OMNI
VENEZUELA ANTHOLOGY #9,
November 20, 2025
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
What’s at stake: The U.S.
is addicted to war. With the renaming of the Department of War, a
proposed Pentagon budget of $1.01 trillion, and more
than 750 military bases across some 80 countries, this is not a nation pursuing
peace. For the past two decades, Venezuela has been a persistent target
of U.S. regime change. The motive, which is clearly laid out by President Donald
Trump, is the roughly 300 billion barrels of oil reserves
beneath the Orinoco belt, the largest petroleum reserves on the planet.
CONTENTS
Grayzone. Historical Patterns.
Code Pink. USA/CBS Fomenting wars.
Veterans
for Peace. US Military Buildup
Offshore Now, Help Stop the Invasion.
Roots Action. Urgent call to
Prevent an Invasion.
Consortium News (Common Dreams). Jeffrey
Sachs and Sybil Fares. It’s Oil.
Transform. Marianne
Williamson. Merchants of Death, Massive
Ruin, Massive Profit.
TEXTS
This
Grayzone in-depth piece on Venezuela shows the history/pattern underlying
current events.
https://thegrayzone.com/2025/11/12/wh-insiders-knew-of-venezuela-coup/
CODE PINK. “CBS
joins US admin in Fomenting Wars.” Nov 9, 2025 .
https://www.codepink.org/60minchinavz?utm_campaign=china_vz_cbs_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepink Forwarded
by Sonny San Juan
If you’ve watched CBS News’ 60 Minutes recently,
you’ve likely been exposed to some of the worst pro-war propaganda out
there. Not only are they airing segments supportive of U.S. wars on both
China and Venezuela, but they also just gave another platform to the fascist
U.S. president who is leading both charges.
Recent segments on China have parroted the hysteria
of U.S. politicians, making evidenceless claims about China’s growing
aggression and “infiltration” of the U.S., which is absurd considering
that the U.S. has militarized the first island chain off China’s coast and
declared its intent for war merely to protect U.S. hegemony. At the same time,
60 Minutes has been pushing stories critical of the Venezuelan government,
clearly manufacturing support for U.S.-backed regime change.
During his 60 Minutes interview, Trump said he “doubts” the
U.S. will go to war with Venezuela, but he also said in the same breath that
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's “days are numbered.” Well,
U.S.-backed regime change is war. And you know what else is
war? Bombing fishing vessels in international waters, which the
Trump administration has been doing for weeks now under the absurd claim that
they’re killing drug smugglers. What happened to following any semblance of
international law? It seems the U.S. empire has grown tired of its
moral facade and is embracing its true role as bloodthirsty,
greedy hegemon.
CODEPINK has already been campaigning against CBS for
months on account of its deep ties to the military-industrial complex
and pro-war interests. The network is now under the influence of figures
like David Ellison, the new CEO of Paramount, whose father, Larry Ellison,
billionaire founder of Oracle, which provides significant data services to
the Department of War. Oracle is also the company tapped by Trump
to oversee TikTok operations in the U.S., which will allow it to control
the algorithm and provide the U.S. government access to its massive
pool of user data. At the same time, CBS has brought on notorious
Zionist and genocide supporter Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief.
None of this is a coincidence. 60
Minutes is widely considered a leading example of television journalism,
specifically known for its investigative reporting. It has the
potential to influence millions of Americans. That’s
why billionaires are extending U.S. government and corporate control over the
program—so they can promote U.S. war propaganda, parrot official talking points
to justify aggression against China, Venezuela, and continue to line
their pockets from all the money they make off war. The danger of this
cannot be overstated.
I know it’s exhausting to keep track of all the U.S.-funded
wars, genocides, bombings, and interventions, especially when things are going
to shit domestically as well. But it’s important to remember that, though
these are all different battles, the struggle is the same. We are all
partners in a global resistance movement against the same enemy: U.S.
imperialism.
War on Venezuela has nothing to do with drugs, just as war
on China has nothing to do with protecting democracy and human rights. These
are just stories meant to justify U.S. aggression. The only things
that really drive U.S. wars are greed and thirst for power. Consider
the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was justified by made-up weapons of mass
destruction, but ultimately was about carving up Iraq’s oil fields for U.S.
corporations. Did you know Venezuela sits atop the largest oil reserves
in the world, which it sells predominantly to China? It’s true. And people
still think U.S. politicians are worried about drugs (sidenote: if they were
actually worried about the health and safety of the American public, they’d
give us affordable healthcare).
You also may have seen recent news stories claiming that
China is “weaponizing trade.” The truth couldn’t be more
ironic if it tried. This story is spun from China recently implementing export
controls on rare earth minerals, which the U.S. uses to build advanced
weapons systems…that it then sells to Israel and Ukraine, and would
undoubtedly use against China and Venezuela as well. China isn’t “weaponizing
trade.” It’s just exercising its sovereignty over its own resources and
hindering the U.S. war effort. Are we supposed to consider that a bad thing?
Listen, you don’t need to like the governments of China or
Venezuela. But you do have to understand that their partnership, and the
growing partnerships across the Global South, are part of the
resistance against U.S. imperialism. That is why the U.S.
is targeting them — not for any moral or legal reason. As we’ve so clearly seen
from two years of U.S.-funded genocide in Gaza, neither morality nor
legality guides U.S. policy.
We have to remain vigilant, especially as U.S. media
outlets continue to be bought up and used as weapons to justify
aggression and promote the interests of U.S. imperialism at home and
abroad. This is where the influence lies, and that’s why they’re
working so hard to take over the media, to take over TikTok, and to control all
the sources of information that shape public opinion.
Tell 60 Minutes Leadership: Don’t Be a
Tool for U.S. Imperialism and War!
Peace and solidarity,
Megan, Michelle, and the CODEPINK Team
[VFP-all]
Some News Of The Day + Meme Dump. 11-18-26
Update: The U.S. Navy’s Caribbean Sea build-up now features
at least a dozen ships, including the Gerald R. Ford
aircraft carrier, which arrived in
the region over the weekend, Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post wrote on
social media Monday. Other vessels include the guided missile destroyers Mahan,
Bainbridge, Winston S. Churchill, Stockdale and Gravely; the guided missile
cruisers Lake Erie and Gettysburg; the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima;
amphibious transport dock ships Fort Lauderdale and San Antonio; and the
littoral combat ship Wichita.
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Hi
Dick,
This
is an emergency.
The
U.S. Senate has now voted twice to NOT prevent a war on Venezuela. All
but two Republicans have voted for war both times, and the Trump regime
has given secret briefings only to Senate Republicans, while moving the U.S.
military into the Caribbean and now El Salvador. Not only will people in
Venezuela (like in Afghanistan, Iraq, and every country ever) fight back, but
Russia has started issuing warnings.
War is
illegal under the United Nations Charter and numerous other laws, but the
Senate is giving it a stamp of approval, while Speaker of the House Mike
Johnson illegally refuses to hold a vote, and the White House openly plans to
seize oil fields.
We're
applying pressure from various angles (see below). Though the corporate media
will not tell you this, public pressure has prevented military attacks on Syria
and Iran, and could succeed here if we don't give in to despair.
Help us do more by
making a donation.
Here
are more steps you can take:
·Share
this email with everyone you can.
·
Email your
representative and senators about preventing war on Venezuela. Every
day!
·
Watch and share videos
of our recent teach-ins.
·
Join our next teach-in
live on Nov. 13.
·
Read and share our
foreign policy primer (published January 2024). Especially
with Congress members and candidates.
·
Help take away the money from the war
makers at BlockWarFunding.org.
Thanks
for all you do!
In
Solidarity, The RootsAction Team
Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares. “Venezuelan Oil — American Gangster Politics.” Consortium News (11-6-25). [Orig. pub. Common Dreams.]
The
slogan has shifted from “restoring democracy” to “fighting narco-terrorists,”
write Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares. But the
objective remains the same. Read here...
The U.S.
is addicted to war. With the renaming of the Department of War, a
proposed Pentagon budget of $1.01 trillion, and more
than 750 military bases across some 80 countries, this is not a nation pursuing
peace. For the past two decades, Venezuela has been a persistent target
of U.S. regime change. The motive, which is clearly laid out by President Donald
Trump, is the roughly 300 billion barrels of oil reserves
beneath the Orinoco belt, the largest petroleum reserves on the planet.
Map
of Orinoco tar sands assessment unit by USGS, 2009. (USGS/Wikimedia
Commons/Public Domain)
In 2023, Trump openly stated:“When I
left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would
have gotten all that oil… but now we’re buying oil from Venezuela, so we’re
making a dictator very rich.” His words
reveal the underlying logic of U.S. foreign policy that has an utter disregard
for sovereignty and instead favors the grabbing of other country’s
resources. What’s underway today
is a typical U.S.-led regime-change operation dressed up in the language
of anti-drug interdiction. The U.S. has amassed thousands of troops,
warships and aircraft in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The president
has boastfully authorized the C.I.A. to
conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.
The calls by the U.S.
government for escalation reflect a reckless disregard for Venezuela’s
sovereignty, international law and human life. On Oct. 26, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went on
national television to defend recent U.S.
military strikes on Venezuelan vessels and to say land strikes
inside Venezuela and Colombia are a “real possibility.” Florida Sen. Rick Scott, in
the same news cycle, mused that if he were Nicolás Maduro he’d “head to Russia or China right
now.” These senators aim to normalize the idea that Washington decides
who governs Venezuela and what happens to its oil. Remember that Graham
similarly champions the U.S. fighting Russia in Ukraine to
secure the $10 trillion of mineral wealth that Graham fatuously claims are
available for the U.S. to grab. [In an
address to the Republican Jewish Coalition on Nov. 1, Graham said “Trump
is my favorite president. We’ve run out of bombs. We didn’t run out of bombs in
World War II.”]
Nor are Trump’s moves a
new story vis-à-vis Venezuela. For more than 20 years, successive U.S.
administrations have tried to submit Venezuela’s internal politics to
Washington’s will. In April 2002, a short-lived military coup briefly ousted
then-President Hugo Chávez. The C.I.A. knew
the details of the coup in advance, and the U.S. immediately recognized the new
government. In the end, Chávez retook power. Yet the U.S. did not end its
support for regime change.
[photo
omitted]Chávez visiting the USS Yorktown, a U.S. Navy ship docked at Curaçao in
the Netherlands Antilles, north of Venezuela in March 2002, a month before the
brief coup, during UNITAS, a multi-national naval exercise conducted by U.S.,
Caribbean, Central, and South American naval forces. (Martin Maddock/U.S.
Navy/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
In March 2015,
President Barack Obama codified a remarkable
legal fiction. Obama signed Executive Order 13692,
declaring Venezuela’s internal political situation an “unusual and
extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security to trigger US economic
sanctions. That move set the stage for escalating coercion by the U.S. The White
House has maintained that claim of a U.S. “national emergency”
ever since. Trump added increasingly draconian economic sanctions during his
first term. Astoundingly, in January 2019, Trump declared Juan Guaidó, then an
opposition figure, to be Venezuela’s “interim president,” as if Trump could
simply name a new Venezuelan president.
This tragicomedy of the U.S. eventually fell to pieces in 2023, when the
U.S. dropped this failed and ludicrous gambit.
[photo
omitted] Guiadó and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
addressing the press in Bogotá, Colombia, in January 2020. (U.S. State
Department/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
The U.S. is now starting a
new chapter of resource grabbing. Trump has long been vocal about
“keeping the oil.” In 2019, when discussing Syria, President Trump said
“We are keeping the oil,
we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil.” To those in doubt, U.S. troops are still in
the northeast of Syria today, occupying the oil fields.
Earlier in 2016, on Iraq’s oil, Trump said, “I was saying this constantly
and consistently to whoever would listen, I said keep the oil, keep the oil,
keep the oil, don’t let somebody else get it.”
Now, with fresh military
strikes on Venezuela vessels and open talk of land attacks, the administration
is invoking narcotics to justify regime change. Yet Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter expressly
prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of any state.” No
U.S. theory of “cartel wars” remotely justifies coercive regime change.
Even before the military
strikes, U.S. coercive sanctions have functioned as a siege engine.
Obama built the sanctions framework in 2015, and Trump further weaponized it to
topple Maduro. The claim was that “maximum pressure” would empower Venezuelans.
[photo
omitted] The Trump administration’s U.S. National Security Advisor John R.
Bolton, left, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announce sanctions of the
Venezuela oil company PDVSA, Jan. 28, 2019. (The White House, Wikimedia
Commons)
In practice, the sanctions
have caused widespread suffering. As economist and renowned sanctions
expert Francisco Rodríguez found
in his study of the “Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions,” the result
of the coercive U.S. measures has been a catastrophic decline in Venezuelan
living standards, starkly worsening health and nutrition, and dire harm to
vulnerable populations.
The flimsy moral pretext
today is the fight against narcotics, yet the real objective is to overthrow a
sovereign government, and the collateral damage is the suffering of the
Venezuelan people. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
The U.S. has repeatedly
undertaken regime-change operations in pursuit of oil, uranium, banana
plantations, pipeline routes and other resources: Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954),
Congo (1960), Chile(1973), Iraq (2003), Haiti (2004),
Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and Ukraine (2014), just to
name a few such cases. Now Venezuela is on the block.
In her brilliant book Covert Regime Change (2017), Professor
Lindsay O’Rourke details the machinations, blowbacks and disasters of no
fewer than 64 U.S. covert regime-change operations during the years 1947-1989!
She focused on this earlier period because many key documents for that era have
by now been declassified. Tragically, the pattern of a U.S. foreign policy
based on covert (and not-so-covert) regime-change operations continues to this
day.
The calls by the U.S.
government for escalation reflect a reckless disregard for Venezuela’s
sovereignty, international law and human life. A war against Venezuela would be
a war that Americans do not want, against a country that has not threatened or
attacked the U.S. and on legal grounds that would fail a first-year law
student. Bombing vessels, ports, refineries, or soldiers is not a show of
strength. It is the epitome of gangsterism.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a
university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at
Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until
2016. He is also president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions
Network and a commissioner of the U.N. Broadband Commission for Development.
Sybil Fares is a
specialist and adviser in Middle East policy and sustainable development at
SDSN.
This article is from Common Dreams
Tags: Covert Action Economic Sanctions Francisco Rodríguez Jeffrey D. Sachs Lindsay O’Rourke Oil regime change Sybil Fares
Marianne Williamson. “DARK CLOUDS OVER
VENEZUELA.” Transform (Nov. 16, 2025. Marianne Williamson mariannewilliamson+politics-and-society@substack.com 11-16-25
The merchants of death
are at it again
One of
the most tragic aspects of American politics is its continuous focus on
short-term gain and short-term arguments. It makes us among other things
extremely vulnerable to political propaganda.
It was
true in Vietnam, scaring people about a communist takeover of Southeast Asia.
It was true in Iraq, scaring people with a bogus lie that Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction.
Today
it’s happening with Venezuela. You can almost hear Trump asking, “What do you
think I should tell people?” Someone in his administration then says, “Oh, tell
them it’s about drugs! Tell them we’re killing drug dealers!” Their
assumption is that people would buy that, and too many do. Very few drugs come into the United States
from Venezuela --no fentanyl at all, by the way. Also, those boats they’ve been
bombing would have to make something like five stops in order to deposit drugs
in the United States. Venezuela is a transit stop, not a manufacturing site.
This has nothing to do with drugs.
It has
to do with oil, and also rare earth minerals. It has to do with
investment opportunities in Venezuela for US corporations, if only they can get
Maduro out of the way. Maduro isn’t a good guy, it’s true, but neither are the
leaders of many countries in the world. That doesn’t give us permission to
invade them. It’s not a new pattern for the United States to act otherwise,
unfortunately, particularly in Latin America. It’s a reprisal of one of the
darkest aspects US foreign policy over the last 70 years. Trump is a hawk not a
dove, and little more than a mouthpiece for US corporate interests.
For
many Americans, Venezuela seems remote. But don’t kid yourself, Latin America
is right beneath us on the map. If we allow the Trump administration to start a
chain of violent conflict in Latin America - and clearly they’re itching to -
then catastrophe could be right around the corner. This is not about the United
States fighting Latin America, by the way. It’s about the United States
competing with China for influence in that region.
None
of this is very good news. And the only antidote to their shenanigans is our
being aware. As I said, do not let them fool you. This has nothing to do with
drugs.
There’s
nothing even remotely normal about a President nonchalantly telling us
he’s “sort of made up his
mind” about dragging America into yet another military
quagmire. Much less one so relatively close to home. Fighting drugs? Makes
no sense! Regime change? Again? Congress hasn’t
approved? He doesn’t care.
So
here we are, so obsessed by the Epstein scandal (not that we shouldn’t be)
while something potentially
calamitous is gearing up to take place South of our
border. According to NPR, “The
world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, will arrive in the
northern Caribbean on Sunday as tensions with Venezuela grow… The carrier will
join 15,000 service members, including 2,000 Marines aboard an amphibious
assault ship.”
By the
way, Venezuela’s main allies are Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran. Just
sayin’….
Former
President George Bush still felt the need to explain his invasion of Iraq to
Congress, even though he was lying! President Trump feels no such
responsibility. He sees the military as his personal toy and he treats it that
way. Whether he’s deploying it to an American city, or to a South American
coastline, it’s whatever and wherever he damn well pleases. As he keeps telling
us, “I’m allowed to.” Congress allows him to. The Supreme Court allows him to. It remains to be seen whether we will.
Part
of our problem is lack of an organized anti-war movement in
the United States. Peace is treated almost like a quaint conversation among
policy makers. And not only is the entrenchment of the military-industrial
complex a fait accompli. Its power has been exponentially
multiplied over the last few years as Big Tech has joined the
arms industry in discovering war is good business.
MAGA
has been adamant that America should stay out of foreign entanglements. Yet
now, with a real threat of U.S. military intervention in another country, Senator
Rand Paul is the lone Republican voice passionately sounding the alarm. Senator
Lindsay Graham is very happy with what’s happening there, saying he’s
delighted that “we’re killing all the right people.”
On the
Left there is a focus on ending a war, to be sure, yet only one war gets all
the attention. Trump’s Gaza peace plan
is tenuous at best, and continued focus on Palestinian
justice is critical. But the Pro-Palestine movement is specifically geared to
addressing one particular situation. There is no larger, organized peace
movement on the Left.
Democratic
Senator Tim Kaine led an effort in the
Senate to block Trump’s unilateral military action in Venezuela.
Kaine argued that the administration’s legal rationale for the boat strikes
rests on an expansive view of presidential powers “that has no support in the
Constitution” and would be “extremely flimsy” if applied to Venezuela. The
measure was voted down along party lines by a vote of 51 to 49, however, as
Congressional Republicans continue the self-sabotaging surrender of their own
authority to the President.
It’s
hard to overstate the lack of moral clarity in almost every corner of American
politics today. People’s attention seems limited to their particular silos. And
if a situation arises that doesn’t fit into one, then no matter how dangerous
it is it can slip by almost unnoticed. The prospect of massive death and
destruction just a few miles from the United States, instigated by reckless
sociopaths who never in a million years would send their own children to die in
this mess, is currently being met with a huge ho hum.
One of
the issues, of course, is that America’s war machine proffers a myth, disproven
repeatedly from Vietnam to Iraq, that “we’ll just go in and clean things up. It
will be quick.” People are lulled into believing, once again, that America’s
military dominance is to be unquestioned. Note to all thinking people: We did
not “win” in Vietnam. Nor did we “win” in Iraq. If anything, we spread
devastation and ruin on a massive scale that in retrospect was for nothing.
Such military misadventures have been ethical, military and political failures,
recognized ultimately as exactly that yet met with no more official remorse
than “Oops, yeah maybe we shouldn’t have done that.” And even that’s a cover,
see. To the multi-trillion dollar interests that back America’s war
machine, what we’ve done - and what we plan to do - spells nothing but profitability.
God
help us when our karma comes due.
We are
sleepwalking into a situation that could erupt into an extraordinary horror,
and Pete Hegseth leading the charge makes the situation that much more
perilous. It’s extremely disappointing to see how Secretary of State Marco
Rubio lost his soul along the way. And President Trump’s command of the U.S.
armed forces looks ever more like a brain-addled king telling full force
military personnel to go anywhere and everywhere, depending on what suits him
on any given day.
So
it’s up to us now. We the People must spread the word, using whatever platforms
we have to make our fellow citizens understand the danger. Post articles and
express your own opinions. Call the Congressional switchboard at 202 224-3121
to tell your Senators and Reps you do not want the US to take
military action in Venezuela!
At a
time when the government has so lost its way, we must not lose ours.
With
increased demand we’re expanding our team. Please support the expansion of our
ability to build community and hope, by becoming a paid subscriber today.
Venezuela Antholoogy #8
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/11/omni-venezuela-anthology-8-november-6.html
END VENEZUELA ANTHOLOGY
#9
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