ANDREY MIHAYLOFF
Washington Moves Toward Fourth Covert Operation Aimed at Toppling Maduro
Pentagon Prepares Fourth Special Operation as Caracas Mobilizes Nation

The United States is advancing preparations for a fourth strategic special operation aimed at removing Nicolas Maduro, tightening military pressure around Venezuela as Washington weighs unconventional warfare options.

The mission now in preparation seeks to overthrow Nicolas Maduro and replace him with a new leadership ready to cooperate with Washington. For decades, the United States has maintained a highly refined system designed to confront governments it deems hostile. Instead of examining the many psychological and information-operations units inside the Pentagon and the CIA, attention turns to the military component shaping events on the ground.

US special operations forces traditionally divide into two components known as the white and black tiers, or Tier-2 and Tier-1. While Tier-1 units conduct covert actions, the Pentagon now focuses on the Tier-2 forces: the US Special Forces known as the Green Berets and their Marine Corps counterparts, the USMC Raiders.

The core responsibility of these units is unconventional warfare — organizing local resistance groups inside a hostile nation, transforming them into capable forces able to sabotage infrastructure, disrupt state authority, and, in some cases, seize territory. Yet as Tier-2 elements, the Green Berets and Raiders operate under strict legal constraints: they must identify themselves as US military personnel, use standard equipment, and remain tied to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.

Crucially, the FAA allows their deployment only when a political structure that Washington recognizes as legitimate formally requests assistance. An earlier example was Washington’s recognition of Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful president. These political actors must emerge before any action can begin, promoting opposition narratives and confronting local authorities. Direct involvement by Green Berets or Raiders in forming such groups would shift the mission into black-tier operations — something the White House cannot openly reveal at this stage.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that airspace over and near Venezuela is closed. In his message, he warned airlines, pilots, traffickers, and human smugglers that the region had been sealed off. Over recent months, the US has moved significant forces into the Caribbean, with the American military presence reaching 15,000 personnel by mid-November — the largest deployment there in decades, whether measured against the 1989 Panama invasion or the 1962 Caribbean Crisis.

Hundreds of flights that normally fly through Venezuelan airspace are now being rerouted following Trump's warning.

The Federal Aviation Administration updated its warning on November 22, advising operators to exercise caution when flying near the Maiquetía Flight Information Region due to deteriorating security conditions and heightened military activity. At the same time, unnamed US officials told Reuters that Washington was preparing a new phase of operations against Venezuela.

Since late August, Venezuela has been under national mobilization. In October, Nicolás Maduroaddressed the United States in English, chanting:

According to reporting from The New York Times, Maduro even offered to step down within two to three years, a proposal Washington rejected, insisting on his immediate departure. As Financial Timesnoted, a US attack could follow one of three scenarios: missile and drone strikes on narcotrafficking-related sites, a targeted operation to capture Maduro, or a full-scale invasion.

American public opinion remains firmly against intervention. A joint survey by CBS News and YouGov found that 70 percent of respondents opposed military action, and only 13 percent considered Venezuela a major threat to US security. The outlet Responsible Statecraft recalled that one of Donald Trump’s key campaign promises was to avoid new wars and prioritize domestic issues — a stance supported by a broad ideological spectrum inside the United States.

The Kremlin stressed its desire for a peaceful resolution, with Dmitry Peskov saying that Venezuela is a sovereign state and that all developments must adhere to international law.

The Washington Post reported that US Air Force aircraft are conducting near-continuous patrols over international airspace bordering Venezuela. An American official speaking anonymously said the flights occurred as part of counter-narcotics operations, but declined to comment on whether the mission scope would expand, referring questions to the White House, which has yet to respond.

Subscribe to Pravda.Ru Telegram channel, Facebook, RSS!

https://english.pravda.ru/world/165021-us-prepares-fourth-strategic-operation/

READ FROM TOP.

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

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Ah, Good Old War Propaganda

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

Just as the news breaks that Trump has issued Maduro an ultimatum to leave Venezuela immediately if he wants to escape with his life, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has published an amazingly brazen war propaganda piece titled “How Venezuelan Gangs and African Jihadists Are Flooding Europe With Cocaine.”

“Venezuela has become a major launchpad for huge volumes of cocaine shipped to West Africa, where jihadists are helping traffic it to Europe in record quantities,” the article begins, going out of its way to note that “the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro — who it asserts is heavily involved in drug smuggling — has brought global attention to the country’s role in the drug trade.”

The propaganda piece is plainly aimed at Europeans as well as Americans, emphasizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s quip last month that the Europeans “should be thanking us” for blowing up alleged drug boats coming from Venezuela because he says some of those drugs are winding up in Europe.

It’s got everything. Whipping up international support for a regime change war. Fearmongering about “jihadists”. The evil, scary dictator. The whole war propaganda sales package.

The mass media do this every time the US empire gets war-horny. And the Murdoch press are always the most egregious offenders.

Reminds me of an old tweet by a man named Malcolm Price:

“I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War a friend I had known all my life suddenly said to me, ‘We must do something about this monster in Iraq.’ I said, ‘When did you first think that?’ He answered honestly, ‘A month ago’.”

Price’s friend had been swept up in the imperial war propaganda campaign that had recently begun, just like countless millions of others. Month after month after month western consciousness was hammered with false narratives about weapons of mass destruction, forced associations of Saddam Hussein with 9/11, and stories about how much better things will be for the people of Iraq once that evil tyrant is gone.

Normally it never would have occurred to the average westerner that a country on the other side of the planet should be invaded and its leader replaced with a puppet regime. That’s not the sort of thing that would have organically entered someone’s mind. It needed to be placed there.

So it was.

The most common misconception about the free press of the western world is that it exists. All the west’s most influential and far-reaching news media publications are here not to report factual stories about current events, but to manufacture consent for the pre-existing agendas of the US-centralized western empire.

They report many true things, to be sure, and if you acquire some media literacy you can actually learn how to glean a lot of useful information from the imperial press without losing your mind to the spin machine. But reporting true things is not their purpose. Their purpose is to manipulate public psychology at mass scale for the benefit of the empire they serve.

This doesn’t happen through some kind of centralized Ministry of Truth where sinister social engineers secretly conspire to deceive people. It happens because all mainstream press institutions are controlled either by plutocrats or by western governments in the form of state broadcasters like the BBC, both of which have a vested interest in maintaining the imperial status quo. They control who the executives and lead editors of these outlets are, and those leaders shape the hiring and editing processes of the publication or broadcaster. Reporters come to understand that there are certain lines they need to color within if they want to get articles published and continue advancing their careers, so they either learn to toe the imperial line or they disappear from the mass media industry.

If people had a clear understanding of everything that’s really going on in our world, they would tear the empire apart brick by brick. If they could truly see how much evil is being done in their name and really wrap their minds around it, and if they could understand how much wealth the plutocrats are getting out of the imperial status quo compared to how little they themselves benefit from it, there would be immediate revolution. So the oligarchs and empire managers shore up narrative control in the form of media ownership, think tanks, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, imperial information ops like Wikipedia, and now increasingly through billionaire-owned AI chatbots to ensure that this never happens.

https://twitter.com/exogamist/status/984355620584292352

The entire empire is built on a foundation of lies. The whole power structure is held together by nonstop manipulation of the way westerners think, speak, act, shop, work, and vote. If truth ever finds a way to get a word in edgewise, the entire thing would collapse.

We know this is true because the oligarchs and empire managers pour so much wealth and energy into manipulating our minds. They’re not doing this for fun, they’re doing it because they need to. If they didn’t need to, it wouldn’t be happening.

So what they are doing is intensely creepy and destructive, but it’s also empowering, because it shows us right where their weak spot is. They’re pouring all this energy into controlling the dominant narrative because that’s the weakest point in the armor of the imperial machine.

What we need, then, is a grassroots effort to help truth get a word in. Help people understand that they’ve been propagandized and deceived about the world by western media and by their power-serving education systems every day of their lives, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. Sow distrust in the imperial media and institutions. Open people’s eyes to the fact that they’re being lied to, and help them learn to see the truth. Anywhere the empire is sowing lies and distortions — whether that’s in Venezuela or Gaza or somewhere else — use that opportunity to help more people unplug their minds from the propaganda matrix.

A better world is possible. The first step in moving toward it is snapping people out of the propaganda-induced coma which dupes them into settling for this dystopian nightmare instead.

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/ah-good-old-war-propaganda

READ FROM TOP.

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://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/11276

SEE ALSO ALL THE ARTICLES ON THIS SITE:

ETAL......