Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal joins Judge Napolitano to expose the real agenda behind Trump’s Venezuela blockade: handing $1.7 trillion in oil, minerals, and infrastructure to Miami’s anti-Chávez exiles and their Republican patrons. Marco Rubio, architect of the debacle, has spent decades cultivating regime-change cutouts like María Corina Machado, who’s already drafted a privatization blueprint to auction off Venezuela’s patrimony to Trump-linked oligarchs. While the Pentagon flounders with oil tanker piracy and failed “anti-drug” ops, the endgame is naked imperial plunder dressed up as liberation—with Rubio playing bagman for a new generation of comprador elites.

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Anya Parampil joins Judge Napolitano to dismantle Washington’s “narco-state” fairy tale about Venezuela—a projection that obscures decades of CIA complicity in drug trafficking through the region. While Trump and Rubio brand Maduro a kingpin to justify oil piracy and regime change, the real cartel operates out of Langley, where covert ops and cocaine corridors have been standard policy since the Reagan era. Parampil connects the dots between fabricated pretexts, imperial resource theft, and a bipartisan narco-empire that weaponizes the drug war to strangle any government that won’t play ball.

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On the Dialogue Works podcast, Max Blumenthal discusses how Trump ended 2025 not by “ending wars” but by multiplying them. From Gaza to Venezuela, Somalia to Ukraine, Trump perpetuated war while dangling apocalypse over Iran and Taiwan to please his donors. Mentally enfeebled and owned by Likudnik and Persian Gulf billionaires, he greenlights Netanyahu’s Iran fantasies, fuels sanctions-driven misery in Iran, and turns Venezuela into a testing ground for piracy and naval humiliation. Max dissects a splintering MAGA right, TPUSA’s grifter meltdown, and an Israel desperate to become a mini-empire from Cyprus to Somaliland, even as young conservatives and the wider U.S. public turn against permanent war.

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The Grayzone’s Oscar Leon interviews Andres Durán, an Ecuadoran investigative journalist who has had to flee his country due to his allegations that billionaire, US-allied President Daniel Noboa, the Noboa family and their inner circle are involved in the international drug trade. In this explosive interview, Durán reveals the following:

* Ecuador, not Venezuela, is the primary departure point for cocaine shipments to the US and Europe, with President Daniel Noboa’s family businesses repeatedly linked to drug seizures.

* Multiple cocaine trafficking scandals involve Noboa-owned companies (e.g., Noboa Trading, Blasti S.A., Transmabo) and a family farm (San Luis), including shipments intercepted in Europe and 193 kg seized in 2025.

* Durán accuses Noboa of heading a “criminal economy” enabled by political decisions: defunding port security, deregulating banana exports, lacking financial oversight, and using shell companies for money laundering.

* Investigations are allegedly obstructed without thorough probes, no arrests of high-level figures, while cases are dismissed as “contamination” despite Noboa companies controlling the full supply chain.

* Ecuador’s criminal economy (drugs, illegal mining, trafficking) is estimated at a staggering 18-22% of GDP thanks to weak state oversight, dollarization, and documented ties to the Albanian mafia.

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In this interview, Max Blumenthal dissects how Rubio’s regime-change crusade, oil tanker piracy, and “narco-state” propaganda are driving the U.S. toward a hemispheric disaster—insurgency, mass migration, and economic blowback included. He tracks Trump’s mental unravelling, the Epstein files farce, the implosion of the MAGA media ecosystem, and Netanyahu’s desperate scramble to keep Trump on Israel’s leash while Washington and the U.S. public turn against endless war.

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Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate cover the furor over Bari Weiss spiking a 60 Minutes segment that exposed the Salvadoran dungeon that has become a linchpin of the Trump-Rubio deportation policy, and the future of a corporate media stripped of the illusion of impartiality. They also cover an insider attack on US troops in Syria, the escalation of US war on Venezuela, US strikes on Nigeria, and Israel’s daily shattering of the Gaza ceasefire.

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By Aaron Mate

This December in Doha, Qatar, The Grayzone’s Aaron Mate sat down with senior Hamas negotiator and former Minister of Health in the Gaza Strip Dr. Bassem Naim to discuss the fractured ceasefire in Gaza, the prospects for a second phase, and Hamas’s political and military positions amid ongoing Israeli siege. Dr. Naim argues that the so-called ceasefire has largely failed due to Israeli violations and that any meaningful progress toward peace is impossible without addressing the roots of the crisis: the lack of Palestinian self-determination and ongoing military occupation.

Dr. Naim contends that Hamas has fully complied with its obligations under the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, including the release of Israeli prisoners and bodies, while Israel has failed to uphold its commitments. More than 350 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded since the ceasefire began, with frequent Israeli attacks continuing daily. Israel has restricted humanitarian aid, blocked essential supplies, limited entry of heavy machinery needed for rubble removal and reconstruction, and kept the Rafah crossing largely closed, preventing wounded civilians, students, and families from traveling. Dr. Naim explains how these systematic violations were reported to mediators without consequence.

Because the first phase has not been implemented as agreed, Dr. Naim argues that discussion of a second phase is premature and problematic. He rejects the framing that Hamas alone would determine the next phase, stating that decisions about Gaza’s future, resistance, and governance must involve all factions inside the Palestinian polity. He slams international proposals that marginalize Palestinians from decision-making structures, including a proposed international “boards of peace,” which he likens to an occupation imposed from outside.

Asked about the role of the international community, Dr. Naim says Hamas would accept a limited international role strictly confined to supervising the ceasefire, facilitating aid, and supporting reconstruction. He supports the deployment of an international stabilization force only along Gaza’s borders to separate Israeli forces from Palestinians, not inside Palestinian cities or in daily governance, noting the consensus among Arab and Muslim countries for this position.

Asked about demands that Hamas unilaterally give up its weapons, Dr. Naim strongly rejects unconditional disarmament, arguing that Palestinians remain under occupation and retain the right under international law to resist, including through armed struggle. History did not begin on October 7, he argues, explaining how Palestinians have endured decades of killings, dispossession, and siege. While rejecting disarmament, he leaves open the possibility of long-term ceasefires lasting five to ten years, during which weapons could be frozen or stored – but only if tied to a credible political process leading to a sovereign Palestinian state with clear timelines and guarantees against renewed Israeli attacks.

Dr. Naim blasts the UN resolution for being vague, selectively enforced, and lacking enforceable commitments to Palestinian self-determination. He argues that international law and UN resolutions must be treated as a package, not selectively applied to serve Israeli interests while ignoring Palestinian rights such as statehood and the right of return.

Asked by Mate about Hamas’ support for a two-state solution, Dr. Naim restates the Movement’s longstanding position that Hamas would cooperate with a consensus Palestinian position supporting a fully sovereign state on the 1967 borders, provided it includes East Jerusalem and guarantees the right of return for refugees. He emphasizes that this would represent a historic compromise and insists that such a state is not a concession from Israel, but a Palestinian right under international law. Recognition of Israel, he argues, would be a decision for a future Palestinian state and society, not one imposed amid ongoing violence.

On the issue of continuing Palestinian divisions, Dr. Naim acknowledges deep fragmentation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, describing decades of failed reconciliation efforts despite repeated agreements. He argues that the Oslo process has failed catastrophically, citing massive settlement expansion and annexation. He attributes continued division partly to external pressure from Israel and the United States, which he says have conditioned Palestinian leadership choices.

He explains Hamas’s efforts to secure the release of prisoners from all factions, particularly Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah-aligned longtime political prisoner with street credibility across Palestine. According to Dr. Naim, Hamas views Barghouti as one of the only figures capable of reshaping Palestinian politics and advancing unity.

Dr. Naim closes by addressing Palestinian criticism of Hamas and its October 7 operation, particularly those who argue that the unbelievable levels of civilian suffering were not worth it. While acknowledging dissent, he argues that Palestinians faced no viable alternative under siege and occupation. He frames Hamas’s actions as resistance born of desperation and insists that the root problem is the “prison” of occupation itself, and that resistance is inevitable under such unjust conditions.

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Trump’s Venezuela gambit leans on a manufactured “Cartel of the Suns” scare story, cooked up by U.S. intelligence when the CIA and DEA turned the country into a cocaine corridor under Reagan. Max Blumenthal, who has tracked Washington’s regime-change ops across Latin America for years, shows how a covert drug ratline was later repackaged as proof that Caracas is a cartel state, paving the way for sanctions, asset grabs, and military threats. Even many anti-Maduro Venezuelans reject this siege, knowing a U.S.-backed power play risks civil war, mass flight, and economic blowback in the U.S. itself—so the endgame is more likely a dirty deal than a glorious war.

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Trump’s “law and order” shtick collapses when his DOJ pardons a Honduran narco-tyrant while DEA and CIA veterans run gear for a Mexican cartel and get tossed in the same dungeon where Epstein vanished. Netanyahu, meanwhile, flirts with war on Lebanon to dodge prison, leans on Mossad-style sex smears against the ICC, and banks on U.S. empire to keep his corrupt, genocidal regime afloat—from Eurovision to Caracas and Tegucigalpa.

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Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Gerardo Torres Zelaya spoke with The Grayzone’s Wyatt Reed to explain what really happened in November’s widely-disputed election. They discuss how the cartel-linked opposition appears to have used their control of the electoral system to rig the vote, the hundreds of death threats reportedly made by MS-13 members supporting the Trump-backed candidate, and why his LIBRE Party is now calling for the questionable results to be annulled.

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