Alright I take back what I said in the mega about Maduro needing to stop public appearances this is a pretty strong point.

The historic constructions of legality and illegality inherent to drug policy are at the very center of American empire. It is a mechanism for designating political projects around the world, but most notably LatAm, as either legitimate or illegitimate. the ones we like receive access to US pharmaceutical markets, investment, and military training/materiel support, the ones we don't have their opposition armed and are subject to de-legitimization on the "international" (European) stage.. and it is all declared legal and civilizied by the atlanticist powers. it has been going on for arguably a century and is a set of surgical tools for controlling the globe, but trump has been brandishing it as a broadsword and drawing attention.

This power of designation was recognized by imperial administrators as far back as the british opium wars, and it moved among to the Atlantacist powers. US government archives show it was discussed openly even before WW2, when various imperial powers were scrambling and pillaging the periphery for these potent miracles from plants and the peoples that actually found them. there's even material analysis that an inflection point in the conflict between Germany and the US was inflamed by contradictory claims to invention/discovery (aka theft from indigenous) of drugs by US and Germany-based pharmaceutical capital formations.

Americans only themselves began to note the arbitrary and opaquely-designated categories when this tool of oppression was turned inward and laser focused on the internal political enemies of an administration.

the historical construction of american/western drug policy (both legal and illegal, because they are two sides of the same coin which the Atlanticist regime flips at will) is an illuminating history.

if you have capacity for a book, We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire by Suzanna Reiss (graduate char at Univ Hawaii, history of political economy, US Foreign Policy, etc) is recommended. if you have time for a ~1hr listen, the 13th episode of Who Makes Cents: A History of Capitalism podcast is an informative interview with her about the book and its findings.

that podcast is a great and very informative one, but it is not really in the entertainment genre. it's focused more on being informative and can be dry, but no other pod has made my jaw drop as much. it's free and available wherever podcasts are downloaded.

i recommend this analysis to anyone who might care, because it is the keystone of everything: militarized policing, foreign policy, the carceral state, neocolonialism, land management, indigenous rights... and there is no technological way around it: people need drugs, to become healthy, to survive, to thrive.

the ability to control who produces them, who distributes them, and who receives them is the ability to control the world.

there's an interesting coda to the book that, while it was being written the TPP was on its way to becoming a dominant force in the pacific, and its strategic purpose was to geographically maneuver the PRC into becoming encircled by a trade framework that would pressure it into western dictated rules about pharmaceuticals and drug policy. that the trump administration let the TPP die was probably one of the biggest own-goals of the west in recorded history and speaks to the collapse of unipolarity.

Socialists predicting the future yet again

All Americans should download and send a copy of this to their Senators and Congress critters.

This is confirmation the whole narco terrorist label on Maduro is

It is so god damn Trump is doing this play after he correctly shat on the Iraq wars. This is premeditation. And ification of MAGA.