[News] Trump: Who Will Put the Bell on the Cat?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

orinocotribune.com
<https://orinocotribune.com/trump-who-will-put-the-bell-on-the-cat/>
Trump: Who Will Put the Bell on the Cat?
Maria Paez Victor
------------------------------

[image: A tabby kitten wearing a small patriotic "Uncle Sam" style hat and
posing with a US flag. Photo: JonnieEngland/Getty Images/iStockphoto/file
photo.]

A tabby kitten wearing a small patriotic "Uncle Sam" style hat and posing
with a US flag. Photo: JonnieEngland/Getty Images/iStockphoto/file photo.

By Maria Páez Victor  –  Dec 16, 2025

*“Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro described the detention of an oil
tanker seized by US military personnel in the Caribbean Sea on Wednesday as
an act of piracy” (Orinoco Tribune, 12 Dec. 2025)*

Trump, the president of the most capitalist nation on Earth, has dealt a
blow to the very system upon which his country – and indeed most of the
West – considers the bedrock of the economy. A blow that not even the most
revolutionary person today would have foretold or thought to achieve. He
has trashed the notion of private property and outright stolen a full oil
tanker in international waters, like modern pirates, and kidnapped its
crew.

Since September, mighty US navy warships obliterated with military missiles
22 small outboard motorboats mostly in the Caribbean and some in the
Pacific, killing at least 87 people. They were unidentified, unarmed, and
there was no evidence of drugs. One boat’s two survivors, clinging to the
wreckage for an hour, were not picked up but obliterated by a second
missile later. These killings were all extra-judicial, therefore illegal as
there was no due process, no chance of defence, no courts, no judges, no
adherence to US laws or international laws, no respect of human rights or
for age-old norms of seafaring rescue. Trump and his buffoonish “secretary
of war” were judge and executioner. In other words, it was a premeditated
murder.  By the precedent set at the Nuremberg trials, all who follow
illegal orders to murder are also guilty of murder: an individual carrying
out illegal instructions on behalf of a superior is not absolved of
responsibility under international law.

The killings have been denounced by most Caribbean and Latin American
countries, progressive NGOs worldwide, solidarity movements and most
non-aligned countries including Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, the BRICS, China,
Russia, Iran, Turkey, and the United Nations. France and the UK have spoken
out, but only lukewarm nods have come from Canada and the EU. However,
human rights experts and international law experts invariably have
pronounced that these were extrajudicial, unlawful killings.

But Wall Street remained unperturbed by the murder of seamen and
fishermen.  The markets were not affected in any real way: murder in the
high seas is “not their department”.

Nor have the markets been affected in any significant way by the hybrid war
against Venezuela these past years: the sabotages, the mercenary invasions,
the cyberattacks, the exclusion from the international financial system,
the UK theft of Venezuelan gold,  the theft of all Venezuelan foreign
assets including its oil company CITGO, and the sanctions impeding the
production and sale of oil by Venezuela restricting its ability to import
food and medicines. Venezuela was not even allowed to acquire Covid-19
vaccines during the pandemic. The list of actions designed to impoverish
and destabilize Venezuela goes on. It includes assassination attempts on
Venezuelan leaders, the promotion and recognition of a false president, and
the death of more than 100,000 Venezuelans due to the 1,000+ illegal,
unilateral, brutal economic sanctions. The economic cost to the country is
staggering: $232,000
<https://www.dw.com/es/venezuela-perdi%C3%B3-usd-232000-millones-por-sanciones-de-eeuu/a-64374193>
millions to the petroleum sector and $642,000
<https://mronline.org/2023/08/18/how-u-s-sanctions-are-a-tool-of-war-the-case-of-venezuela/>
million to the non-petroleum sector.

None of these appalling imposed sufferings of Venezuelans seemed to impress
in any meaningful way geopolitics or world markets. After all, what
importance did a Latin American country like Venezuela have in the broad
scheme of international geopolitics and economy? It all seemed to be
confined in a sort-of private “quarrel” between the US and Venezuela.

Not so the robbery of a full oil tanker in international waters on December
10, 2025.

After the news got out – with a handy PR video of the assault to
demonstrate just how “tough” the US is – oil prices climbed immediately.
Brent crude futures rose 0.4% to $62.21 a barrel, and US West Texas
Intermediate (WTI) crude futures also gained
<https://www.wsj.com/finance/commodities-futures/oil-edges-higher-on-likely-technical-recovery-f4246903>
0.4% to close at $58.46 per barrel on the same day. Oil is very affected by
supply issues and by restricting the supply of oil from Venezuela, the
price of oil and price of gasoline can rise.

But that price fluctuation is minor compared with the long-term risks which
Washington has visited upon international shipping, especially its safety
and security and that of its cargo.  Trump has said that he will seize even
more tankers, increasing the already heightened insecurity and uncertainty.
Will oil tankers now-on have to be heavily armed to deliver their cargo and
protect their crew? The oil in that seized tanker was prepaid, so Venezuela
has not lost the income from it, but since, in all likelihood, the oil’s
final destination was China, Trump has stolen from China. This puts the
seizure of the tanker and its cargo on a totally different scale of
importance geopolitically with China as the victim.

There is more. The enormity of the US assault on a commercial, civilian oil
tanker that was carrying out non-military private business in international
waters, is an uncommon blow to the cornerstone of the capitalist system on
which the entire economy of the West relies: that is: private property. By
committing such an impudent and openly publicized assault on a private,
unarmed, oil tanker, the US Navy has committed – without a doubt – an act
of piracy. The Venezuelan minister of defense has said, “It is a crude,
rude act of cowardly thievery to appropriate resources that do not belong
to you.” And cowardly it was, as we all saw the video in which marines
armed to the teeth quickly grabbed unarmed seamen.

It is worse than the piracy of old because in this case it is
state-sponsored piracy. It is a grab at another country’s natural
resources, as the US is obsessed with Venezuela because it has the largest
proven oil reserves on the planet, and to do so it endeavours to turn its
government into a lackey puppet that will do the bidding of the US and its
oil corporations. The US does not want to buy Venezuelan oil, it wants to
own it, as Trump openly declared in 2023. Therefore, it wants to bring down
its present government and install a vassal state. No other nation save
Russia, has received so many sanctions as Venezuela, and for twenty years
the CIA attacks to undermine the government have not ceased. The sanctions
have, however, failed, so now Washington has turned to the military
“option”: to take Venezuela by force.

The United States of America is now a piratical country: an abuser of its
own domestic laws and international laws. It is a lie that they took
possession of the oil tanker because it was “violating sanctions”, when
said sanctions are in themselves illegal and invalid. They are unilateral
US instruments of harassment and interference in the sovereign affairs of
other nations, not backed by the United Nations Charter, and the UN is the
only mechanism to impose legal sanctions on a nation. The tanker assault
also violates the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the UN Convention
for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime
Navigation and is demonstrably contrary to the Geneva Convention.

This armed robbery at sea was also condemned by the Non-Aligned Movement
that comprises 121 countries, and which also condemned the US’s attempt to
completely close Venezuela’s sovereign airspace which the US has no right
to do. The US is undermining the Proclamation of Latin America the
Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

A main concern, however, is the geopolitical risk of stealing the tanker.
The US has trashed the one undisputed principle of capitalism: that private
property is sacrosanct. This theft, unlike murder, instantly affected
markets as the assault put in peril international shipping, the
international laws and protocols surrounding it, and the protection of
private property. If the US can do this, so can any other nation with the
military force to carry it out. Might is right in this new order that the
cruelty of the Trump administration is trying to enforce upon our
civilization.

Of course, Venezuelans have reacted in disgust, as recent polls show 96% of
the population condemn the attack. But as well, there has been
international condemnation from the Caribbean nations, China, Iran,
Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and Cuba. China has pointed out how this assault
created “instability in global energy markets and undermined international
economic security”. China and Russia have been solid defenders of
Venezuela’s right to self-determination and have shown their solidarity by
helping with Venezuela’s defence. This is no small thing, putting
Venezuela’s sovereignty in the middle of geopolitical concerns. because the
US clearly and outspokenly, seeks to curtail any involvement of China or
Russia in Latin America.

We must put all this in context. The war of Washington against Venezuela is
not just about that country, but against all of Latin America and the
Caribbean which the US insists is their back yard’ – with Canada thrown
into the bargain.

The new US National Security Strategy has been described as “the Monroe
Doctrine on steroids” (The Hill, 15 Dec. 2025) The new Strategy is a
brazen, shameful bravado of a bully that attempts to exert its will by
force upon sovereign nations. It states: “After years of neglect, the
United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore
American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our
homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will
deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other
threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets,
in our Hemisphere.”

Trump has openly said: “You have to dominate. If you don’t dominate, you’re
wasting your time.” Trump is ready to revive the belief that any problem
can be solved by military force, even when other tools exist. He promises
to use its “military system superior to any country in the world” to steal
the hemisphere’s resources.” (V. Prashad, Counterpunch, 15 Dec. 2025)

The question of private property has long been debated in political science
and philosophic discourse particularly, by men such as Proudhon, Fourier,
Saint Simon, and Marx.   Proudhon famously said: “Property is theft”. Karl
Marx refined the concept by pointing out that it is the private property of
the means of production that is a sort of theft, one that basically acts to
estrange people from people, and indeed from nature itself.  In other
words, capitalism alienates people from one another and revolutionary
movements throughout the world are concerned with the issue of private
property and ownership of the means of production. The forceful theft of a
commercial oil tanker in the high seas is indeed, by capitalist standards,
a violation of private property and it is the seizure of a particular
substance that is crucial to the means of production that are key to
industrial activity. It has already increased the volatility of oil markets
and oil transportation by this blow on navigational security. So private
property is now a relative notion according to Trump, subject to the whims
of the most powerful.

Trump has a new take on private property (or perhaps it is as old as the
caveman with a club in his hand?): if we need it or want it and you have
it, we will use our military strength to take it from you but you cannot
take anything from us. And to gild the lily, the new, “improved” Monroe
Doctrine proclaims to the world that Washington now says it owns the
Hemisphere.

So, who will put the bell on the cat? How can Trump and his entourage be
stopped?  He must be stopped by the combined effect of good people, inside
and outside the US,  and courageous nations that are willing to stand up to
a mendacious, murderous, thieving government, no matter how powerful. One
must not cower before military technology but cast awareness to those who
misuse it.

   - First, it is necessary that their legitimacy be widely questioned and
   unrecognized at every instance. The US has no right outside its own
   frontiers to interfere, harass and in any way influence the sovereignty of
   other nations. Other nations should not follow US illegal sanctions. It has
   no jurisdiction outside its own frontiers. As Human Rights Watch
   advocates
   <https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/12/09/us-other-countries-should-push-back-on-lawless-executions-at-sea>,
   other countries should push back on lawless executions at sea as world
   order and peace depends on countries speaking out against violations, even
   when they’re committed by powerful friends.
   - Secondly, the prevailing international laws must be strengthened
   especially in terms of penalties to be applied if violated. Laws are
   useless unless they are enforced. The US must be sanctioned legitimately,
   multilaterally, by the United Nations.   Washington should be fined,
   sanctions, or at least all nations should refuse to buy military equipment
   from it. Its outrageous murderous acts and larceny should be enough to ban
   it from international organizations upholding international laws. The US
   should be shunned at every venue for its state-run piracy that includes
   murders.
   - Thirdly, in view of its unparallelled military resources, the US has
   become, more than any other nation, a threat to world peace and security.
   Accordingly, it should be required to forfeit its place in the UN Security
   Council.
   - Fourth, the countries of the world should increase their trading in
   other currencies rather than the dollar and ignore any illegal, unilateral
   sanctions the US tries to impose on commerce. Freedom of navigation and
   freedom to trade with whomever a nation wishes should prevail.

The Trump regime is fueled by narcissistic pride: hubris.

And the ancient Greeks told us clearly that hubris ends badly.

In the 19th Century Venezuela led the way to freedom from an unjust empire.
Today, in the 21st century again it is showing the way to defeat
imperialism with its serene determination, its military/civil union, its
communal councils, its strong network of allies in solidarity, and its
fierce defence of its own sovereignty. It will prevail again. Bolívar was a
greater mind and man than Monroe ever was.

MPV/OT


Maria Paez Victor

María Páez Victor, Ph.D. is a Venezuelan born sociologist living in Canada.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20251218/34d2a3c8/attachment-0001.htm>