international law,” the statement read.

Spain and the five Latin American countries also issued a strong warning against any attempt to seize control of Venezuela’s vast natural and strategic resources, describing such moves as a direct threat to sovereignty and regional stability.

“We express our concern over any attempt to control, through government or administrative means, as well as the external appropriation of the natural and strategic resources (of Venezuela), which are incompatible with international law and pose a threat to the economic, political and social stability of the region,” the statement said.

The leaders further called on UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to play an active role in easing tensions and safeguarding peace in the region.

The condemnation followed US missile and drone strikes on major Venezuelan cities, including the capital, Caracas, in the early hours of Saturday.

Hours later, US President Donald Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social that Maduro and his wife had been captured by US Delta Force.

US media outlets later reported that the couple were being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, Trump said the United States would run Venezuela on an interim basis, offering no timeline or explanation of how such control would be exercised.

He repeatedly highlighted Venezuela’s oil reserves, openly linking the military operation to future extraction plans.

“We are going to rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars. It will be paid for by the oil companies directly. They will be reimbursed for what they are doing, but that is going to be paid,” he said.

A large part of the international community, including China, Iran, and Russia, have condemned the seizure of Maduro, describing it as “state terrorism” in its purest form and a stark example of US disregard for international norms.

PressTV report

Not so much about narcotics, “Going after them and dismantling them inherently involves regime change,” the US attorney general Barr said.

The U.S. has indicted other foreign leaders on corruption and drug trafficking charges while in office. Among the most noteworthy is Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, who was convicted in 2024 for drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Trump pardoned Hernández in November, a move that drew criticism from even some Republicans who viewed it as undercutting the White House’s aggressive counternarcotics strategy centered against Maduro.

The US places their fake domestic and foreign laws  above international law to ensure their interests are concrete at all times.

“There’s no claim to sovereign immunity if we don’t recognize him as head of state,” said Dick Gregorie, a retired federal prosecutor who indicted Noriega and later went on to investigate corruption inside Maduro’s government.

Several U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have called his election fraudulent and withheld U.S. recognition.

The U.N. Charter’s prohibition on the use of force in international relations does not bar the U.S. from carrying out “forcible abductions” abroad to enforce domestic laws.

Supreme Court decisions dating to the 1800s also have upheld America’s jurisdiction to prosecute foreigners regardless of whether their presence in the United States was lawfully secured.

US sanctions are a hurdle for Maduro’s defense. Maduro under American dictatorship practically rightless.

Another challenge that Maduro faces is hiring a lawyer. He and his wife, Cilia Flores, who also was captured, have been under U.S. sanctions for years, making it illegal for any American to take money from them without first securing a license from the Treasury Department.

The government in Caracas now led by Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, may want to foot the bill, but it is similarly restricted from doing business in the United States.

The full AP NEWS report

Instead of fighting the angry white supremacist fascist male within their borders,

The United Kingdom and France have carried out a joint airstrike against what they said was an underground Daesh facility near the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the UK Ministry of Defense said Royal Air Force aircraft participated in the overnight operation, targeting a site suspected to be a Daesh weapons storage facility.

The ministry added that the facility was located north of Palmyra in an area “devoid of any civilian habitation.”

“Royal Air Force aircraft have completed successful strikes against Daesh in a joint operation with France,” the statement said.

The development comes as the US has also recently begun striking targets allegedly belonging to the Daesh terrorist group in Syria amid speculations about Washington’s seeking to reestablish a significant military presence in the country.

In late December, the US Central Command reported conducting over 70 strikes on suspected Daesh targets in central Syria, using approximately 100 munitions from various aircraft and artillery.

The strikes, known as “Operation Hawkeye Strike,” were launched in response to the killing of three Americans in Palmyra on December 13, with the aim of “eliminating Daesh fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites.”

Syria defeated Daesh in 2017 under the country’s former government of President Bashar al-Assad, with help from allies Iran and Russia.

Daesh’s remnants, though, keep staging sporadic attacks throughout Syria, attempting to regroup and unleash fresh violence against the nation.

Today, Washington says between 1,500 and 3,000 Daesh terrorists are still active in Syria and Iraq, citing intelligence assessments.

Western governments assert that the recent military operations are designed to prevent Daesh from rebuilding its capabilities and launching new attacks, both regionally and internationally.

Al Masirah report

U.S. media’s default posture is state subservience and stenography.

In the past few months, Trump has committed several clear acts of war against Venezuela, including: murdering — in cold blood — scores of its citizens, hijacking its ships, stealing its resources, issuing a naval blockade, and attacking its ports. Then in a stunning escalation on early Saturday morning, the administration invaded Venezuela’s sovereign territory, bombing several buildings, killing at least 40 more of its citizens, kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their bed, and announcing they will, henceforth, “run” the country.

And yet none of these acts of brazen aggression, violence, and violations of international law have, in any sustained or meaningful way, been referred to as acts of war, a coup, or invasion in U.S. mainstream media reporting.

This episode seems to indicate that the president can do almost anything in the context of foreign policy, and the media will still overwhelmingly adopt language that is flattering and sanitizing to the administration when describing what has unfolded. This dynamic reached a new low Saturday morning, when the U.S. media rushed to frame the administration’s unprovoked attack as, at worst, a “ratcheted up” (CBS News) “pressure campaign” (Wall Street Journal) and, as was more often the case, some type of limited narcotics police “operation” (CNN).

For the past several months, U.S. media has been working overtime to provide pseudo-legal cover for Trump’s aggression against Venezuela, a task the White House itself has barely bothered to feign interest in. It began last month when both the New York Times and CNN referred to “international sanctions” on Venezuelan oil in their reporting of Trump’s hijacking and theft of Venezuelan oil ships. But there was only one problem: There are no international sanctions on the Venezuelan oil trade, only U.S. sanctions.

The New York Times even cited Mark Nevitt, a professor of law at Emory University and a former Navy lawyer, to say the U.S. hijacking Venezuelan oil tankers was legal because they were enforcing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea without noting, rather importantly, that the U.S. never signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. But it needed to feel vaguely rules-based and international-y, so unilateral U.S. dictates were passed off as ersatz international law.

From the first minutes news of the airstrikes and Maduro’s abduction broke, every major outlet — CNN, The Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, New York Times, Washington Post — all simultaneously called it a “capture” or “arrest,” terms typically reserved for criminals or fugitives, despite the fact that, as with Venezuela’s “illegal” oil trading, only one out of the 193 U.N. member states, the United States, had issued an arrest warrant for Maduro. Maduro is not fleeing any international criminal sanction.

Similarly, Trump’s bombing and invasion of a sovereign country suddenly became an “escalating pressure campaign” or an “operation,” rather than an act of war. From the Washington Post to CNN to the New York Times, not even “inside” detailed reports of the bombing, killing of 40 people, kidnapping of their head of state, or a military assault seemed to demand using the words “act of war,” “invasion,” or “coup” even once.

The full Intercept report

In my humble opinion, the media is just the representation or the product of a colonizing folks that was founded on a double genocide and that has been ever since overthrowing government’s, occupying and massacring across the world to mollify their American Greed.

zion¿st occupation army killed three Palestinians on Sunday and carried out a series of airstrikes across various parts of the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.

One Palestinian was killed after a z¿onist occupation drone opened fire in an area from which the army had withdrawn under the ceasefire agreement northwest of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, a medical source told Anadolu.

zionist occupation army also killed a fisherman, another medical source said.

According to local sources, zionist naval forces fired gunshots off the coasts of Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza earlier Sunday.

On the northwestern outskirts of Rafah, a medical source said another Palestinian was shot in the head by Israeli forces, describing his condition as “critical.”

Local sources said that the area where the Palestinian was injured is among those from which the Israeli army withdrew under the ceasefire agreement.

A 15-year-old boy was killed by Israeli gunfire in the Joura Al-Lout area, south of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, from which the army had withdrawn under the agreement, a medical source told Anadolu.

Another Palestinian sustained a gunshot wound to the thigh after the Israeli naval opened fire off the coast of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, medical sources and eyewitnesses told Anadolu.

Israeli warplanes also carried out a series of airstrikes on various areas north and west of Rafah.

Meanwhile, the zionist army carried out demolitions of residential buildings in eastern Khan Younis, accompanied by artillery shelling of areas that are under its control under the agreement.

Separately, Israeli warplanes launched a series of airstrikes on different areas in northern Gaza and east of Gaza City.

In central Gaza, zionist military vehicles opened indiscriminate fire toward the eastern areas of the Bureij refugee camp.

Since the ceasefire agreement came into effect on Oct. 10, the Israeli army has committed hundreds of violations, killing 420 Palestinians and wounding 1,184 others, according to the Health Ministry.

The ceasefire halted Israel’s two-year war that killed nearly 71,400 Palestinians, most of them women and children, injured more than 171,200 others, and left the enclave in ruins. But despite the ceasefire, Israel’s deadly attacks on Gaza continue.

MEMO report

Russia and China have called on the United States to immediately release Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is illegally jailed in New York after being kidnapped during an armed aggression against his country.

On Sunday, China’s Foreign Ministry urged Washington to stop its regime change efforts and advance a diplomatic path to resolve issues with Venezuela.



“China calls on the US to ensure the personal safety of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, release them at once, stop toppling the government of Venezuela, and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiation,” it said.



The ministry also expressed grave concerns about the US’s forcible abduction of Maduro, saying the move is “in clear violation of international law, basic norms in international relations, and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.”



Previously, Beijing said it was “deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the US’s blatant use of force” against Venezuela.



After months of threats, the US bombed Venezuela and kidnapped Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their residence in the capital of Caracas. The pair were taken to a detention center in New York, where they will stand trial for alleged drug trafficking-related charges.



US President Donald Trump said Washington will “run” Venezuela for now and tap its oil reserves.



Many analysts and politicians said that the true motive for the illegal attack was not combating drug trafficking but plundering Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.



In recent months, the US has piled pressure on Venezuela by dispatching warships and fighter jets to the region, conducting lethal strikes on suspected drug boats, and seizing oil tankers going in and out of the Latin American country.



Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Belarusian counterpart, Maxim Ryzhenkov, held a telephone conversation, during which they called for Maduro’s release from US custody.



The Russian Foreign Ministry said both diplomats emphasized “the absolute need to immediately release the legitimate President of Venezuela … and his wife, return them to the country’s capital, and reinstate Nicolas Maduro as head of state.”



Lavrov and Ryzhenkov further discussed the situation in Venezuela and stressed that their countries are united in condemning the US aggression against a sovereign state, according to the ministry.



The two sides further noted the importance of a dialogue-based solution to the Venezuela crisis in accordance with international law.



Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim also said on Sunday that Maduro and his wife must be released without any undue delay.



In an X post, he described the US military action against Venezuela as “unusual” in its “scope and nature,” saying such raids “constitute a clear violation of international law and amount to an unlawful use of force against a sovereign state.”



“Whatever may be the reasons, the forcible removal of a sitting head of government through external action sets a dangerous precedent,” Ibrahim added.



“It erodes fundamental restraints on the use of power between states and weakens the legal framework that underpins international order.”

Al Masirah report

On the sixth anniversary of General Haj Qassem Soleimani’s martyrdom in 2026, the spokesperson for the commemoration headquarters announced that the motto for the occasion will be “Man of Iran.”

The full Al Manar report