But meanwhile the pounding of the war drums just continues to intensify.  If the world keeps going down this path, next year's holiday season could look completely different.  Unfortunately, most people seem to assume that everything will magically work out just fine somehow.  That greatly frustrates me, because ignoring the reality of the crisis that we are facing is not going to fix anything.  If ordinary citizens in the western world truly understood what was at stake, they would be going completely ballistic right now.  Global war is rapidly approaching, but the vast majority of our entertainment-addicted population doesn't seem to get this.

Over the weekend, there were some very alarming new developments.

On Saturday, U.S. forces seized another Venezuelan oil tanker…

In a pre-dawn operation on Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard seized a Panama-flagged vessel called Centuries. A U.S. official told CBS News that the interdiction of the vessel followed a similar playbook to an earlier U.S. seizure of an oil tanker near Venezuela.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said on social media that the vessel on Saturday was "a falsely flagged vessel operating as part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet to traffic stolen oil and fund the narcoterrorist Maduro regime."

Needless to say, the Venezuelans were furious.

They accused the U.S. of committing a "serious act of piracy"…

In a statement on Saturday, the Venezuelan government condemned the vessel's seizure, saying it was a "serious act of piracy."

"The colonialist model that the U.S. government seeks to impose through such practices will fail and be defeated by the Venezuelan people," the statement said.

Of course now that the ball is rolling, the U.S. does not intend to stop.

On Sunday, it was being reported that U.S. forces were pursuing yet another oil tanker…

The United States is pursuing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, according to multiple reports, just a day after the Coast Guard seized a different tanker in the same waters amid a rapid U.S. military buildup in the region.