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.”
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
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.
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.
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.
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Jared Kushner, adviser to former US president Donald Trump, speaks during a panel at the annual Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference in Riyadh on October 25, 2023. [FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP via Getty Images]
The classic 17th-century buccaneer was not a simple pirate; he was a hybrid figure who operated in the grey area between state-sanctioned privateering and outright piracy. He used his connections with powerful governments to secure a “Letter of Marque” that legitimised his plunder, all the while lining his pockets. This government-issued license authorised privateers to attack and capture vessels of a rival nation, distinguishing legal privateering from piracy. Financial incentives also meant that privateers kept a large portion of the seized goods as compensation for their efforts, with portions going to the government that issued the commission. This form of state-sanctioned warfare, which blurred the lines between privateering and piracy was abolished internationally in 1856. And now it is back, dressed in a corporate suit and incarnated by Jared Kushner et al.
Just as the ancient buccaneer hid behind the flag of a nation to plunder, so Kushner and his ilk hide behind the flags of diplomacy and “economic development” to do the same. In recent years, Kushner, the deal-maker son-in-law of the American president, has made an entrance into the world of diplomacy and neo-colonial administration by actively meddling in Palestine and Middle Eastern politics.
As his father-in-law’s chief advisor, Kushner oversaw Trump’s ludicrously monikered “Deal of the Century,” announced in January 2020 and then followed by the so-called “Abraham Accords” in September 2020, which bypassed the central issues of the Palestinian-Israeli ‘conflict’. In an early interview during Trump’s first administration, Kushner explained his qualifications in this area: he had been “studying [the Middle East] now for three years: I’ve read 25 books on it, I’ve spoken to every leader in the region, I’ve spoken to everyone who’s been involved in this.” In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (14 March, 2021) Kushner characterised the Arab-Israeli ‘conflict’ as a “real-estate dispute”. The limitations of his understanding of the roots of the conflict are clearly discernible here, including in the claim that “Arab leaders refused to accept the creation of the state of Israel and spent 70 years vilifying it and using it to divert attention from domestic shortcomings.”
With no experience and a pronounced lack of grounding in the region’s historical and political complexities, Kushner owes his position entirely to nepotism, which has given him a diplomatic cover to attain “deal making” under the guise of diplomacy and peace, thus converting political access and diplomatic power into billions of dollars in Saudi-UAE-and Qatar-based branches of Sovereign Funds Affinity Partners, his private equity firm. Blatant 21stcentury buccaneering in all its glory.
Fast forward to August 2025 and POTUS indicated that he had to bring in his son-in-law because no one can match his intelligence. Kushner’s “second coming” only became public knowledge when he (along with Tony Blair and others) attended an August White House meeting to plan for post-war governance and “redevelopment” of Gaza, when the president announced: “I put Jared on it because he’s a very smart person and he knows the region, knows the people, knows a lot of the players.” In a New York Times interview, repeating his previously held views that he was “not quite interested in history,” and making it clear he saw himself and Witkoff, the Middle East envoys as “deal guys,” veterans of the New York real-estate scene who understood what made people tick. Kushner announced: “A lot of people who do this are history professors, because they have a lot of experience, or diplomats. It’s just different being deal guys – just a different sport.” His only real knowledge comes from his father, Charles Kushner, who has decades-old close family ties with Netanyahu and has been a major donor to Right-wing pro-Israeli causes; a relationship so close that Netanyahu has stayed in the Kushner family home in New Jersey, according to the New York Times. One official commented that Kushner and Witkoff “stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel 100%”. Total and complete partiality. No questions asked.
Indeed, Kushner’s major imprint on Middle East policy since Trump’s second administration is his signature proposal that Gaza be “redeveloped” as a vast and “valuable waterfront” property, an idea that he first voiced at a Harvard event in 2024, in which he promoted “cleaning it up” and the forcible eviction of Palestinians.
Enormous conflict of interest and open corruption charges notwithstanding – and still with no formal role in the White House – Kushner took centre stage in getting the Gaza deal, which could bring him a huge bounty to “redevelop” Gaza. And lest Palestinians and other international observers declare anything other than undying gratitude to this hero of our times for his sacrifices in the cause of world peace, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt informed us earlier (in October) that “Jared is donating his energy and his time to our government, to the president of the United States, to secure world peace, and that is a very noble thing.”
And now to the final scene in the act. In a ceremony announcing the inauguration of the new civil-military cooperation centre in Kiryat Gat, Kushner, standing at the command centre said he was looking forward to a “new Gaza, to give Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live”. This elicited a fierce response from Joshua Liefer, the leading Haaretz writer, on 23 October 2025, in which he excoriated failed “occupation management”, the chimera of “economic peace”, and the patronising assumption that Palestinians can be “bought off” with these scraps. All of this, previously said and indeed reiterated on multiple occasions, will however presumably entirely bypass Kushner.
Kushner’s soulless public persona, a masterpiece of strangely immobile features, presents a smooth deadpan surface to the world, giving little hint of emotion. This eerie wax-work quality of otherworldly detachment is profoundly disquieting, suggesting not inner peace but a deep disconnect and the ability to discuss the fate of millions with the same detached focus as if reviewing a real estate portfolio.
In this new world, the language of “peace” and “ceasefire” is becoming ever more Orwellian, a “ceasefire” in which on one night alone in October more than 100 starved Palestinians – children, women and the elderly – were bombed and murdered in their tents, with hundreds more injured. A “peace” with a new “Yellow line” reminiscent of Oslo-style administrative divisions of areas A, B, and C, and a West-Bankification of Gaza or, more bluntly stated, bantustans. This will bring more than half the territory of the Gaza strip under full Israeli control, raising serious concerns that this new policy could become a permanent partition of the devasted enclave, with Israel remaining the occupying force, promising more violence, carnage, death and destruction and the absence of any measure of genuine self-determination for Palestinians.
The age of buccaneering is well and truly back, led by Jared Kushner and his international allies, including Tony Blair, Ron Dermer, Steve Witkoff et al. Their land and resource grabbing is not a secret – they speak of it openly. In the lexicon of the deal guy, peace is just another word for a very profitable acquisition. Plunder is now policy.
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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.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
