In reading historian Marcus Rediker, one can learn a great deal about the Golden Age of Piracy. Pirates also did not discriminate on the basis of race. Many pirates were Black victims of slavery who escaped for the short and exciting life of a buccaneer.
Far from being nothing more than cruel brutes, pirates often practiced an egalitarian pro to-socialism, with loot being spread more or less evenly between the captain and crew.
Caribbean Pirates Active along the Venezuelan coast and Trinidad & Tobago
Despite Rediker’s impressive scholarship, the common pop culture image of pirates— violent, barbarous, cutthroat—has remained.
It’s that image appearing in my mind recently, but not because I have been rereading Treasure Island or re-watching Captain Blood.
Rather, it has been because of US attacks on sailors in the Caribbean. Policymakers may lack the eye patches, peg legs, or parrots, but their conduct is of the same caliber.
DEA drug trafficking profits remain in the US banking system
On day one of his term, Presidency Donald Trump signed an executive order designating drug cartels foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated foreign terrorists.
As I write, three Venezuelan vessels have been attacked via US military drone, said to have been drug smugglers. In total, seventeen people have already been killed.
Legally, this is all quite dubious. Smuggling drugs is not a death penalty crime in the United States, and there has been precious little evidence that sailors on the ships are guilty of anything, let alone a capital crime.
The USA deploys over 8 warships to Dutch Caribbean region to combat Venezuela
Brian Finucane, a former legal expert for the State Department, told the Intercept that the attacks are flat-out murder. The Venezuelan government have accused the USA of waging undeclared war and called for the United Nations to investigate.
None of this has deterred members of the Trump administration. The President took to Truthsocial to publish this warning:
IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!” Vice President J.D. Vance chortled, I wouldn’t go fishing right now, referring to the unfortunate fate of the destroyed vessels.
Regarding the international community, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a reporter, I don’t care what the UN says.
These flagrant violations of international law are part and parcel for how Washington has treated Latin America.
When the International Court of Justice ruled in 1986 that the USA had illegally funded the Nicaraguan contras and mined Managua harbor, the response was to ignore the court and to block any attempts at enforcing its decisions.
USA Confiscated most of Venezuela’s Gold and Oil Industry Assets
Britannia ruled the waves; America waives the rules.
US intervention in Latin America always takes place under cover of official righteousness. The Monroe Doctrine said Washington was merely keeping out European influence in the hemisphere.
Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary to the Doctrine declared Uncle Sam could exercise international police power in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence.
President Wilson stated his ambition was to teach the South American Republics to elect good men. Good, that is to say, by his standards.
More recent interventions have been justified under notions of national security, Cold War grand strategy, or anti-drug trafficking.
The US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has bombed several Venezuelan small vessels allegedly carrying drugs to the USA, killing entire crews.
DEA drug trafficking profits remain in the US banking system
The strikes come amid the Trump administration’s military deployment to the Caribbean as part of its revived war on drugs, with the primary targets being cartels in the region, whether real or alleged.
Legal experts have argued that US actions amount to extrajudicial killings, noting that the crews were not identified and no narcotics cargoes were seized, and that the use of armed force was disproportionate, contravening international human rights and maritime law.
Caracas has denounced the US military deployment in the Caribbean as an attempt to provoke a war, using a false narco-state narrative against the Maduro government.
The first strike occurred on September 2. Trump posted a 25-second clip showing a vessel being destroyed by what was later revealed to be a missile fired from a drone.
He claimed that the operation killed 11 members of Tren de Aragua, a US-designated, but CIA-controlled foreign terrorist organization.
According to Washington, Venezuela is greatly responsible for the US narcotics crisis, with a narrative that also seems to accommodate US domestic and foreign objectives. Almost 80% of the cocaine enters the USA through the Pacific, namely sent by US ally Ecuador.
DEA agent reveals that the Caribbean Drug War is a Party Game
In August, the Trump administration raised the bounty for information leading to President Maduro’s arrest from US $25 million (set in January) to $50 million.
The bounty initially stood at $15 million as part of a 2020 indictment by the Southern District of New York against Maduro and 14 other officials accused of narco-terrorism.
US officials have never provided court-backed evidence to prove the cartel’s existence nor to support any of the claims against Maduro and Venezuelan institutions.
The Mexican and Colombian governments have asserted there is zero proof of Venezuelan government involvement in any narcotics activities.
Although the indictment remains an unproven allegation, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio uses it as a legal justification for the military build-up in the Caribbean and targeting Caracas as a cartel.
Rubio also omits the role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in actual drug trafficking in Venezuela before the Bolivarian Process.
Dutch gangsters are the mightiest Narcotics-dealers in the World
In 2007, two years after expelling the DEA, Venezuela was declared by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) a territory free of illicit crops, and the seizure of narcotics grew every year since.
In 2025 alone, Venezuela seized 60 tons of drugs, according to military spokespeople.
The 2025 UN World Drug Report once again concluded that Venezuela is neither a major drug producer nor a key international trafficking corridor. The so-called “Cartel de los Soles” and “Tren de Aragua” are not even a footnote.
The report is very clear: Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the primary sources of cocaine in Latin America, with the vast majority (over 80%) of shipments reaching the USA and Europe via the eastern Pacific Ocean and Washington-allied Central American nations.
The 2017 DEA report also concluded that less than 10 percent of US-bound cocaine passes through Venezuela. The agency’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment report does not even include any reference to Venezuela, “Cartel de los Soles,” or “Tren de Aragua.”
UNODC also notes that synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and methamphetamine are produced in clandestine North American labs and move across the US–Mexico border, debunking Trump’s claims that fentanyl in the USA comes from Venezuela!
Venezuela Analysis / ABC Flash Point News 2025.
Technology has perverted society and while luxury destroyed humanity.
Agenda 2030.
The dollar is failing and the USA is technically bankrupted, so robbing, invading and stealing other nations minerals an doil is the only tool left to keep on trucking?