US President Donald Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has taught me a lesson: that if you think you have a scoop, you file it immediately, not only to get the story out first but to warn the world if it’s about something bad that might be coming.

Shortly after Trump bombed Nigeria on Christmas day, I wrote an article that said his real aim was to send a message to Maduro and that among the options he was entertaining was a SEAL-type operation to capture or kill Maduro.

How did I come to this conclusion? I have no assets in the US intelligence community. I was completely running on instinct, and my instincts told me that the egomaniac Trump wanted to eclipse Obama’s feat in sending in the SEALS to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad in 2011, just as he wanted badly to get the Nobel Peace Prize that Obama got.

But it was the holidays and, out of consideration for the folks that run my stories, who deserved a New Year’s break to be with their families, I sat on it after I finished it on December 27 and only sent it to Foreign Policy in Focus on January 2, eight hours before the Caracas operation that kidnapped Maduro, in violation of all the norms of civilised conduct among states.

But though out-scooped by Trump, I still think that there are elements in the unfiled article that could be useful in helping us anticipate what could unfold in the days and weeks ahead. So here’s the scoop that wasn’t.

Trump strikes Nigeria but real target is Venezuela
The Trump regime’s air strikes on Islamic State targets in Nigeria on Christmas Day may have had symbolic significance but no strategic value. There will likely be no impact on the efforts of the militant group called Lakurawa, allied to ISIS, to establish a base in Sokoto state.

Many have been puzzled by the attacks that involved the use of Tomahawk missiles, especially given the relatively minuscule space given to Africa in the recently released National Security Strategy (NSS) 2025. That brief section focuses on transforming the US relationship with Africa from one based on aid to trade, though it does say, “we must remain wary of resurgent Islamist terrorist activity in parts of Africa while avoiding any long-term American presence or commitments.”

It is likely that the attacks were carried out for reasons unrelated to Africa. One is to appease Trump’s Christian evangelical base. As Joshua Keating, an expert in crisis areas, has noted, “Trump’s sudden interest in Africa’s most populous country was likely motivated less by any particular event there — these are all longstanding issues — than by developments in Washington. Though it doesn’t get a ton of mainstream media attention, the plight of Christians in Nigeria has been a galvanising issue for evangelical Christians in the US in recent years.”

On his internet platform Truth Social, Trump has cited figures from the international Christian rights NGO Open Doors, claiming that of the 4476 Christians killed for their faith globally in 2024, 3100 were in Nigeria.

In her recent book on the key groups that make up the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, Furious Minds, Laura Field says that non-establishment Christian groups have an outsized influence in the Trump administration.

With the Republicans struggling in the lead-up to the mid-term elections in 2026, these groups’ muscle on the ground can determine whether the Republicans will continue to control the House of Representatives.

The main target: Venezuela
However, the main goal of the strikes, in my view, had to do mainly with developments thousands of kilometres away. It was to signal to the government of Nicolás Maduro that it will face not just attacks on Venezuelan boats at sea but also air attacks on ground targets. This interpretation would be consistent with NSS 2025.

NSS 2025 is an iconoclastic document. It literally dumps the 80-year-old strategy of liberal containment that guided the United States from the post-Second World War years through the Cold War years to the post-Cold War years, which was to meet challenges to global capital wherever and whenever the US state saw its interests threatened or challenged.

Next to its overthrowing the 80-year-old American “Grand Strategy,” the most significant departure in NSS 2025 is its break with the key assumption of US security policy since the presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2008), including the first Trump administration (2017-2021): that Washington must focus its resources on containing China, which was defined as the principal US strategic competitor.

Replacing China and the Asia Pacific as the main US concern in the Western Hemisphere, the document comes out with a reiteration of the Monroe Doctrine, but one fortified with what it calls the “Trump corollary.”

It states that Washington “will deny non-hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our hemisphere.” There is no more stark expression of the rude replacement of the liberal containment doctrine by a “spheres of influence” approach.

Meantime, the debate goes on in Trump administration on whether a ground invasion of Venezuela is the best way to implement the Western-Hemisphere-first strategy. Air strikes are one thing, boots on the ground are another, and one opposed by much of the MAGA base that is tired of the “forever wars”.

The “Molotov Cocktail” throwers in that base have made known their opposition or disquiet regarding a Venezuelan adventure.

Laura Loomer, an influential firebrand, has challenged Trump’s rationale for the attacks on Venezuelan boats, which is to prevent the opioid fentanyl and other drugs from being shipped to the United States.

“Fentanyl isn’t being manufactured in Venezuela,” she said, urging that the Pentagon target the Mexican drug cartels responsible for most shipments instead. She has also criticised María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize awardee for 2025 and the leader of the opposition in Venezuela, for “actively stoking and promoting violent regime change”.

Steve Bannon, a key official in the first Trump administration, said “neoconservative neoliberals” like Secretary of State Marco Rubio are pushing for a Venezuelan intervention that would derail the administration from its domestic priorities. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the volatile Georgia congresswoman, has posted on X that “People voted in 2024 against foreign intervention and foreign regime change as we have seen far too many times how that’s turned out, it’s not good, and people are so sick of it.”

My fearless forecast
Trump will limit attacks on his perceived adversaries globally to air strikes or naval bombardments to keep them off balance and not risk triggering another forever war with a ground invasion.

Of course, Trump’s people are probably weighing a SEAL-type special op — like then-President Obama’s killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad in 2011 — to murder or capture Maduro, but Maduro is likely to be already very well prepared for such a contingency. He’s not stupid.

Frankly, if you ask me, Washington has dug itself into a hole with its focus on Venezuela, one from which there is no easy exit.

If one gives a broad interpretation to Che Guevara’s dictum that the best way to defeat the United States was to create “two, three many Vietnams,” then Venezuela has the potential for becoming the third phase of the death rattle of the empire, Vietnam being the first and bin Laden’s dragging Washington to eventual defeat in the Middle East the second.

Dr Walden Bello is co-chair of the board of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and senior research fellow at the sociology department of the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is also author of Global Battlefields: My close encounters with dictatorship, capital, empire, and love (2025). This article was first published by Foreign Policy in Focus and is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In this week’s security podcast, Dr Paul G. Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning discuss:

• three areas that have been relied on to protect New Zealanders from terror-style attacks;
• legal measures designed to protect communities from danger and even protect individuals from themselves;
• and why they failed.

The background to this episode is the tragic, terrifying, attack that were committed against unarmed innocent people at West Auckland’s LynnMall Countdown supermarket, by Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen.

The attack occurred last Friday, 3 September 2021. It ended with the hospitalisation of seven people, and, the death of Samsudeen, who was fatally shot by special tactics police officers during his attempt to kill and injure as many people as he could.

Immediately after, the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the nation that the dead man was a terrorist and that she herself, the police, and the courts were all aware of how dangerous he was and had been seeking to protect New Zealand from this man.

Within days of the attacks, we learned, that Samsudeen was a troubled man with psychologists describing him as angry, capable of carrying out his threats, and displaying varying degrees of mental illness and disorder.

Refugee who sought asylum
Samsudeen was a refugee who sought asylum in New Zealand after experiencing, through his formative years civil war and ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka, who, at around 20 years of age, arrived in New Zealand on a student visa and then sought political asylum.

He was eventually granted refugee status, and since then spent years in prison on various charges and convictions – largely involving the possession of terrorist propaganda seeded on the internet by Islamic State (ISIS), and, threats showing intent to commit terrorist acts against New Zealanders.

In this week’s episode, Dr Buchanan and Manning examine questions about whether this tragedy could have been prevented and considered New Zealand’s:

• Security and terror laws
• Deportation laws involving those with refugee status
• The Mental Health Act and whether this was available to the authorities.

Dr Buchanan and Manning also analyse whether it is necessary for the New Zealand government to move to tighten New Zealand’s terrorism security laws. And, if it does, how the intended new laws compare to other Five Eyes member countries.

Republished in partnership with EveningReport.nz

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An Australian criminologist who deemed the New Zealand shopping mall attacker “low risk” in 2018 believes there were missed opportunities to steer him away from violent extremism.

Ahamed Samsudeen was described as a high risk to the community when he was sentenced in July for possessing Islamic State propaganda — with the means and motivation to commit violent acts.

However, three years earlier, Australian National University criminologist Dr Clarke Jones told the High Court Ahamed did not appear to be violent and did not fit the profile of a young Muslim person who had been radicalised.

At the time Dr Jones suggested “a carefully designed, culturally sensitive and closely supervised intervention programme in the Auckland Muslim community”.

Now, he said, it was unclear how much rehabilitation actually took place.

“People can change, sometimes quickly, sometimes over a longer period of time. But back in 2018, we didn’t think that he was violent,” he explained.

At the time Samsudeen appeared to feel marginalised and disconnected, Dr Clarke said, like he couldn’t “get his foot up” in society.

‘Rigid life views’
“Some of the material he was reading was of concern and he had fairly rigid views around religion and around life in general. But he’d also had some experience in difficult times and was, I would argue, deeply depressed.”

On Friday, Samsudeen walked into a Countdown supermarket in LynnMall, picked up a knife and stabbed at least shoppers, leaving some of them critically injured, before he was shot dead by tactical force police tailing him.

In the High Court in July, Samsudeen had admitted two charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage, two charges of knowingly distributing restricted material and one charge of failing to assist the police in their exercise of a search power.

Another expert was consulted — forensic psychiatrist Dr Jeremy Skipworth — who echoed Dr Clarke’ concerns.

“Dr Skipworth said that any form of home detention would tend to further exacerbate your mental health concerns, and that your successful community reintegration is likely to be assisted by cornerstones, such as stable housing, personal support, appropriate employment and medical care,” reads Justice Wylie’s sentencing notes.

Justice Wylie imposed a sentence of supervision, with special conditions, including a psychological assessment and a rehabilitation programme with a service called Just Community.

Dr Jones said he really would like to know more about what support Samsudeen was actually given in Corrections.

‘Was he responsive?’
“Was he responsive to that treatment, if he was receiving any treatment at all, or was the focus more on on the security side and the monitoring and the surveillance?”

Asked if the terrorist had enough support to “get better”, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said there had been attempts to change the man’s mind — and none of them were successful.

But in a family statement released after the attack, Samsudeen’s brother said he sometimes listened.

“He would hang up the phone on us when we told him to forget about all of the issues he was obsessed with. Then he would call us back again himself when he realised he was wrong.

“Aathil was wrong again [on Friday]. Of course we feel very sad that he could not be saved. The prisons and the situation was hard on him and he did not have any support. He told us he was assaulted there.”

Dr Clarke said, “I would say that we haven’t got the balance right. In this case there was too much focus on the counter-terrorism or counter violent extremism narrative, rather than actually getting to the core of what was wrong with Mr Samsudeen.”

“We can always improve the way we do things to have have greater preventative sort of mechanisms within government, police and communities.”

Dr Clarke said what happened in LynnMall was a tragedy and a terrible situation.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Name suppression for the man responsible for yesterday’s New Zealand terror attack at a west Auckland supermarket has been revoked, but his name cannot be published yet.

The High Court has given his family who live overseas at least 24 hours to seek further suppression orders.

The Sri Lankan national was shot dead by police after stabbing six people inside Countdown in LynnMall.

Suppression orders prevented details about his identity and background from being made public.

The government filed an urgent application last night to have the court orders lifted, so details about the man’s identity and background could be made public.

In a judgment last night, Justice Wylie said there was no longer any proper basis for the suppression orders.

But he said the man’s family live overseas and lawyers needed time to contact them to take instructions.

He said he could consider extending the 24-hour period if needed.

Isis propaganda
However, it can be revealed the man was sentenced in July to one year of supervision after he was found guilty by a jury in the High Court at Auckland of two charges of possessing Isis propaganda that promoted terrorism.

He was found guilty of another charge of failing to comply with a search, but he was acquitted of a third charge of possession of objectionable material and a charge of possessing a knife in a public place.

The state had sought to charge him under the Terrorism Suppression Act, but failed after a High Court judge ruled that planning a terror attack was not an offence under the law.

Because he had already spent three years in custody awaiting trial, he did not receive a further prison term for his offending.

Despite that, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said he had been under surveillance since 2016, because of his support for a violent ideology inspired by Islamic State.

The man was being so closely monitored by a surveillance and tactical team that police shot him within 60 seconds of the attack starting.

On the radar of authorities
He arrived in New Zealand in October 2011.

He first came to the attention of authorities in 2016, when police formally warned him about posting anti-Western, pro-Isis, extremist content on the internet.

The man had also at some point told a worshipper at an Auckland mosque that he wanted to go to Syria to fight for Isis.

In a July 2020 judgment, Justice Downs said in May 2017, he had booked a one-way flight to Singapore but was arrested at Auckland Airport.

When police searched his apartment, they found a large hunting knife under the mattress on the floor and secure digital cards containing fundamentalist material, including propaganda videos and photos of the man posing with a firearm.

He was remanded in custody and in June 2018, he pleaded guilty to distributing restricted publications. In August 2018, he was sentenced to supervision, Justice Downs’ 2020 judgment said.

But the day after his sentencing, he went and bought the same model of hunting knife that police had earlier found under his mattress.

Arrested again
He was arrested again and another search found a large he had a large amount of violent Isis material, including one video about how to kill “non-Muslims”.

This time, the state sought to charge the man under the Terrorism Suppression Act, for planning a terrorist act.

But Justice Downs said that in itself was not an offence under the law.

In his decision, Justice Downs said: “Terrorism is a great evil. ‘Lone wolf’ terrorist attacks with knives and other makeshift weapons, such as cars or trucks, are far from unheard of.

“Recent events in Christchurch demonstrate New Zealand should not be complacent. Some among us are prepared to use lethal violence for ideological, political or religious causes.

“The absence of an offence of planning or preparing a terrorist act … could be an Achilles heel.”

Justice Downs said it was not for the courts to create such an offence.

“The issue is for Parliament,” he said.

A copy of Justice Downs’ judgment was provided to the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General and the Law Commission.

High Court trial
The man finally stood trial in the High Court at Auckland in May this year, on lesser charges.

A jury found him guilty of two charges of possessing Isis propaganda that promoted terrorism and one charge of failing to comply with a search.

He was acquitted of a third charge of possessing objectionable material and a charge of possessing a knife in a public place.

The man was sentenced in July.

In her sentencing notes, Justice Fitzgerald said the two publications on which he was found guilty were “nasheeds” – religious hymns.

Both were classified by the Censor as objectionable and contained Isis imagery and lyrics.

Justice Fitzgerald did not accept the explanation that he was listening to them to improve his Arabic language skills.

“Rather, I accept that the broader context to your possession of these nasheeds, which included a range of other materials relating to Isis or Isil, suggests that you have an operative interest in Isis.

“In other words, I do not accept that you might have simply stumbled across these and other Isis-related materials in your research of Islam or the historic Islamic State,” she said.

Report raised further flags
A pre-sentencing report raised further flags.

“The report writer suggests that you support the goals and methods of Isis,” Justice Fitzgerald said.

“The report writer concludes that the risk of you reoffending in a similar way to the present charges is high.

“It suggests that you have the means and motivation to commit violent acts in the community and, despite not having violently offended to date, as posing a very high risk of harm to others.”

Given he had already spent three years in custody awaiting trial, the man was sentenced to one-year supervision.

There were restrictions on his use of electronic devices, the internet and social media.

“The Police and Community Corrections clearly have concerns that you pose a not insignificant risk to the broader community,” Justice Fitzgerald said in her sentencing notes.

“I do not know whether those concerns are right and I sincerely hope that they are not, though having regard to all of the materials available to the court, I can say that they are not wholly fanciful.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says an attack at Auckland’s New Lynn Countdown supermarket today was a terrorist attack carried out by a violent extremist.

The prime minister and Police Commissioner Andrew Coster addressed media after the man was shot dead at a west Auckland mall this afternoon.

It is understood six people – all shoppers at the mall – have been wounded in the incident at LynnMall in New Lynn.

A St John Ambulance spokesperson said three patients in a critical condition and one patient in a serious condition had been taken to Auckland City Hospital; one patient in a moderate condition had been taken to Waitakere hospital; and one patient in a moderate condition had been taken to Middlemore Hospital.

Ardern revealed the terrorist was a Sri Lankan national who had arrived in New Zealand in October 2011 and he became a person of national security interest from 2016.

The reasons he was known to agencies was subject to suppression orders, but Ardern said it was her view that it was in the public interest to share as much information as possible.

The prime minister did say the terrorist held a violent ideology inspired by the Islamic State, but it would be wrong to direct any frustration at anyone other than this individual.

Personally aware
She said she was personally aware of the terrorist before today’s attack.

Ardern said it was a senseless attack and she was sorry it had happened.

“What happened today was despicable. It was carried out by an individual.”

Ardern said the individual was under constant monitoring, and he was shot and killed within 60 seconds of the attack starting.

The police team who was monitoring shot and killed him.

Commissioner Coster said the man had been under heavy surveillance because of concerns about his ideology.

He had entered the store and obtained a knife from within the store before starting the attack.

When the man approached police with the knife he was shot and killed.

Surveillance teams ‘close’
Coster said the surveillance teams were “as close as they possibly could be without compromising the surveillance”.

“I acknowledge that this situation raises questions about whether police could have done more, whether police could have intervened more quickly. I’m satisfied based on the information available to me that the staff involved did not only what we expect they would do in this situation, but did it with great courage,” he said.

“The reality is, that when you are surveilling someone on a 24/7 basis, it is not possible to be immediately next to them at all times. The staff intervened as quickly as they could and they prevented further injury in what was a terrifying situation,” Coster said.

Ardern said all legal and surveillance power had been used to try to keep people safe from this individual.

“What I can say is that we have utilised every legal and surveillance power available to us to try and keep people safe from this individual. Many agencies and people were involved and all were motivated by the same thing – trying to keep people safe.”

Coster said there had been nothing that would tell police the extent of his intentions, or that he intended to do this today.

He said the individual was very surveillance-conscious, and surveillance teams needed to maintain a distance to be effective.

intervened ‘in 60 seconds’
“There was nothing to prevent him being in the community and we were doing absolutely everything possible to monitor him and indeed the fact that we were able to intervene so quickly — in roughly 60 seconds — shows just how closely we were watching him.”

Ardern said the local Muslim community had been “nothing but helpful and supportive. It would be wrong to direct any frustration to anyone beyond this individual. That is who is culpable, that is who is responsible — no one else”.

She said his past behaviour and action did not reach the threshold to have him in in prison, which was why he was being constantly monitored.

An eyewitness told RNZ she had seen a man running around armed with a knife and heard many people screaming.

Another shopper who was in the supermarket at the time heard someone scream before shoppers started running towards the door.

Heavily armed police and ambulances remain at the scene.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

About 60 people from the Sri Lankan community and human rights advocates gathered in Auckland’s Aotea Square today in a solidarity vigil for the survivors of the Easter Sunday bombings.

More than 320 people were killed in the Sri Lankan atrocities.

Today’s vigil was organised by the Federation of Tamil Associations in NZ (FTANZ).

Meanwhile, the New Zealand and Sir Lankan governments are treating with caution reports that the suicide bombings of three Christian churches and three tourist hotels in three cities across Sri Lanka were carried out by Islamic State (ISIS) in retaliation for the Christchurch mosques terror attacks on March 15.

The terrorist group’s Amaq news agency says ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Easter bombings.

It is the deadliest overseas operation claimed by ISIS since it proclaimed its “caliphate” almost five years ago, and would suggest it retains the ability to launch devastating strikes around the world despite multiple defeats in the Middle East, reports The Guardian.

Auckland Sri Lankans and human rights advocates at the vigil in Aotea Square today. Image: David Robie/PMC Federation of Tamil Associations of New Zealand (FTANZ) coordinator Dr Siva Vasanthan at the Auckland vigil today. Image: David Robie/PMC RNZ Checkpoint’s Alex Perrottet interviewing FTANZ president George Arulanantham at the Auckland vigil today. Image: David Robie/PMC

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz