Hello All – Those with good memories will recall the torturous six-month prelude to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. We saw it coming, heard lie after lie about “weapons of mass destruction,” and watched Congress support the war despite strong public opposition. Now comes Venezuela. Will we see war again?
It looks like it. In incremental steps, day-by-day the Trump people are moving closer and closer to an attack on Venezuela itself. As in Iraq, with its BS about “weapons of mass destruction,” the Trump people are attempting (unsuccessfully) to persuade us that our country is threatened by drugs from Venezuela. Totally false, refuted by our own government’s recent reporting. The real reason for the coming war is …. there are several. One is certainly, as in Iraq, that a giant oil producer ripe is for “democracy” and a takeover by US oil companies. The destruction of Venezuela’s current government would also threaten, and perhaps render obedient, countries like Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico, which have dared to have views contrary to those of the Godfather. And diverting popular attention from Trump’s scandals and economic policy failures would be a war bonus as well.
Unlike the war on Iraq, however, the US public and even substantial portions are Congress are not lining up for war. Months of protest against the war on Palestine and now Trump’s foreign and domestic policies have energized a substantial portion of the electorate, especially young people. A recent poll shows that most people, including a majority of Republicans, oppose going to war against Venezuela. Boastful snuff films of US bombs executing people in speedboats off Venezuela and Colombia have not gone down well, even bestirring dozens of congressional representatives to speak out against these atrocities. And this weekend leaked information that our Secretary of War authorized the murder of two survivors of a US strike on their boat may be the straw-too-many for the US camel’s back. Americans will fight back against this war. Can we fight hard enough to win?
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING OUR NEXT WAR
(Video) Will the U.S. Attack Venezuela? Trump’s Anti-Maduro Campaign Seen as Part of a Broader Regional Plan
From Democracy Now! [November 25, 2025)
---- As the Trump administration escalates pressure on Venezuela, U.S. military activity across the Caribbean continues to grow. The U.S. has deployed more than 15,000 troops to the region and carried out airstrikes on over 20 boats, killing at least 83 people in operations the White House has justified, without providing evidence, as targeting drug traffickers. On Monday, the administration also designated the so-called Cártel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization, alleging President Nicolás Maduro leads the group. “It’s certainly not a cartel,” says Phil Gunson, senior analyst for the Andes region with the International Crisis Group. He explains that while some parts of the Venezuelan military are involved in the drug trade, “these people are in it for the money,” and declaring them terrorists is “ridiculous.” We also speak with Alexander Aviña, associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University, who says the anti-Maduro campaign is part of a “broader plan” to remake the entire region. “It’s not just about Venezuela.” [See the Program]
It’s Not Just About Venezuela: Trump Intends a Wider Domino Effect
By Roger D. Harris and John Perry, Counterpunch [November 26, 2025]
---- US-imposed regime-change in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua – where the “socialist plague” has taken deep root – is a bipartisan project. For other progressive and left-leaning Latin American states – Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, and even Chile – the Pax Americana prescription stops short of outright deep regime change; infiltration, intimidation and co-optation are employed to keep them subordinate. For Democrats and Republicans alike, the US imperial projection on the region is a given. Trump and his comrade-in-arms Rubio are leading the charge. But the so-called US opposition party is offering weak constraints. To these ends, the US empire, with Trump at its titular head, is weighing the opportunity costs of deploying the full force of the military might assembled in the Caribbean, one-fifth of its navy’s global firepower. But Trump’s neocon advisers appear to want to seize the moment and embark on hemispheric political change, bringing a Trumpian “Donroe Doctrine” to fulfillment. Will caution prevail, or will the US continue to bring lawlessness and chaos – as it has to Haiti, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere – not just to Venezuela but possibly to other countries in the region? [Read More]
Legalizing Cocaine Is the Only Way to End the Drug War
By Mattha Busby, The Intercept [November 30 2025]
---- Today, cocaine is one of the world’s most reliable commodities. It’s a multibillion-dollar market serving around 50 million global consumers. Production in the Andes is at a record high. Purity is the highest it’s ever been. Cocaine is cheaper, stronger, and more accessible than at any point in history. From bankers to bricklayers, everyone is at it — and the interests of cartels all over the world are enmeshed with the legal economies. This state of affairs represents a totemic, catastrophic policy failure. It’s high time for a grown-up conversation which acknowledges that the drug laws — by funneling untold riches to violent criminals — are more harmful than the drugs themselves, as research increasingly shows. … So what would happen if cocaine was legalized? [Read More]
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” – [2003 film about a coup attempt]
FB – In 1998 Venezuelans elected a military officer, Hugo Chávez, as president. In a country with great income inequalities and with the world’s largest oil reserves, Chavez’s “preferential option for the poor” mobilized US opposition. In 2002, an Irish documentary film crew was making a video about Chavez and Venezuela when the US-supported Venezuelan elite attempted to overthrow the government and re-establish the “old regime.” The film crew stayed the course, filming everything “from the inside.” The result is a fascinating insight into the Chavez regime and the quick defeat of the counterrevolution. Will history repeat itself? Check out the film here; 75 minutes.
NEWS NOTES
US citizen Mohammed Ibrahim was released from an Israeli prison this week after 9 months of confinement in terrible jail conditions. Demands for the release of this teenager got no support for months from the Trump administration and Democratic politicians. Especially active in attempting to gain Mohammed’s release was Hastings journalist Jasper Nathaniel and his mother Sharon. Check out this story here.
A few weeks ago ICE tried to arrest some African street vendors on Canal St., NYC, and was confronted by a strong crowd of dissenters. ICE was back to its tricks on Saturday, but was stymied again by brave, alert ICE-watchers, blocking their garage and not letting them get started on their villainous deeds. Check out the New York Times story here and see some good protest video here.
Also on Saturday, protesters around the world joined to mark “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” Some good video from Aljazeera.
Finally, you may be surprised to learn that the “US Africa Command” launched its 101st airstrike of the year in Somalia this week. The operation involved 100 US troops, 10 helicopters, and Reaper drones to bomb ISIS fighters.people. Did you know this was happening? Don’t we have a War Powers Act for this stuff? Read more here.
MAMDANI FOR NEW YORK
(Video) The Historic Rise of Zohran Mamdani: Democracy Now! Coverage from 2021 Hunger Strike to Election Night
From Democracy Now! [November 28, 2025]
---- As Zohran Mamdani prepares to become New York’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor on January 1, we look at the historic rise of the democratic socialist who shocked the political establishment. We spend the hour hearing Mamdani in his own words and look at the grassroots coalition that helped him pull off what’s been described as “one of the great political upsets in modern American history.” [See the Program]
(Video) Mamdani’s Affordability Agenda: Incoming NYC Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan on How to Make It Happen
From Democracy Now! [November 26, 2025]
---- Zohran Mamdani will be taking office as mayor of New York in just five weeks. His transition team continues to make announcements about the new administration, recently unveiling a 400-person advisory group, broken up into 17 committees. Democracy Now! speaks with the incoming first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan, on how Mamdani plans to implement his progressive vision. [See the Program]
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com, and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
This week’s Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers feature some music from the amazing Nina Simone. From Tryon, North Carolina, she was a child musical prodigy, supported by her community through music lessons and a trip north for musical training, but rejected for a classical piano career because of wrong skin color. But that world’s loss was our gain, and she evolved her own style, which included the civil rights movement. Listen now to “I Wish I Knew How It Would Fee to be Free”; “Ain’t Got No, I Got Life”; and “Mississippi Goddam!, her response to the White terror against the civil rights movement. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Shepherd Communities in Wadi Qelt Are Vanishing Under Settler Terror. A Journey Through an Abandoned Land
By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, Ha’aretz Magazine [November 29, 2025]
---- They stood opposite one another. On the top of the hill three settler teenagers and below them two youths and an adult. They are from the same generation and the same nation. The physical distance between them may have been a number of meters, the height of the rise in the hill, but the mental, cultural, moral and religious distance is almost infinite. All are Israeli Jews, but they’re divided by an abyss. Up on top is a brand-new settler shack; below, yet another abandoned enclave of shepherds. The three bearded youths with long sidelocks and large kippas stood on high gazing down, plotting evil. A few days beforehand they had erected the shack up there, after stealing the corrugated tin from the homes of the Bedouin shepherds, who fled in fear. Every day, the people at the bottom of the hill relate, the invaders swoop down into their valley, harassing and threatening them. Below, in the now-empty enclave, sat three members of the Arab-Israeli grassroots movement Standing Together, plotting good. They had arrived with one goal: to protect the remains of the herdsmen’s homes, which the settlers covet. The activists show up on weekends and/or whenever the Bedouin, for whom they are the sole source of protection, summon them. This week they arrived following the appearance of the new shack. [Read More]
The Care Factory [Wages for Housework]
By Emily Baughan, Boston Review [Fall 2025]
[FB – This is a review of several books about “Wages for Housework” and the expanding “care and service” industries.]
---- Thus “Wages for Housework” was born—the phrase would serve as the movement’s name, theoretical North Star, and rallying cry. Paying women for domestic labor, they argued, would break the cycle of exploitation for everyone. If profit was shared between waged workers and the people whose work produced them, women could be free. They might leave their husbands, share child care, and dissolve the traditional family. If they did, men would no longer be trapped by the obligation to provide for women and children, and could strike without fear. Wages for housework was a means, and its end was the destruction of capitalism. That hasn’t happened, of course. On the contrary, over the half century since the movement reached its zenith, care work has become less the unseen precondition of capitalist labor than the embodiment of it. ... How did we get here? Has Wages for Housework been proven wrong, and could things have turned out otherwise? The three books discussed here provide essential windows into the changing relationship between capitalism and care, offering important lessons for the future of left feminism. [Read More]
Nuclear Arms Control Disappearing Before Our Eyes
By Mark Muhich, Counterpunch [November 26, 2025]
---- When NewSTART (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, 2010) expires on February 5, 2026, Russia and the U.S. will face the prospect of a new nuclear arms race unconstrained by bilateral agreements. … Since coming into force during the Obama Administration, ratified by the Senate 71-26, NewSTART has reduced the number of nuclear weapons deployed by Russia and the U.S. to 1,500 warheads for each side, the lowest level since 1960. Nuclear weapons treaties require years of painstaking negotiation. Negotiating an immediate replacement for NewSTART is out of the question. Adhering to NewSTART weapons levels for one or two years, as proposed on numerous occasions by Russian President Vladimir Putin, could provide enough time to initiate a fresh round of arms control talks. President Trump has responded that it “sounds like a good idea”. … Giving context to the present failure of nuclear weapons negotiations: the launch of a single nuclear weapon, regardless of circumstance, in declassified simulation models, provokes a retaliatory exchange of hundreds of nuclear weapons, causing 90 million deaths within hours and potentially billions of deaths during the following decade. Nothing is more consequential than containing the nuclear weapons arsenals of the U.S. and Russia within the framework of a signed and ratified nuclear weapons treaty. Are we watching nuclear arms control disappear before our eyes? [Read More]
The Rise of France Insoumise [The French left wing in politics]
An Interview with Clémence Guetté
---- France, like many other European countries, has seen a historic decline of the old workers’ parties. Yet the rise of France Insoumise has ensured the renewal of a dynamic left rooted in popular mobilization. The many crises afflicting Emmanuel Macron’s presidency point to deep turmoil in France’s institutions. In many accounts, the likely beneficiary is Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National, which is today polling strongly. Yet, time and again, the country’s Left has shown that it cannot be discounted. Only last summer, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance defied expectations to come first in the parliamentary elections. Decisive to that success — and to the radicalism of the NFP’s program — was radical-left force France Insoumise. Its presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was by far the most popular left-wing candidate in the last two election cycles, and it has established a much more enduring presence in protest movements and in institutions than other European radical-left forces. In an interview, France Insoumise MP Clémence Guetté and the Institut La Boétie’s Antoine Salles-Papou explained the movement’s strategy, its basis in popular mobilization, and the possibility of an overhaul of the Fifth Republic’s institutions. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
The Security Council’s Resolution on Gaza Makes Trump Its New Overlord
By Phyllis Bennis, The Nation [November 26, 2025]
---- The United Nations Security Council resolution passed on November 17 may be in complete violation of the UN’s own rules. And it may do as much damage to the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom as the Oslo accords did more than 30 years ago. The resolution is extraordinarily powerful—and profoundly dangerous. It puts the United Nations on record denying the Palestinian right of self-determination, while doing nothing to stop the Israeli assault, imposed famine, and ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. (The daily killing of Palestinians continues, with an average of two children killed every day since the ceasefire, according to UNICEF.) It also said not a word about accountability for Israel’s crimes, or about the urgency of stopping arms transfers to Israel—arms that come overwhelmingly from the United States. And the resolution is dangerous in a bunch of other ways, too. … The Security Council vote has turned the United Nations into a direct instrument of the Trump administration and broader US financial, political, and strategic interests. [Read More]
(Podcast) Israel emptied half of Gaza. What’s next?
With Muhammad Shehada, 972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [November 24, 2025]
---- Six weeks into the ceasefire in Gaza, most of the enclave’s population is still enduring many of the same conditions that defined the past two years of war. Since the truce went into effect, Israel’s ongoing attacks have killed over 340 Palestinians and injured more than 900. Starvation, disease, psychological warfare, and ongoing bombardment continue to shape daily life, now intensified by the onset of winter. While Israel has reduced the intensity of its genocidal assault, it has not stopped it; instead, the tactics have shifted from relentless bombardment to a more bureaucratic, long-term strategy of control. At the center of this approach lies the so-called “Yellow Line,” a boundary dividing Gaza into two distinct zones. Nearly 60 percent of the Strip remains under Israeli occupation: This is the expanding eastern or “green” zone, in which Israeli forces are systematically razing all remaining infrastructure. The western side of the line, or “red” zone, comprising roughly 40 percent of the enclave’s land mass, is where virtually the entire Gazan population has been concentrated and Hamas still exercises some level of control. [Hear the Program]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Gaza Death Toll Crosses 70,000 Since Israel-Hamas War Began, Gaza Health Ministry Says,” by Jack Khoury and Nir Hasson, Ha’aretz [Israel] [November 29, 2025] [Link]; “AI-powered surveillance firms are gunning for a share of the Gaza spoils” (“The presence of Palantir and Dataminr at the new U.S. military compound in Israel offers a glimpse of how tech companies are cashing in on the genocide.), by Sophia Goodfriend, 972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [November 28, 2025] [Link]; “International tribunal finds Israel guilty of genocide, ecocide, and the forced stavation of Palestinians in Gaza,” by Marianne Dhenin, Mondoweiss [November 27, 2025] [Link]; and “Israel is violating all its ceasefire agreements and escalating on all fronts,” by Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss [November 28, 2025] [LInk].
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
The Europeans pushing the NATO poison pill
By Eldar Mamedov, Responsible Statecraft [November 25, 2025]
---- The recent flurry of diplomatic activity surrounding Ukraine has revealed a stark transatlantic divide. While high level American and Ukrainian officials have been negotiating the U.S. peace plan in Geneva, European powers have been scrambling to influence a process from which they risk being sidelined. While Europe has to be eventually involved in a settlement of the biggest war on its territory after World War II, so far it’s been acting more like a spoiler than a constructive player. The core of the current negotiation effort is the American plan, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ukrainian officials in Geneva reportedly agreed to reduce from an initial 28 points to19. Critically, the most sensitive issues — namely territorial compromises and the final status of Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO — have been reportedly deferred for direct talks between Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. Into this fragile process, European capitals have thrown a wrench. Having circulated various “counter plans,” they have now settled on a different tactic: offering unsolicited amendments to the American proposal. [Read More]
Europe’s Leaders Have No Strategy for Peace [Ukraine]
By Allmut Rochowanski, Jacobin [November 27, 2025]
---- Caught off guard by new proposals to halt the war in Ukraine, European leaders have rejected the idea of Kyiv giving up territory. What’s less clear is how they imagine making their red lines into a reality. On November 19, news broke of a US-brokered peace proposal imposing stringent conditions on Ukraine. It was news to European leaders, too, with a US official adding insult to injury: “We don’t really care about the Europeans.” For the first forty-eight hours, the Europeans responded with stunned, sullen silence. Since Marco Rubio declared the arrival of a multipolar order, we’ve been watching a repeat reel of Europe’s foreign policy establishment having the rug pulled from under their feet. Americans mostly saw the unedifying spectacle. Europeans, meanwhile, have been watching their elites succumb to a rearmament frenzy, characterized by shrill fearmongering. … What explains this frenzy among European elites? What explains their sudden readiness to throw strict fiscal rules to the wind, alienate citizens with yet more austerity and then scold them for their discontent, meekly forfeit their positions on trade, or suspend democracy itself? Why revive militarist propaganda tropes reeking of early-twentieth-century rot? [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
(Video) Climate Deal Excludes Fossil Fuel Phaseout as Wealthy Nations Place Burden “On the Backs of the Poor”
From Democracy Now! [November 24, 2025]
---- Global negotiations at the annual U.N. climate summit ended Saturday in Belém, Brazil, with a watered-down agreement that does not even mention fossil fuels, let alone offer a roadmap to phase out what are the primary contributors to the climate crisis. The COP30 agreement also makes no new commitments to halt deforestation and does not address global meat consumption, another major driver of global warming. … “The absence of the United States is critical,” adds Jonathan Watts, global environment writer at The Guardian. “The United States under Donald Trump is trying to go backwards to the 20th century in a fossil fuel era, whereas a huge part of the rest of the world wants to move forward into something else.” [See the Program]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Soldiers Must Disobey Unlawful Orders Under Trump — It’s Their Legal Duty
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [November 25, 2025]
---- The courageous action of six Democratic members of Congress has thrust into the national discourse the duty of military and CIA personnel to disobey Donald Trump’s illegal orders. As the Trump administration continues to unlawfully murder people in small vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, deploy the National Guard to U.S. cities, and ignore court orders, the six lawmakers were moved to act. In a 90-second video organized by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Michigan), two senators and four Congress members, all U.S. military or CIA veterans, take turns reading a statement to active servicemembers, urging them to refuse to follow illegal orders. … But there is a noble tradition in the United States of servicemembers refusing orders to deploy to illegal wars and/or commit war crimes. Some refusers have been arrested and court-martialed. Many have argued in their defense that they had a legal duty to disobey illegal orders. [Read More] - ALSO OF INTEREST - “Mark Kelly Is Being Investigated for Telling the Truth,” by David Cole, New York Times [November 26,2025] [Link]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Pandemic Programs Worked, So Business Elites Killed Them Off
By Fran Quigley, Jacobin [November 29, 2025]
---- To prevent economic collapse amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the government unleashed the power it always had. New programs caused hunger, evictions, and child poverty to plummet. Why not just continue them? Because employers thrive on desperation. … There is an enduring perception that the United States is an individualistic nation whose people oppose collective guarantees to the basic necessities of life. This perception is false. Look at, for example, the overwhelming popularity of our Social Security program and the guarantees of free public education contained in every state constitution; the United States already has some well-established economic rights that are deeply woven into the fabric of our society. Public opinion polls in recent years show strong majorities in support of recognizing and enforcing housing and health care as human rights and calling for the government to do more to address food insecurity. Most Americans have long supported a government jobs guarantee. So what is stopping us? Corporations and wealthy individuals who deploy their de facto unlimited ability to fund campaigns and lobby lawmakers to crush economic support programs. [Read More]
Progressive Mayors vs. Developers [Affordable Housing]
By Robert Kuttner, Portside [November 26, 2025]
---- In New York, one of the toughest challenges that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani faces will be preserving and increasing the supply of affordable housing. Same story in Boston, where I live and where our progressive mayor, Michelle Wu, is constrained by similar forces. The immediate obstacles are a scarcity of buildable land and subsidy dollars. In both cities, higher taxes to support more housing requires the approval of state government. New York has a form of rent control, known as rent stabilization, but most New Yorkers do not live in rent-stabilized apartments. Boston once had rent control, but the state legislature took it away in 1994. Local option rent control will be back before voters next year via a ballot initiative. But behind all of these challenges is the sheer political power of developers. Let me give a couple of emblematic examples [NY & Boston] [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The Black People Who Fled Slavery Had a Lot to Teach Their Northern Allies
By Jesse Olsavsky, Hammer & Hope [Fall 2025]
---- It is common knowledge that the Underground Railroad helped Black people flee enslavement. What that story leaves out is that fugitives continued to be hounded by slave hunters, mobs, and police across the North. An organized urban wing of the railroad called vigilance committees focused on protecting, supporting, and learning from fugitives. That education went in both directions — by working with and interviewing Black people who had experienced slavery firsthand, abolitionists learned much more about what slavery looked like, how it operated, and strategies for resisting it. Vigilance committees were antislavery organizations that began forming in northeastern cities in the 1830s, often supported by Black churches. A majority of their members were Black, women, or working-class. Their work took on new urgency after the revamped Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unleashed terror in Black neighborhoods. [Read More]
First Amendment in flux: When free speech protections came up against the Red Scare
By Jodie Childers, The Conversation [November 20,2025]
---- As the United States faces increasing incidents of book banning and threats of governmental intervention. the common reflex for many who want to safeguard free expression is to turn to the First Amendment and its free speech protections. Yet, the First Amendment has not always been potent enough to protect the right to speak. The Cold War presented one such moment in American history, when the freedom of political expression collided with paranoia over communist infiltration. In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed 10 screenwriters and directors to testify about their union membership and alleged communist associations. Labeled the Hollywood Ten, the defiant witnesses refused to answer questions on First Amendment grounds. During his dramatic testimony, Howard Lawson proclaimed his intent “to fight for the Bill of Rights,” which he argued the committee “was trying to destroy.” They were all cited for contempt of Congress. Eight were sentenced to a year in federal prison, and two received six-month terms. Upon their release, they faced blacklisting in the industry. Some, like writer Dalton Trumbo, temporarily left the country. The conviction and incarceration of the Hollywood Ten left a chilling effect on subsequent witnesses called to appear before congressional committees. It also established a period of repression historians now refer to as the Second Red Scare. [Read More]
