From New York, this is Democracy Now.

As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large.

Largest one ever seized, actually.

And other things are happening.

So you'll be seeing that later.

In a major escalation, U.S. troops seize an oil tanker off Venezuela's coast,

a day after U.S. fighter jets fly over Venezuelan airspace.

We'll get the latest on the U.S. military threats, then acclaimed academic and writer, Mahmoud Mamdani, author of the new book Slow

Poison, Idi Amin, Yawari Museveni, and the making of the Ugandan state. He's also the father of

New York mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani, who was inspired by his father's civil rights activism in the 60s as a young Ugandan student in the United States.

My father got on that bus. He marched. He was hosed down. He was thrown in jail. He was given one phone call.

And he called the Ugandan ambassador to the United States. He said, can you get me out of jail?

The ambassador said, what are you doing in jail?

We sent you there to study. My father said, you sent me here as a gift for our freedom. They are

fighting for theirs. It's one and the same. And finally, to Gaza, where winter storm, Byron,

is battering, displaced Palestinian families with rain and freezing temperatures.

We have been humiliated by the war, by the winter, by the conditions we are in.

From the morning to the night, we drown. The kids and the clothes are all drenched.

All that and more. Coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman.

U.S. forces seized a tanker loaded with crude oil off the coast of Venezuela Wednesday as the Pentagon

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