Most International Airlines Servicing Venezuela Suspend Flights As US Intensifies Pressure
11-30-2025 ~ Multiple international airlines have suspended flights to and from Caracas amidst a heightened US military presence in the Caribbean, after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issuance of a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) Friday.
Iberia (Spain), TAP (Portugal), LATAM (Chile), Avianca (Colombia) and Turkish Airlines (Turkey) were among the companies to cancel upcoming flights connecting the Venezuelan capital to international destinations.
At the time of writing, Venezuelan airlines Avior, Laser, Estelar and state-owned Conviasa continue to service foreign destinations. The Copa Airlines-operated flight from Caracas to Panama City, one of the region’s main connection hubs, remains active as well.
The airlines’ cancellations were in response to an FAA NOTAM that urged “caution” in Venezuela’s Maiquetía Flight Information Region (FIR) due to a “worsened security situation and heightened military activity.”
Venezuela’s FIR covers the country’s territory and a section of the Caribbean Sea north of Caracas.
Since August, the Donald Trump administration has amassed military assets in the region on a self-declared anti-narcotics mission. The large-scale deployment presently includes the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, guided-missile destroyers, aircraft and around 15,000 troops.
US fighter jets and bombers have repeatedly flown inside the Maiquetía flight information region, often with transponders turned off. The FAA issued similar NOTAMs for Curazao and Puerto Rico FIRs, though no flight cancellations have been reported. All three warnings are in place until February 2026. The contiguous areas could provide US aircraft with a corridor from bases in Puerto Rico to Venezuelan territory.
US forces have destroyed 22 vessels that US officials claimed were carrying US-bound drugs, killing 83 civilians in the process. Nevertheless, US authorities have not disclosed evidence of the boats’ cargoes or crews. UN experts have labeled the bombings as extrajudicial executions.
The US’ Caribbean military deployment recently affected maritime trade as well, with Bloomberg reporting that oil tanker Seahorse saw its path blocked by a US warship on November 14 as it attempted to deliver a cargo of naphtha to a Venezuelan port.
The Cameroon-flagged Seahorse made a U-turn and waited close to Aruba before finally making its way to Puerto La Cruz in Eastern Venezuela and arriving on Sunday. Read more
The Angry Tide Of The Latin American Far Right
Vijay Prashad
11-30-2025 ~ The far right in Latin America is angry. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Argentina’s Javier Milei always look furious, and they always speak loudly and aggressively. Testosterone leaks from their pores, a toxic sweat that has spread across the region. It would be easy to say that this is the impact of Donald Trump’s own brand of neo-fascism, but this is not true. The far right has much deeper pedigrees, linked to the defence of the oligarchical families that have roots in the colonial era across the virreinatos (viceroyalties) from New Spain to Rio de la Plata. Certainly, these far right men and women are inspired by Trump’s aggressiveness and by the entry of Marco Rubio, a furious defender of the far right in Latin America, to the position of US Secretary of State. This inspiration and support are important but not the reason for the return of the far right, an angry tide that has been growing across Latin America.
On the surface, it looks as if the far right has suffered some defeats. Jair Bolsonaro is in prison for a very long time because of his role in the failed coup d’état on January 8, 2023 (inspired by Trump’s own failed coup attempt on January 6, 2021). In the first round of the presidential election in Chile, the candidate of the Communist Party, Jeannette Jara won the most votes and will lead the centre-left bloc into the second round (December 14). Despite every attempt to overthrow the government of Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro remains in charge and has mobilised large sections of the population to defend the Bolivarian Revolution against any threats. And, in late October 2025, most of the world’s countries voted for a UN General Assembly resolution that demands an end to the blockade on Cuba. These indicators —from Bolsonaro’s imprisonment to the vote on Cuba— suggest that the far right has not been able to move its agenda in every place and through every channel.
However, beneath the surface, there are indications that Latin America is not seeing the resurgence of what had been called the Pink Tide (after the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998) but is experiencing the emergence of an angry tide that slowly has begun to sweep the region from Central America down to the Southern Cone.
Elections in South America
The first round of the Chilean presidential election produced a worrying result. While Jara of the Communist Party won 26.85 percent of an 85.26 percent turnout, the far right’s José Antonio Kast came in second with 23.92 percent. Evelyn Matthei of the traditional Right won 12.5 percent, while the extreme right candidate who was once with Kast and now to his right, Johannes Kaiser, won 14 percent. It is likely that Jara will pick up some of the votes of the centre, but not enough to overcome the advantage of the far right which looks to have at least more than 50 percent of the voters on its side. The so-called social liberal, Franco Parisi, who came in third, endorsed Kast in 2021 and will likely endorse him again. That means that in Chile, the presidency will be in the hands of a man of the far right whose ancestry is rooted in German Nazism (his father was a member of the Nazi Party who escaped justice through the intercession of the Vatican) and who believes that the dictatorship in Chile from 1973 to 1990 was on balance a good idea.
North of Chile, in Bolivia, the new president Rodrigo Paz Pereria, son of a former president, beat the far right’s Jorge Tuto Quiroga (a former president) in the second round of the election that had no candidate of the left (this after the Movement for Socialism governed Bolivia continuously from 2006 to 2025). Paz’ own party has a minority position in the legislature and he will therefore have to align himself with the Quiroga’s Libre coalition and he will likely adopt a pro-US foreign policy and a libertarian economic policy. Peru will have its own election in April, where the former mayor of Lima —Rafael López Aliaga— is expected to win. He rejects the label far right but adopts all the generic policies of the far right (ultra-conservative Catholic, advocate for harsh security measures, and favours a libertarian economic agenda). Iván Cepeda of Colombia is the left’s likely candidate in their presidential election in May 2026, since Colombia does not permit second terms (so President Gustavo Petro cannot run again). Cepeda will face strong opposition from Colombia’s oligarchy which will want to return the country to their rule. It is too early to say who Cepeda will face, but it might be journalist Vicky Dávila, whose far right opposition to Petro is finding traction in unexpected parts of Colombian society. It is likely that by the middle of 2026, most of the states along the western edge of South America (from Chile to Colombia) will be governed by the far right.
Even as Bolsonaro is in prison, his party, the PL (or Liberal Party), is the largest bloc in Brazil’s National Congress. It is likely that Lula will be re-elected to the presidency next year due to his immense personal connection with the electorate. The far right’s candidate – who will be either Tarcísio de Freitas, the governor of São Paulo state, or one of the Bolsonaro’s (wife Michelle or son Flavio) – will struggle against him. But the PL will make inroads into the Senate. Their control over the legislature has already tightened the reins on the government (at COP30, Lula’s representative made no proposals to confront the climate catastrophe), and a Senate win will further their control over the country. Read more
Linda Bouws ~ Neem me mee naar huis
11-29-2025 ~ Als kind overleefde Sonja de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Ze verloor haar familie, haar jeugd en uiteindelijk, door dementie, ook haar grip op het heden. De trauma’s die haar leven bepaalden, werkten door in haar dochter Linda.
In dit persoonlijke relaas onderzoekt Linda Bouws hoe herinnering, verlies en de impact van oorlog generaties overstijgen.
Emile Schrijver, algemeen directeur van het Joods Cultureel Kwartier:
“Een goudeerlijke, bewonderingswaardig diepzinnig en niets ontziende reflectie op een complexe moeder-dochterrelatie. In combinatie met het ontroerende fotomateriaal en de confronterende tekeningen heeft Linda Bouws een hoogst origineel egodocument gecreëerd, dat een groot lezerspubliek verdient.”
Over de auteur
Linda Bouws is cultureel ondernemer, publicist en curator. Ze is directeur van Metropool International Art Projects en curator/eindredacteur van het grootschalige kunstproject On Friendship / (Collateral Damage) van Joseph Sassoon Semah. Van 2002 tot 2014 was zij algemeen directeur van de Felix Meritis Foundation in Amsterdam.
Neem me mee naar huis is nu te bestellen
Stichting Metropool Internationale Kunstprojecten, € 21,95 en € 5 verzendkosten,
rekeningnummer NL 42 INGB 0006 9281 68 o.v.v. Neem me mee naar huis, naam en adres.
Neem me mee naar huis
Tekst en tekeningen: Linda Bouws
Design + layout: geert schriever (artlifelove)
64 pagina’s, full colour
ISBN 9789090405919
Arjan Peters in Argus
The Caribbean Faces Two Choices: Join The US Attempt To Intimidate Venezuela Or Build Its Own Sovereignty
Vijay Prashad
11-27-2025 ~ US President Donald Trump has authorised the USS Gerald R. Ford to enter the Caribbean. It now floats north of Puerto Rico, joining the USS Iwo Jimaand other US navy assets to threaten Venezuela with an attack. Tensions are high in the Caribbean, with various theories floating about regarding the possibility of what seems to be an inevitable assault by the US and regarding the social catastrophe that such an attack will occasion. CARICOM, the regional body of the Caribbean countries, released a statement affirming its view that the region must be a “zone of peace” and that disputes must be resolved peacefully. Ten former heads of government from Caribbean states published a letter demanding that “our region must never become a pawn in the rivalries of others”.
Former Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Stuart Young said on 21 August, “CARICOM and our region is a recognised zone of peace, and it is critical that this be maintained”. Trinidad and Tobago, he said, has “respected and upheld the principles of non-intervention and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and for good reason”. On the surface, it appears as if no one in the Caribbean wants the United States to attack Venezuela.
However, the current Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar (known by her initials as KPB), has openly said that she supports the US actions in the Caribbean. This includes the illegal murder of eighty-three people in twenty-one strikes since 2 September 2025. In fact, when CARICOM released its declaration on the region being a zone of peace, Trinidad and Tobago withdrew from the statement. Why has the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago gone against the entire CARICOM leadership and supported the Trump administration’s military adventure in the Caribbean?
Backyard
Since the Monroe Doctrine (1823), the United States has treated all Latin America and the Caribbean as its “backyard”. The United States has intervened in at least thirty of the thirty-three countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (90 percent of the countries, in other words) —from the US attack on Argentina’s Malvinas Islands (1831-32) to the current threats against Venezuela.
The idea of the “zone of peace” emerged in 1971 when the UN General Assembly voted for the Indian Ocean to be a “zone of peace”. In the next two decades, when CARICOM debated this concept for the Caribbean, the United States intervened in, at least, the Dominican Republic (after 1965), Jamaica (1972-1976), Guyana (1974-1976), Barbados (1976-1978), Grenada (1979-1983), Nicaragua (1981-1988), Suriname (1982-1988), and Haiti (1986).
In 1986, at the CARICOM summit in Guyana, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Errol Barrow, said “My position remains clear that the Caribbean must be recognised and respected as a zone of peace… I have said, and I repeat, that while I am prime minister of Barbados, our territory will not be used to intimidate any of our neighbours be that neighbour Cuba or the USA.” Since Barrow made that comment, Caribbean leaders have punctually affirmed, against the United States, that they are nobody’s backyard and that their waters are a zone of peace. In 2014, in Havana, all members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) approved a “zone of peace” proclamation with the aim “of uprooting forever threat or use of force” in the region.
Persad-Bissessar or KPB has rejected this important consensus across political traditions in the Caribbean. Why is this so?
Betrayal
In 1989, trade union leader Basdeo Panday formed the United National Congress (UNC), a centre-left formation (whose former name was the Caucus for Love, Unity, and Brotherhood). KPB joined Panday’s party and has remained in the UNC since then. Throughout her career till recently, KPB stayed at the centre of the UNC, arguing for social democratic and pro-welfare policies whether as opposition leader or in her first term as Prime Minister (2010-2015). But even in her first term, KPB showed that she would not remain within the bounds of the centre-left but would tack Far-Right on one issue: crime. Read more
How Wage Inflation Became The Fed’s Red Line
John P. Ruehl – Independent Media Institute
11-7-2025 ~ For decades, the Federal Reserve has acted quickly when wages rise, while other sources of inflation have often received a slower response. Amid the latest inflation surge, it may be time to reconsider.
The 2021-2023 inflation surge saw sudden and persistent increases in prices for consumer goods, housing, and assets. Wage inflation also rose, but it lagged behind other inflation measures. When wages finally accelerated, the Fed began hiking rates to cool the economy, consistent with its longstanding view of wage inflation as a precursor to spiraling inflation and the need to suppress it.
At first glance, the average weekly wage for the last two decades appears strong, often outpacing general inflation. Data from the Center for American Progress indicate that workers, especially lower-income workers, have seen real gains between the COVID-19 pandemic and late 2024.
Yet these figures can be misleading. Recessions often skew the numbers because lower-paid workers are more likely to be laid off while higher earners remain, and new hires during recoveries can temporarily boost averages through starting pay or signing bonuses. Meanwhile, common inflation metrics like the consumer price index for all urban consumers can often understate the cost of living for lower-income households, and most wages remain below pre-pandemic levels. In fact, real hourly wages for most workers have barely moved since the 1970s and have typically been slow to recover once they fall behind.
While the Fed has long viewed suppressing wage inflation as central to stabilizing the economy and preventing runaway inflation, this was not always its primary mission. The Federal Reserve was founded in 1913 to prevent banking panics by providing liquidity to struggling banks, with its authority expanding dramatically during the Great Depression as it took on a central role in monetary policy, bank supervision, and financial system oversight.
The 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord restored the Fed’s independence to set interest rates after the government assumed control during World War II, allowing it to experiment with new monetary approaches. By 1958, the Phillips Curve began to be employed, suggesting a trade-off between unemployment and inflation. Economists believed that keeping interest rates low would encourage businesses to hire more workers, raising wages, which in turn would boost spending.
This approach worked until the 1970s. Thereafter, high government spending, the decline of U.S. manufacturing, and repeated oil shocks triggered stagflation. High inflation and unemployment, combined with slow economic growth, showed that traditional interest rate policies could not control inflation and support growth. Read more
Advocates Offer Regulatory Alternative To Hemp Product Ban
Hemp ~ en.wikipedia.org
11-24-2025 ~ Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is widely viewed as the father of the American hemp industry, given his role as then-Senate majority leader in pushing across the finish line the 2018 farm bill that legalized the cannabis variety. But in 2025, McConnell worked with his prohibitionist counterparts in the House, such as Representative Andy Harris (R-MD), to reverse course and push for a ban on most hemp products.
While tactically yielding to opposition from fellow Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul by removing hemp ban language from the Senate version of the farm bill, McConnell then managed to get it included in the legislation to end the federal shutdown during the second week of November, and it is now law. That means that by November 2026, the ban will go into effect, with devastating consequences for the near-$30 billion hemp products industry—unless something changes in the meantime.
Josh Schneider is among the hemp industry experts who have been working on Capitol Hill to make those changes happen. The founder of Cultivaris Hemp, which provides starter plants to American hemp farmers, Schneider has played a key role in federal and state-level hemp policy development and has seen his regulatory framework incorporated into House and Senate farm bill drafts. Now, he is pushing for Congress to reject the prohibitionist approach and replace it with a regulatory scheme that will protect both consumers and the industry.
“The ban will kill the industry… fiber and grain will not escape unharmed,” Schneider told the American Hemp Monitor. “It would be an extinction-level event for a lot of small businesses.”
But he suggested that may not be what McConnell wants to achieve by supporting the looming ban. “It may be that McConnell intended it as a way to bring everybody to the table,” he said. “Everyone assured him that nothing bad would happen with hemp legalization, but the advent of delta 8 THC and synthetic cannabinoids created the image that the plant wasn’t the innocuous CBD-only thing he had been sold. While the ban he pushed through is fairly complete and very, very few products will survive it, I think it is a reasonable interpretation to assume that his desire is to bring the entire industry into the discussion. Now that the industry is focused, we will all have to come together to find a solution,” he added.
“Now, we have been given a time frame and an opportunity to resolve the issues of concern to Congress,” said Schneider. He and his allies at places such as the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, the National Industrial Hemp Council, the National Hemp Association, and the American Herbal Products Association have created a regulatory vehicle they say will do just that.
That schema is laid out in a document released on November 13 called “Pushing Progress.” The authors say their objective in the next farm bill is to “clearly define industrial and floral hemp separately and direct the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] USDA to manage hemp production based on the intended end use of the material. This bifurcation protects agricultural producers growing grain and fiber while establishing a clear regulatory pathway for cannabinoid-producing hemp,” they stated.
The proposal would require additional language under the Energy and Commerce Committee “to secure a complete solution to the challenges facing today’s hemp industry,” they added.
The farm bill language would define industrial (fiber and grain) and floral (cannabinoid-producing) hemp and clarify that the USDA is in charge of all agricultural hemp production. The agency would also administer licenses that align crop production with the intended end use. The proposed farm bill language would also raise the total THC threshold for hemp from 0.3 percent to 1.0 percent “to reflect real-world crop variability.” Read more