The US imperial neocolonial power...

Editor's note: ...is on the move in the Caribbean with the USS Gerald R. Ford moving in the region. The US Navy destroyed what they claimed was a boat carrying cocaine with eleven killed. How is it possible to be transporting cocaine when there were eleven people on the boat? Most of the cocaine coming out of the region transits the Pacific and not the Atlantic. Is the US running out of oil? Why is the US buying oil from Russia? Because the refineries in the US like in Beaumont, Texas (ExxonMobil), Lake Charles, Louisiana (Citgo), and Lafayette, Louisiana are set up to refine sour heavy crude oil. There are only three countries in the world that produce sour (contains a lot of sulfur and a lot of other impurities) heavy (high viscosity and density) crude oil: the Russian Ural Mountains, Iran and Venezuela. It would be too costly to reengineer these US refineries to refine anything other than sour crude oil. Refineries designed for sour heavy crude are essentially locked into those types of feedstocks. Switching to light sweet crude or other oils isn't impossible, but it's prohibitively expensive and economically inefficient, which is why most US Gulf Coast refineries continue to specialize in Venezuelan, Russian and Middle Eastern heavy sour crude. Therefore, the guess is Venezuela is going to taste some neocolonial naval fire power to give up the oil and infrastructure - again. And this pattern has been going on for the past 120 years.

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U.S. Deploys Its Latest Aircraft Carrier In Caribbean, Targets Another Boat Near Venezuela (Video)

October 25, 2025 | By South Front

The Pentagon on October 24 ordered the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Caribbean Sea to support operations against drug cartels there, amid reports suggesting that President Donald Trump was nearing a decision on launching strikes against Venezuela.

"The enhanced U.S. force presence in the USSOUTHCOM AOR will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere. These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs," spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X.

Tensions have been on the rise between Venezuela and the U.S. since August, when the Trump administration doubled the reward for the arrest of Maduro to $50 million on drug trafficking charges then deployed a naval force with thousands of marines close to the country's shores on a so-called "counter narco-terror operation."

The deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group marks a significant escalation by the U.S. The carrier can support some 70 aircraft, including F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets and EA-18G Growler electric warfare attack jets. The carrier's group also includes several Tomahawk cruise-missile carrying destroyers.

The strike group docked near the harbor of Split, Croatia, on October 21. That is more than 4,300 nautical miles from the Caribbean, meaning it would take days for the group to be in position to launch any strikes.

The announcement of the carrier strike group deployment came just hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. military had struck another alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean.

Hegseth said on X that the strike killed all six men who were on board, and took place in international waters. He noted that this was the first strike to take place at night.

"The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics," Hegseth wrote, linking the boat to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

This latest strike was the tenth carried out by the Trump administration against alleged drug trafficking boats over the past several weeks, which have now led to at least 43 deaths. The first several took place in the Caribbean Sea, but this week, operations expanded into the Pacific Ocean.

CNN reported amid these developments that Trump is considering plans to target cocaine facilities and drug trafficking routes inside Venezuela.

Responding to the recent escalation by the U.S., Maduro warned on October 25 that the Trump administration is "inventing a new eternal war."

Please go to South Front to continue reading.

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The drug trade should probably be looked at as an internal problem within the US and not externally?

A new investigation...

Drug smugglers? More like securing Venezuelan's sour heavy crude oil output and infrastructure:

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon plans to send the Navy's most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, marking a major escalation of the Trump administration's military campaign to target drug smugglers

Where did the meth come from?

More than 385 pounds of meth seized over four-day period at this port of entry

Other than oil there is no other reason to go after Venezuela when systemic problems in the US are ongoing:

Florida Police Bust Massive COLOMBIAN Theft Ring Run by Illegal Aliens Disguised as "Landscapers" — All Five Suspects Are in the U.S. Illegally with ICE Detainers