The U.S. Justice Department celebrated Labor Day this year by commandeering Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s official presidential plane in the Dominican Republic, where it was undergoing repairs, and flying it to southern Florida. The justification given from this latest brazen robbery of sovereign assets, an act which the Venezuelan government rightfully called “piracy,” was that the plane had been purchased “illegally” in violation of U.S. export controls and sanctions—draconian economic sanctions which successive U.S. governments have unilaterally levied on the government and people of Venezuela, because they choose to run their country the way they want to.
An unnamed spokesperson for the White House National Security Council hailed the action as “an important step to ensure that Maduro continues to feel the consequences from his misgovernance of Venezuela,” BBC boasted. The Justice Department press release on the seizure contains one thuggish quote after the other from Biden administration officials thumping their chests over how they are prepared to carry out similar actions against other nations. The officials range from Attorney General Merrick Garland, who promised “the Department will continue to pursue those who violate our sanctions and export controls to prevent them from using American resources to undermine the national security of the United States,” to the lowly Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Miami, one Anthony Salisbury, who blustered that the seizure “highlight[s] HSI’s global reach and our continued commitment to enforce U.S. sanctions and stemming the flow of illicit proceeds being generated from high level foreign public corruption.”
And they wonder why nations throughout the world are racing to join the BRICS and the other associations joining nations together to defend their right to sovereign development?
