Venezuela & ALBA News # 571, 9.15.2025:
TeleSur: Venezuela Stages Nationwide Militia Drills in Response to US Threats Venezuela conducted nationwide training for the Bolivarian Militia, as a response to potential military threats from the US. Defense Minister Padrino said Washington seeks to “turn the Caribbean Sea into a war zone.” Exercises were carried out across all 312 military garrisons in the country. Such exercises are being held nationwide as the Bolivarian Militia readies for a new phase of confrontation with the United States.
TeleSur: Poll Shows Venezuelans Overwhelmingly Reject Foreign Military Intervention In a Primera Pagina interview on Globovision, Leon stated that only 3% would support foreign military intervention.
Ultimas Noticias: Venezuela Denounces US Spy Flights, Says Reconnaissance Missions Have Tripled Defense Minister General Padrino explained that intelligence operations have always been carried out by US military aircraft. “There, they cross our flight information region, sometimes violating operational regulations because they don’t give notification of their flight plans, which can even cause plane crashes in the north of our Caribbean territory….This has always happened; what’s happening is that now they do it at night or in the early morning, and in August, intelligence operations, reconnaissance operations, and reconnaissance against the country tripled.” In September, it happened every day. The US is looking for an incident to generate a war in the Caribbean. They are trying to get us to fall into their provocation game and allow them to escalate—with legitimacy in their view—the military conflict and produce the aggression they have been announcing for over a month, with the goal of regime change.
President Maduro Denounces Attempted US Military Intervention in Venezuela in Interview With Rafael Correa (full iuterview) Washington is “after many things, first they are looking for oil, not drug traffickers, it is about oil, it is about gas. Venezuela has the main oil reserves in the world…It has the fourth gas reserves…And has what could be the world’s leading gold reserves… We have in front of us 8 US warships, destroyers, in the Caribbean. That’s never been seen before. The only thing like it is the memory of the October crisis in 1962, when they made the blockade of Cuba. Well, they have 8 ships now with 1,200 missiles pointed at our heads.” Correa: “And it turns out that cocaine production has increased in Colombia, especially under Duque’s government. In Ecuador, with the last three Right-wing governments, we became the world’s leading exporter of cocaine. Venezuela was declared by the United Nations in 2016 a Territory Free of Illicit Crops; but they still claim those who support drug trafficking are you.” Maduro: “There is the Cartel of the North that is clandestine, 85% of the thousands and billions of the annual international drug trafficking are in US Banks. That’s where the Cartel is, let them investigate it and find out…I think it’s more than 500,000 million dollars a year that are in the US Banking system, in legal Banks.”
ALBA-TCP Denounces U.S. Aggression Against Venezuelan Fishing Boat The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) expresses deep concern about the senseless act of aggression perpetrated September 12, by the US Navy destroyer USS Jason Dunham against the Venezuelan fishing vessel Carmen Rosa, with a crew of nine Caribbean tuna fishermen, who were engaged in authorized fishing operations within the Exclusive Economic Zone of Venezuela. ALBA-TCP denounces this irresponsible and provocative act which constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and further threatens the peace, security and stability of our region. ALBA-TCP demands full adherence to international law enshrined in the United Nations Charter and the full respect of the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Newsweek (Mark Weisbrot): Trump Military Attack on Venezuelan Boat Intends To Redefine War This international episode—with the U.S. military killing 11 people in a boat from Venezuela—seems particularly threatening because it involves war. This
represents a new kind of war, in which our government claims the right to summarily execute civilians from the air in what legal experts, including from the military, consider illegal killings. One of the main points of this operation: to show the world that the US can do this, to whomever they want, whenever they want. Even when there is no actual war and the people assassinated—who are still unknown—pose no imminent threat to other people’s lives. This abandonment of the rule of law, and the removal of restrictions on the use of force and violence outside the U.S., has real implications for Americans at home. A war, for instance in Venezuela, could be used to justify more repression at home. Trump has already tried to do just that, invoking a fictional “invasion” of the U.S. by a South American gang to deploy the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
In response to the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean prior to the strike, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Tex.) proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to prohibit the US from using military force in, or against, Venezuela without Congressional authorization. The amendment has been cosponsored by eight other House members so far, including Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), and Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.). This pushback—from the public as well as political leaders—needs to get stronger, before it’s too late, and Trump’s new forms of warfare abroad and at home become even more normalized.
Video: The Duran on U.S. Decapitation plan for Venezuela
Video: Francisco Dominguez on US war threats against Venezuela
Video: The Grayzone on Trump’s Latin American tools unite against Venezuela
Granma: The USA cartel It’s well known that the US is the world’s leading consumer of drugs, and the largest supplier of the weapons used by organized crime for drug trafficking. The pretext of combatting drug trafficking to invade countries is nothing new and was used by several US governments. The US is currently the largest narco-state in the world. Its invasions, far from resolving drug trafficking, have actually encouraged it. One was the war of aggression against Vietnam. In the US war against Sandinista Nicaragua, the profits from the cocaine trade were used to finance the “contras” in Nicaragua. Both CIA officers and the contras trafficked cocaine to the US. In Afghanistan, after the 2001 US invasion, opium production rose from 185 tons to 9,000 tons in 2017. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime stated after the 2011 invasion of Libya, cocaine flowed in from South America, redirected to Europe, the second largest global consumer. In Colombia, when the Pentagon deployed US troops, wherever they were, cocaine production and marketing flourished. Mexico has numerous cases of US officers and high-ranking officers trafficking prohibited substances. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Operation “Fast and Furious,” which ran from 2009 to 2011, sponsored arms sales to Mexican cartels.
Orinoco Tribune: Venezuela’s VP Rodríguez: The UN reports 85% of Drug Trafficking Profits Remain in the United States During the financial crisis in 2009, “the bailout was possible thanks to drug trafficking funds in US banks.” The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports from 1999 to 2025, “Venezuela does not appear as a relevant country in terms of illicit drugs or narcotics…only 5% attempt to pass through Venezuelan territory. Of that 5%, we have a 70% seizure and destruction capacity for this drug, [and we are] under tremendous pressure due to its extensive border with the world’s largest cocaine producer.”
Colombia is the world’s leading cocaine producer, accounting for 61% of the total, followed by Peru and Bolivia. “The cocaine route: 87% leaves Colombia and Ecuador to go to the United States.” The main route for the export of this drug is the Pacific, not the Caribbean.
Drugs such as cocaine, fentanyl, and methamphetamine are exported to the US, but marijuana is currently produced in that nation. “The US today supplies itself with cannabis. Today, marijuana, cannabis, produced in the US is much more addictive, more potent,” citing Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). “Several U.S. banks have been fined for receiving drug money to launder it.” The DEA “has known connections with the drug trafficking world.”
Resumen Latinoamericano (Roger Harris): Washington Projects Its Drug Problem onto Latin America: Narco-State Myth Used to Attack Venezuela Drug interdiction has been weaponized by the US as an excuse to impose imperial domination. Maduro maintains his country is free of drug production and processing, citing reports from the United Nations, the European Union, and even the DEA. The findings of Trump’s own security agencies absolve Maduro from the charge of directing the Tren de Aragua drug cartel.
The US Department of Justice revealed that at least ten DEA agents in Colombia participated in repeated “sex parties” with prostitutes paid for by local drug cartels. In 2022 the DEA quietly removed its Mexico chief for maintaining improper contacts with cartels. DEA presence tends to coincide with major drug activity. The US “is not interested in addressing the serious public health problem its citizens face due to high drug use;” Maduro points out that drug trafficking profits remain in the US banking system; illicit narcotics are a major US industry. Research by the RAND Corporation reveals that narcotics rank alongside pharmaceuticals and oil/gas as top US commodities.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum notes that if any “alliance” exists with cartels, it lies “in the US gun shops,” highlighting how Yankee firearms fuel cartel violence. If the US truly wanted to curb fentanyl, “they can combat the sale of narcotics on the streets of their main cities… and [stop] the money laundering” tied to the trade – steps “they don’t do.”
TeleSur: PSUV Secretary Diosdado Cabello Denounces the US Drug Enforcement Administration as The World’s Largest Drug Cartel “What is the world’s biggest drug cartel? The DEA,” Cabello stated, noting that this reality is absent from U.S. films and media products. “The time has come for revolutionary war against a powerful enemy… No one can underestimate that enemy. No one should overestimate it either. Imperialism is determined to attack us. They are defeatable, and they know it.”
Orinoco Tribune: Ignacio Ramonet: ‘Venezuela Remains the Great Political Laboratory of Our Time’ For decades, social democracy and much of the left accepted neoliberalism as an inevitable framework. That was when the betrayal was consummated: millions of workers, young people, and regular civilians felt deprived of real representation. The far right then established itself as the only disruptive discourse. It is a poor and exclusionary narrative, but it connects with the social pain of those who have seen their rights destroyed. The solution is to rebuild an emancipatory horizon: radical redistribution of wealth, participatory democracy, internationalism, social and ecological justice.
“The progressive cycle in Latin America, which some called a “renaissance” after Chávez’s victory in 1998, opened up an unexpected horizon amid neoliberal dominance: the possibility of an advanced, popular, inclusive democracy with sovereignty and social justice. However, that initial momentum quickly encountered limits and resistance: economic sabotage, soft coups, media warfare, and also internal contradictions within the processes themselves. In that vacuum, a danger we thought had been banished is reemerging: a fascist international with multiple faces—religious, neoliberal, militaristic—that operates in networks and is strongly inspired by Europe. Latin America, which has so often been a laboratory for emancipation, now runs the risk of also becoming a laboratory for new forms of authoritarianism.”
“Venezuela continues to be the great political laboratory of our time. There, they are attempting something that the global system cannot tolerate: combining participatory democracy, national sovereignty, and social redistribution under a socialist horizon. That is why the attacks continue: blockades, sanctions, economic suffocation, campaigns to delegitimize the government. But it is also there that the most creative forms of popular resistance have been seen: communes, self-management, the idea of power from below.”
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