It was 2002 when Delcy Rodriguez, sworn in today as President of Venezuela, came to my apartment in London well after midnight to tell me, a BBC television reporter, that the US was planning to kidnap, and likely assassinate, the then-president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.

The coup, Rodriguez said, was planned for March, but I could not get the BBC to send me there on the basis of Rodriguez’s inside info. In fact, there was no coup in March. Chavez was seized on April 2.

President Chavez was kidnapped and flown by helicopter to a prison on Margarita Island off the Venezuelan coast. But President George W. Bush had let Venezuelan plotters operate the coup, and they were incompetent.

Chavez, the first Black and Indian president in Venezuela’s history, was guarded by a young soldier who was the same color as Chavez. He handed Chavez his cell phone. Chavez reached his Air Force generals who made it clear to the plotters — most of them white (race matters here) — that they would be bombed into oblivion unless Chavez were returned in 48 hours to his desk. The coup leaders brought back Chavez within hours.

I’m not going to say that we weren’t warned. Trump has been beating the war drums about Venezuela for months. The US has been shooting small motorboats and their crews, like ducks on the water, for months, while making unverified claims about whether they were drug runners. The US had built up an intimidating flotilla of carriers and support ships in the Caribbean demanding that the country’s president, Maduro resign and leave the country.

Still, I have to admit, I held onto a last straw of hope that not even Trump would be crazy enough to invade the country illegally under international law and without Congressional approval. When we started hijacking ships on the open seas and bombing ports where they were supposedly being loaded, I knew we were going from bad to worse, but still, surely someone somewhere in Washington would tell Trump to calm down and get a grip. There was no reason that the US needed to go any farther off the grid as a rogue nation.

What was defined at Nuremberg as the supreme international crime (one country attacking another one) is depicted by Trump and even the supposedly anti-Trump corporate media as some sort of law-enforcement. Bombing is liberating. Kidnapping is capturing. Murdering people on boats is “impeding the flow of drugs.”

Smedley Butler,in his book “War is a racket”, described his experience at using the military to steal other countries resources. The American Empire attacks Venezuela in order to steal it's oil, we know that Chevron, and individuals working for Chevron, will benefit. Having always believed that the cost of the theft is borne by US taxpayers, with little benefit, I asked Chat Gpt to analyze. And the answer is:

When U.S. firms like Chevron gain access to Venezuelan oil, how—if at all—do U.S. consumers benefit?

U.S. consumer benefits are indirect, limited, and often marginal. Most gains accrue to corporations, shareholders, and specific sectors—not to everyday consumers in a clear or proportional way.

Below is a clear breakdown.

If Venezuelan oil enters global markets:

• It adds to global supply

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The U.S. government is now attacking the capital of Venezuela. If the murderous sanctions were not enough to mobilize the people of the United States and the world to put a halt to this, if the various coup attemps were not enough, if the ongoing brutal murder of over 100 boaters didn’t do it, if the no-fly-zone and naval blockade and pirating of oil tankers didn’t hit the threshold, can this do it? Can we mobilize a massive nonviolent movement against this war now? Can we bring pressure to bear on the pretense of a government on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, where the Senate has twice and the House once voted down resolutions to put a halt to the criminal action of the U.S. military? Can we shame so-called legislators who were told by the White House that there would be no war and that there was therefore no need to oppose one, and who pretended to believe that?