Sunday 18th of January 2026
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Trump’s illegal invasion of Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro is an act of imperialist plunder targeting not only Venezuela but all of Latin America and the world. Its utter lawlessness and Trump’s open calls for US banks to seize Venezuela’s oil revenues mark a major escalation in the international class war on working people. At home, Trump is sending anti-immigrant ICE police to occupy US cities and faces rapidly growing opposition in the working class, including calls for a general strike in Minneapolis.

 

US invasion of Venezuela exposes bankruptcy of Mélenchon’s France Unbowed Party

Alex Lantier

 

Imperialism’s turn to unabashed neocolonial war and the rise of the class struggle expose the bankruptcy of “populist” parties like Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI) party. Hostile to the independent mobilization of the working class in struggle against the capitalist state and for workers’ power and socialism, they call to unify the people—that is, to unify capitalists and workers based on nationalism. This anti-Marxist position only works to subordinate workers to bourgeois nationalist forces and block the necessary struggle against imperialism.

LFI calls on workers in Venezuela and internationally to subordinate themselves to Venezuela’s capitalist regime, which is trying to work out a deal with Trump at workers’ expense. Its statement, “Support the Venezuelan people against Trump’s aggression,” says:

France Unbowed gives its full support to the Venezuelan people and its authorities, facing an illegal and illegitimate war triggered by Donald Trump’s administration against Venezuela. … The USA is violating international law and trying to forcibly impose regime change. They are renewing their tradition of coups, wars and interventions that ravaged Latin America in the previous century. Faced with this aggression, the Venezuelan people’s resistance is legitimate.

Masses of working people have participated in protests in Caracas and across Venezuela after Maduro’s abduction, and the situation in Caracas remains explosive. But in such a situation, the task of any genuine Marxist-Trotskyist tendency is to unify the struggles of the working class internationally against imperialism, independently from bourgeois nationalist forces that seek an accommodation to imperialism.

Mélenchon and LFI—by remaining silent on the revolutionary tasks of US and European workers, and demanding that Venezuelan workers obey the state machine—block such a struggle. LFI’s entire policy is based on a political lie. It presents support for Venezuelan bourgeois nationalism as a strategy of resistance, but in reality the Venezuelan regime is desperately trying to work out a deal with US imperialism at workers’ expense.

A week ago, the Chancellor of the Venezuelan regime, Yvan Gil, announced that interim President Delcy Rodriguez “decided to initiate an exploratory process of a diplomatic character with the government of the United States.” This exploration, Gil added, is “oriented towards re-establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries,” broken in 2019 by Trump during his first term. But re-establishing diplomatic relations after a US invasion, with Maduro still in a US prison, is a signal from the ruling elite in Caracas that it is willing to collaborate with Trump.

Indeed, the economic foundation of the Venezuelan regime’s deepening ties with the Trump administration is Caracas’ attempts to grant Washington more control over Venezuelan oil and natural resources. Such an economic collaboration could only be worked out between the US and Venezuelan bourgeoisies at the expense of the Venezuelan workers—in particular, by liquidating what remains of social spending based on Venezuela’s now-shrinking oil revenues.

PDVSA, the Venezuelan national oil company, has hailed the US Navy’s illegal seizure of a Russian tanker transporting Venezuelan oil in the Atlantic Ocean. Only days after the abduction of Maduro, it presented this US act of war against Russia as a great success of Venezuelan cooperation with Trump. The PDVSA, formerly run by interim President Rodriguez, issued a communiqué declaring:

US and Venezuelan authorities have announced the success of the joint operations to force the return of the ship Minerva, which left port without paying for its oil and without the authorization of Venezuelan authorities.
Thanks to this first, successful joint operation, the vessel is now steaming to return to Venezuelan waters to be taken back under control and for other pertinent actions.

Neither PDVSA nor Rodriguez have clearly stated through which channels and with what aims the Venezuelan regime has established military collaboration with Washington. But PDVSA’s silence on Trump’s demand that Venezuela give him personally the control of part of its oil revenues is deafening. The Venezuelan regime is buffeted both by mass protests in Venezuela and by Trump’s threats, but it is evident that factions at its summit are seeking collaboration with Trump.

The New York Times for its part wrote: “Venezuela’s New Leader Went From Revolutionary to Trump’s Orbit.” Hailing Rodriguez for having “relied on a close-knit team of market-friendly officials,” it added: “Ms. Rodríguez brokered a truce with Venezuela’s economic elite and embarked on a stealth privatization of natural resources by giving foreign investors control over some coveted projects, such as oil fields, cement plants and iron ore mines.”

The Spanish social democratic daily El Pais, citing CIA reports summarized by the New York Times, concluded: “The CIA has recommended to hand power in Venezuela to Delcy Rodriguez, given the risk that [Venezuelan bourgeois opposition leader] Maria Corina Machado might not be able to control the army. Donald Trump has opted for continuity of [Venezuela’s] chavista regime, believing this is the best guarantee of stability in the Latin American country.”

Mélenchon is thus trying to bolster the same force that Trump and the CIA are currently treating as key to their plans to subjugate Venezuela: Rodriguez’s regime. Of course, Mélenchon briefly called on Venezuela, last weekend at a protest in Lyon, to oppose the United States “arms in hand.” But this call—aiming to give his own policy a false, left-wing veneer—is in blatant contradiction with LFI’s policy of full support to the Venezuelan regime.

Opposing imperialist war requires building an international movement in the working class. In countries targeted for conquest, the task of this movement is to take control of the resources targeted for imperialist plunder out of the hands of rotten capitalist elites. In imperialist countries, the goal must be to take control of the economic resources of society out of the hands of a ruling class bent on wars of plunder abroad and dictatorship and social plunder at home. In both cases, this objectively leads the working class towards a struggle for socialist revolution. 

LFI opposes the building of such a movement in France, however. It seeks to block the growth of the class struggle by forming an alliance, which it currently calls the New Popular Front (NFP), with the bourgeois Socialist Party (PS) and the Stalinist and Green parties and union bureaucracies. This alliance has worked relentlessly to subordinate the French working class to Macron.

The NFP backed the French union bureaucracies’ sell-out of mass strikes against Macron’s pension cuts in 2023, opposed by the overwhelming majority of French people. LFI was thus instrumental in letting Macron keep diverting tens of billions of euros from social spending to France’s military. In 2024, LFI endorsed PS and pro-Macron candidates in snap general elections, claiming this would fight neo-fascism. It returned a series of weak, Macron-led minority governments to power.

Macron has applauded Maduro’s abduction, hoping French imperialism could also benefit from the plundering of Venezuela despite rising tensions with the Trump administration. This indicates the urgent necessity not only for renewed working class struggles against Macron, but of a political break with Mélenchon and the NFP, who have played the leading role in enabling Macron to rule against the people.

This requires building rank-and-file committees in the working class, independent of the union bureaucracies like those in the NFP, to coordinate workers’ struggles, block sell-outs as in the 2023 pension struggle and link them to workers’ struggles internationally. Unifying rising workers’ struggles against imperialism in the United States, Latin America, Europe and beyond requires fighting to build a socialist anti-war movement in the working class, based on a perspective of transferring power to the working class and pursuing socialist policies.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/17/mceo-j17.html

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujSESn5ew5Y

oily discounts...

 

Paul Singer, the empire of debt and demographic replacement in the United States

by José Alberto Niño

In the series of those known as "the villains of Judea," in the United States

Who is Paul Singer, "the embodiment of Jewish plutocracy"?

Paul Elliott Singer is one of the most influential figures in global finance. This Jewish billionaire hedge fund manager amassed a fortune estimated at between $6,2 and $6,7 billion by buying sovereign and distressed corporate bonds at heavily discounted prices, then waging ruthless legal campaigns to obtain full repayment, including interest.

Born on August 22, 1944, in Teaneck, New Jersey, Singer transformed a $1,3 million start-up in 1977 into Elliott Management, a hedge fund empire managing approximately $65,5 to $72 billion in assets.

However, Singer did not limit himself to financial maneuvers. He established himself as a kingmaker within the Republican Party, becoming the second most important a donor to the party in 2016 and a major figure in AIPAC, immigration reform, and the LGBT rights movement. His business model has devastated entire communities, from Sidney, Nebraska, to Buenos Aires, Argentina. His political activism embraces seemingly contradictory causes, supporting both an uncompromising pro-Israel stance and marriage equality. His most recent operation, the acquisition of Citgo assets in Venezuela for $5,9 billion, allows him to profit from the Trump administration's military intervention in Venezuela.

Vulture capitalism

Singer's business model earned him the nickname "vulture capitalism." In the 1990s, Singer gained notoriety by purchasing $20 million of Peruvian sovereign debt. Through an aggressive legal strategy, he eventually obtained a payment $58 million, nearly triple his initial investment. A U.S. court revealed that Elliott's purchase of Peruvian debt was made with the explicit aim of obtaining full repayment through legal action. Investigative journalist Greg Palast reported that Singer's lawyer confided in him that Singer had enabled Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who had fled the country to escape murder charges, to flee in exchange for the injunction made to the Peruvian Treasury to pay $58 million to Singer.

Between 2002 and 2003, Singer earned over $100 million from a $30 million investment in debt. from Congo-Brazzaville But his most audacious campaign targeted Argentina. Following the 2001 Argentine economic crisis, Singer acquired distressed bonds worth approximately $117 million. Refusing to participate in debt restructuring agreements accepted by other creditors, he instead demanded full repayment in international courts. This campaign culminated in a 2016 settlement that netted Elliott Management $2,4 billion, a staggering return of 1270%.

Singer's tactics proved extraordinary, even for a hedge fund. In 2012, Elliott successfully persuaded a Ghanaian court to grab The Argentine training ship ARA Libertad, with 220 crew members on board, demanded $20 million for its release. The then-Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, refused to pay Singer's fund, calling Elliott and similar companies "financial terrorists" and vulture funds. The Obama administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that the courts reject Singer's attempt to ruin Argentina, but Singer's legal campaign ultimately succeeded.

Pro-Israeli financier

Paul E. Singer has established himself as one of the most prominent donors to pro-Israel causes in the United States. Through his foundation, the Paul E. Singer Foundation, he has donated approximately $300 million since 2010. Since 2022, he has given $2 million to AIPAC and $3 million to his super PAC, the United Democracy Project, making him the third-largest donor to AIPAC. He sits on the consulting administration of the Republican Jewish Coalition and co-founded Start-Up Nation Central, an organization that aims to facilitate access for Israeli companies to international markets.

Singer was also a major donor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative think tank advocating hawkish policies aligned with Israeli interests. From 2008 to 2011, he poured $3,6 million to the FDD, making him the second largest donor of the organization. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, has described The FDD as a staunch supporter of a war against Iran. At a meeting of the Jewish Funders Network in Jerusalem, Singer said that "Israel is perhaps the only guarantee that all Jews, everywhere in the world, can rely on for the security and continuity of Judaism.».

The promoter of LGBT degeneration and mass migrations

Like many Jewish magnates Singer became a fervent advocate for the LGBT cause after his son Andrew found his homosexuality. In 2012, he donated one million dollars to create American Unity PAC whose mission was to encourage Republican candidates to support same-sex marriage. From 2012 to 2015, he contributed to the tune of over $5,5 million to this organization. In 2013, he made a donation of $500,000 to the Human Rights Campaign. Since 2001, Singer has given over $11 million for the legalization of same-sex marriage and support for LGBT causes.

Singer's crusade to redefine marriage within the Republican Party was just one aspect of his broader agenda; he quickly shifted to advocating for mass immigration to transform American demographics. In 2013, Singer made a significant donation to the National Immigration Forum to support reform global immigration, more commonly known as the amnesty. As one of the first major Republican donors to publicly support the amnesty, Singer worked to mobilize conservative support for an overhaul of federal laws. In 2014, he founded the American Opportunity Alliance, bringing together wealthy Republican donors who share his support for LGBTQ+ rights, immigration reform, and Israel.

The Looting of Sidney, Nebraska by Paul Singer

Singer's business activities in the United States have generated controversies as devastating as its international operations. In 2015, Elliott Management acquired an 11% stake in Cabela's, an outdoor retailer, and forced a merger with Bass Pro Shops. plunging Sidney, Nebraska, where Cabela's headquarters were located, was in chaos. The city suffered massive job losses, a housing market collapse, and an economic recession. According to court documents, Elliott pressured Cabela's board of directors to sell the company until they finally gave in. The merger netted Elliott nearly $100 million in profits. Residents told Fox News producers that the hedge fund had ruined their city, one of them declarer : "If money is a god in his eyes, he is a deeply sick man.».

Tucker Carlson's revelations

In December 2019, Tucker Carlson, host of Fox News, devoted a major investigative report to Paul Singer, focusing on the Cabela's case. Carlson qualified Singer's economic model of "vulture capitalism", consisting of "acquire significant stakes in American companies, lay off employees, artificially inflate stock prices in the short term and, in some cases, obtain government bailouts". He stated : "This is nothing like the capitalism we were promised in school. It creates nothing. It destroys entire cities. It couldn't be uglier or more destructive.».

Carlson emphasized Singer's political power, stressing that "People like Paul Singer exert considerable influence on our political systemHe revealed that Singer wasthe second largest donor to the Republican Party in 2016, and that he gave millions to a super PAC supporting Republican senatorsCarlson added:You may never have heard of Paul Singer, which says a lot, but in Washington, he's a real star.».

During the production of this report, Carlson reported being warned several times by people in Washington:Don't criticize Paul Singer, it's not a good ideaDuring the broadcast, Carlson received a text message froman An influential figure in Washington said:Incredible! I can't believe you're doing this. I'm scared of Paul Singer.».

Venezuela and Citgo

One of Singer's most controversial business deals involves the Venezuelan oil company Citgo. In November 2025, Elliott Investment Management won a court-ordered auction to acquire Citgo for 5,9 billion Citgo represents the flagship of Venezuela's international oil assets. having three large refineries on the Gulf of Mexico coast, with a processing capacity of 800,000 barrels per day, 43 oil terminals and more than 4000 service stations.

Singer acquired Citgo at a significantly reduced price, according to several sources. Court advisors estimated Citgo's true value at approximately $13 billion, while Venezuelan authorities valued its assets at between $18 and $20 billion. Singer therefore paid about 45% of the estimated market value.

A highly controversial aspect of the sale concerns Robert Pincus, the court-appointed special administrator who oversaw the auction and recommended Singer's bid. Pincus sits on the national board of directors from AIPAC. Gold Reserve Inc., a competing bidder that offered $7,9 billion, filed Requests to recuse Pincus due to conflict of interest. Venezuela rejected the legitimacy of the sale, the calling of "fraudulent procedure" and "theft of the century».

Trump's intervention in Venezuela is Singer's ultimate fantasy

The timing of events has raised serious questions about the links between Singer's acquisition of Citgo and the actions of the Trump administration. In 2024, Singer poured $5 million to Trump's super PAC and $37 million to support Republican candidates for Congress. On January 3, 2026, the U.S. armed forces conducted a military raid in Caracas, capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Maduro's ouster offers Singer the opportunity to reap enormous profits. —Economist Paul Krugman pointed out : "If Trump lifts the embargo, Singer will receive a considerable financial windfall.A few days after Maduro's capture, Trump announced that Venezuela would deliver between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil to the United States.

Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY), a staunch opponent of intervention in Venezuela, also understood how Singer could benefit from military action against Venezuela. tweeted January 4, 2026:According to Grok, Paul Singer, the globalist Republican mega-donor who has already spent $1,000,000 to defeat me in the next election, will pocket billions of dollars from his troubled investment in CITGO, now that this administration has taken control of Venezuela».

As pointed it out Massie, Singer donated one million dollars to MAGA KY, a super PAC seeking to impeach the Kentucky congressman. Singer and his fellow Zionist Jews view Massie as an obstacle to consolidating Jewish supremacy in Congress.

Ultimately, Singer embodies the Jewish plutocracy. He finances the decline of the West by supporting LGBT decadence, mass migration, endless wars waged in the name of global Judaism, and opportunistic finance. Americans must recognize these existential threats, relinquish their elite privileges, and stop the Great Replacement before it consigns our political institutions to oblivion.

https://plumenclume.com/2026/01/15/paul-singer-lempire-de-la-dette-et-du-remplacement-demographique-aux-etas-unis-par-jose-alberto-nino/

 

TRANSLATION BY: https://www.unz.com/article/villains-of-judea-paul-singers-empire-of-debt-demographic-replacement/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.