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Trump Escalates in Venezuela With ‘Illegal’ US Seizure of Oil Tanker

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Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A Venezuelan navy patrol boat escorts Panamanian flagged crude oil tanker Yoselin near the El Palito refinery in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela on November 11, 2025.
(Photo by Juan Carlos Hernandez/AFP via Getty Images)

“Millions of civilians will be at risk if the economy deteriorates and tensions rise,” warned one anti-war group.

The US military on Wednesday seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela in the latest act of aggression against a nation that President Donald Trump has been openly threatening for several weeks.

Bloomberg, which described the move as a “serious escalation” in tensions between the US and Venezuela, reported that the seizure of the tanker by US forces “may make it much harder for Venezuela to export its oil, as other shippers are now likely to be more reluctant to load its cargoes.”

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The seizure was described to Bloomberg by a Trump administration official as a “judicial enforcement action on a stateless vessel” that had been docked in Venezuela.

Shortly after the seizure occurred, Trump boasted about it during a meeting with business leaders at the White House, declaring that the tanker was the “largest one ever seized.”

Trump: "It's been an interesting day from the standpoint of news. As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. Largest one ever seized actually. And other things are happening." pic.twitter.com/wyOYMKCJTT
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 10, 2025

Just Foreign Policy, a progressive think tank and advocacy group, condemned the seizure of the tanker, describing it as an “illegal US move to take control of Venezuela’s natural resources and strangle the economy, which is already struggling under indiscriminate US sanctions,” and warning that “millions of civilians will be at risk if the economy deteriorates and tensions rise.”

The seizure of the oil tanker is just one of many aggressive maneuvers that the Trump administration has been making around Venezuela.

Starting in September, the administration began a series of murders of people aboard boats in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela and in the Pacific Ocean.

The Trump administration has claimed those targeted for extrajudicial killing are drug smugglers and accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of leading an international drug trafficking organization called the Cartel de los Soles, despite many experts saying that they have seen no evidence that such an organization formally exists.

Trump late last month further escalated tensions with Venezuela when he declared that airspace over the nation was “closed in its entirety,” even though he lacks any legal authority to enforce such a decree. Trump has also hinted that strikes against purported drug traffickers on Venezuelan soil would occur in the near future.

Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough. — Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.

Activists slam US act of international ‘piracy’ as Trump continues military threats

…
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the act “a blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”
“Trump’s attitude has made it clear that the policy of aggression against our country is part of a deliberate plan to plunder our energy wealth,” the statement said.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said: “Cuba expresses its full support for the Venezuelan government’s denunciation and strongly condemns the assault on an oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea.
“This constitutes an act of piracy, a violation of international law and an escalation of aggression against that sister nation.”
Geopolitical analyst Ben Norton accused the US of being “run by imperialist pirates,” while co-founder of women-led peace campaigner Codepink, Medea Benjamin, said the seizure of the tanker was an “act of 21st-century piracy.
“This isn’t about drugs. It’s about regime change and provoking a war in Latin America. Americans don’t want this. Seventy per cent oppose intervention in Venezuela.”
She said: “Cuba needs oil, not blockades. Venezuela needs peace, not warships. Hands off Venezuela. Hands off Cuba.
…

Post author:dizzy
Post published:11 December 2025
Post category:Donald Trump Neo-liberalism new authoritarianism plutocracy the filthy rich
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Richest 0.001% Now Own Three Times More Wealth Than Poorest Half of Humanity Combined

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

People attend a demonstration in support of taxing the super-rich in São Paulo, Brazil on July 10, 2025. (Photo by Miguel Schincariol/AFP via Getty Images)

“The choices we make in the coming years will determine whether the global economy continues down a path of extreme concentration or moves toward shared prosperity.”

A landmark report on global inequality published Wednesday shows that the chasm between the richest slice of humanity and everyone else continued to expand this year, leaving the top 0.001%—fewer than 60,000 multimillionaires—with three times more wealth than the poorest half of the world’s population combined.

The global wealth gap has become so staggering, and its impact on economies and democratic institutions so corrosive, that policymakers should treat it as an emergency, argues the third edition of the World Inequality Report, a comprehensive analysis that draws on the work of hundreds of scholars worldwide. Ricardo Gómez-Carrera, a researcher at the World Inequality Lab, is the report’s lead author.

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“Inequality has long been a defining feature of the global economy, but by 2025, it has reached levels that demand urgent attention,” reads the new report. “The benefits of globalization and economic growth have flowed disproportionately to a small minority, while much of the world’s population still face difficulties in achieving stable livelihoods. These divides are not inevitable. They are the outcome of political and institutional choices.”

The richest 10% of the global population, according to the latest data, own three-quarters of the world’s wealth and capture more income than the rest of humanity. Within most countries, it is rare for the bottom 50% to control more than 5% of national wealth.

“This concentration is not only persistent, but it is also accelerating,” the report observes. “Since the 1990s, the wealth of billionaires and centimillionaires has grown at approximately 8% annually, nearly twice the rate of growth experienced by the bottom half of the population. The poorest have made modest gains, but these are overshadowed by the extraordinary accumulation at the very top.”

“The result,” the report adds, “is a world in which a tiny minority commands unprecedented financial power, while billions remain excluded from even basic economic stability.”

The report comes as the world’s richest and most powerful nation, led by President Donald Trump, abandons international cooperation on climate and taxation and works to supercharge inequality by slashing domestic and foreign aid programs while delivering massive handouts to the wealthiest Americans.

Jayati Ghosh, a member of the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality and co-author of the forward to the new report, said in a statement that “we live in a system where resources extracted from labor and nature in low-income countries continue to sustain the prosperity and the unsustainable lifestyle of people in high-income economies and rich elites across countries.”

“These patterns are not accidents of markets,” said Ghosh. “They reflect the legacy of history and the functioning of institutions, regulations and policies—all of which are related to unequal power relations that have yet to be rebalanced.”

Reversing the decadeslong trend of exploding inequality will require the political will to pursue obvious solutions, including fair taxation of the mega-rich and bold investments in social programs and climate action, which is disproportionately fueled by the wealthy.

“The choices we make in the coming years,” the report says, “will determine whether the global economy continues down a path of extreme concentration or moves toward shared prosperity.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy. — Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.

Post author:dizzy
Post published:10 December 2025
Post category:Donald Trump Neo-liberalism plutocracy politics the filthy rich Trump
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‘Attack on Independent Science’: Trump EPA Removes All Mention of Human-Caused Climate Crisis From Public Webpages

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Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Svínafellsjökull Glacier in Iceland, which is rapidly melting due to climate change, is seen on November 4, 2025. (Photo by NPHOTOS/Getty Images)

Climate scientist Daniel Swain called it “a deliberate effort to misinform.”

The Trump administration has removed all references to human-caused climate change from Environmental Protection Agency webpages, as well as large amounts of data showing the dramatic warming of the climate over recent decades and the resulting risks.

According to a Tuesday report from the Washington Post, one page on the “Causes of Climate Change” stated as recently as October that “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land,” a statement that reflects the overwhelming consensus in peer-reviewed literature on climate.

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That statement is now nowhere to be found, with those that remain only mentioning “natural” causes of planetary warming like volcanic activity and variations in solar activity.

“The new, near-exclusive emphasis on natural causes of climate change on the EPA’s website is now completely out of sync with all available evidence demonstrating overwhelming human influence on contemporary warming trends,” explained Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, who posted about the changes on social media.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which examines tens of thousands of studies from around the globe, found that virtually all warming since the dawn of the industrial era can be attributed to human carbon emissions.

Pages about the catastrophic results of climate change have also been scrubbed: One of them allowed users to view several climate change indicators, like the historic decline of Arctic sea ice and glaciers and the increased rates of coastal flooding due to rising sea levels. That page has been deleted entirely.

Another page, which answered frequently asked questions about climate change, now no longer includes questions like, “Is there scientific consensus that human activities are causing today’s climate change?” “How can people reduce the risks of climate change?” and “Who is most at risk from the impacts of climate change?” The page provides no indication that climate change is a human-caused phenomenon, instead only discussing natural factors.

That page links to another that has since been deleted. It once provided extensive information about the risks climate change poses to human health, “from increasing the risk of extreme heat events and heavy storms to increasing the risk of asthma attacks and changing the spread of certain diseases carried by ticks and mosquitoes.” Another deleted page discussed the impacts of climate change on children’s health and low-income populations.

“This is, I think, one of the more dramatic scrubbings we’ve seen so far in the climate space,” said Swain. “This website is now completely incorrect regarding the changes in climate that we’re seeing today and their causes… It’s clearly a deliberate effort to misinform.”

During his 2024 campaign for reelection, President Donald Trump and his affiliated super political action committees received more than $96 million in direct contributions from oil and gas industry donors, according to a January report from Climate Power. Since retaking office, he has moved to dramatically expand the extraction and use of planet-heating fossil fuels while eliminating investment in clean energy and electric vehicles.

Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, “Deleting and distorting this scientific information only serves to give a free pass to fossil fuel polluters who are raking in profits even as communities reel from extreme heatwaves, record-breaking floods, intensified storms, and catastrophic wildfires.”

Cleetus said that the purging of climate information from EPA sites was a prelude to “the likely overturning of the endangerment finding, a legal and scientific foundation for standards to limit the heat-trapping emissions driving climate change and threatening human health.”

In July, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin unveiled a proposal to rescind the 2009 finding, which determined that climate change endangers human life and serves as the legal basis for greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act.

Undermining climate science is core to that effort, which Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M, said at the time, “could unravel virtually every US climate regulation on the books, from car emissions standards to power plant rules.”

Shortly after Zeldin announced the rule change, the Department of Energy cobbled together a “Climate Working Group” comprising five authors handpicked by Secretary Chris Wright to produce a climate report that disputes the IPCC’s findings and the scientific consensus on climate change.

The report did not undergo peer review and omitted around 99% of the scientific literature the IPCC relied on for its comprehensive findings. A group of climate scientists that independently reviewed the paper found that it “exhibits pervasive problems with misrepresentation and selective citation of the scientific literature, cherry-picking of data, and faulty or absent statistics.”

Cleetus said Tuesday that “EPA is trying to bury the evidence on human-caused climate change, but it cannot change the reality of climate science or the harsh toll climate impacts are taking on people’s lives… This isn’t just about data on a website; it’s an attack on independent science and scientific integrity.”

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.

Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.

Post author:dizzy
Post published:10 December 2025
Post category:Climate Crisis Climate Emergency Climate Science Denial Donald Trump Fascism Neo-liberalism Nigel Farage plutocracy politics the filthy rich
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UN Report Estimates Bold Climate Action Would Deliver $100 Trillion in Benefits by 2100

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Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Houses in the so-called ‘smart city’ of Etteln, Germany, are seen equipped with solar panels on the roofs on June 6, 2025. (Photo by David Inderlied/picture alliance via Getty Image

“If we choose to stay on the current path—powering our economies with fossil fuels, extracting virgin resources, destroying nature, polluting the environment—the damages would stack up.”

A new report from the United Nations Environment Program has found that addressing the global climate emergency would deliver major economic benefits, in addition to creating a cleaner and more habitable planet.

The seventh edition of the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO), released on Tuesday, estimates that making up-front investments in climate action now would begin to yield global macroeconomic benefits starting in 2050, potentially growing to $20 trillion per year by 2070 and $100 trillion by 2100.

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The report, which was the product of nearly 300 multi-disciplinary scientists across more than 80 countries, argues that a total of $8 trillion in annual investment from this year until 2050 would be needed to achieve its climate goals. But, the report stresses, the cost of inaction would be far greater.

“If we choose to stay on the current path—powering our economies with fossil fuels, extracting virgin resources, destroying nature, polluting the environment—the damages would stack up,” the report warns. “Climate change would cut 4% off annual global GDP by 2050, claim many lives, and increase forced migration.”

Other likely consequences of inaction, warns the report, include “Amazon forest dieback and ice-sheet collapse,” along with the loss of “hundreds of millions more hectares of natural lands.” The report also projects that global food availability will fall if the climate crisis is not addressed, and that increased air pollution will cause an additional 4 million premature deaths per year.

The report recommends a rapid move away from fossil fuels, as well as a drastic rethinking of agricultural subsidies so that they no longer “directly favor activities that have significant harmful effects on the environment, including on biodiversity.”

Robert Watson, a co-chair of the GEO assessment, said in an interview with the Guardian that the climate crisis cannot simply be seen as an environmental issue given that it is now “undermining our economy, food security, water security, human health,” and also creating national security problems by increasing “conflict in many parts of the world.”

In an interview with BBC, Watson also accused US President Donald Trump’s administration of sabotaging the report by refusing to even accept its conclusions about the damage being done by human-induced climate change.

“The US decided not to attend the meeting at all,” he explained. “At the very end they joined by teleconference and basically made a statement that they could not agree with most of the report, which means they didn’t agree with anything we said on climate change, biodiversity, fossil fuels, plastics, and subsidies.”

Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Post author:dizzy
Post published:10 December 2025
Post category:Climate Crisis Climate Emergency Climate Science Denial Donald Trump Fascism Neo-liberalism plutocracy the filthy rich
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Even ‘weak’ cyclones are being turned into deadly rainmakers by fast-warming oceans

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Ligin Joseph, University of Southampton

The final week of November was devastating for several South Asian countries. Communities in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand were inundated as Cyclones Ditwah and Senyar unleashed days of relentless rain. Millions were affected, more than 1,500 people lost their lives, hundreds are still missing, and damages ran into multiple millions of US dollars. Sri Lanka’s president even described it as the most challenging natural disaster the island has ever seen.

When disasters like this happen, the blame often falls on a failure in early warnings or poor preparedness. This was the case with major floods in Kerala, south India, in 2018, which devastated my hometown.

But this time, the forecasts were largely accurate; the authorities knew the storms were coming, yet the devastation was still immense.

So, if the forecasts were good enough, why were the impacts still so severe?

Weak winds, extreme rain

One emerging explanation is that these storms were not dangerous because of their winds, but because they produced unusually intense rainfall.

Graph of wind speeds — This graph of all cyclonic storms over the north Indian Ocean since 2001 shows Ditwah and Senyar weren’t particularly windy. (Wind speed measured in knots. 1 knot is about 1.15 mph or 1.85 kph) Ligin Joseph (data: IBTrACS), CC BY-SA

Consider Cyclone Ditwah. Its peak winds were around 75 km/h (47 mph). That’s windy, but nothing special. In the UK, it would be classified merely as a “gale” rather than a “storm”. It was far weaker than the 220 km/h winds of the powerful 1978 cyclone that also struck Sri Lanka. Yet Ditwah still caused massive devastation.

What explains this apparent contradiction? It’s too early to say definitively, but climate change is likely a part of the story. Even when storms are not especially strong in wind terms, the amount of rain they carry is increasing.

A warmer atmosphere holds more water

A well established meteorological rule helps explain why. For every degree of global warming, the atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture.

As the planet warms, the air above us becomes a larger reservoir, waiting to dump more water on us. When storms form, they can tap into this expanded supply, often in extremely short bursts. Even if wind speeds are modest, the rainfall alone can be catastrophic.

The oceans matter even more

Warming oceans play an even more powerful role, as cyclones draw their energy from warm ocean waters. Satellite data from late November shows just how warm the eastern Indian Ocean was, with large areas more than 1°C above normal during Ditwah and Senyar.

Coloured map of Indian Ocean and SE Asian seas — In the days before the cyclones formed (20–24 November), the oceans were even warmer than usual, creating conditions that could have fuelled and intensified the rainfall. Ligin Joseph (Data: OISST; track positions are approximate), CC BY-SA

Such warm anomalies are no longer unusual. The oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, and long-term observations show a clear upward trend in ocean temperatures.

That doesn’t necessarily mean cyclones are becoming more frequent – their formation still depends on other ingredients, such as low wind shear (small differences in wind speed and direction with height) and the right atmospheric structure.

What warmer oceans do change, however, is the amount of energy available to any storm that does manage to form. When the ocean is warmer, cyclones have more fuel and evaporation increases, loading the atmosphere with moisture that can fall as intense rain once a storm develops. Even weak cyclones can therefore hold exceptional amounts of rain.

The winds near the surface help this process along. As they move across the ocean, they sweep away the moisture-filled air just above the water and replace it with drier air, allowing evaporation to continue. Put together, warmer oceans, higher evaporation, and an atmosphere that can store more moisture, these factors can significantly intensify the rainfall associated with cyclones.

Coastline hugging makes flooding worse

Local geography amplified these effects. Both Ditwah and Senyar formed unusually close to land and travelled along the coastline for an extended period. This meant they stayed over warm waters long enough to continuously draw moisture, but remained close enough to land to dump that moisture as intense rainfall almost immediately.

Cyclone Ditwah, in particular, moved slowly as it approached Sri Lanka. Slow-moving storms can be especially dangerous as they repeatedly dump rain over the same area. Even if winds are weak, this combination of warm seas, coastal proximity and slow forward speed can be devastating.

A new threat

These storms suggest that climate change – especially ocean warming – is reshaping the risks posed by cyclones. The most dangerous storms may no longer simply be the ones with the strongest winds, but also the ones with the most moisture.

Forecasting systems, including new AI-powered weather models, are getting better at predicting cyclone tracks and wind speeds. Yet rainfall-driven flooding remains far harder to forecast. As oceans continue to warm, governments and disaster agencies will need to prepare for storms that may be weak in wind but extreme in rain.

These insights are based on preliminary analysis and emerging scientific understanding. More detailed peer-reviewed studies will be needed to pinpoint exactly why Ditwah and Senyar produced such extreme rainfall. But the pattern that is emerging – weak cyclones delivering outsized floods in a warming world – must not be ignored.

Ligin Joseph, PhD Candidate, Oceanography, University of Southampton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Post author:dizzy
Post published:10 December 2025
Post category:Climate Crisis Climate Emergency Climate Science Denial Neo-liberalism politics
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