The Empire Is Scrambling to Fully Dominate Latin America, and Other Notes

By Caitlin Johnstone – Dec 11, 2025

US forces have seized an oil tanker carrying some 1.8 million barrels of oil from Venezuela to Cuba as part of its ongoing series of warmongering escalations against the Maduro government.

When asked what would be done with the oil, President Trump told the press, “We keep it, I guess.”

Meanwhile Chuck Schumer is refusing to oppose Trump’s regime change interventionism against Venezuela, and CNN just had former US intelligence official Beth Sanner on to proclaim that the Trump administration’s act of piracy “is absolutely normal.” So Trump’s ostensible opposition in the political-media class are putting absolutely no inertia on this.

The US pirating a Cuba-bound oil tanker from Venezuela illustrates how the empire is hurrying to shore up control over Latin America in the same way the US and Israel are quickly shoring up control over the middle east. There’s a window of opportunity to shove through a bunch of pre-existing military agendas in both regions, and they’re aggressively seizing it before their attention has to turn to bigger geopolitical fish.

You often hear US imperialists saying that obtaining regime change in Venezuela will help achieve it in Cuba as well; Senator Rick Scott recently told 60 Minutes that if Maduro is successfully ousted “it’ll be the end of Cuba,” and that “America is gonna take care of the southern hemisphere and make sure there’s freedom and democracy.”

Stealing the oil hurts both Cuba and Venezuela, who are the two primary enemies of the US empire in the Americas because of their strongly socialist governments. They got a right wing government into Bolivia this year, and now they’re hurrying to push regime change in Caracas and Havana while they’ve got a right wing tyrant in office with a gusano secretary of state. The hope is to force the entirety of Latin America into full alignment with the empire before Trump leaves office. I have no idea if they’ll succeed.

The Hemispheric Turn in New US National Security Strategy

The US House and Senate have agreed to make registration for the draft “automatic”, which will simplify the drafting process if the empire decides to throw the youth of America into a horrific new military conflict. The US is making its biggest draft policy change in 45 years so it’s easier to force Americans to fight and die in a massive war, just as the New York Times editorial board launches a series explaining why the US must prepare for war with China.

The latest edition of the New York Times’ arguments for the need for more US militarism is titled “This Is The 21st Century Arms Race. Can America Keep Up?”, which argues that “Congress needs to expand funding for research and development into technologies with military applications.”

“To counter the growing threat, America must simultaneously win the race to build autonomous weapons and lead the world in controlling them,” the editorial board writes.

Fun times.

The BBC is reportedly training its staff that it is antisemitic for anyone to oppose Zionism, because most Jews identify as Zionists. You see this argument a lot, and it a textbook example of an ad populum fallacy, which is when someone claims that something is true or right just because a majority of people believe it.

Just as the Atlantic slave trade would have been wrong even if every white person in the world supported it, a genocidal apartheid state which cannot exist without nonstop violence, theft and abuse would still be wrong even if every Jewish person on earth supported it. The claim that a majority of Jews support the existence of the modern state of Israel has no bearing whatsoever on the question of whether such a state should exist, and does not invalidate any arguments that it should not.

Israel supporters rely on lies, manipulations and fallacious arguments because their position is not based on truth or morality. If their position was right they would simply be making normal arguments like normal adults. They can’t do this because they are wrong.

Whenever I catch myself wondering if I’ve been too hard on the Democrats I re-watch last year’s video of DNC attendees covering their ears and mocking activists reading the names of children who’d been murdered in Gaza.

When they’re not in power it’s easy to forget how evil these people are.

The Daily Mirror has a gross new propaganda piece out claiming that “Hamas plotters are spreading their tentacles of terror into Europe, with secret arms dumps and operatives planning attacks even as far as in the United Kingdom.”

As you might expect, The Mirror provides no evidence whatsoever for this claim, citing only “an intelligence report” of unspecified origin.

This is one of the dumbest narratives we’ve ever been asked to believe about Hamas, amid some very stiff competition. I don’t know about you, but am so sick of having my intelligence insulted like this.

(Caitlin Johnstone)