Tag Archives: Cocaine

Trump Pardons a Convicted Drug Dealer While Starting a War Against Venezuela to Fight “Drug Dealers”

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman at Global Research. Reposted with permission.

f someone or some organization can win an award for hypocrisy, the Trump regime would win in a landslide. Recently, US President Donald Trump has pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, a former president of Honduras and a convicted drug trafficker known as the‘Narco-Dictator’ who was convicted by a grand jury in New York City for importing 400 tons of cocaine and weapons into the United States. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Mr. Hernandez was convicted “for cocaine importation and related weapons offenses.” Let that sink in for a minute, Hernandez helped import more than ‘400 tons’ of cocaine and weapons into the United States, and Trump pardoned him, at the same time, a new war is on the table in Washington to remove Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro for allegedly sending drugs into the United States. This is hypocrisy on steroids.

The Department of Justice published a Press Release on June 6, 2024, titled, ‘Juan Orlando Hernández, Former President of Honduras, sentenced to 45 Years in Prison for Conspiring to Distribute More Than 400 Tons of Cocaine and Related Firearms Offenses.’ The following statement explains in a nutshell what Hernandez was clearly involved in: 

As President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández abused his power to support one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world, and the people of Honduras and the United States bore the consequences,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Thanks to the diligent work of the Justice Department’s agents and prosecutors, Hernández will now spend more than four decades in prison. The Justice Department will hold accountable all those who engage in violent drug trafficking, regardless of how powerful they are or what position they hold

Image: Juan Orlando Hernández (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The evidence against Hernandez was undeniable:  

Hernández looking to the side in a suit

As the former two-term president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández had every opportunity to affect positive change for his country,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York. “Instead, Hernández helped to facilitate the importation of an almost unfathomable 400 tons of cocaine to this country: billions of individual doses sent to the United States with the protection and support of the former president of Honduras. Now, after years of destructive narco-trafficking of the highest imaginable magnitude, Hernández will spend 45 years where he belongs: in federal prison

However, Trump is fighting “Narco-terrorists” from Venezuela because he is concerned about the American people, right?  When Trump first announced on September 2nd, that the US Navy hit an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, he said that a “kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narco-terrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility” and that the attack took place while the boat was “at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States.” Trump boasted that “the strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action” he continued, “TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of [Venezuelan President] Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere.”

Fox News, one of the mainstream media outlets who is cheerleading for a war on Venezuela reported that Trump is prepared to order direct attacks, “on land” inside Venezuela, warning that the Nicolás Maduro regime has already sent “killers, murderers … gang members” and other violent offenders into the U.S. during past years of mass migration” Trump continued, “We’re knocking out drug boats right now at a level that we haven’t seen,” and that “Very soon we’re going to start doing it on land too.”

Trump claimed that “We know every route. We know every house. We know where they manufacture this crap, the poison … they’ve been feeding us.” This made me think that if the US military started bombing Venezuela, and they hit a civilian target and murder innocent people, will Trump conveniently claim that drug dealers were hiding there? That will be the same excuse Israel uses when they hit civilian targets in Gaza claiming that Hamas was hiding among civilians and using them as human shields.

As Trump’s team of zionists and neocons prepare for a possible war against Venezuela, he pardons Hernandez, a big time drug dealer who helped ship 400 tons of cocaine and weapons into the US. Maybe Hernandez will be used for another ‘Iran-Contra Scandal’ for a secret operation involving drugs against another Latin American nation who is on Washington’s hit list that can include Cuba, Nicaragua and possibly Colombia to re-establish full-spectrum dominance in their “backyard,” with this regime, anything is possible.    

Can a War on Venezuela Become Another Vietnam in Latin America?

The problem with a US war on Venezuela is that it won’t be a cakewalk. Just imagine this, the US tapped out in a short battle against the Houthis of Yemen in the Red Sea, yet, they want to challenge Venezuela, a country that is twice the size of Yemen with a civilian militia of more than 4 million people alongside 300,000 plus well-trained soldiers willing to fight for their country. Venezuela’s military is armed with mostly Russian and Chinese made weapons that includes Surface-to-Air Missile systems such as the S-300 VM Antey, the Buk M2 and the Buk M2E that can give US fighter jets and bombers a run for their money. Venezuela’s military can also fight a US invasion by using guerrilla warfare tactics within their cities, vast jungles and mountains. Neighboring countries such as Colombia and Brazil will surely have people that will volunteer alongside Venezuelans to fight against the ‘Gringo Invasion.’  

So how will the US Navy and the Marines do in an all-out war against Venezuela given the fact that Venezuela has a standing army and a civilian militia who will be ready to fight the US empire to the very end? The US public will end up witnessing US Navy sailors and Marines coming home in body bags on the evening news. 

I mention Yemen because it was the most recent conflict under Operation Rough Rider, a failed operation against the Houthis of Yemen that involved the US Navy who eventually had to retreat from the short-lived battle at the Red Sea.     

The Middle East Monitor, ‘A Story of Retreat: America’s Failure in the Red Sea’ mentions that after two months of fighting, Trump had established a ceasefire with the Houthi resistance, why? The US Navy could not withstand Yemen’s persistent missile attacks and their relentless determination to fight the US and Israel in the Red Sea:

In spring 2025, the Red Sea became a tense battleground between the United States and Yemen’s Houthis—a part of the so-called Resistance Axis who had intensified their attacks on international shipping. U.S. President Donald Trump, vowing to restore deterrence and secure freedom of navigation, launched a large-scale military operation titled Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis. This campaign—costing over $1 billion and involving aircraft carrier strike groups, B-2 bombers, and advanced missiles—was intended to cripple the Houthis’ military capabilities. However, just two months after the operation began, on May 6, 2025, Trump unexpectedly announced a ceasefire agreement with the Houthis—a deal effectively brokered by bypassing Israel, and one that ultimately brought the U.S.-Yemen conflict to a halt  

The consequences of the Trump regime’s actions against the Houthis are undeniable:

Trump’s failed war and the ceasefire agreement had deep consequences for both U.S. credibility and Houthi positioning in Yemen. For America, the failure weakened its regional and global standing. The Houthis emerged stronger after surviving over 1,000 airstrikes, casting doubt on U.S. military efficacy. The heavy use of precision-guided munitions—vital for potential conflicts with China—raised concerns within U.S. Indo-Pacific Command

Trump’s ceasefire meant a Houthi victory against the US Navy: 

For the Houthis, the ceasefire bolstered their standing in Yemen and across the region. They framed the agreement as a victory, solidifying their control over large parts of the country. Continued attacks on Israel despite the U.S. ceasefire illustrated their regional ambitions and unwavering resolve to play a major role in reshaping Middle Eastern and even global dynamics

The US Navy and over 17,000 Marines are now awaiting orders in the Caribbean Sea to enter Venezuelan territory for a regime change operation, but it’s going to be another quagmire. 

This war is about oil and other valuable resources, but it is also about making sure that the BRICS alliance does not influence Latin America to eventual ditch the US dollar. The US government with Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio are leading the charge and are hoping that they can get their dirty hands-on Venezuela and impose one of their puppets to become Venezuela’s next president such as the “Nobel Prize Winner” Maria Corina Conchado. Conchado has openly called for the Trump regime to bomb her own country so that US corporations can once again, control the oil and other natural resources. 

Trump’s approval rating would sink further into the abyss, probably into the single digits if he goes to war against Venezuela. Expect Anti-War protests all over the world as the US government would be seen once again, as the belligerent actor on the world stage.

Let’s hope that the Trump regime will back off Venezuela, but with an economy that is slowly collapsing due to his reckless tariffs, mass layoffs in government and private industries, the Epstein files scandal, and other failures including rising tensions in the Middle East with the Gaza genocide still going on, unfortunately, a new war seems more likely by the day to distract the US population from Trump’s economic and foreign policies disasters. Let’s hope some sort of diplomacy can prevail, but I must admit, when it comes to Washington’s thirst for war, I am very pessimistic.   

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Venezuela: Cartel of the Suns a Fictitious Excuse for Regime Change. Kurt Nimmo

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By Kurt Nimmo Reposted with permission by Globalresearch.ca.

The seven US warships and a nuclear submarine sent to the waters off Venezuela have nothing to do with drugs or so-called “narcoterrorism.” The Cartel of the Suns, like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, is a cynical ruse designed as a pretext to invade Venezuela, assassinate its elected leader, destroy the Bolivarian revolution, and steal the largest reserve of oil in the world. 

On August 25, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said the Cartel of the Suns does not exist and “denounced that this narrative, used by imperialism to criminalize Venezuela and carry out a military intervention to control its resources, is a fiction used by the far right to overthrow governments that do not obey Washington’s whims,” reports the Orinoco Tribune. 

Petro “pointed out that the flow of Colombian cocaine through Venezuela is controlled by what he calls the ‘drug-trafficking junta,’ whose bosses live in Europe and the Middle East.” The Colombian president added the “one who controls cocaine trafficking through Venezuela is not the ‘Cartel of the Suns,’ that is a lie like Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and it only serves to invade countries.”

The United Nations notes that a mere 5% of the illegal narcotics produced in Colombia pass through Venezuela. 87% of the drugs headed for US and European markets are produced in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The UN reports that 60% to 70% of narcotics that traffickers attempt to move through Venezuela en route to the US and Europe is currently seized by Venezuelan law enforcement agencies. Moreover, the Drug Enforcement Agency in the US did not mention Venezuela in its 2024 and 2025 reports on drug trafficking. 

Fernando Casado, a Spanish journalist and international analyst, writing for El Perro y la Rana Publishing Foundation, also argues the Cartel of the Suns does not exist. The cartel is “a construction whose objective was and still is to portray Venezuela as a narco-State, that is, a rogue State with which nothing can or should be negotiated,” Casado writes. The objective is to demonize President Nicolás Maduro and portray him as a drug kingpin.

“Maduro would no longer be considered a dictator but rather a criminal who together with his gang of thugs is getting rich with the drug business. As a result, any intervention to overthrow a ruler turned drug-trafficker and put an end to the illegal organization ruling Venezuela would be justified.” 

According to a report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Venezuela spent 15 years eradicating coca leaf cultivation and marijuana and cocaine processing. As previously noted, the vast majority of production is attributed to Colombia (67% of the world’s coca leaf cultivation) with the remainder produced in the Andean countries of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. 

Beginning in 1999, when Hugo Chávez came to power, the US worked overtime to discredit and overthrow his popular socialist government. The late leader was insidiously linked to Colombian guerrillas, ETA, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas. US propaganda claimed the Chávez government was providing Iran with uranium for a nuclear weapon, in addition to “every fabrication brewed by right-wing media and intelligence laboratories,” writes Clodovaldo Hernández. The same treatment was applied to Maduro, who was Chávez’s foreign minister for six years. When Maduro was elected president, the Cartel of the Suns ruse was added to the mix. 

“As US officials did before with Chávez and continue to do with Maduro, what they aim to achieve is the political objective of legitimizing an assassination, an invasion, or any other violent means to overthrow Venezuela’s government. With their recycled accusations, they seek to manipulate international public opinion so that any such action against the Caribbean nation will be accepted as legitimate.”

Venezuela and Colombia announced they have deployed 25,000 troops to the border region of the two countries to combat drug trafficking. The Venezuelan troops patrol Zulia and Tachira, two states on the Venezuelan side of the border.

Image:  President Daniel Noboa (Public Domain)

“The military operations are part of a bilateral strategy to combat organized crime and stimulate the legal economy in the border region, which has historically suffered from state neglect and violence caused by illegal armed groups,” according to Colombia Reports. 

Headshot of Daniel Noboa. He is a clean-shaven, Latino man with very short hair, wearing a suit with a tie.

“Marco Rubio is warmongering against Venezuela while having friendly meetings with Ecuador President Daniel Noboa, the man who actually traffics 60% of Colombian cocaine into the United States and Europe,” Maduro tweeted on September 1.

Ecuadorian police documents reveal how a banana company, owned by Noboa’s family, has been involved in exporting over half a ton of cocaine to a number of European countries since 2020. Ecuadorian journalist Andrés Durán, who revealed the existence of the documents, left the country after death threats and legal harassment by the Ecuadorian ruling party Movimiento Acción Democrática Nacional (ADN).

“The Noboa family controls the entire chain of the banana export business, from planting and harvesting to transportation and private ports. There is no doubt that the death threats are closely linked to this investigation,” Durán said. 

Juan Pablo Escobar, the son of Pablo Escobar, the former leader of the now defunct Medellín Cartel, argues that his father worked for the CIA.

“My father worked for the CIA selling cocaine to finance the fight against Communism in Central America,” Escobar writes in his book, Pablo Escobar In Fraganti. “He did not make the money alone,” Escobar said during an interview, “but with US agencies that allowed him access to this money. He had direct relations with the CIA.”

Image: Pablo Escobar

The CIA, under the cover of Plan Colombia, eliminated the Medellín and other cartels and took over the cocaine business. The CIA convinced Congress to fund Plan Colombia, a supposed aid project for the Colombian poor, but in reality, it allowed CIA front companies to profit from counter-narcotics schemes. The CIA eventually took control of the cocaine trade by eliminating drug cartel leaders. Colombian politicians and government officials were bribed to overlook the CIA’s involvement.

The DEA was also involved in cocaine trafficking. US attorney Damian Williams published evidence that agents from the agency conspired to smuggle cocaine into the United States in 2017. Evidence “suggests that the DEA coordinated the export of cocaine it allegedly received from Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s Office,”  writes Adriaan Alsema for Colombia Reports. “DEA agent Brian Witek testified under oath that he coordinated the conspiracy to traffic the drugs” to allegedly frame FARC guerrilla leader Jesús Santrich, who was later assassinated. Moreover, according to the New York Times, DEA officials helped a Mexican drug trafficker and his Colombian suppliers launder and smuggle money as part of an alleged scheme to infiltrate Mexican drug cartels. 

Banks in the US were prosecuted for laundering drug money.

“In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami,” The Guardian reported. Wachovia “paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.” 

In 2020, BuzzFeed News reported a

“huge trove of secret government documents reveals for the first time how the giants of Western banking move trillions of dollars in suspicious transactions, enriching themselves and their shareholders while facilitating the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins.”

UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in 2009 illegal drug money in banks helped save the US during the financial crisis.

“In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital,” Costa explained. “In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.” 

The Trump administration is flooding the media space with lies about Maduro and the Cartel of the Suns as part of a psychological operation to deflect from the real reason for confronting Venezuela—the removal of a socialist government and the seizure of Venezuela’s bounty of petroleum. If Trump was sincerely interested in ending the flow of drugs into the United States, he would dismantle the CIA, the DEA, throw bank presidents in prison, and end the disastrous war on drugs, in this case used as a cover to overthrow a democratically elected government and allow transnational corporations to pillage the country and further impoverish the Venezuelan people. 

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Kurt Nimmo is a journalist, author, and geopolitical analyst, New Mexico, United States. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).