President Trump issued an executive order Jan. 10 to block judicial processes from being instituted against Venezuelan oil funds held in the US, on the basis that it would "materially harm the national security and foreign policy of the United States."

A close reading of the facts indicates that Putin and Trump worked out a global carve-up in which Russia gets Ukraine and the US gets Venezuela. This was implicitly acknowledged in the "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine enshrined in the National Security Strategy released by the White House weeks before the illegal Venezuela attack was launched. In this light, Russian protests of the US aggression at the UN Security Council seem strictly pro forma. Both dissident left voices in Venezuela and democratic socialists in Ukraine have made the point that to betray one country is to betray the other. In Episode 312 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg demonstrates how the global divide-and-rule racket that is campism has never made less sense.

President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum Jan. 7 directing the United States to withdraw from 66 international organizations, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Nicolás Maduro, the former president of Venezuela, appeared alongside his wife before a federal judge in New York on Jan. 5—with dueling demonstrations by his supporters and opponents outside the Manhattan courthouse. Separated by police lines, the rival protests nonetheless repeatedly escalated to physical confrontations. Inside, Maduro told US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein: "I'm innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the president of my country." Maduro also told the judge he was "kidnapped from" his home in Caracas. His attorneys are expected to argue he was illegally arrested and is immune from prosecution.

President Donald Trump announced on Jan. 3 that the US would "run" Venezuela, following a strike on the country that led to the capture and transfer to the US of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores.

A group of 21 Arab, African and Islamic nations on Dec. 27 issued a joint statement formally rejecting Israel's recognition of Somaliland as an independent state. The statement asserted that recognizing Somaliland as a nation independent of Somalia constitutes a grave violation of international law, emphasizing the "serious repercussions of such [an] unprecedented measure on peace and security in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, and its serious effects on international peace and security as a whole."

With his Christmas air-strikes on Nigeria, Trump is blundering into a conflict fundamentally driven by desertification related to the very climate change that he denies, and which now threatens democratic rule throughout the West African region. And while the Muslim-Christian sectarian strife that Trump hypes is a large element of the situation, the violence has gone both ways—and also targeted Muslim minorities such as Shi'ites, and even indigenous Jews. Furthermore, making Christians the perceived beneficiaries of imperialist intervention is only likely to exacerbate the tensions and make Christians more of a target. In Episode 310 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes an in-depth and unsparing look.