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OIL PETROLEUM

belated main 10/18 see tag oil (and energy)

INVASION VENEZ 1 26 ADMITS FOR OIL THEY STOLE

SINGER VULTURE BOUGHT CITGO; TRUMP ASKED 1 BILL$

LEVER

NIXON DONORS

What they uncovered was damning. Witten and his team traced

the funds paid to the Watergate burglars back to illegal campaign con-

tributions, but they wanted to go further, examining the motivations

behind these secret donations. Why were Nixon’s backers so eager to

avoid disclosure? What influence were they buying?

The names of contributors and companies came from multiple

sources: members of CREEP, Nixon’s personal lawyer, investigative

journalists like Woodward and Bernstein, and the Rose Mary’s Baby

list. Familiar corporations emerged, including Gulf Oil, Ashland Oil,60

Northrop, 61 Phillips Petroleum,62 Goodyear, 63 Occidental.64

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omg god wants low gas prices

rww

MAGA Cultist Hank Kunneman Claims God Praised Capture Of Nicolás Maduro | People For

01/05/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

One day after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military had captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, MAGA cultist and self-proclaimed "prophet" Hank Kunneman used his Sunday service to announce that God was thrilled by the Trump administration's actions.

Kunneman, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has steadfastly refused to admit that his multiple prophecies that Trump would win the 2020 election were wrong, took to the stage on Sunday to deliver what he claimed was a message from God praising Trump for seizing control of Venezuela's oil.

"They say you have seized Venezuela for the oil," Kunneman proclaimed, purporting to speak on behalf of God. "Yes, this is true."

"The enemy has sought and was seeking to bring war and to bring conflict through Venezuela and to control the oil of the Earth," Kunneman thundered. "But the spiritual oil and the natural oil does not belong to the forces of darkness or to those who thought that they could bring a One World Order. This is my reset and the oil of the natural and the oil of the spirit is mine, says the Lord."

"There will be a flow, not only of oil in the Earth, that will cause the pressure and cause that which has suppressed the people of nations," he continued. "I will lift it through the oil of the natural, but this is the work of the oil of my spirit, says the living God, that is destroying yokes and undoing heavy burdens through the oil of my spirit, and it will be seen in the signs of the natural oil and its refineries."

"Watch as the prices of oil go down, down, down, down, down, and a surge of acceleration shall come unto the economies of the Earth," Kunneman declared. "I speak to you, America, because you have cried out to me. I will show the Earth what a nation looks like when they have called on God to come, for blessed is the nation who the Lord is their God, and I will show the Earth!"

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MMA

As Trump threatens regime change in Venezuela, right-wing media embrace opposition figure María Corina Machado

Conservative pundits have given Machado a platform to agitate in favor of Trump’s aggressive military campaign, while she’s given them fuel for discredited conspiracy theories

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Alex Kaplan, Sophie Lawton, Monica Rodriguez & Ben Van Bloem

Published 12/03/25

Right-wing media figures have spent the last year championing Venezuela opposition figure María Corina Machado, who has supported President Donald Trump’s threats of regime change in her home country.

The relationship between Machado and conservative media is mutually reinforcing: She provides right-wing outlets with inflammatory claims about President Nicolás Maduro — including exaggerated or false accusations of tampering in U.S. elections and running narcotics enterprises — and in return these outlets provide her with a platform to agitate for his ouster. As The New York Times reported, Machado recently endorsed the debunked conspiracy theory that Venezuela interfered in the 2020 U.S. election, further ingratiating herself to MAGA by adopting one of the movement’s core tenets. She has also claimed without evidence that Maduro is the leader of two drug cartels, one of which doesn't even exist as a discrete or coherent organization, according to many experts.

Since early September, President Donald Trump has ordered airstrikes on at least 21 boats, killing at least 83 people, in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean — part of a larger pressure campaign aimed at removing Maduro from office. In October, the administration ended diplomatic outreach to the country, though Trump and Maduro reportedly spoke over the phone in late November. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a key Machado-backer, has been pushing for Maduro’s ouster for months with what some believe is an eye toward eventually collapsing the government of Cuba as well.

Right-wing media responded to Trump’s escalation by defending the extrajudicial boat strikes and pushing for even greater incursions into Venezuela, including toppling Maduro’s government. Many in conservative media have told their audiences that regime change in Venezuela would be easy, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Right-wing coverage of Machado often relies on a blurry distinction between supporting Machado and cheering the removal of Maduro on the one hand while misleadingly claiming to oppose U.S.-led regime change on the other — arguably a distinction without a difference. Sometimes Machado employs this sleight-of-hand rhetorical device herself, seemingly to assure her audience that attacking Maduro’s government would not result in a replay of George W. Bush’s unpopular forever wars.

Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy is perhaps Machado’s most significant ally in right-wing media, having interviewed her in both English- and Spanish-language media. Campos-Duffy’s colleagues at Fox have also praised Machado, as has Donald Trump Jr. on his Triggered podcast. Other conservative figures celebrated her even prior to Trump’s election in November 2024.

Machado’s rise has also given election deniers an opportunity to revive the long debunked conspiracy theory that Venezuela interfered in the 2020 U.S. election against Trump. Machado — who had recently been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — repeated that false claim during an October 31 interview on a Bloomberg podcast. “I have no doubt that Nicolás Maduro, Jorge Rodríguez, and many others are, you know, the masterminds of a system that has rigged elections in many countries, including in the U.S.,” Machado said. “I have no doubt about that.”

Former Overstock CEO and "prominent election denier" Patrick Byrne mocked a post criticizing Machado’s interview on his Telegram channel, writing that people who say the 2020 U.S. was fair “doth protest too much.” In August, Byrne claimed that Smartmatic, which provides electronic voting systems, is “a spinoff of the Venezuelan government” and that the company “has been rigging elections for people around the world.” In October, Bryne said the United States had to “overthrow the governments of Venezuela and Cuba" because they “overthrew our republic.”

In November, Trump promoted a right-wing show on social media during which a guest said “there are at least a dozen people in Venezuela that have more money and power” than the CIA, adding: “This is the largest transnational criminal organization in the world that no one knew about, or no one wanted to talk about, until they stole our election in 2020."

For all of the right-wing media claims that Maduro interfered in the 2020 election, it’s worth underscoring that in 2002 the United States at least tacitly supported a failed coup against then-President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez. During Trump’s first term, his administration engineered an unsuccessful campaign to oust Maduro and install opposition figure Juan Guaidó.

:{Despite those failures, conservative media have embraced Machado in a way that’s reminiscent of earlier episodes in U.S. foreign policy, when media and government officials celebrated opposition figures in the early years of the :{invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.}:

As The New York Times notes, Machado has been a “darling” of Washington for decades, and her people are in constant contact with Secretary Rubio, the Trump administration figure leading the charge to topple Maduro. One possible reason Washington has been enthralled with her for so long is that, according to Bloomberg, she “favors privatizing all industries in Venezuela,” including the state-owned oil company, if the United States takes out Maduro. Ian Bremmer noted that U.S. action in Venezuela “in large part about the oil.”}:

Should Trump's plan move forward, Machado is the most likely candidate for his administration to rally behind. She’s already won over right-wing outlets — but as U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan showed, sometimes an opposition figure’s charm offensive is the easiest battle of the war.

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https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-may-6-2020/

The global crisis of our times — the climate emergency — has been temporary slowed by another worldwide disaster — the coronavirus. As industrial production, transport, and consumption have plummeted, so has the demand for fossil fuels. Environmental historian Troy Vettese places the fortunes of fossil fuels within a larger context over time, with an eye to what lies ahead.

Resources:

Troy Vettese, “Is This the End of the Oil Era?” New Statesman, April, 2020

Oil Demand and Supply Reaches Landmark 100 Million Barrels a Day

The world has hit "new twin peaks for demand and supply" of oil at 100 million barrels a day, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced Friday in its monthly oil market report.

Neither demand nor supply shows signs of ceasing to grow any time soon, the Paris-based organization said.

Keep reading...