Venezuela: Reading the Fine Print of Power | Shahid Bolsen

Well, I mean, you can see how it works. Right? What I was talking about with the narrative shelf, you have these two opposing opinions, both upholding the same narrative, both upholding the same propaganda, the same propaganda goal. I'm talking about Venezuela. You know, one side says that The US was right to do what they did.

The other side says that The US had no right to do what they did. Right? One side says America is a big, bad, unstoppable, colonizing power, and that's terrible. Or the other side says America is a big, bad, unstoppable power, colonizing power, and that's wonderful. So what's the narrative goal there?

Well, clearly, to perpetuate the idea that America is a big, bad, unstoppable power. Both of them are saying the same thing. I'm not saying that the people who are who, you know, who say these things don't believe what they're saying. They probably do. They probably do believe what they're saying.

Because, again, most political opinion that you see, especially online, is just regurgitated propaganda and indoctrination. That's most of what you see. The people talking don't even know what they what what what they don't know, and they don't even know that they don't know anything. The whole trick of propaganda, that's the whole trick, to make you think that ignorance is information. Now look, I've never been to Venezuela.

You know, maybe thirty years ago or so, I followed Central America and South American politics quite closely, quite some time ago. But then my personal focus shifted quite a bit. So now the further you move away from the Middle East and from the Muslim world, full disclosure, the more or the less informed I become about what's going on. So I don't personally have an opinion about Maduro. I know that the Venezuelan people have varying opinions about him.

Opinion is relatively divided. I know that the people of Venezuela have suffered tremendously for decades, primarily because of US sabotage and US hostility and so forth. And I don't have any I have no reason to suppose that Maduro wasn't involved or isn't involved in one way or another with the drug cartels, probably was. There's nothing unique about that. So is The US.

The United States has relentlessly interfered in the domestic politics of Venezuela my entire life and before my life. Venezuela and every other country in the in the in the Western Hemisphere for over a century. You know? Obviously, what The US did is flagrantly illegal, obviously. That's not even interesting.

They're an outlaw country. That's not an opinion. That's a fact. It's not even an interesting observation at this point. It's like if you find out that Jeffrey Dahmer was also a shoplifter.

Who cares? We know this already. America is a completely renegade nation, a rogue state, and always has been, especially in the Western Hemisphere, especially in Central And South America. But the problem is, when with regards to Venezuela, if you restate history, you know, if you recite the catalog of US crimes in Central And South America, and you contain the kidnapping of Maduro exclusively within this context, then I think that you will misunderstand what's happening. If you're only looking at it as part of the the history because it looks like if you do it that way, it looks like the perpetuation of the same pattern.

Right? It looks same old same old. It's it's just you know, there they go again. There there America goes again. I think it was even done on the anniversary of the US invasion of Panama and the arrest of Manuel Noriega.

So it looks like from the outside, apparently, it looks like The US is just continuing as they always have. But this is a mirage in my opinion. Understand, The US is like a former boxing champion, who has had to start to inject himself with a whole cocktail of hormones and a whole cocktail of drugs just to keep up the appearance appearances that he's still a champion. Now they have to pay opponents to take a dive. It's been a very long time since that fighter ever knocked anyone out in a real fight.

So when you only contextualize US actions by their historical behavior only, I think that you can overlook what has changed, and it's incredibly important to look at what has changed. I mean, first of all, all, let's get a few things clear right from the start. The Trump administration, like I've said many many times, is aligned, fully aligned with the a national OCGFC, not with the military industrial complex. If you look at it, every single thing that Trump has done in his term has done nothing but boost American isolation, American withdrawal. It's boosted BRICS.

It's boosted China. It's boosted Russia. It's boosted BRICS. It's boosted multipolarity because that's his job. He's a Khaleji president, like I've said many times.

You know? And if your analysis of geopolitics starts from a position of, for for example, validating the idea that there's a fundamental power conflict between The US and between between The US and China, then you, quite simply, have no idea what's going on. The ascendancy of the anational OCJFC completely changes the context of how international relations works in the modern era. We're no longer talking about friction and competition between nation states. We're not talking about that being the driver of everything that happens anymore.

That's that that era is past. We're in an era of coordination and management, which is very often being obscured. It's very very often being obscured or it's being performed via a sort of interface of those old mechanisms of friction. You know what I mean? You understand me?

Like, everyone is is used to the twentieth century paradigms. Right? Everyone is used to that. Everyone is used to state against state competition for resources and for power and so on. You know, nation states.

Nation states as the sort of main characters in in in in the global story, as the protagonist and as the antagonists, and we all fight. So that continues to be the interface. That's the user friendly language, but that's no longer the operating system. That's no longer the operating code. This is an this is unprecedented coordination that we're talking about, multilateral coordination.

And that's because the western and the American private sector, as I've said again many times, has transcended national attachments. They're a national, a floating imperial network. I'm not saying again, I'm not saying that we are talking about a, you know, a shadowy cabal of overlords. That's not what I'm talking about. It's not a conspiracy theory.

It's just a complex set of global actors, nonstate actors, private sector actors pursuing the stability of their interests and coordinating with each other to do that. It's not conspiratorial at all, I mean, the way people think about it. They coordinate necessarily also with the actual states like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, so on. States in which the government is completely integrated with national business interests and vice versa. They're not captured by the private sector like in the way in the West.

We're talking about states that actually maintain their supremacy over their own economies, unlike America and Europe and so forth, which have become completely captured by the private sector. So this coordination, this management, this collaboration will sometimes use the language of conflict, the recognizable language of conflict. But conflict is not what's really happening. So if you look at Venezuela, you have to look at what's actually happening here because the surface story, you know, Trump removes Maduro regime change, American oil companies are gonna win. That's a superficial story.

That's a show for people who still think that nation states make decisions based on national interest. That's those days are past. We're way past that. Like I said, that's an obsolete understanding. So let's try to go through what what the actual architecture is of what's being constructed right now in Venezuela or where Venezuela fits in the architecture globally and why every single actor who's involved from Washington to Riyadh to Moscow to Beijing is actually perfectly aligned in delivering this thing, in my opinion, what they're trying to what they're trying to do with Venezuela.

First, the baseline reality that forces anything else and everything else. American energy consumption is about to explode. Right? We're talking about AI data centers in America that are currently eating about two to 3% of US electricity, and that's projected to hit, I think, 8% by 2030. Just data center energy consumption in America right now is higher than the individual energy consumption of over a 100 countries in the world.

You understand me? That's just just data centers, and that's gonna double more than double in the next four years. We're talking about EV charging infrastructure. That's gonna require grid expansion. It's gonna require a grid expansion equivalent to 20,000,000 homes.

That's like adding 20,000,000 homes to the system. Okay? We're talking about reshorred manufacturing, chips, batteries, defense production, probably even auto manufacturing, and so forth. All of this demands industrial scale power at levels that we haven't seen since the nineties in The United States. The American grid cannot support this.

Very simply, it cannot. Now the traditional American solution would be drill. Drill, baby, drill. Right? Frac more.

Burn more coal. But that's simply not possible. You know? Even fracking. Right?

It can't there's no way that fracking can scale fast enough for what's needed, for what's coming. It can't scale fast enough for what's coming, for the needs that are coming. Not to mention high energy prices would completely kill the consumption dependent growth model that's really the only thing keeping the American economy from completely imploding right now. So that's not really an option. So what to do?

Well, you need massive cheap oil supplies injected into the global markets. You need prices suppressed, you know, suppressed sustainably below $60 a barrel. You need enough supply to fuel an American consumption boom because that's what you need. And that's where Venezuelan heavy crude comes in, in my opinion. But here's what everyone is missing about Venezuela.

Everyone is talking about American companies going to Venezuela and taking over. It's not profitable for American oil companies. You understand me? Let me say that again. For those people who think that this is just 2003 Iraq all over again, and they're just going in to get the oil.

Look. Venezuelan oil infrastructure reconstruction is not profitable for American companies at all. The capital expenditure that would be required is completely insane. We're talking about $200,000,000,000 plus over a decade just to restore production capacity after years and years of sanctions. That decayed their whole infrastructure in Venezuela.

Venezuelan heavy crude is expensive to extract, and it's expensive, and it requires a specialized refining infrastructure. But this is a very expensive undertaking. At current and projected prices, breakeven is gonna be around somewhere between 40 to $50 per barrel. And that's competing directly with American companies' own domestic shale production, where they've already sunk a tremendous amount of capital. Not to mention their operations in Canada, which is where, most of the American companies went, most of the foreign companies went to places like Canada when Venezuela was nationalized.

They've already sunk all a lot of money that. Meanwhile, they've got shareholders who want their who want returns on a regular basis, and they're not interested in nation building projects in South America. The financials just doesn't work. Wall Street's not gonna fund it. American oil companies are gonna make token bids for political cover to make it look good to to, you know, placate Trump and so forth, but then they'll quietly withdraw, in my opinion.

You don't understand. Oil companies are incredibly good, incredibly politically skilled, diplomatically skilled. They're a national actors. But here's what American companies can survive on. Not the oil directly, but service contracts.

They don't need to own the oil. They just need to get paid to extract it, to refine it, and to move it. That's the Halliburton model, and Halliburton's already been mentioned with regards to Venezuela. Provide services globally regardless of who owns the production. They're already doing it for Saudi Aramco, for ADNOC, for everyone else.

So when Chevron or Occidental's name appears on a Venezuela deal, check the fine print, and they those names have already been mentioned. Who's providing the capital? What's the joint venture structure? Check the offtake agreements. The devil's in the details.

Because if anyone can survive on Venezuelan oil economics, I can't think of anyone better than the GCC. Saudi Arabia and The UAE can produce oil at 2 to $10 per barrel and still make a profit. Listen to that again. 2 to $10 per barrel. They can operate Venezuelan oil fields at a loss, okay, for years and still be profitable.

They can still be profitable overall because they're using it as a weapon against their competitors. You understand? They can absorb a massive upfront capital expenditure, massive injections of investment because sovereign wealth funds, unlike corporations, they measure their returns in decades, not in financial quarters. Not to mention they've already built the specialized refining infrastructure for heavy crude. It exists in Jebda.

It exists in Texas, which is owned by Saudi Arabia, that that that refinery. They're coordinating through China with the BRICS energy architecture, which means that Venezuelan oil could potentially Venezuelan crude could potentially flow through Gulf intermediaries to their refineries, to Chinese refineries, bypassing Western financial systems entirely if they want to. This isn't theoretical. They can do this. The infrastructure already exists.

The relationships already exist. The the obviously, the financing capacity exists. What doesn't exist is American corporate capacity to do this themselves profitably. American companies can't do this. So how does this actually play out?

I mean, no one knows. It's kind of throwing me for a loop the last few days. No one actually knows how this is gonna play out except for the players who are actually involved, but you can imagine. You can imagine. For example, that Chevron, say, gets announced as the lead contractor in Venezuela since they're already there or Occidental.

You know, maybe it's gonna be a a consortium. So you get the headlines. Trump wants the headlines. American companies return to Venezuela. We've got the oil.

Trump tweets about, you know, American energy dominance and what have you. CNN runs segments about how how regime change delivered benefits to US corporations and jobs and whatnot and so on. This is the the the narrative that they can run with. But I would guess that if you look at the actual structure, and I mean, actually look at the the, like, the SEC filings, for example, the joint venture agreements, the financing sources, the real story is probably gonna look very different if you really look into it. It's more likely to be US companies provide technical expertise.

Maybe Chinese companies provide infrastructure. That's what they're very good at. And, of course, The Gulf provides the money either directly or through firms or funds that they control. The offtake agreements could structure oil sales through Gulf trading entities. You understand?

US companies will get paid service fees, not commodity margins. Now this may not be what happens. It may not be what happens, but this is what makes makes the most sense to me. That's the only sense that I can make of it. And then the actual ownership of the oil flows gets obscured thoroughly enough through corporate complexity that by the time anyone figures it out, it's a fait accompli.

Because like I said, if you understand who Trump actually is and who he actually represents and who he actually serves, Trump represents and serves the a national OCGFC. Every single move that he's made, and I mean every single one, serves this constituency, not American national interest. Look at tariffs. Right? That just boosts South South trade.

It boosts, BRICS alternative payment systems. It it further isolates The United States, and it tries to force, manufacturing repatriation into The US domestically, which does nothing but increase US energy consumption, US energy dependency, which creates the need for cheap oil that only The Gulf can provide at scale. That's one thing. The the his his attacks on immigration, that suppresses wages. It boosts boosts profit margins for OCGFC owned companies.

His deregulation and so forth enables Gulf acquisition of American assets without antitrust barriers, and that's coming. His criticism or his attacks on NATO reduces European subsidization and forces EU energy dependence on The United States. The so called confrontation with China is nothing but pure theater. He's done nothing but help China. His actual policies enable Chinese and GCC coordination while satisfying the neocons need for a villain.

Now the Venezuelan operation fits perfectly into this framework if you really think it through. You've got US military and intelligence assets being deployed to deliver a strategic resource to OCGFC coalition partners. While the American public is told that uncle Sam is still a top dog, and everyone can still talk about how America's this big bad colonial power. But what makes all of this more probable, in my opinion, why I'm more certain about it, is because every major power has already agreed to it. This couldn't have happened otherwise.

What happened to Venezuela couldn't have happened otherwise. I mean, not publicly. They won't admit it publicly. But think about it. The incentive alignment is too perfect.

It's too perfect for this to not be coordinated. In my opinion, Maduro is kinda like Bashar al Assad, removed by the consensus of external power players. The same power players, in fact, that coordinated the removal of Bashar al Assad. I mean, really, just look at it's just like Syria. If you just look at it, the optics even.

In Venezuela, right, you had supposedly a successful breathtaking military operation, such precision. But, no, obviously, this was a mediated negotiation. This was a mediated, negotiated removal. Just like with Bashar al Assad, you thought it was a big revolution? No.

It was a negotiated removal mediated by the same players, The US, the GCC, Russia, and China. Same ones as Syria, same in Venezuela. We might see something similar in Iran, in fact. You you should watch out for that. This is what I mean about multinational or multilateral management and coordination.

So your stability and your security as a leader now is completely dependent upon the extent of your utility and your irreplaceability to this new dynamic, to this new system. Putin, Xi, MBS, MBZ, they're stable because of this. Because of this, they're stable. Trump's utility is temporary. I would say that Erdogan's position is highly conditional, and probably is nearing its end, most likely.

Netanyahu is clawing for his own post expiry existence because I think he's already expired. Most of the other Gulf leaders, in my opinion, are replaceable. Sisi is stable. Khamenei is negotiating. So the key to a political career in the global South now is the key is demonstrating that you can have a useful function to this management system, which means that you can collaborate with and you can coordinate both with other major leading countries as well as with the a national OC GFC that you can coordinate and collaborate with them in ways that contribute to overall cohesion and smooth operations across the whole global power networks.

Understand, we are already living in the post American world order. Just because the user interface hasn't updated yet, don't get confused about that. It's over already. I mean, I myself have to fight the knee jerk reflexes sometimes, like over with with with the Venezuela situation. Because, yes, the the reflex is to look at the history and all of America's known behaviors in the hemisphere and just say, Okay.

The the global bully is at it again. But you have to return to and stand on what we know to be true about the current context of global politics economics, and that that current context is completely different than what we've all known. And you have to remember who Trump works for, and you have to remember that America is a captured country. And we know what the overall plan is to dismantle American empire and American authority relative to others. So you have to pause and reflect to see what's really going on.

Don't just react. You know, I've said several times that I thought that The US was gonna insist on keeping the entirety of the Western Hemisphere under their sphere of influence. That's the way it's always been. That's always been their priority. It's been an absolute for them.

But in my opinion, this action in Venezuela actually signals something different. It's made me reassess, made me reexamine that and reevaluate that. I mean, I know the apparent signal looks like, yes, it's just US domination in South America all over again. That's what it looks like, clearly. But if you think it through, like what I'm talking about, if you think it through, I think that I might have actually underestimated America's weakness and overestimated their aspirations for hemispheric influence.

I think Venezuela actually indicates that Central And South America might have a chance at actually integrating into the broader system, which I didn't think that they did, but I think they might. They might not just have to remain America's captive forever, which is obviously very good for them, and I didn't really see that coming. So, okay, let's walk through what are the the the what seems sensibly likely to happen with regards to Venezuela. So over the next year or so, American companies are gonna make public bids. There's gonna be press releases, congressional testimony, and so forth, the whole show.

But then I think that they will probably quietly withdraw, citing economic conditions or instability or what have you. Oil and gas companies do this all the time. They do it all the time. Then you're probably gonna see, or you may not see, but the GCC might make, you know, generous offers framed as sort of supporting US transition and management of Venezuela and whatnot, being trying to be supportive of their ally. I think The UAE or Qatar makes the most sense here because they already have decent formal relations with Venezuela.

They have a long relationship. They've kept their relations all along. And, obviously, they have very close relations with The US. There's probably gonna be Chinese infrastructure investments that are coordinated with the GCC ports, refineries, pipelines, and so on. Then maybe a couple of years from now, two or three years from now, Venezuelan output rises from 800,000 barrels per day to 2,500,000.

Global prices suppressed to between 45 to $55 a barrel because you wanna keep the low low energy prices so that you can encourage consumption in America. And, of course, American independent producers are gonna start hemorrhaging cash because no one can afford at that price. Refineries, pipelines, storage facilities, so forth, they're gonna enter distress. They're gonna become distressed assets, which is also something that you wanna have happen as part of this global plan. So by maybe 2030, Gulf sovereign wealth funds are gonna be able to acquire distressed US energy assets to stabilize the markets.

It'll be framed as allied investments supporting American energy security and so forth, but they're gonna get those assets. Technology transfer, operational control, all of this shifts to Gulf ownership. US companies are gonna be reduced to being service contractors on infrastructure that they once owned. You understand? And nobody's even gonna notice because it happens so gradually, deal by deal, always with a a friendly narrative framing.

And then maybe, like, ten years from now, say, 2035, you're gonna have stable, cheap oil prices, which will enable everything else in the plan. AI data center expansion, acceleration of EV adoption because it's actually economically viable at scale now. Maybe there's gonna be a deal between The US and BYD similar to the TikTok deal because, let's be honest, Tesla is an albatross on the industry. There might be or there should be manufacturing reshoring into the domestic market in America because energy costs are making that possible, making it feasible, and consumption growth continues, funded by cheap energy. And that that cheap energy flows through gulf controlled infrastructure.

Do you understand? You gonna have managed decline of the dollar. And remember when we talked about the Mirren plan, the managed devaluation of the dollar to reduce the debt burden of America, to boost their exports, and to try to survive the multipolar transition by drastically scaling America down? But the problem with the Mirren plan was that dollar devaluation normally causes catastrophic inflation unless you can suppress commodity prices. And it will cause, potentially cause, if you drop the price of the value of the dollar, the bond markets would collapse unless you can maintain capital inflows, foreign capital.

And if you devalue the dollar, then obviously it worsens your trade deficits and unless you can revive domestic manufacturing. Well, Venezuelan oil solves the first problem. Massive supply injection suppresses the prices even as the dollar devalues. You understand? And GCC capital inflows solves the second problem.

They're buying US assets. So they're creating the capital inflows that are needed to prevent bond market collapse. And then you've got the cheap energy, which solves the third problem. Manufacturing actually becomes viable in The US again when power costs are actually manageable. It's not three separate policies.

It's one coordinated global restructuring. You understand me? The GCC and China accept continued dollar pricing temporarily in exchange for ownership of dollar generating assets and a managed transition timeline where they're building alternative payment systems and and currency agreements. So you see what I'm saying? Venezuela delivers the asset collateral.

The GCC owns the oil production and The US energy infrastructure, which are all dollar denominated. They control the commodity flows, keeping the dollar system stable during the transition. All of this is part of the Mirren plan. No one's defending the dollar. Understand this.

This is the the dollar is in hospice care now. And the OCGFC is managing the transition by ensuring that all of the major players have sufficient dollar denominated asset positions, sufficient to prevent catastrophic collapse. They don't want it to happen suddenly. It needs to be managed. Now for all those people whose actual racism and ideological bias prevents them from accepting the fact that golf leaders are, as they say, playing four d chess.

They can't believe that. I mean, it's partly because of their own bigotry and their own pseudo Islamist ranting against the governments, but it's also just because politics, let's be honest, is simply beyond their intellectual depth. But for the for for for all of those people, let me explain something that you probably don't understand. The GCC already owns significant pieces of US energy infrastructure, not majority stakes necessarily. Majority stakes trigger disclosure, requirements, but strategic positions that provide them significant leverage.

Saudi Aramco already 100% owns Motiva Enterprises, the largest refinery in North America in Port Arthur, Texas. Yes. Exactly where that Venezuelan oil is likely to go and get refined. UAE through Mubadala has positions in Occidental, petrochemical joint ventures on and on. Qatar through the QIA has Exxon Mobil exposure, LNG infrastructure in Texas, and so on.

The real penetration, however, the real penetration of the GCC isn't even in these disclosed positions that everyone knows about if you look into it. It's in the private equity layer. Gulf sovereign wealth funds are major limited partners in every energy focused fund. You understand me? Apollo, Carlisle, KKR Energy divisions, and so on.

These funds own significant midstream, downstream, and service company positions. Their influence is in the joint venture structures where American companies provide expertise and The Gulf provides the capital, structured so that, the American company is the public facing company, but The Gulf has effective control, through the purse strings because they control the purse strings. And then you have the debt holdings. GCC funds hold massive amounts of US energy company debt, which converts into equity in distress scenarios and provides a veto power for those companies, for those funds over major corporate decisions even when they don't have a majority ownership or majority shares. The conservative estimate of current GCC influence in The US energy sector is between 200 to 330,000,000,000.

After the Venezuela operation and the potential, you know, if not inevitable subsequent distressed acquisition phase that will come to follow, I would say that by 2030 in the next five years, that's gonna go up to 500 to $750,000,000,000. That's 15 to 25% of total US energy infrastructure market cap. You understand? Effective control over 30 to 40% of US refining capacity, all in the hands of the GCC. Significant positions in more than half of all major US energy companies.

So you might ask why would Chevron or Occidental accept such such arrangements? Why would American oil executives literally facilitate the transfer of strategic assets to foreign powers? Because they're a national. That's why. They're not tied to American national interest.

You understand? Executives get bonuses tied to their completion of deals, not to long term profitability. They're gonna retire wealthy regardless of shareholder outcomes. They get board seats on Gulf backed entities postretirement. Their stock prices demand growth stories.

It's all narrative driven. So the Venezuela project provides the story that they need even if it's ultimately unprofitable, even if they end up pulling out of the deal. By the time the the the losses materialize, the executives will have already cut their deal and run off. They've already moved on. And frankly, if US companies don't participate, then the GCC just enters directly with Chinese partners exclusively, and American companies get completely shut out.

They're just trying to stay in the game. They're just trying to stay in the game at this point. It's the same incentive structure, in fact, that drove American corporate behavior, in China for thirty years. Do you understand? To accept unfavorable terms for market access, you tell yourself that you're winning, and then you watch your technology and you watch your market position completely transfer over to your competitors until you wake up one day completely dependent on the country that you thought you were gonna exploit.

It's quite poetic actually, if you think about it. But, you know, talking about China and the comparison with China, let's actually talk more about the Iraqi comparison, the comparison to Iraq. America invaded Iraq for the oil, right, to control the oil, to own the oil. Right? That's what we all understand.

Okay. Then tell me why Chinese companies dominate Iraqi oil production. Over 30 of the output. Russian companies hold major positions. Luke Oil is everywhere in Iraq.

US companies mostly service contracts, and they hold minority equity stakes. The American military provided security for Chinese and Russian operations for two decades. That's what they were doing over there, whether you understand it or not. Massive cost to US taxpayers, minimal benefit to US companies. That's the truth.

I'm telling you, the OCGFC have been planning and prepping for the global transition for a very long time for a very long time. They've been bringing it about for a very long time. You know? The American public was told that you went to Iraq for oil. Yes.

You did. Yes. You went for oil, but not for American oil companies. So when I say that Venezuela is not going to be Iraq two point o, I'm referring to the commonly accepted narrative about Iraq. But if we're talking about what actually happened, if we're talking about the reality, then, yes, Venezuela will be Iraq two point o, except there's gonna be Iraq two point o because Trump and the USA GFC don't even pretend to serve American interests anymore, national interests.

Now the GCC partnership involved in this may never be publicly acknowledged, same with the Chinese rule, but those, to me, I think, are inevitable. And it may not play out like this, but this seems the most likely to me. Now from my position and from the Middle Nation position, as a witness, standing outside the chronology of these events, analyzing from the vantage point of ultimate accountability on the last day, we do have to name what this represents for Muslim leadership. You understand? The GCC is being offered power and wealth and strategic position, but is being offered all that through participation in mechanisms of force, regime change, predatory acquisition, and so on.

This is realpolitik, as we've talked about many, many times. And that means that in the short horizon, it's highly questionable ethically. It's pragmatic, and it's ruthless. No doubt. It's playing a game that is intrinsically cutthroat, but you're playing that game because you're trying to avoid being outplayed and to try to secure for yourself the ability to, inshallah, change the game potentially.

But like I said, yes, in the short term, it is ethically questionable. But good leaders don't work on short term horizons, and that has to change your evaluation of their decisions in my opinion if you're a mature person. It's a dangerous game, but like I said, it is the game. That's the game that's being played, and there's no way for you to win at that game by failing to acknowledge that you are a player in that game whether you want to be or not. You know?

We're going through that book, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Malouf in the Middle Nation book discussion. And one of the main reasons that we're doing that is so that people can understand that every outcome, every political outcome has an architecture behind it, an architecture that has been built over time, generations maybe. It's been built over time through decisions, through actions, through events, through reactions, through plans, through adjustments, and so forth. That architecture, each individual component of that architecture, if taken in isolation, right, it might not stand up to moral scrutiny scrutiny on its own. That's a fact.

It was true then and it's true now. You know, Nur ad Din Zhenki and his father did many things. Even Salahdin did many things that if they were taken in isolation would undoubtedly be deemed unethical or wrong. But they contributed to the ultimate moral victory. Now I don't know, obviously, what the judgment of Allah is gonna be on those individual actions and those individual decisions with regards to past and present leaders.

I don't know if their intentions will absolve them. Them. I don't know if even the the the long term successful outcomes will absolve them. I hope so. I hope so.

For them, I hope so. But only Allah knows. Each of them is gonna have to face Allah with their deeds just like the rest of us. But I think that we have to understand, the Muslim populations worldwide have to try to understand that something is being built here. Something is being built, and what is being built is inevitably going to be inherited by future generations, which also means that it could be inherited potentially by leaders who are more righteous than the leaders who are doing the building today.

I mean, we have an example in Aymar ibn Zengki and his son Nur ad Din Zengki. Nur ad Din was a more pious man than his father. What Aymar ibn built, Nur ad Din inherited, and then Salahdin inherited from him. And as a result of all of those inheritances and all of those things that were built, we were liberated from our invaders. This is why we study history.

We don't study history just to learn the stories, but to learn how the world works. How the world worked in the past and therefore how the world works in our lifetimes and what that means for, ourselves and for our children and for our children's children and so on. And to learn perspective and to learn patience. So in my opinion, there is a high probability that the GCC is gonna become the primary controller or at least the primary beneficiary of Venezuelan oil, in my opinion. I may be inaccurate in some of the specifics here, but, I mean, the mechanisms already exist.

The joint venture structures already exist. The financing financing arrangements already exist. The service contracts, all of these mechanisms are available, all of which the ramifications have already been proven proven in other contexts. What all of this means in other contexts has been proven. Personally, I don't see that there's a feasible alternative.

US companies can't self finance this, so GCC financing is the only viable option in my opinion, barring any new information that may come out. And, again, there's no doubt that the GCC was involved in mediating the removal of Maduro. They're deeply involved in this. So the consensus is too strong, apparently. The incentive structure is too aligned.

In my opinion, what you're witnessing here, and I need you to really understand this, what you're witnessing here is the emergence of the a national elite as global transition managers together with those states that have strong governance and that have, as I say, full integrational control over their private sectors. They're not defending, the American system at all. They're facilitating the transition, from the American system to the new system, between systems, while trying to position themselves to profit from both. Venezuela is like a proof of concept. It's a test case for, you know, can we use a declining hegemon's military for a rising power's benefit?

Can we transfer strategic assets without systemic collapse? Can we profit from decline and rise ourselves at the same time? If Venezuela succeeds, and I think it will succeed, the model scales. The American bully can be used as a gun for hire. That's why Trump's apparent incoherence makes perfect sense once you understand his actual role.

He's not trying to strengthen America. He's managing the liquidation of America for the benefit of a national capital. Every move that looks like or that's touted as America first, well, that just actually refers to the order of asset distribution to the post American world order. The Americans watching this unfold are gonna be told that this is all revival of America. Just like every declining empire's population is told that, right up until the day when they wake up and realize that their currency doesn't buy what it used to, and they realize that their government doesn't control what it claims to, and they they realize that their children are gonna live in a world where their nation, their so called civilization is a secondary power.

You see? That's what I said at the beginning. Both ends of the narrative spectrum are lying to you about Venezuela. Both of them are trying to affirm America's continued global dominance. You know?

The ones who say that what they did in Venezuela is right and the ones who say that what they did in Venezuela is wrong. They're both trying to affirm that America is still the big bad player. That's why I'm trying to give you a higher altitude view so that you can watch it unfold step by step, and you'll recognize what you're seeing. Hopefully, you'll be able to discern the system as it's as it actually is when you see it operating. In my opinion, the Venezuela operation is like a a a blueprint, and we might see it again.

We might see it used again, perhaps in Iran or maybe even Israel. Like I said, because any leader who does not prove their utility to this new, architecture is on a countdown. But that's not an American imposed countdown. You need to understand this. Trump is not an originator of policy.

He is a facilitator of policy. And the OCGFC is the beneficiary. The American empire is functionally already over. They cannot act unilaterally anymore. You understand?

They only shoot when they have been told where to shoot, who to shoot, and when to shoot. So just because you're used to watching them shoot or you're used to them shooting, you have to understand that when they do it now, when they start shooting now, they're doing it for someone else.