Links and Notes for January 2nd, 2026

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Economy & Finance
• Medicine & Disease
• Art, Literature, Music, & Cinema
• Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
• Technology & Engineering
• LLMs & AI
• Programming
• Fun

Public Policy & Politics

The Year Just Fucking Started Man

At least it’s easier to stay on top of things this time. You don’t have to dig down to get to the truth. The press conferences have finally turned honest and to the point. We now own Venezuela (I mean, it’s not true, but that’s what they think happened), and we took it for their oil. And we’re going to give the oil to the corporations. That’s basically verbatim.

So, now we don’t pay for things or do stupid stuff like “trade”. We just take what we want because we’re strong. OK. I mean, it’s been like that for a long time, but we used to dress it up a bit.

And all this to corner the market on the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet: Venezuelan crude. To keep it out of the hands of the Chinese and the Indians. So we do war crimes by attacking Venezuela to steal their oil so we can make already fattened U.S. corporations even fatter by polluting the atmosphere and warming the planet even more? Jesus wept.

Should be a fun ride. Watch out for the blowback, USA.

Although, how would you even know if there were blowback? Can you tell the difference between militants kidnapping people and ICE kidnapping people?

These are the violent shudderings, the death-throes of an empire. It’s going to get messier.

I always think of the US as the vanquished Balrog, whose whip lashes back up to pull down the bridge with Gandalf on it. It’s going down, but it’s still so dangerous.

We are such a broken society that we would celebrate Jack the Ripper today for “cleaning up the streets.” Might makes right. We are the absolute worst.

Just because empires inevitably die, the flailing of a dying empire was never going to be pleasant.

The US Empire Needs Men Like Trump by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“If you were wondering why the US establishment was so much more chill about Trump becoming president this term than they were the first time around, you’re watching the reason now. The powers that be were assured that he’d carry out longstanding imperial agendas like kidnapping Maduro, bombing Iran and overseeing a final solution to the Palestinian problem, and they trusted him to carry out those plans.”

““Cuba is ready to fall,” Trump told the press on Sunday next to a delighted Lindsey Graham. “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know if they’re going to hold out. But Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from their Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil. They’re not getting any of it. And Cuba is literally ready to fall.””

People like Vijay Prashad will say that this isn’t a “mask-off” moment because the mask has always been off. But he’s making the same mistake that other clever people make: he’s assuming that since he knew the mask was off a long time ago, that other people also know that. With “mask off,” we mean that most U.S.-Americans will no longer be able to deny that we are toppling other countries’ governments for our own gain. The administration isn’t even claiming to have done it for Democracy. They did it to steal resources that they don’t need but that they want to control, to kill other countries. More people are in on it now; that’s what “mask off” means.

This is our hemisphere

That was published under the imprimatur of the Department of State of the United States. There’s no way to pretend that the U.S. doesn’t think of itself as an empire now. You have to either disavow this administration or go all-in that you’re for empire and subjugation of other nations. You have to declare that you’re an immoral criminal with no principles.

Like, you have to say that you love Lindsey Graham and you think he’s a smart, well-informed, deeply moral and loving Christian. That’s what you have to do because that’s what you stand for. You have to put your bloody signature on idiocy like the stuff below.

““You just wait for Cuba,” Graham added. “Cuba is a Communist dictatorship that’s killed priests and nuns, they preyed on their own people. Their days are numbered. We’re gonna wake up one day, I hope in ’26, in our backyard we’re gonna have allies in these countries doing business with America, not narcoterrorist dictators killing Americans.”

““Donald Trump will have done something that’s eluded America since the fifties: deal with the Communist dictatorship 90 miles off the coast of Florida,” Graham said on Fox News. “I can’t wait till that day comes. To our Cuban friends in Florida and throughout America, the liberation of your homeland is close.””

Or this horseshit about Iran,

“Prior to that Trump had confirmed to the press that the US would attack Iran if it tried to rebuild its missile program, saying in a joint news conference with Benjamin Netanyahu that “I hope they’re not trying to build up again because if they are, we’re going have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup.”

“[…] the president is not talking about attacking Iran if it tries to rebuild its nuclear facilities or construct a nuclear weapon. He’s talking about Iran’s conventional ballistic missile program. The United States is saying that Iran simply is not allowed to defend itself in any way, shape or form, and that if it tries to rebuild its ability to do so it will be attacked again.”

US imperialism rings in the New Year with a new war by WSWS Editorial Board (WSWS)

“The aggressive message to China was unmistakable. Just hours before the assault, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met with a high-level Chinese delegation led by Beijing’s Special Representative for Latin American and Caribbean Affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, to discuss joint energy cooperation. The US raid, timed to coincide with this meeting, was an act of aggression aimed at disrupting growing ties between China and Latin America.

“The actions taken by the Trump administration are not only criminal, they have the character of sheer madness. In 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, the World Socialist Web Site warned that American imperialism had entered into a “rendezvous with disaster. It cannot conquer the world. It cannot reimpose colonial shackles upon the masses of the Middle East. … It will not find, through the medium of war, a viable solution to its internal maladies.”

“That warning was confirmed. What is now being set into motion is even more reckless—a rendezvous with catastrophe.

“Trump declared on Saturday the intention to impose a dictatorship over Venezuela, proclaiming that the country will be “run” by Rubio, Hegseth and other officials in the Trump regime, as though this colonial fantasy could be imposed with a press conference. In reality, such an occupation would require the deployment of hundreds of thousands of US troops and a brutal campaign of urban warfare amid mass resistance. Trump said as much when he said he was not afraid of “boots on the ground.””

“The United States is attempting to reverse the long-term decline of American capitalism through militarism and war. The economic foundations of US global dominance have dramatically eroded. Gold has surged past $4,300 an ounce, a de facto measure of the collapse in confidence in the dollar as a global reserve currency. The national debt has soared past $38 trillion. The seizure of Venezuela’s oil and the reassertion of American control over the Western Hemisphere are seen by the ruling class as essential to the survival of its economic and geopolitical position.”

“It is necessary to understand that Trump does not act as an individual. He is the chosen instrument of the American ruling class, a gangster elevated to power by the oligarchy to enforce policies that can no longer be pursued through democratic or legal means.

“In 2025, US billionaires—roughly 900 individuals—amassed an 18 percent increase in their net worth, bringing their combined holdings to nearly $7 trillion. Ten individuals alone accounted for $750 billion of this total. Just as the German ruling class brought Hitler to power to implement policies that could not be carried out except through dictatorship, Trump serves the same function.”

“The Democratic Party represents the same class and defends the same system as Trump. There will be no serious opposition from its ranks. Their differences with Trump are purely tactical, not strategic. This was made clear in the muted response to the assault on Venezuela. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries grumbled about the lack of congressional notification, while reaffirming that Maduro was “not the legitimate head of government.””

“[…] while it is expressed most violently in the US, the same basic tendencies exist throughout the world. All the imperialist powers are now engaged in a global redivision of the world. In Europe, the major capitalist governments are undertaking the most massive rearmament campaigns since the Second World War as they clamor for war against and destroy social programs. The German ruling class is nurturing dreams of a Fourth Reich, asserting its military power across the continent and beyond.

“The ruling class has made clear what they want 2026 to be: a year of unrestrained military violence. The answer must be to make 2026 a year of class struggle and the development of a mass movement for socialism.

“The fight against war is, at its root, a fight against the capitalist system that breeds it. This struggle must be led by the working class, the only social force capable of ending imperialist violence and establishing genuine democracy and equality.”

Trump Strikes Venezuela and Captures President Maduro by HasanAbi (YouTube)

At about 14:30,

“Liberals are just basically going, “No, you actually you’re actually doing this for world police stuff, right? You’re doing this because you’re the world police and you’re installing democracy in Venezuela.” Right?

“And the Trump administration’s like, “Nah, not really. I just want the gold. I just want the oil. I want the land. I want to rape and pillage. I’m bored. I want to rape and pillage because I’m bored.”

“And liberals are like, “No, no, no, no, no. You don’t understand the domino. The dominoes will fall about the dangers of socialism. Everyone will learn about the dangers of socialism if we actually, you know, dethrone this corrupt autocratic dictator.”

“And Trump still turns around and is like, “Nah.”

“Like, he might as well openly come out and be like, “You guys were talking too much about my best friend who recently passed away, Jeffrey Epstein, and I did this because I really was bored and I didn’t want you talking about that no more.”

“And liberals would still be like, “Uh, actually actually this intervention was justifiable because the people of Venezuela have spoken.”

“Do you like Maduro? I don’t care. My opinion or my dislike for Maduro is not pertinent to this conversation.

“Do you guys understand why it’s not relevant to this conversation? My own personal criticisms of Maduro or whatever is not relevant to this conversation. It’s kind of like the “but Hamas” equation, right? Israel will be doing a genocide and people will be like, “Well, what about your criticisms of Hamas?” It’s like, “Bro, they’re being genocided.” You know what I mean?

“It’s like, “What are your opinions on Maduro?” I don’t know. He shouldn’t be kidnapped. How about that? That’s my opinion on Maduro. That’s the only one that matters.

“There is no reason to be like, “I don’t like the way that he repressed protest in his country or I don’t like the way he mismanaged the Venezuelan currency.” Like, what what difference does that make? Do you think that plays a role in why America kidnapped them? No. So, it doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant.

“And that’s why when people say like, “Well, actually, Venezuelans are celebrating.” It’s like, well, okay, it still doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter at all.

“They’re already spinning the narrative that all Venezuelans are happy. Yeah. I mean, they did the spin in Iraq as well. I mean, that’s where “they will welcome us as liberators” comes from. That’s unironically where it comes from. Do you see what I mean? The “they will welcome us as liberators” is a statement from Iraq. That was at a time when the American government was actively trying to propagandize a lot better than than this one certainly is doing.”

The US Is An Evil Empire and Always Was. Venezuela Proves It by Indrajit Samarajiva (Indica)

“The whole point of imperial sovereignty is a violent intolerance of any other sovereignty. That’s the whole point of Empire, and this is the biggest empire there ever was.”

“Venezuela has given up its head the cause, Palestine has given its body, Russia has given up its arms, but it will never be enough for the White Empire, that’s sadly obvious. They came in on war and plunder and that’s how they’ll go out. The White Empire eats oil and spits blood and gets only more carnivorous as it collapses. But make no mistake in these dark times, the darkness is coming. As a bit of darkness myself, I look forward to it. The White Empire is going white dwarf, outgassing to envelop nearby planets like the Sun will envelop Earth, that’s what’s happened to Venezuela.”

Venezuela: What Just Happened? With Vijay Prashad, Andreína Chávez and José Luis Granados Ceja 📱 by Katie Halper (YouTube)

Vijay Prashad is brilliant. He discusses how he knows Maduro personally, that the guy was a bus driver and union leader before he was asked to step in for him by Chavez, who was dying of cancer. Maduro’s wife is in the general assembly, as well. He was elected president.

The Wikipedia on the 2024 Venezuelan national election is one of the longest ones I’ve ever seen, and is filled with wishy-washy language that lets the reader believe that there is cold, hard proof of election fraud without actually providing it. This suggests to me that some people in powerful organizations were busy laying the groundwork for being able to say that Maduro wasn’t the legitimate president of the country, so that the immunity enjoyed by the president of a country under international law doesn’t apply. Think about it: why is there a 35-page article about an election in Venezuela in English? I would understand if it were in Spanish, but someone took the trouble to make sure it was available in English.

This is an invasion and a coup. The timing is so that Trump could present the fait accompli to the Congress and the nation on the 4th of January. Venezuela has an important meeting on the 5th of January.

José also points out that the Venezuelan opposition has always bitched about every election result that they didn’t win.

Prashad talks about the crews of the boats that were seized. “We live in a civilization of detritus. Nobody cares about any of these people.”

José gives a PSA that there is no such thing as sanctioned oil. You can’t sanction a commodity.

Prashad recommends to read the indictment against Maduro because it’s ludicrous, a joke of an evidence-free document written by teenagers.

All of the so-called evidence presented against Venezuela and its democratically elected government is equally shaky. They have been trying to do this for over 20 years. Bush tried to coup Chavez in 20o3, FFS. They’ve been gunning at Venezuela’s oil for that long. The sanctions have also been hitting Venezuela that long. What are we even talking about? Almost certainly, nothing you “know” about Venezuela is true. It’s all propaganda and disinformation planted to lead up to this coup.

Their conversation starts at about 20:00.

But we don’t need to do more. People are going to be on board with this because they have been ordered to be on board for this war, just like they’re always on board for every damned war of plunder. The cartoon They’re Not Even Trying to Lie Well Anymore by Ted Rall sums it up.

Ted Rall − 1-5-26

“He: There is a country.
She: This country has a president.
He: You don’t know anything about this country.
She: You don’t even know where it is.
He: They’re a threat.
She: He’s evil.
He: We need war! Else we’ll die!
She: These scripts aren’t even trying any more.
Producer: Americans are war sluts! No need for lube!”

Alastair Crooke : Netanyahu Lures Trump Into War with Iran by Judge Napolitano − Judging Freedom (YouTube)

This was an excellent, wide-ranging interview. The title was obviously chosen in advance because they only spoke of Iran at the very end. The first 90% was about Venezuela, generally, and then in relation to the effects it would have on discussions with Russia. Crooke says that discussions are now over. The U.S. has already demonstrated that its military power extends into Russia, having blown up bombers there, half a year ago. This was because Russia had been storing its long-range bombers in the open, as required by the only remaining nuclear-arms treaty. That is gone. Russia realizes now, at the very latest, that it cannot trust a word coming out of Trump’s mouth. He will talk to country’s and slaughter their armies behind their backs. He thinks that this is OK. You cannot trust that snake or anyone in his administration.

Crooke did note, at the end, that Israel will be ramping up another attack on Iran, as well as simultaneously hitting Lebanon and both parts of Palestine. These maniacs, these demons will never be done.

Why the U.S. Keeps Targeting Venezuela: Oil, Empire & China’s Influence | Ben Norton by India & Global Left (YouTube)

This is an excellent interview with a fluent Spanish-speaker whose spent a lot of time in Venezuela, reporting and investigating economics and politics. He knows a lot of people there and has many friends there. He says that the opposition in Venezuela, which on the tip of everyone’s tongue in the U.S., is negligible in Venezuela. They have no real presence, not even online. They are very marginal.

Those are the two parts of the narrative that are being pushed very hard: Maduro wasn’t even the president because their elections were a fraud, and also the opposition has just as much legitimacy to rule as the elected government. None of this is relevant, of course. Even if the opposition has no support among the people, the oligarchs of Venezuela, who co-own much of the media with the CIA, have outsized power relative to their numbers.

Norton, as is his wont, recounts the entire last 25 years of history of economic warfare and coups on Venezuela, and how it relates to other, similar actions throughout the world. This is not an isolated case.

He says that now, after 11 years of suffering under crippling sanctions—and the worst inflation that he has ever personally experienced—Venezuela’s economy was the second-fastest-growing economy in South America, mostly thanks to an influx of contracts with China and the Global South. The U.S. couldn’t abide that, of course, because they’d been trying to strangle it into giving up its oil. Now, they’re hijacking oil tankers, they’ve kidnapped the president, but they’re still a ways away from having control over the oil. They do have control over Venezuela’s ability to refine their crude oil, though.

He discusses the economies of the other countries in South America as well, in particular the raw materials they have, and to whom they export them. He noted that Chile is still suffering from the years of Pinochet, with the highest level of inequality of any country in South America, with the same oligarchs who looted the country then still owning everything now. I was already thinking it but then Norton also drew the parallel to how the Soviet Union was plundered during Perestroika.

He also provides a lot of detail about Argentina’s history, vis á vis China, swap lines, the IMF, over several administrations. He also talked about the likelihood that the U.S. will continue working to shut down the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) with China. In fact, he predicts that Honduras will officially recognize Taiwan and all of that entails. Honduras is very much in the U.S. pocket. Argentina is more than 1000% of their quote at the IMF.

As a fellow bloviator, I appreciate and am very much in awe of the information Ben has organized into a coherent picture and that he has at his disposal without looking anything up. It bespeaks someone who has done the work.

It’s like those warnings on Wikipedia, “This section may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience.”

Yes, but that audience is very interested.

Declaring “I don’t need international law,” Trump moves to seize more oil tankers in the Atlantic by Andre Damon (WSWS)

“US President Donald Trump asserted unlimited presidential powers to wage war all over the world in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, declaring, “I don’t need international law.”

“Asked what limits exist on his power as commander-in-chief, Trump replied: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.””

“On Tuesday, Trump announced on Truth Social that the US would seize between 30 and 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil, worth up to $3 billion. “This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America,” Trump wrote.”

“Trump has now called for a $1.5 trillion military budget for fiscal year 2027—a 66 percent increase. “America MUST have the strongest Military in the World, and it’s not even close!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “We will CUT the waste, but we will BUILD the power. $1.5 TRILLION!” According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, this would add $5.8 trillion to the national debt over 10 years.”

Vijay Prashad: Why the US Will Never ‘Rule’ Venezuela by BreakThrough News (YouTube)

“It’s very important to say that Hugo Chávez’s first government did not nationalize the oil. It’s important to say he wins the presidential election in 1998 with a mandate to improve the people’s condition of life. They pass a new constitution in 1999 mandating improving the people’s life. And then there’s a democratic law passed in 2001—the hydrocarbons law—which says that Venezuela should have more say over the surplus based on the oil extracted.

“Chevron understands that, you know, they’re playing ball and decides to negotiate with the Venezuelan government. Exxon Mobile goes nuts about this, you know, and and Canadian mining companies, Baric Gold, led by Peter Monk—Peter Monk writes in the Canadian press, saying Hugo Chávez should be overthrown.

“There’s a coup attempt against Chavez in 2002, right after the hydrocarbons law. You don’t need Stephen Miller around to say these things. Stephen Miller is a moron. This has been a longstanding part of US policy that this oil is US oil. Why should Exxon Mobile’s oil have been taken?

“And remember, Trump’s first secretary of state was Rex Tillerson, former CEO of of Exxon Mobile. And it was actually Rex Tillerson who engineers Exon Mobile’s confrontation between Guyana and Venezuela over the Essequibo region. I mean, they’ve been angry about this for a very long time. They want that oil back.

“And it’s important to tell people who are going to go and say silly things on social media: the United States doesn’t need oil. It’s an oil exporter. United States wants to control the oil. The United States wants to control the oil. It’s a supremely important resource. And also they don’t want the Bolivarian revolution to be using the oil to improve the conditions of life for people in the Caribbean through procarib, which, for a brief period of time, helped the people of Haiti. They don’t want the proceeds of the oil to be used to help left-wing movements across Latin America or indeed around the world.

“Don’t forget that it was Hugo Chávez who in 2003 said ‘we don’t want no US imperialism.‘ The first time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Hugo Chávez joining Fidel Castro in a global campaign against imperialism. Meanwhile, it was in fact about 6 or 7 years later for us to listen to the Russians and the Chinese say we we don’t want a single master in the world. Chavez was saying this 2003, when he [went] to the United Nations and says I can smell sulfur here after George W. Bush had spoken.

“Now it’s important to remember that what Stephen Miller tweets ‘this is our oil we want it back’ has been the basis of US policy from the 2001 hydrocarbon law to the present. Extraordinarily consistent policy that has gone from the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, blah blah blah.”

LIVE: Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou on Venezuela, 9/11 & More! by Lee Camp − Unredacted Tonight (YouTube)

Excellent interview. I learned,

• The U.S. had zero casualties. Kiriakou says that wouldn’t have been possible without complicity on the part of at least some Venezuelans, who were almost certainly on the CIA payroll.
• He thinks that the vice president was probably in on it, simply because of how conciliatory she is after the kidnapping versus how fire-breathing she was before.
• The U.S. went out of its way to bomb Chavez’s tomb, which had been turned into a political-information and tourist destination. WTF.
• The U.S. will not be “occupying” Venezuela. The country is bigger than Austria, Germany, and France combined, and it’s mostly jungle.
• Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves—centuries worth—but it’s also the dirtiest oil in the world.
• The U.S. administration seems to have gotten away with it, as the only other possible poles have either not reacted—China—or have just expressed dissatisfaction—Russia.
• Congress hasn’t said or done anything.
• The U.S. populace doesn’t care about war crimes.
• Neither does anyone in Europe.
• Macron cheered it!
• The Labour Secretary in Great Britain only chastised that this kind of thing might “embolden other countries.” So deliciously unaware of her own bias. But this is typical for Europeans: The problem is never the U.S. The problem is always whoever the U.S. says it is. So, this lady is dutifully afraid that the U.S.‘s master stroke of piracy and criminality might be emulated by the true criminals and enemies of the world: Um….checks with the U.S….ah, yes, of course: China, Russia, Iran, Cuba … who else? Oh, you’ll get back to me? Ok. I’ll wait here.
• Kiriakou: “Just do whatever you want. Nobody’s gonna stop you.”
• Jeffrey Sachs:

  “The issue before the council today is not the character of the government of Venezuela. The issue is whether any member state by force, coercion, or economic strangulation has the right to determine Venezuela’s political future or to exercise control over its affairs. This question goes directly to article 2, section 4 of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

“Kiriakou: Until 2017, where were the only refineries on Earth that could clean Venezuelan oil? They were in Houston, Texas. And in 2017, the first Trump administration effectively shut down the Venezuelan oil industry. And we mothballed those refineries.

“But the world didn’t just screech to a halt. China and India immediately built their own refineries to handle Venezuela’s dirty oil. But the Chinese did it right. The Chinese built a refinery in China, but they also built one in the Caribbean. The Indians built one in India and they’ve been shipping Venezuelan oil to India to refine it there. The Chinese were ready to do it right there in the Caribbean. The refinery is built, but it hasn’t yet been opened.

“Well, now they don’t need a refinery because whatever oil Venezuela lifts is going to come to the United States. We don’t have to occupy the oil fields in order to control Venezuela’s oil or to control the economy. We just have to insist with a very stern look and a pointing finger that oil comes to the United States.

“So, why did I bring up Iran in this? First of all, this was a big “fuck you” to the Chinese. But secondly, virtually the only leverage that Iran has in international affairs today is the ability to close off the straight of Hormuz. Right? Something like 60% of the world’s oil flows out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. It’s […] four miles across. So it’s easy to block the straight of Hormuz.

“So in the event of you know something terrible happening, if the Iranians needed to do something to pressure Western economies—and especially the US economy—closing the straight of Hormuz presumably with Russian and/or Chinese consent would be the only thing that they have to do. Well, now we don’t need Iranian oil. We have all the Venezuelan oil we could use for the next 500 years. So, it further weakens Iran.”

But the isn’t the U.S. a net exporter of oil? Or is that fossil fuels, including natural gas?

'Don’t you think Maduro was bad?' by HasanAbi (YouTube)

They: Maduro was a dictator.

Me: Fuck off.

They: What?!? Don’t you care that Maduro wasn’t a nice guy?

Me: No. Nothing you think you know about Venezuela is true. Nothing you think you know about Maduro is true.

They: But the Venezuelans…

Me: You don’t care about the Venezuelans. You care about low gas prices.

They: But Venezuelans are celebrating…

Me: The only people greeting the U.S. as liberators are oligarchs, plunderers, and assholes. Or the clinically deluded. Like you.

They: FOX News said…

Me: Look, there’s Lucy. She’s holding a football. Why don’t you try and kick it?

They: But they’re all drug dealers…

Me: They’re not. And it’s irrelevant.

They: You love drug dealers?

Me: No. You love drug dealers. The Sacklers[3] are still billionaires, advertising regularly on your favorite news sources.

They: But we’re just protecting Americans…

Me: No. You’re cheering the plundering of the world for the U.S.-American elite.

They: But Trump said…

Me: You have no principles. You have a daddy. You should be ashamed of what a pathetic sucker you are. You’re in a cult. Go try to kick another football. I bet he doesn’t pull it away this time.

They: But the NY Times wrote…

Me: Everything you know about the world has been told to you by people who hate not just you, but anyone who has anything. They want to plunder the world.

Me: You’re just a dupe who hates the enemy du jour. Everything you think you know about anything has been told to you by people who represent their own interests. They don’t even have to work very hard. You make it easy. You’re a cheap lay.

After Venezuela attack: White House threatens to murder Venezuelan acting president, attack Cuba and annex Greenland by Andre Damon (WSWS)

“In remarks to The Atlantic on Sunday, President Trump threatened Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as acting president on Saturday, with a fate “worse” than that of Maduro.

““If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price,” Trump said. “Probably bigger than Maduro.”

“Trump’s threat against Rodríguez came just hours after he had claimed at Saturday’s press conference that she had agreed to cooperate with US demands. Her public statements have been defiant, denouncing the US operation as “a barbarity” and calling Maduro Venezuela’s “only president.”

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” suggested that Cuba would be the next target of US military operations.

“When asked whether Cuba was the Trump administration’s “next target,” Rubio replied: “The Cuban government is a huge problem.” Pressed again, he said: “They are in a lot of trouble, yes.”

“Trump went even further, renewing his threat to annex Greenland, a territory of Denmark and a NATO ally of the United States.

““We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense,” Trump told The Atlantic, describing the island as “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.” Asked whether the military operation in Venezuela signaled a willingness to use force to take Greenland, Trump declined to rule it out.”

“The attack on Venezuela is part of the broader US confrontation with China and Russia. China currently purchases 80 percent of Venezuelan oil exports. By seizing control of Venezuela’s oil industry, Washington aims to deprive its rivals of a major energy source.

“Rubio declared: “Why does China need their oil? Why does Russia need their oil? Why does Iran need their oil? They’re not even in this continent. This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live, and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors and rivals of the United States.””

That’s a statement that a majority of U.S.-Americans will agree with, unfortunately. Because people in the U.S. love the privilege of empire. And they have no principles.

“Republican Senator Tom Cotton was even more thuggish: “Where were they when Delta Force went in and got Nicolás Maduro? They were nowhere to be found. And, frankly, that’s the same thing you saw in June with China and Russia in Iran. We struck Iran. China and Russia did nothing. They stood idly by. That’s a reminder that the United States is still the world’s dominant superpower.””

The worst people in the world are having a wonderful time.

“The events since Saturday’s attack have made clear that this conflict is spiraling into a broader war. The claim, repeated by Rubio on ABC’s “This Week,” that this is “a law enforcement operation” rather than a war is a total absurdity.

“Eighty Venezuelans—soldiers and civilians—were killed in the assault. US forces destroyed at least five buildings at Venezuela’s largest military base. American warships are blockading the country’s ports. The president of a sovereign nation has been kidnapped and is being held in a Brooklyn jail. And the Trump administration is now openly threatening murder, annexation and further military strikes across multiple continents.”

None of that matters because laws bind those who aren’t willing to be criminals. Everything we’ve been told about international law has always been fake.

“Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared: “Let me be clear, Maduro is an illegitimate dictator,” complaining only that the war was launched “without a credible plan for what comes next” and without sufficient briefings to Congress.

“House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries stuck to the same script, declaring, “We’re in the euphoria period of acknowledging across the board that Maduro was a bad guy and that our military is absolutely incredible.” Jeffries declared that Maduro is “not the legitimate head of government”—fully accepting the administration’s fraudulent premise for the attack—and criticized Trump only for failing to “properly notify Congress.””

The ruling class loves this. They love it. This is great for them. Look at the stock market. It loves empire. They will all celebrate anyone who advances their short-term interests.

Veni, Vidi, Venezuela: Pox Americana From War-A-Lago by Dennis Kucinich (Antiwar.com)

“[…] the President’s digression from his celebration of the takeover of Venezuela to extolling the glories of federal troops’ enforcement of law in American cities, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, a nineteenth century law which limits the use of federal troops for domestic purposes.”

“[…] knocking over the government of Venezuela which, to reiterate, spent approximately ZERO for its defense in 2024 and then declaring the gambit to be one of the greatest military operations since WWII, is a violation of the English language which imposes limits on hyperbole — or should.”

Venezuela is not a military power in any way. It is a country that can only exist in a country because the U.N. has agreed that countries don’t attack just to plunder each other, just because they can. It was a temporary agreement that might doesn’t make right. This is what the U.S. has been doing all along. It just used to care more about marketing.

Regime Change and Nation-Building Are Back! by Ron Paul (Antiwar.com)

“Warmongering US Senator Lindsey Graham has taken to the television news programs to urge President Trump to continue on to Cuba and then Iran. President Trump seemed to agree, stating that, “we have to do it again. We can do it again, too. Nobody can stop us.”

“Venezuela was just another neocon operation. First comes propaganda demonizing the country and its leadership. Then comes saber-rattling and threats of war. The operation is launched and the “objectives” are quickly reached. Or so they claim. But then it all falls apart. We become poorer as the special interests get richer. And those we claim to be liberating suffer worse than under the previous regime.”

European Union welcomes Maduro’s abduction, while invoking international law by Peter Schwarz (WSWS)

“On Sunday, the European Union (EU) officially took a stand on the US attack on Venezuela. The brief statement, which was supported by all 27 EU member states with the exception of Hungary, has schizophrenic traits. In half a page, it invokes no less than five times the principles of international law, territorial integrity, sovereignty and democracy, but explicitly welcomes the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which violated all of these principles. It invokes international law, but does not condemn its violation by the US with a single word.”

“The conclusion is always the same: Europe, and Germany in particular, must rearm in order to assert itself in a world where “might makes right” prevails. Pacifism means “better to be a slave than to risk your life,” explains the F.A.Z. In his New Year’s address, Chancellor Merz called for “defending and asserting our interests even more strongly on our own.”

“The European powers do not yet dare to openly oppose Trump. They are dependent on US support to continue the war against Russia in Ukraine. On Tuesday, a summit meeting of the “coalition of the willing” is taking place in Paris, at which decisions will be made on the continuation of negotiations with Russia and further support for Ukraine. The Europeans want to win Trump, who has been zigzagging for months, over to their side and not anger him.

““We must not forget that we are still involved in Ukraine,” said Christian Democratic Union foreign policy expert Armin Laschet, explaining the European stance on Venezuela. “The question is: Would it be wise for the Europeans to decide now to make a one-sided accusation against US President Donald Trump?” Doing so could lead to a loss of support for further steps in Ukraine.”

No, The US Kidnapping of Maduro Is Not Unique & Shocking — In Fact It’s Quite Common by Lee Camp (Lee Camp − Truth & Freedom)

“The horror show Trump and Rubio have scripted for us is… well, a horror show. However, it’s not a new horror show. Some of their actions — like blowing fishermen to bits in the waters off Venezuela — are more full-frontal than we’re accustomed to seeing in Latin America. But controlling, decimating, and destabilizing countries around the world is the S.O.P. of the US empire.

“I don’t say this to convey apathy or boredom with the completely criminal and unhinged invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro. I convey this history to explain that Trump is not a bad apple. He is a representation of a long-running and absolute moral rot of the US empire.”

Meet Paul Singer, the Billionaire Trump Megadonor Set to Make a Killing on Venezuela Oil by Stephen Prager (Scheer Post / Common Dreams)

“In November 2025, less than two months before Trump’s operation to take over Venezuela, Singer’s investment firm, Elliott Investment Management, inked a highly fortuitous deal.

“It purchased Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, for $5.9 billion—a sale that was forced by a Delaware court after Venezuela defaulted on its bond payments.

“The court-appointed special master who forced the sale, Robert Pincus, is a member of the board of directors for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

“Elliott Management hailed the court order requiring the sale in a press release, saying it was “backed by a group of strategic US energy investors.”

“Singer acquired the Citgo’s three massive coastal refineries, 43 oil terminals, and more than 4,000 gas stations at a “major discount” because of its distressed status. Advisers to the court overseeing the sale estimated its value at $11-13 billion, while the Venezuelan government estimated it at $18 billion.

“As Legum explained, the Trump administration’s embargo on Venezuelan oil imports to the United States bore the primary responsibility for the company’s plummeting value:”

They’re running straight into WWIII to be able to burn up the planet faster, all to fill already overfilled coffers. This is who wins. This is who we allow to win. This is who we are. Prove me wrong.

“Venezuelan Vice President and Minister of Petroleum Delcy Rodríguez called the sale of Citgo to Singer “fraudulent” and “forced” in December.”

“Massie said that Singer, “who’s already spent $1,000,000 to defeat me in the next election, stands to make billions of dollars on his distressed Citgo investment, now that this administration has taken over Venezuela.”

“Fiorentini added that “Paul Singer’s shady purchase of Citgo has everything to do with this coup.””

US imperialist bandits parade kidnapped Maduro in show trial by Andre Damon (WSWS)

“When Maduro was asked to confirm his identity, he declared: “My name is President Nicolás Maduro Moros. I am president of the Republic of Venezuela. I am here kidnapped since January 3rd—”

“He was allowed to get only a few words out before 92-year-old Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein cut him off. “There will be a time and a place to go into all of this,” he snapped.

“As deputy US marshals led him from the courtroom, Maduro declared in Spanish: “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”

“The hearing lasted just over 35 minutes. Both pleaded not guilty.”

Did they take that judge out of mothballs? I picture him sitting there with an ear trumpet.

“Flores bore the marks of the violence inflicted upon her during the abduction. The Telegraph reported that Flores “had visible bruises to her face—one the size of a golf ball on her forehead—red cheeks and what appeared to be a welt over her right eye.” Her attorney, Mark Donnelly, told the court she had sustained “significant injuries during her abduction” and asked the judge to authorize an X-ray to determine whether her ribs were fractured.”

Dude, they dragged the lady out of bed and beat the shit out of her.

“The accusations against Maduro are not meant to be believed by anyone. Maduro was not kidnapped because he trafficked drugs. He was kidnapped because his country sits atop the largest proven oil reserves in the world—303 billion barrels—and the gangster Trump wants them. Trump said so himself at Saturday’s press conference: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars … and start making money for the country.”

“The Hill reported on Monday that Trump told oil companies about the assault on Venezuela before it happened, while not notifying Congress, let alone the American people. “Reporters on Air Force One asked the president if he spoke to American oil companies to tip them off before” the attack, The Hill wrote.

““Trump nodded and said he spoke to the companies ‘before and after’ the operation. ‘And they want to go in, and they’re going to do a great job for the people of Venezuela, and they’re going to represent us well,’ Trump continued.””

INTERVIEW: Complete disregard for international law by George Galloway | Chris Hedges (YouTube)

Always excellent and on-point analysis.

Common Che Guevara banger (Reddit)

The American Working Class − Friend or Foe? − Che Guevara

AMB. Chas Freeman : China and Russia view Trump as a Kidnapper by Judge Napolitano − Judging Freedom (YouTube)

“If the Congress does nothing, why do we even bother having a a legislative body? Maybe we should just admit we have a dictatorship and be done with it.

“And the same principle exists with regard to international law. If you have a constitutional collapse at home, the rule of law disappears domestically. Apparently, it also disappears internationally as far as the United States is concerned.

“So I think this is really the end of 300 years of effort by western civilization to develop rules to regulate international behavior. Now it’s entirely might makes right. There’s no pretense of providing a legal justification for what was done. And the precedent has been set.

“Prime Minister Frederickson of Denmark is now concerned that we will in fact take Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, by force, and the whole fabric of collective defense that we set up—NATO and the Rio treaty, which people don’t seem to remember, but among American states that would justify Latin America uniting to retaliate against our invasion of Venezuela. Frederickson of Denmark says, I think quite accurately, that if this precedent is applied to Greenland, NATO will disappear.”

“We negotiate internationally entirely through cronies of the president—Steve Witkoff, his business associate in New York, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, neither of whom have been confirmed by the Senate to have the power to represent the United States. So we’re basically operating entirely outside any legal framework.”

From a FOX News clip of Kat Timpf on Gutfeld,

“Let me get this straight. We go to a country, we capture their leader, we bomb it, and then we say we run this country now. And that’s not war. But when they say send cocaine over here that people are willingly snorting, that is war.”

And then Gutfeld played the Trump simp. Completely. Useless. Unsurprising. I was pleasantly surprised by Timpf’s pushback, though. Is there hope? I’ve watched her before (with my Dad, obviously) and she’s probably the sanest voice on that show, or on that network, so it wasn’t too surprising. I hope she can hold the line and change some minds.

Max Blumenthal : Trump and Rubio’s Buddies to Pillage Venezuela by Judge Napolitano − Judging Freedom (YouTube)

This was another excellent analysis and breakdown of the so-called evidence against Maduro by an excellent journalist.

America the Rogue State by Chris Hedges (Substack)

“Our democratic institutions are moribund. They are unable or unwilling to restrain our ruling gangster class. The lobby-infested Congress is a useless appendage. It surrendered its Constitutional authority, including the right to declare war and pass legislation, long ago. It sent a paltry 38 bills to Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law last year. Most were “disapproval” resolutions rolling back regulations enacted during the Biden administration. Trump governs by imperial decree through Executive Orders. The media, owned by corporations and oligarchs, from Jeff Bezos to Larry Ellison, is an echo chamber for the crimes of state […]”

“Democratic Party leaders treat New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a flicker of light in the darkness — as if he has leprosy. Better to let the whole ship go down than surrender their status and privilege.”

“Dictatorships invert the social order. Honesty, hard work, compassion, solidarity, self-sacrifice are negative qualities. Those who embody these qualities are marginalized and persecuted. The heartless, corrupt, mendacious, cruel and mediocre thrive.”

“Can anyone seriously make the argument that the U.S. is a democracy? Are there any democratic institutions that function? Is there any check on state power? Is there any mechanism that can enforce the rule of law at home, where legal residents are snatched by masked thugs from our streets, where a phantom “radical left” is an excuse to criminalize dissent, where the highest court in the land bestows king-like power and immunity on Trump?”

“Our reigning gangsters will accelerate the decline. They will steal as much as they can, as fast as they can, on the way down. The Trump family has pocketed more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts since the 2024 re-election. They do so as they mock the rule of law and tighten their vice-like grip. The walls are closing in. Free speech is abolished on college campuses and the airwaves. Those who decry the genocide lose their jobs or are deported. Journalists are slandered and censored.”

“Flush with success, there is already talk by Trump and his officials about Iran, Cuba, Greenland and perhaps Colombia, Mexico and Canada.”

“If nations and people do not bow before the great Moloch in Washington, they are bombed. This is not about establishing legitimate rule. It is not about fair elections. It is about using the threat of death and destruction to procure total subservience.”

“Iraqis, a million of whom were killed during the U.S. war and occupation, know what comes next. The infrastructure, modern and efficient under Saddam Hussein — I reported from Iraq under Hussein so can attest to this truth — was destroyed. The Iraqi puppets installed by the U.S. had no interest in governance and reportedly stole some $150 billion in oil revenues.

“The U.S., in the end, was booted out of Iraq, although controls Iraqi oil revenues which are funnelled to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The government in Baghdad is allied with Iran. Its military includes Iran-backed militias in Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. Iraq’s largest trading partners are China, the UAE, India and Turkey.”

“The tragedy is not that the American empire is dying, it is that it is taking down so many innocents with it.”

As I wrote above (before reading this article): Just because empires inevitably die, the flailing of a dying empire was never going to be pleasant.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sharply condemned the U.S. attack on Venezuela by BreakThrough News (YouTube)

✊✊✊

Mexico’s military is just as weak as Venezuela’s. I hope she doesn’t hear helicopters soon, but all bets are off.

The Plot Against Maduro: Venezuela on the Edge by Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, Carlos Ron, Jack Murphy (YouTube)

Another excellent analysis with a lot of background from Carlos Ron, Former Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister, as well as a military breakdown by Jack Murphy.

0:00:00 — Jeremy Scahill: Opening
0:07:51 — Carlos Ron, Former Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister, Joins from Caracas
0:09:20 — Bolivarian Revolution Still in Charge in Venezuela
0:12:04 — How is the Venezuelan Government Handling This Situation?
0:14:54 — Breaking Down the Trump Administration and Media Narrative
0:17:10 — Who is Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s Interim President?
0:19:48 — No Evidence to U.S. Claims Against Maduro 
0:21:14 — ‘Acts of War’: Kidnapping Maduro and Attacking Boats in the Caribbean
0:25:19 — Jack Murphy’s Report Detailing Delta Force’s Capture and Arrest Operation
0:27:27 — How Did All of This Unfold?
0:30:47 — Timeline of The Operation
0:36:14 — Marco Rubio ‘Driving Force’ Behind This and ‘Sights Set on Havana Next’
0:37:29 — Did People Within Venezuela’s Government Collaborate With the U.S.?
0:40:02 — ‘Come Get Me’: Colombia’s President Petro Dares Trump
0:43:48 — Agencies Involved: JSOC, FBI, HRT, and DEA
0:45:40 — U.S. No Longer Has Hegemony It Used to Have
0:48:55 — U.S. Seeks to Control Continent to Compete With Global Superpowers
0:51:30 — Understanding Oil Business, Reserves in Venezuela
0:55:32 — Making Sense of Narratives After U.S. Military Operations
0:56:44 — Trump Administration Blatant About Oil Interests in Venezuela
1:01:01 — ‘Convictions’ and Same Government ‘Remain in Place’ in Venezuela
1:02:57 — Jeremy: Closing

The Real Tyrannical Regime by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“So let’s recap:

“Russia invades Ukraine claiming there’s a NATO proxy force directly on its border = Crazy. Evil. Worse than Hitler.

“US invades Venezuela claiming China is making energy deals there thousands of miles from the US border = Fine. Normal. Monroe Doctrine. Just wish he’d asked Congress.”

A Recent Book Shows Why Invading Greenland Would Be a Dumb Idea by Matthew Petti (Reason)

“After Trump’s diet regime change operation in Venezuela, he immediately set his sights on Greenland, with the implication that it would be an armed conquest rather than a voluntary purchase.

““Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told CNN, bragging about a world “governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that a U.S. attack on any part of Denmark would end “everything” that has to do with “post-World War II security.””

I like the “diet regime change” epithet. They kidnapped Maduro but the government is still in place.

Trump’s sphere of influence quest is sloppy, self-sabotage by Anatol Lieven (Responsible Statecraft)

“During the Cold War, the previous determination to exclude foreign empires morphed into a determination to prevent states in the Western Hemisphere from joining hostile military and political alliances; or if Washington was forced to concede this (as in the case of Cuba), to cripple the states concerned through economic sanctions and subversion.

“This longstanding U.S. strategy renders absurd the NATO and European line concerning Ukraine that “every country has the right to choose its international alliances,” and that no other country has a veto over this. And of course, this rule extends far beyond the U.S. and Latin America, or Russia and Ukraine. Whatever its legal or moral “right,” Vietnam would be very ill-advised to join a military alliance with the U.S. against China, as would Bangladesh if it joined a Chinese alliance against India. Or as one Kazakh official once told me when the U.S. was seeking a security relationship with his country, “Every sensible Kazakh has a map in his head; and what that map shows is that Russia is there, and China is there, and Kazakhstan is in the middle. And the U.S. is not on that map.”

“The implacable U.S. goal of preventing a hostile military presence in the Americas has been pursued by both Republican and Democratic administrations; and though the result for populations in the region was often monstrous oppression and suffering, this strategy did succeed in excluding potential military adversaries from America’s neighborhood. No Latin American government today is dreaming of inviting the Chinese or Russians to establish bases on their territories. Nor would Beijing and Moscow accept such an invitation. For they all know very well how ferocious and overwhelming would be the U.S. response.”

“[…] the kidnapping of President Maduro seems intended to frighten the existing Venezuelan regime into submitting to Trump’s will, especially when it comes to U.S. control of Venezuela’s oil; not just for profit, but for leverage against Russia and China. By cutting off much of Cuba’s oil imports, it might also enable the U.S. to starve Cuba into surrender, allowing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s relatives to return “home” and regain the property that they lost in the Cuban Revolution.”

“[…] there is an issue of diplomatic tone. It has often been said, and rightly, that Russia weakened its influence over its neighbors by the bullying tone in which its officials often stated Russian demands. Even Russian officials at their worst however would be hard put to match the coarse, smirking arrogance of Stephen Miller on the subject of the U.S. demand for Greenland. Miller clearly sees himself as an old-style imperialist.”

The Narco-Trafficking Elite Set to Run Venezuela (w/ Maureen Tkacik) | The Chris Hedges Report by Chris Hedges (YouTube)

I learned that Marco Rubio grew up working for his family in Miami, making enough money to attend every one of the Miami Dolphins home games one season. He wrote proudly of his ability to make his own way through life. He worked for his brother-in-law Cicilio, who was “was arrested and convicted of trafficking millions of dollars worth of cocaine”. Rubio maintains that he had no idea at all about any of this, which is probably as true as any of the rest of his largely confabulated personal history. E.g., from the Wikipedia article on Marco Rubio,

“Rubio’s previous statements that his parents were forced to leave Cuba in 1959 (after Fidel Castro came to power) were falsehoods.[5] His parents left Cuba in 1956, during the Batista regime.”

Keir Starmer is a COWARD by HasanAbi (YouTube)

“What’s worse is they’re also trying to do this with the Greenland thing. British minister cannot say the US should not invade Greenland. What an ally Denmark has.

“Dude, it’s so crazy cuz Trump is literally looking at this and salivating.

“He’s like, I’m going to take Greenland. I’m going to take … colonize France.

“You know what I mean? What can you say? You can’t say anything. You can’t do anything.

“Donald Trump’s going to literally come over and be like, uh, actually, you know what? It’s not just Greenland. Denmark is mine too.

“What can you say? Nothing.”

“If this [were] my job, I’d have a little bit of shame. Like, if my job [were] to sit there and just eat America’s dick, as America literally puts its dick and balls all over the table. At some point, I’d be like, “This is, I mean, this is too much. I can’t do this. I can’t stand doing this. What the fuck is my life?”

“You have no dignity, man. You have no honor. You have no care or consideration for your fellow man.

“It’s incredible because like with Greenland at least, white supremacy is still a a very big motivating force in this calculation, right? Like Venezuelans are brown, they’re far away, who cares, right? Gazans are brown, Israel is our ally. Who cares, right?

“But Greenland, now of course there’s indigenous people in Greenland, but like it’s still under the white periphery. This is the difference between, you know, Belgium and its colonial conquest or even Germany and its African colonial initiatives versus colonizing and and wholesale slaughtering white people. Right?

“This was literally what caused people to go, “Hold on, Hitler. We were with you.” Right? But this is a a bridge too far. What the fuck are you doing? You’re taking over other white countries. You can’t be doing that. You know, we have this established thing. Like what do you what the fuck going on? Donald Trump is literally doing the Adolf Hitler play of being like, “No, I’m going to take all the white countries, too. Nothing you can do about it.””

Abduction in Caracas by Tariq Ali (ZNetwork)

“Two decades before US forces kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro this weekend, Hugo Chávez had already predicted the approach:”

“Years ago, someone told me: ‘They’re going to end up accusing you of being a drug trafficker – you personally – you, Chávez. Not just that the government supports it, or permits it – no, no, no. They’re going to try to apply the Noriega formula to you.’ They’re looking for a way to associate Chávez directly with drug trafficking. And then, anything goes against a ‘drug trafficker president’, right?”

“[…] there is another precedent, which should not be forgotten: that of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, President of Haiti in the early 1990s and then again from his election in 2001 until his overthrow in 2004. Initially a moderate, Aristide had the nerve to say that Haiti should be repaid by France for the massive reparations the island had been forced to pay its former colonial master for the crime of abolishing slavery after the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution – some $21 billion in today’s money. Paris worried that this might set a precedent for Algerian demands. In February 2004, French and Haitian officials collaborated with the US to force Aristide out of the country.”

“[…] I was in Caracas when Jimmy Carter visited the country to observe the elections. He was shocked when, entering a restaurant in the leafy eastern suburbs of the city, where the bourgeoisie lives, the local opposition spat abuse at him. Afterwards he said, ‘I’ve never seen an opposition like this anywhere’. When asked, ‘How did you think the elections went?’, he answered that he hadn’t seen such a fair election in any country, clearly including the United States.

“Chávez always insisted that the Bolivarian Revolution must be a democratic experience – and it was. Many people, including myself, discussed this with him. When the first results came in for the 2004 referendum, I asked Chávez, ‘Compañero, what are we going to do if we lose?’ He said, ‘What do you do if you lose? You leave office and fight again from outside, explaining why they were wrong’. He had a very strong sense of this. Which is why it’s a travesty to accuse the Chavistas of being anti-democratic from the start. During the Chávez period, the opposition newspapers and television stations blasted propaganda non-stop, attacking the regime – something you could never have seen in Britain or the United States. When people said to Chávez, ‘We should crack down’, he said, ‘No, we fight them politically’.”

“Economically, there’s no doubt that the Bolivarians were ill-advised, even during the Chávez days. When the best Keynesian economists turned up there, including Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, as well as Joseph Stiglitz, their recommendations weren’t followed. Possibly it would have been better at that point if they had turned to the Chinese. But the real economic deterioration was a result of the US siege. The sanctions on oil sales, imposed by Trump in 2017-18 and maintained by Biden, effectively led to some 7 million people leaving the country, with Venezuelan refugees turning up in Miami, Colombia and other parts of Latin America. Washington knew what it was doing.”

“In Chávez’s 2005 speech, he went on to say:”

“Fidel once told me, ‘Chávez, if that ever happens to you or me, if they invade us, the last thing we’d do is what Saddam did: go and hide in a hole. You have to die fighting, in the first line of battle.’ And that’s what I would do – if I have to die, I’ll die on the front line with the dignity of a Venezuelan who loves this country.”

“Nothing is settled as yet.”

Trump Took Maduro Hostage — What Comes Next? | Chas Freeman by India & Global Left (YouTube)

“There’s no reason, theoretically, that the members of NATO should not invoke article 5 against any country that invades Greenland. And, if I were the Danish prime minister, I would probably do that. I would announce that if Greenland were to be invaded, that I will insist on the other members of NATO enforcing article 5 against whichever country invaded Greenland. I’m just citing illustrations, since you asked for hypothetical illustrations. I’m sorry to say that it’s unrealistic to expect the Europeans, who are an invertebrate life form […] to do anything whatsoever.”

“If you simply rhetorically condemn things and take no concrete action to enforce the norms that you’re defending, those norms cease to be have any value at all. Ironically, of course, this is a case of a superpower, abusing a smaller middle ranking country. It is fair to say that there’s been quite a history behind this.

“Perhaps you can you can start this with the separation of Kosovo from Serbia by NATO which transformed NATO from a purely defensive alliance that had provided stability in Europe into an offensive alliance alliance that created instability and institutionalizing it because Kosovo is now recognized only by a minority of countries and its existence depends on a foreign garrison of a military garrison. There’s no peace between Kosovo and Serbia for in effect, other than that enforced by the force of arms.

“So that was the beginning. Then we had the annexation of Crimea by Russia which basically followed the Serbian Kosovo precedent. This is the danger of precedents: that if you do something, that it will inspire others to do the same. So now you know one of the implications of what President Trump has just done is that, if Mexico, for example—out of exasperation with the continued flow of guns over the border from the United States—were to bomb the gun factories or the depots where the guns are stored, it could site a precedent. It could even kidnap Donald Trump and bring him to justice in Mexico for crimes against humanity, war crimes and policies that Mexico finds unacceptable.

“Again, I’m speaking hypothetically because I don’t think Claudia Scheinbaum has any intention of doing any of that. But I’m just making a point that we have we have this possibility.”

Ushering In The Age Of Impunity: Venezuela, Palestine, And The End Of International Law by Craig Mokhiber (ZNetwork)

“[…] the unmistakable, unequivocal message that the U.S. imperial regime, its Israeli attack dog, and its legions of subservient Western vassals are sending to the world, to the nation states in its gunsights, and to all peoples resisting foreign occupation, colonial domination, and racist regimes is this: Diplomacy will not save you. International law will not save you. The United Nations will not save you. And we are coming for you.”

How The White Empire Besieges The World by Indrajit Samarajiva (Indica)

“[…] sanctions is just the White word for sieges! As Richard Nixon said in the 1970s, when they sanctioned socialist Chile into destruction, the goal was to “make [Chile’s] economy scream.” As a State Department memo in the 1960s said about Cuba, “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba,” by “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.””

“The only thing that counts is feeding nations and natural resources into the Capitalist AI’s mouth that actually runs the place. Strategy is perhaps putting too fine a point on it here, we are witnessing algorithmic damage from corporations that do not care and squeeze nations until oil and blood come out.”

“Cuba and North Korea are still besieged to this day. The US prevented medical equipment from going to Cuba during COVID and life-saving equipment to Syria after an earthquake, that’s how deep and depraved these sieges are, hidden behind the White-washing word ‘sanctions’.”

“[…] there is really no ‘post’ war period. Just a comma between White atrocities.”

US Sanctions Kill as Many People as Wars by Mark Weisbrot & Francisco Rodriguez (This is Hell!)

“The impact of sectoral and secondary sanctions is indiscriminate and purposely so. US officials regularly say that the sanctions target the government and not the people. Economic pain is the means by which the sanctions are supposed to work… How many people were dying annually as a result of these unilateral sanctions, which are over 70% US sanctions is comparable to war. Even if you take the low end of it, it’s still 368,000.”

Genocide and the Illusion of Western Civilization by Hamid Dabashi (This is Hell!)

“What is imperialism? It is capitalism times geography. That’s all it is. Imperialism does around the globe what capitalism is doing at home. What is capitalism is doing at home? Cheap labor, abused labor codified in color as black or brown or gendered as women…What is imperialism? When the yield of capital inside any particular unit of capitalism hits a wall, you go around the globe. What do you do around the globe? If you go to Asia, Africa, Latin America, what do you want? You want cheap labor and raw materials. In order to justify that, in order to rationalize that, you need to dehumanize those people you are abusing and robbing of their resources.”

It’s really not more complicated than that.

Mass protests erupt in Iran over mounting economic distress by Keith Jones (WSWS)

“The protests began with a December 28 shutdown of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, organized by bazaar merchants and traders, historically a pillar of the regime. In subsequent days, they spread to cities and towns across much of the country, including key industrial centers such as Isfahan, Mashhad and Ahvaz. Reports indicate the protest movement has been especially strong in areas with large ethnic minority populations, including Kurdistan.

“The protests have involved diverse social layers, including university students, shopkeepers, truck drivers and public sector workers, and taken the form of “sector strikes” as well as short demonstrations and mass gatherings.

“On Monday, December 29, as the protest movement was rapidly spreading beyond Tehran, the head of Iran’s central bank, Mohammad Reza Farzin, submitted his resignation. The collapse in the value of Iran’s currency, the rial, is a major factor driving Iran’s 40 percent-plus inflation rate.

“The next day, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian appealed for “dialogue” with the protesters. “We have fundamental actions on the agenda to reform the monetary and banking system and preserve the purchasing power of the people,” he claimed.

“In fact, the “liberalization” measures carried out by Iranian governments in recent years, in accordance with the policy prescriptions of the World Bank and IMF, including privatization and the elimination or curtailment of subsidies on essential goods, have only served to impoverish working people while further enriching a tiny bourgeois elite.”

“Years of punishing sanctions; the Iranian bourgeoisie’s pursuit of its selfish class interests; last year’s twelve-day war with Israel, which concluded with a US strike on Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities; the “snap-back” of still more extensive sanctions last October; and the fall in the price of oil have all had a devastating impact on Iran’s economy and the living standards and lives of ordinary Iranians.

“As a consequence of dilapidated infrastructure, Iran faces severe energy shortages that have forced rolling power cuts, disrupting production and causing Tehran to temporarily close government offices and impose a shorter workweek across much of the country. Large sections of Iran have also been badly impacted by climate-change-driven drought, further driving up food prices and slashing rural incomes.

“Already in 2024, the Ministry of Social Welfare found that 57 percent of Iranians had experienced malnourishment. Meat has become a luxury item, with food prices rising overall last year by about 70 percent. Prices for hundreds of vital medicines doubled or more during 2025, forcing many people to forego vital health care.”

Horrific fire in Crans Montana, Switzerland: No tragic accident, but manslaughter amid lust for profit by Peter Schwarz (WSWS)

“Even some of the guests on the ground floor were only able to escape the inferno by breaking windows. Others were pulled out of the entrance area and into the open air by helpers. Eyewitnesses describe horrific scenes. “Faces were completely disfigured, hair had fallen out. People were burned black, their clothes fused to their skin,” is how one rescuer described the scene.”

“The immediate cause of the fire appears to have been largely clarified. So-called party fountains, which emit a bright flame from above, set fire to the sound insulation on the ceiling of the basement. Numerous cell phone photos and videos circulating on the internet show waiters bringing champagne bottles decorated with burning party fountains into the room, guests waving them near the ceiling, and the fire finally breaking out.”

Indoor fireworks. God loves fools and drunks but perhaps being a foolish drunk is going a bit too far. They were serving these in the basement? Great idea.

“[…] there is much to hide. Given the large number of victims and the scale of the disaster, the public prosecutor’s office may be forced to extend its investigation somewhat in order to minimise the damage to the tourism industry. But this will not change the fundamental problem that led to the disaster in Crans-Montana: the disregard for human life in the interests of profit.”

The Crans-Montana inferno: New findings prove the responsibility of local authorities by Peter Schwarz (WSWS)

“Nicolas Féraud, president of the municipality responsible for fire safety inspections, was forced to admit that the local authority bears joint responsibility for the catastrophe. The last inspection, Féraud said, had taken place in 2019. For five years, the bar had not been inspected.

“However, even during the three inspections that took place between 2015 and 2019, the cheap insulation material on the ceiling of the bar was not considered important. The highly flammable material was ignited on the night of the fire by “fountain candles.””

“Féraud also had to admit that the dangers posed by the ceiling had long been known. A newly surfaced mobile phone video from New Year’s night 2020 shows a waiter urgently warning guests of the risk of fire.”

“Féraud, a member of the right-liberal FDP, claimed that he would have acted immediately if he had known earlier about the party practices at the bar. When it was pointed out that the bar had advertised the fountain candles on its website, he replied that anyone was free to write whatever they wanted on their website.”

“Féraud also rejected any suspicion that bribery or cronyism had been involved. Neither he nor the responsible fire inspectors had personal relationships with the landlord couple, he claimed. Coming from the same man who only a few days earlier had asserted that the bar was inspected “annually or biennially,” this claim is of little value.”

“The tourism industry, too, is increasingly dominated by profit-hungry, globally operating corporations. In the case of Crans-Montana, US corporation Vail Resorts, which owns all the ski facilities and several restaurants, plays this role. The authorities are put under pressure or bought off by them. Smaller actors, such as the Morettis, only prevail if they possess the required ruthlessness.”

Debanking: How German banks suppress fundamental democratic rights by Justus Leicht, Peter Schwarz (WSWS)

“Financial institutions are terminating the accounts of those affected, although they have often been customers of the banks for years or decades. They are then no longer able to pay their bills, collect membership fees and donations or, in the case of solidarity organizations, provide assistance to those persecuted by the state.”

“Basic democratic rights protected by the Constitution—such as freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of association—are thus undermined and eliminated without the public knowing about it or being informed of the reasons. Banks, intelligence agencies and government representatives are working hand in hand behind the scenes. Donald Trump’s government is also involved, using sanctions against alleged “terrorists” and the dominance of American financial service providers to put pressure on German financial institutions.”

“The Civicus Monitor platform, which assesses the state of democratic freedoms in 198 countries in terms of five categories, has downgraded Germany from the highest level, “open,” to the middle level, “restricted,” in just two years. Germany is now on a par with Hungary, where Viktor Orbán is heading an authoritarian regime.”

“The situation is even worse for individuals who have been sanctioned by the EU itself. The WSWS reported on the de facto professional ban for political reasons imposed on Berlin-based German journalist Hüseyin Doğru, whose account was also frozen. Doğru is not allowed to engage in paid work, nor is he allowed to receive economic support of any kind.”

German court convicts student for criticising the military by Florian Hasek, Inessa Reed (WSWS)

“Young people and young adults cannot escape military propaganda in schools. They are not allowed to express criticism without risking penalties to their grades, disciplinary action or even criminal measures, up to and including confrontation with the public prosecutor.”

“This propaganda and recruitment campaign aims to expand the armed forces to 480,000 soldiers and reservists in the coming years.

“The fact that the Bundeswehr is taking legal action against a pupil’s satirical criticism illustrates the severity with which it is responding to the growing resistance of young people to militarism and conscription.

“Polls show that the overwhelming majority of 18- to 26-year-olds reject conscription. The Bundeswehr is trying to make it more “palatable” by deploying youth officers as figures of identification. They are presented as neutral experts who want to defend security and democracy. Their appearances in schools, however, are part of a systematic recruitment strategy. Such manipulation has already led in the past to youth dying as “cannon fodder.””

“At places of education—where young people should be learning to question power relations and draw historical lessons—the Bundeswehr is invited in and critical discussion suppressed.

“Instead of encouraging debate on war and political history, pupils are intimidated, and criticism is punished and banned. Once again, the reactionary spirit of German militarism is to take hold in the minds of a new generation.”

Sanctioned by EU. Abandoned by Switzerland | Nathalie Yamb by Neutrality Studies and Nathalie Yamb (YouTube)

00:00:00 Intro & Reasons for Sanctions
00:03:04 Financial De-platforming & Frozen Assets
00:12:46 Travel Bans & Notification of Sanctions
00:17:51 Refusal of Consular Assistance & Surveillance
00:27:12 Legal Recourse & The Judicial Trap
00:36:20 Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) & Banking
00:41:49 Psychological Impact & Support Systems
00:43:40 Advice for Survival & Digital Sovereignty

“You are at the mercy of these faceless bureaucrats.”

“PascaL: So, and just ladies and gentlemen, just to make this very clear, the Europeans have been using this way of doing things for decades towards people outside of Europe and they’re now turning it into Europe. They’re turning it on them, on their own populations just to know. I mean, other people have been for decades victims of this kind of bullshitery, which is not a judicial process. It’s absolutely not and it’s it’s very difficult because it’s difficult to see an end of it.
Nathalie: And it will also affect your next stop of kin. For example, I have a son who is living in Switzerland. He has nothing to do with what I’m doing actually but, because he bears the same name then sometimes when he makes payment it gets declined.”

“What you have to do is to build a new ecosystem around you that is outside of occupied Europe, because I think Europe is not free anymore. So you have now to start looking for banks outside of Europe. You have to look for platforms outside of Europe. You have to you have to reconfigure everything in your immediate day to day.”

“We are now at 59 people. We are at two Swiss. There will be more. There will be more. It will be hundreds. It will be thousands maybe 10 thousands. This tool, they will not let go of it. There’s a very good argument that the European Union will keep this thing indefinitely—the Russian sanctions list—even if the war comes to an end, because they can now link it to Russia paying reparations or not. They will keep this tool and they will put more and more people on it.”

This hits a little too close to home. How long before someone finds this blog and puts me on a list? Will my bank in Switzerland freeze my account as well? Granted, I’m not a black woman like poor Nathalie, so I have more rights.

I’m glad to have discovered Pascal Lottaz, who’s a great interviewer and seems like a good, moral person, deeply disappointed by the ineffectiveness and uselessness of the Swiss bureaucracy, who aren’t willing to “lean out of the window” on any, single thing. They just keep their heads down and don’t help when that help might be misconstrued by the sanctioning bodies, for which they have much more respect than their own citizens.

Poor Nathalie got no help from her own embassy, nor from any of the organizations in the Swiss government specifically charged with assisting citizens in these situations. They all acted as if she’d deserved what she’d gotten, considered the charges of being a Putinversteher to be not only beyond reproach, but also justification for completely blocking her from Swiss life. From all life.

She’s cash-only. Amazon doesn’t work. Deezer doesn’t work. Her Netflix is blocked. The payments probably continue.

She has lawyers. They are being stymied all the way.

This has been my experience as well, as a U.S./Swiss citizen living in Switzerland. The U.S. passport makes you a second-class citizen, subject to rules and regulations that other Swiss don’t have to deal with, imposed by the Swiss banks.

“We need we need to connect. The only solution for me, it’s solidarity. Because it goes across the borders. It goes across the continent. It’s a matter of humanity, of human rights in a proper sense. […] So we really need to put all our energy, our our ideas, our resilience together because the enemy that we are fighting is a monster and alone you can just hit them a bit but you can’t you can’t break it. We need to to build a strong system all together in order to resist this dystopian reality that they want to to impose on us worldwide.”

US capture of Russian-flagged ship could derail Ukraine War talks by Stavroula Pabst (Responsible Statecraft)

“Today’s U.S. seizure of a Russian-flagged, Venezuelan-linked oil tanker in the Atlantic Ocean threaten the success of critical Ukraine war talks, where negotiations for security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine are now underway.

“For its part, Russia condemned today’s tanker seizure, calling it illegal under maritime law. Russia says the seized tanker, part of a “shadow” fleet aiming to avoid oil sanctions, had temporary permission from Russia to fly its flag. But the U.S., calling that tanker “stateless after flying a false flag,” is considering prosecuting its personnel to enforce these sanctions. The U.S. also captured a second tanker near the Caribbean Sea today.

“This tit-for-tat, experts say, stands to cause greater friction at a significant diplomatic moment.

“[…]

““The benefits to the United States here just seem so low, and the costs quite high,” Kavanagh said.

““It will certainly damage U.S.-Russian relations,” Anatol Lieven, the director of the Quincy Institute’s Eurasia program, told RS.”

Trump seizes Russian-flagged tanker, plunders Venezuelan oil, threatens to attack Greenland by Andre Damon (WSWS)

“Wednesday’s seizures involved two vessels: the Russian-flagged Marinera, intercepted in the North Atlantic south of Iceland, and the Sophia, a tanker operated by a Chinese company, seized near the Caribbean. The seizure of the Marinera marked a dramatic escalation of the US-Russia conflict, with US special operations forces boarding the tanker while a Russian navy ship and submarine were escorting it.

“While a direct clash with Russian warships was avoided, the seizure was carried out as a major military operation, involving the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the “Night Stalkers,” supported by P-8 Poseidon submarine-hunting aircraft, F-35 jet fighters and AC-130J gunships.

“The Marinera, formerly known as the Bella 1, had been fleeing the US blockade for two weeks after repelling an initial boarding attempt in December. During its flight across the Atlantic, the ship changed its name, painted a Russian flag on its side, and registered with Russia—but none of this deterred the US military.”

“White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Monday the “formal position” of the United States is that Greenland should become American territory. “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller sneered. His wife posted an image of the American flag superimposed on a map of Greenland with the caption “SOON.””

They’re all maniacs and demons.

Maybe she’ll post an AI-generated photo of the new president having just been raped by a robot—á la Guns-&-Roses Appetite of Destruction—with a photo of her smiling face, giving a thumbs-up, with the caption “SOON”. Would you be surprised?

Appetite for Destruction Inside Sleeve

ICE gestapo murders woman in Minneapolis, sparking mass outrage by Jacob Crosse (WSWS)

“Ignoring video evidence, the Trump administration moved immediately to brand the killing as justified. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote on X that “one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle” and claimed the shooting was a defensive act that “saved” officers’ lives. Stephen Miller characterized the woman’s actions as “domestic terrorism,” as did DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference.

“Trump personally intervened to justify the killing, issuing a statement that repeats and escalates the false federal narrative and openly endorses the actions of the shooter.

““I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota,” Trump wrote. He claimed that “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” He asserted that the agent “seems to have shot her in self defense.””

“Trump went further, attempting to criminalize all opposition to federal immigration raids, claiming that “the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis.” He concluded by demanding that the population “stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers.”

“Trump’s statement is a direct political signal to federal agents, acting as Trump’s personal paramilitary force, that lethal violence will be defended and rewarded by the White House.”

None of what they said happened. There are multiple videos. The terrorists were wearing uniforms and point-blank executed a woman they found annoying, while she was in her car in an American suburb. There is no curb on these people. The police are completely absent. The police are not there to protect you. You are being ruled by maniacs and demons. They will murder you if they think you might have looked at them funny.

The only thing many of you are implicitly going to do is to see how long your white skin protects you. There is no protection against these maniacs. You are what they say you are. They’ll use broken AI software to build a profile of you and then send shock troops to eliminate you because you’re a domestic terrorist. What did you do? It doesn’t matter anymore. That’s what a world without laws, burden of proof, evidence, and trials looks like. The apparatus was never there to protect you, much less so now.

“[…] a masked federal agent has shot an unarmed woman in broad daylight, been allowed to leave the scene, and remains unidentified and uncharged.”

He’s almost certainly out there again. He’s got his mask on right now. Safety’s off.

Enjoy the year.

American Conservatives Are Disgusting Frauds by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“American conservatives are such gross frauds.

“They pretend to oppose tyranny but start frantically licking boots whenever there’s a police shooting.

“They pretend to oppose war and applaud Trump’s warmongering.

“They pretend to be Christian and ignore most of the New Testament.

“They pretend to support freedom of speech and then support Trump stomping out speech that is critical of Israel.

“They pretend to support the rule of law and then applaud when Trump openly kidnaps the president of a sovereign nation to steal its oil.

“They pretend to oppose big government and then applaud trillion-dollar military budgets and the expansion of government departments to flood the streets with armed thugs.

“It’s not that they’re hypocrites. It’s that they’re liars. They’re groveling, power-worshipping bootlickers, and then they make up a bunch of fake stories about themselves to make them feel like they’re actually decent people.

“They are not decent people. They are genocidal warmongers with their tongues firmly inserted into the anuses of the most powerful people on the planet. They are everything they pretend to hate. They are everything that is wrong with this world.”

ICE murder in Minneapolis: Trump’s war comes home by Socialist Equality Party (WSWS)

“After the shooting, agents refused to allow a physician to administer aid, blocked the ambulance from accessing the scene, and violently suppressed community members and journalists who had gathered.

“The site of the murder was barely a mile from the location where George Floyd was choked to death by a Minneapolis cop in May 2020, touching off mass international protests against police violence. Like Floyd’s death, the killing of Renee Good was recorded by dozens of bystanders, who screamed in shock and outrage and denounced the ICE thugs as “murderers.”

“Trump administration officials have responded with a torrent of lies aimed at denying what millions of people know from watching the videos on social media. The fascist Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem denounced Good as a “domestic terrorist.” Trump issued a statement claiming that the killing was an act of “self-defense,” asserting, in direct contradiction to the video footage, that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.”

“The gang of criminals in the White House speaks of the population of the United States with open hatred and contempt. Everyone knew that at some point ICE would kill someone; this was only a matter of time. And Renee Nicole Good will not be the last. Indeed, her death is the intended consequence of the massive paramilitary mobilization that the Trump administration has unleashed in cities across the country, the spearhead for the broader conspiracy for dictatorship.”

They’re just killing people in the streets, in broad daylight, for daring to even consider protesting what they’re doing. There’s no accountability. The killer won’t even miss a shift. That’s his job. Keeping the sheep in line.

f**k ice (YouTube)

“I don’t understand how people don’t recognize that this is fascism, which is colonialism turned inward. Okay?

“This is literally how we operated in Iraq without any accountability whatsoever. Okay, we did this for years and years. We said, “Oh, we shot a hospital. Maybe the hospital had Taliban in it.” Turns out the hospital didn’t have Taliban in it. But it’s all right. It’s just, you know, oh, my mistake.

“This kind of unaccountable violence is now taking place on US soil.

“It was unacceptable in Afghanistan. It was unacceptable in Iraq. And now it’s happening on US soil.

“And it’s crazy to me that there are American citizens who will defend this.

“And it’s also crazy to me that there are people in the government that are lying in the exact same way that they were lying in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“The whole point here is to always justify. Always justify. Always justify, you know? No matter what happens. The greater threat here is not the random lady in her vehicle, okay? The greater threat here is the unaccountable ICE agents that are shooting people in the face. What are we doing?”

“If Donald Trump comes out and says, or if Donald Trump’s own servants come out and say, “This was good because it was a severe act of terror,” Republicans will sincerely look at this and go, “Yes, this was a 37year-old woman in a Honda Pilot that was sincerely trying to murder every ICE agent and do an act of terrorism. She might have actually been ISIS.” Okay? It does not matter anymore. The truth does not matter. None of this matters. ”

But For Video: DHS Credibility Lost by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice)

“Had there not been video, it might be hard to appreciate whether Noem and McLaughlin were indulging in self-serving fantasy. Maybe there was some merit to their claims. Maybe not. But there is video, and it conclusively proves that they are willing liars for the cause. They don’t care. Trump doesn’t care, not that he ever did. And they hope you won’t care either. They want you to pick your side, right or wrong, and “stand with ICE,” even if it means murdering a United States citizen for no reason.”

her name was Renee Nicole Good. by HasanAbi (YouTube)

NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS TRUTH BEHIND ICE SHOOTING by HasanAbi (YouTube)

Another cover-up of a shooting by federal military deployed in the U.S. Being white does not protect you. The umbrella has gotten smaller. You used to be standing under the umbrella, watching it rain on black and brown people. Now, you’re watching it rain on those people who have the right skin color, but the wrong thoughts, maybe the wrong gender.

This is Gaza.

The cop shot her because she was an uppity bitch who wasn’t doing what he told her. He shot her because she’s not a person. He had to shoot her, so she would stop, so he could give her the smack he knows she deserved. So she deserved to die. Who cares anyway? She was a fucking prairie dog. Vermin.

This is how they think. This is how Stephen Miller, Donald Trump. J.D. Vance, Kristy Noem, and anyone else defending this thinks. They are liars. They are maniacs. They are monsters. They are demons. I do not know what will stop them.

What You’re Watching Isn’t What You’re Really Watching by Gail Mackenzie-Smith (McSweeney's)

“You think you’re watching a woman being shot in the face by an ICE agent, but what you’re really watching is a woman trying to run an ICE agent over and the agent firing at her in self-defense.

“[…]

“You think you’re watching an ICE agent murder an innocent woman, but what you’re really watching is a federal agent being the victim of a domestic terrorist.

“[…]

“You think you’re watching an innocent woman being shot and killed by an ICE agent, but what you’re really watching is the radical left threatening, assaulting, and targeting law enforcement officers and ICE agents daily, who are just trying to do the job of making America safe.

“You think you’re watching an innocent woman being shot and killed in cold blood by the federal government, but what you’re really watching is the death of the United States of America.”

Roaming Charges: In ICE Cold Blood by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“The murder of Renee Good happened in plain sight. We’ve all seen it from various angles. There was no one in front of Good’s car when she pulled out. No one was run over. The shots were fired from the side, not the front of her Honda. The ICE agent shot her and he walked away. He didn’t limp. He didn’t flinch in pain. He simply walked away. He didn’t seek treatment from the paramedics on the scene. Or show any wounds to his fellow agents. He just walked away. He walked around the scene for three minutes. Then he got in a car and left. (The Intercept identified the shooter as Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent based in St. Paul.) Renee Good was denied medical care and left to bleed out in her car. There’s nothing left to cover up.”

“ICE’s rules of engagement are to intimidate, to terrify. And not just its targets, but entire neighborhoods, communities and cities. They brutalize the innocent not by accident but by tactic. They offer the security of fear. They want you so afraid of them that you’ll snitch your neighbor out, turn in the women who clean your toilets and take care of your kids, denounce the men who mow your lawn, rake your leaves and clean your gutters. They want you to stay inside with your doors locked when you hear a familiar voice scream, as masked men raid your block.

“Like the cascading violence of the raids themselves, the smearing of the victim is strategic. It’s meant to frighten and paralyze those who might otherwise object. Stand in the way and you will be blamed for whatever happens to you. You will be slimed and slandered beyond all recognition. If you survive, your life will be made hellish, your reputation splattered with lies and calumnies by your own government.

“ICE has killed before and will kill again.”

“These kinds of raids, while shocking to most Americans, are familiar to many immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, countries still haunted by the death squads funded, armed and trained by the CIA. Horrors that they fled and have now reappeared like ghosts from the past here on the streets of Chicago and Minneapolis and Los Angeles. They know all too well that collateral damage is a feature of all paramilitaries.

“With the murder of Renee Good, ICE has now advanced from scaring the hell out of American citizens to killing them.”

“Minneapolis pastor Rev. Kenny Callaghan on being detained by ICE: “I saw ICE agents circling a young woman who appeared to be Hispanic. I said to this ICE agent, ‘Take me, stop harassing her.’ The agent got in my face, pointed a gun at me, and said, ‘Are you afraid now?’ To which I said, ‘I am not afraid.’ The next thing I knew, they were putting handcuffs on me, and they put me in the back of an SUV. I asked them if I was under arrest. They said to me, ‘Well, you’re white, you won’t be any fun anyway.’””

“It’s trigger-happy ranks already swollen with illiterate, obese, and intemperate rejects from the DEA, ATF and county sheriff departments, ICE plans a “wartime recruitment” drive, according to the Washington Post, that will target gun show attendees and military fanatics, using imagery that would embarrass DW Griffith and Lenni Reifinsthal …”

Europe on brink of war with Russia and America at Paris summit by Alex Lantier (WSWS)

“On January 6, European leaders met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a war summit in Paris, joined by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and two of the Trump administration’s Russia negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“The assembled NATO officials issued an open-ended commitment to stationing troops in and arming Ukraine as a military base on Russia’s borders, once a ceasefire is reached. As the Kremlin went to war to prevent just such a situation and has threatened to fire on NATO troops arriving in Ukraine, this makes a mockery of US-European claims to be trying to negotiate with Russia to end the war”

It’s just great to see Zelensky, Starmer, and Macron smiling in the photo accompanying the article. All the best people are winning right now. 2026 is shaping up great! More of this!

“German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the press that Berlin’s plans “could include, for example, deploying forces for Ukraine in neighboring NATO areas after a ceasefire.” He added that the German government and parliament would decide on the extent of German military activity once the conditions of a hypothetical Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire were known. “We do not exclude anything in principle,” Merz said.”

At least these guys are still wishy-washy. What Merz means is that Trump hasn’t ordered him to do anything yet, so he’s still on standby. Give him a break. You can’t ask “how high?” when no-one’s even asked you to jump yet.

“They could say: “We pressed Ukraine to fight Russia, counting on a Ukrainian victory, which we hoped to use to rape and plunder Russia like Trump wants to rape and plunder Venezuela. Things didn’t go according to plan, Ukraine suffered millions of casualties and is being defeated, but we found it easier to lie to you about it. Demonizing Moscow was a great excuse to cut social spending and rearm, and quite honestly, we didn’t care how many Ukrainians died. Now somehow it turns out the United States may declare war on us, but trust us, we have more great ideas coming.””

Walz Pulls Out: Score Another Another One for Racism, Coupled with Democratic Party and Media Ineptitude by Dean Baker (CounterPunch)

I don’t really care about Tim Walz. He’s an empty suit. That he’s bowing out of a re-election campaign doesn’t interest me. He’s getting railroaded for something that doesn’t exist, though. Dean writes a good article debunking this stuff but, honestly? It’s a waste of time. Even the people making the accusations don’t believe them. The people online who’ve managed to pressure Walz into resigning don’t believe in them. They don’t even believe that Walz stands for the things that he stands for, or that they say he stands for. The only thing that matters is that Walz seems to be in opposition to Trump and his administration, so Trump and his administration—and their army of online volunteers, who make a fortune grifting the gullible—are making an example of him.

“Sometimes even high levels of fraud are apparently tolerated. As I noted previously, the Inspector General of the Small Business Administration (SBA) identified $200 billion of potentially fraudulent payments in the Paycheck Protection Program, an emergency pandemic started in Trump’s first term. This would have been more than 15 percent of the money that went out the door.

“That massive level and percentage of fraud proved not to be career ending for Donald Trump. In fact, it was not even career ending for Linda McMahon, the SBA administrator responsible for overseeing the program. Trump promoted her to Education Secretary in his current term.”

Dean points out that Linda McMahon—someone whose entire work experience before the Trump administrations was working for the WWE—didn’t suffer reputational loss for having been in charge of an agency that lost far more money to fraud. That doesn’t matter because people haven’t been ordered to care about large-scale fraud from which Trump and his ilk benefitted. They are told not to care about white-collar crime. They are told to care about penny-ante bullshit so that the hoi polloi fight amongst themselves.

Plunging Toward Armageddon: U.S. and Russia on the Brink of a New Nuclear Arms Race by Michael Klare (TomDispatch)

“So, the question is: What, exactly, will it mean for New START to expire for good on February 5th?

“Most of us haven’t given that a lot of thought in recent decades, because nuclear arsenals have, for the most part, been shrinking and the (apparent) threat of a nuclear war among the great powers seemed to diminish substantially. We have largely escaped the nightmarish experience — so familiar to veterans of the Cold War era — of fearing that the latest crisis, whatever it might be, could result in our being exterminated in a thermonuclear holocaust.

“A critical reason for our current freedom from such fears is the fact that the world’s nuclear arsenals had been substantially diminished and that the two major nuclear powers had agreed to legally binding measures, including mutual inspections of their arsenals, meant to reduce the danger of unintended or accidental nuclear war. Together, those measures were crafted to ensure that each side would retain an invulnerable, second-strike nuclear retaliatory force, eliminating any incentive to initiate a nuclear first strike.

“Unfortunately, those relatively carefree days will come to an end at midnight on February 5th.

“Beginning on February 6th, Russian and American leaders will face no barriers whatsoever to the expansion of those arsenals or to any other steps that might increase the danger of a thermonuclear conflagration. And from the look of things, both intend to seize that opportunity and increase the likelihood of Armageddon. Worse yet, China’s leaders, pointing to a lack of restraint in Washington and Moscow, are now building up their own nuclear arsenal, only adding further fuel to the urge of American and Russian leaders to blow well past the (soon-to-be-abandoned) New START limits.”

“Many organizations, individuals, and members of Congress are pleading with the Trump administration to accept Vladimir Putin’s proposal and agree to a voluntary continuation of the New START limits after February 5th. Any decision to abandon those limits, they argue, would only add hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal budget at a time when other priorities are being squeezed. Such a decision would also undoubtedly provoke reciprocal moves by Russia and China. The result would be an uncontrolled arms race and a rising risk of nuclear annihilation.

“But even if Washington and Moscow were to agree to a one-year voluntary extension of New START, each would be free to break out of it at any moment. In that sense, February 6th is likely to bring us into a new era — not unlike the early years of the Cold War — in which the major powers will be poised to ramp up their nuclear war-fighting capabilities without any formal restrictions whatsoever.”

Zohran Mamdani and NY Gov. Hochul Deliver on Mayor’s Free Childcare Campaign Promise by Diego Ramos (Scheer Post)

“The governor also announced a plan to invest $1.2 billion in child care subsidies for low-income families in the city as well as $4.5 billion statewide which, according to an ABC 7 report, “includes working with community-based day cares, increasing family vouchers by 40% and working to expand pre-K in areas upstate.” Hochul also expressed interest in establishing universal child care statewide by 2028, which would include Pre-K access to all 4-year-old children in New York State. ”

The Consequences of Rejecting “Defund the Police” by Hamilton Nolan (How Things Work)

“You can’t just talk about how the police should be better. You have to defund the police. You can’t just say that you hope nobody will ever pick up one of the loaded guns you have laying around. You have to get rid of them.

“As Renee Good, a mother and wife, lays dead, I would like for the sober and serious members of the Democratic Establishment, and the well-intentioned liberal voters across the country, to take time to look very hard in the mirror and think about the broader consequences of their knee-jerk dismissal of the very concept of defunding the police. The consequences that have rippled far out past a single election cycle. The consequences of establishing very publicly that there are not two positions on the question of whether or not more armed men produce safety. The consequences of saying to voters, “There are two parties in this country, and on this, they both agree: More police. More guns. On this, there is no other choice.”

“ICE is police. Liberals may object to what ICE is doing. They may find it scary that Congress has appropriated tens of billions of dollars to hire ten thousand ICE agents who will constitute an army of Trump loyalists empowered to purge our nation of brown people. But you, liberals, Democrats, must recognize that you teed this up for them. We had a historic opportunity to have a grand national reckoning with the thesis that more police are always better. In Washington, the Democrats very deliberately chose not to have that reckoning in any substantive way. They, and the good liberal establishment, chose to cling to the belief that defunding the police was unwise, unpopular, and unrealistic, and that America would be able to somehow progress past our blood-soaked legacy of oppression even while leaving all of those armed men in place. Just by asking them to be better.”

US Media Admits CIA Attacking Russia During 'Peace' Talks by The New Atlas | Brian Berletic (YouTube)

This is an excellent analysis showing that the U.S. was never interested in peace in Ukraine. There are links to the articles he references in the video, having been published starting in 2018 and up to 2025.

“It’ll just get worse. It will only get worse. And, as the US war of aggression on Venezuela proves and, as they’re setting the stage for another round of hostilities against Iran proves, President Trump was never going to stop any of this. He never intended to.

“If you listen to what he actually said objectively, if you you filter out your own bias and listen to what he actually said and what you know the “voice of reason” JD Vance was actually saying even before they took office, they were talking about ceasefire, a freeze in Ukraine so they could do China and then get back to Russia. They were never they were never going to reconcile with Russia. They had no intention of ever doing that.

“They are all proponents of American primacy over the globe. They are all proponents of this longstanding enduring US strategy that calls for ensuring no rivals develop. No peer or near-peer adversaries allowed. That was the policy at the end of the Cold War. That is the policy today. No matter who is in the White House, no matter who controls Congress, the only thing that’s going to change are the faces you look at and the lies you have to listen to as they continue all of this uninterrupted into the future.

“It will only stop when people make it stop. These people are not going to stop on their own. They have no reverse gear and they’re willing to do absolutely anything to advance their agenda. And you have to understand that they will never ever let anyone that is a a danger to that agenda get anywhere near any kind of election, let alone the presidency.

“President Trump is backed by all of these special interests that are writing these policy papers. So they knew he was going to do what they told him and they depended on his ability to dupe the American people into believing otherwise. And that’s what he has done. I hope more people are waking up to it. Now, our future depends on it. Not just the future of the rest of the world, but the future of America and the American people themselves. They’re not benefiting from this either.”

There is an accompanying article, New Year Starts, Same Old US Proxy War Continues by Brian Berletic (The New Atlas)

“In other words − the US launched attacks on Russian energy production inside Russia as well as conducted maritime drone strikes on tankers moving Russian hydrocarbons wherever the US could find them − all of this politically laundered through Washington’s Ukrainian proxies − attacks Ukraine itself would be incapable of conducting on its own.”

“In the background of Washington’s ongoing war on Russia is a much larger and more urgent policy of confronting and containing China − an imperative that necessitates continued pressure on China’s allies in Moscow.

“Much of Washington’s strategy in confronting and containing China is based on a combination of maritime “distant blockades” imposed by a now completely reconfigured anti-shipping-centric US Marine Corps, attacks and disruptions along China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) land routes, as well as the degradation of Russian energy production that could sustain China’s economy and warfighting capacity even if the former two options are successfully implemented.

“Laid out in detail in a 2018 US Naval War College Review paper titled, “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China,” the US would impose a maritime blockade against Chinese shipping across the Asia-Pacific region including in the Malacca Strait, the South China Sea, and in and around the waters of the island province of Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea.”

“Because the US seeks to continue encircling and containing China, and degrading Russian energy production (and Russia’s utility as a Chinese ally in general) is a key prerequisite in doing so, the US is almost certainly not going to end its proxy war against Russia.

“Instead, it will continue, possibly even escalate its campaign striking Russian energy production inside Russia, Russian pipelines, and maritime oil shipping, and gradually expanding operations to set the stage for similar operations aimed at China directly.

“Thus, Washington’s “peace negotiations” amount to empty rhetoric, drowned out by America’s own actions through its Ukrainian and European proxies in a war that seeks to set the stage for an even larger, more dangerous confrontation with China.

“Russia and ultimately China’s ability to counter not only US proxy warfare, but also the tools it uses to set the stage for it − including America’s uncontested global information dominance and the inability of potential US proxies to defend their information space against US political capture − will determine whether or not US policy is blunted and stopped or allowed to draw the rest of the world into the destructive conflict currently consuming both Russia and Europe.”

But What About REAL ID? by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice)

“[…] some (like Justice Kavanaugh) might respond, what’s the big deal about pulling out your identification to prove you aren’t an illegal, but an American citizen, entitled to all the rights pertaining thereto? Aside from the fact that the United States, unlike other countries of infamy, does not have a “show us your papers” requirement and, at least when it comes to people whose last name doesn’t end in a vowel, would find such a demand intolerable if it some masked thug demanded they prove their identity or risk a free night or 90 in Alligator Alcatraz.”

“It’s “bad enough” that American citizens, in conflict with their constitutional right to be left alone, are compelled to prove their identity at all. But when the very proof of identification forced down American’s throats by the very agency that refuses to accept them as proof of citizenship, it become intolerable.”

“[…] the fact that ICE wants to mass deport the undocumented does not make it incumbent on Americans to prove their citizenship to masked thugs or suffer deportation. The burden is on the government to prove that a person is here unlawfully, not on the person to prove to the government that he has the right to be left alone.”

The Russian Idée Fixe by Andriy Movchan (CounterPunch)

“[…] in the twenty-first century, no state can openly wage a war of conquest without framing it as defense against an external threat. Every aggressor — from Hitler to Netanyahu — has called their war forced, defensive, provoked from the outside, a response to danger facing the state and its citizens. And if Russia sees itself as defending, then surely it must have the strongest possible arguments for doing so.”

I think that this paints all of the reasons with the same brush, which is unfair and not factual. It doesn’t lead to understanding why one country invaded another. We should be clear that the framing of what aggression is, is framed by those who wish to wield aggression without being blamed for it. When Russia had been attacked with crippling economic sanctions—we cannot call them anything other than modern siege warfare, in which the aggressor tries to deprive the civilian population of the necessities of life—for decades at the point that it “started” the war by invading Ukraine. At the level of international law, Russia “started” it. At the level of logic, and understanding provocations, the war had been started long, long ago.

But it is convenient to the author’s argument that any possible reasons for Russia’s invasion be swept into the same pile as those that Israel has for its invasions of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, or for the U.S. and all of the countries that it has invaded, the counting of which would take too much time and space. I understand that the author’s thesis is that we very much should understand why Putin very specifically can be provoked with Ukraine. I find the author noting that Finland and Sweden having joined NATO didn’t seem to have provoked a similar reaction to be thought-provoking but, in the end, the U.S. has not threatened to pour weapons and missile bases into Finland and Sweden, as it has with Ukraine. The borders are long, and the nations are now ostensibly in the alliance, but they are no more dangerous that Latvia or Lithuania.

“Unlike the thousands of Western Marxists who insist that Russia faces a NATO threat, Putin himself claims nothing of the sort.”

Can’t it be both, though? I’m so tired of this style of refutation. Can’t it be that Russia faces a NATO threat and Putin actually invaded Ukraine for different reasons than that, i.e., because he’s lost in a historic notion of Rus or whatever?

Why do I have to encounter so many potentially interesting theses where the author nearly immediately starts setting up quasi-imaginary strawmen—thousands of Western Marxists—for whom he then formulates their arguments and then knocks them down. I find it a shame because I rarely if ever feel that such authors end up addressing any of the niggling concerns I may have with my own thinking about a subject on which I feel that they are more expert than I. Instead, I watch them mow down things that I either didn’t believe at all, or which I believe to be much less relevant to the actual matter than the author.

Like, just explain to me the thing you know without trying to simultaneously prove that everyone who hadn’t already believed the thing you’d just laid out was an idiot for not having learned it themselves.

This is debate-brain thinking and it absolutely poisons discourse. It’s Twitter-brain.

“For both Israel and Russia, the concept of international law is far too young and has not yet stood the test of time. The UN-based system of international law is only eighty years old; the European treaty on the inviolability of borders — barely fifty. What is this nonsense compared to millennia-old chronicles and sacred texts?”

How do you not mention the U.S. here? Because it doesn’t fit the thesis.

I know that the author was being sarcastic about how Putin considers Ukraine “invadable” regardless of international law—despite the fact that Russia waited a full decade after the initial putsch to actually invade, preferring every possible diplomatic channel first—but it’s also become very obvious, now, in 2026, that Russia’s transgression of international law on the inviolability of borders, cannot possibly be the world’s biggest concern right now.

I know, I know: Russia seems to have a hard-on for Ukraine. OK. So, it does. That’s just the reality of Ukraine’s geographic location vis á vis a large, military power that has opinions about how it conducts its daily business.

I live in Switzerland. Do you think that Switzerland has complete freedom to do whatever it wants, regardless of what the EU or the U.S. thinks? Of course not. Switzerland is currently whistling and looking up at the sky as the EU sanctions its citizens into impecunious situations, all because it doesn’t dare offend its neighbor.

The U.S has had a hard-on for Cuba for almost 70 years. It is currently re-defining the Monroe to mean hemispheric hegemony over all of the other governments, rather than just primacy in trade with those governments. The U.S. has basically already taken Greenland away from Denmark. Everybody knows that they could just take it if they want. Europe wouldn’t do a thing.

Why wouldn’t Europe do a thing? Think about the Venezuelans who were running the air-defenses on January 2nd, 2026. People assume that they were paid off. But think about it. You’ve got those Chinooks on your radar. Those fucking things are just hanging there, daring you to swat them out of the sky like giant piñatas. Do you do it? Of course not. You could shoot those down. You could win the day, maybe. Most likely just the hour, as hundreds more would swarm over the horizon, as the B2s would start dropping their payloads from 40,000 feet.

No, Europe won’t do or say a fucking thing when Stephen Miller lands in Nuuk and plants the U.S. flag between his moon boots and smirks.

But, yeah, that there might be extra reasons for Russia’s invasion—other than the obvious one that NATO was establishing bases on its perimeter—is absolutely of prime concern. Let’s focus laser-like on that.

I’m not saying that Russia is correct to consider Ukraine to be special but that it’s not unique in any way whatsoever. At some point, it becomes offensive for a country to realize that its own opinion as a neighbor and trading partner seems to matter much less than those of countries that are completely unaffiliated. Perhaps that has something to do with it, no? At least as much as the contents of 1000-year-old texts from which the author feels that Putin reads before he goes to sleep each night?

“[…] the scenario of nuclear weapons being deployed in Ukraine and the Americans attacking the world’s largest nuclear power is utterly far-fetched […]”

Are you still so sure? That’s summer-child thinking right there. We’re going to see a mushroom cloud over Copenhagen before the year is out. Wake up.[4]

“That same summer, Donald Trump decided to lift Russia out of international isolation and invited Putin to a summit in Alaska. Offering fairly generous concessions, he hoped that the Russian leader, as a pragmatic politician, would strike a deal and make peace. But Trump was wrong. No deal took place.”

Well, that gives this poor fellow’s game away. For him, Putin is a deranged maniac living in the deep past whereas Donald Trump is a poised statesman, one who “lifts Russia out of international isolation” and has those lifting hands rudely slapped away by an ungrateful Putin. This guy is Trump-brained. He actually believes a word that Trump says. He wrote this essay less than a month ago. I wonder if he’s changed his mind about Trump? Probably not. People kind of rarely do.

“The systematic practices of abduction, forced adoption and re-education of children from occupied zones led to the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in 2023.”

The author is making that statement do a lot of work, while eliding a lot of relevant detail.

“Few left-leaning observers would deny the significance of Zionist doctrines in shaping Middle Eastern politics. So why is the primordialist ideology of Russian expansionism almost entirely ignored by leftist commentators? We can debate at length how Vladimir Putin came to his ideas, at what stage, and for what reasons they radicalized, turning into a driving force behind the war. But to deny their influence on material reality is to sin against the truth.”

Bro, this is a great point! But, you see, we also know that the Zionist doctrines that are religious in nature or that reach back thousands of years to justify today’s atrocities are bullshit. We don’t need to discuss them because even those who keep saying them don’t believe them. I suspect that Putin’s seeming obsession with Russian fairy tales is similar. It’s red meat for the fools he’s deluding into supporting him.

Israel and the U.S. just want more land, more plunder. They eagerly say this more often than they talk about more ur-Zionist notions of justice based on the Bible. In Russia’s case, the message has been much more consist, and the invasion not only came much more reluctantly, it is being executed much more reluctantly, than the giddy eagerness we see in the regime-change operations and land-grabs executed by those under the umbrella of U.S. hegemony.

When the USSR and China saved humanity: How they won the World Anti-Fascist War by Ben Norton (Scheer Post | Geopolitical Economy Report)

“What the capitalist countries in Western Europe and North America had hoped for was that Nazi Germany would attack the Soviet Union, which they considered their main enemy. This is why the Western imperial powers had long appeased Hitler, signing shameful deals like the 1938 Munich Agreement, which allowed the Nazi empire to expand in Europe.

“What the Western capitalist “liberal democracies” and the fascist regimes shared in common was mutual hatred of communism. The rich oligarchs who controlled Western governments feared that they would lose their privileges if workers in their countries were inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution.”

“For Europe, WWII began in 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. For the people of China, the war started much earlier, in 1931, when the Japanese empire invaded the Manchuria region of northern China.

“For 14 years, the people of China resisted Japan’s aggression, as the imperial regime sought to colonize more and more Chinese territory.

“By the end of the war in 1945, roughly 20 million Chinese had lost their lives.”

“In China, WWII is known as the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and it was part of a larger conflict called the World Anti-Fascist War.”

“Later, the CIA and NATO created Operation Gladio, in which they used fascist war criminals as foot soldiers of their new global imperialist war on socialism. The former top Nazi military officer Adolf Heusinger was appointed the chair of NATO’s military committee, and the ex Nazi Hans Speidel became commander of NATO’s land forces in Central Europe.”

“The United States did not defeat fascism; it rehabilitated and absorbed fascism into the capitalist empire that Washington built after WWII, centered in Wall Street and based on the dollar.

“The contemporary German government published the results of a study in 2016, called the Rosenberg project, which sifted through classified documents from 1950 to 1973. It found that, at the height of the Cold War, the government of capitalist West Germany, which was a member of NATO, was full of former Nazis.”

The German film Schtonk (1992) illustrates that this was such an open secret that you could make a successful film satirizing it.

“In fact, 77% of senior officials in West Germany’s Justice Ministry had been Nazis. Ironically, there had been a lower percentage of Nazi Party members in the Justice Ministry in Berlin when the genocidal dictator Adolf Hitler himself was in charge of the Third Reich.

“Similarly, in Japan after WWII, US occupation forces released Japanese war criminals from prison and used them to construct an imperial client regime. The CIA helped to create and fund the powerful Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has essentially governed Japan as a one-party state, with few exceptions, since 1955.”

“In short, after the Soviet Union and China led the fight to defeat fascism in WWII, the US empire recruited fascists to fight its global war against socialism.”

“Politicians in Washington scapegoat immigrants and foreigners for the many domestic problems in their country, including the significant growth in inequality, poverty, and homelessness. They have no solutions other than more violence, racism, and war.”

Decline and Fall by Chris Hedges (Substack)

“The U.S. has one of the highest rates of poverty among Western industrialized nations, estimated by many economists at far above the official figure of 10.6 percent. In real terms, some 41 percent of Americans are poor or low-income, with 67 percent living paycheck to paycheck.”

Journalism & Media

Francesca Albanese and the Lonely Road of Defiance by Chris Hedges (Substack)

“The OFAC list — weaponized by the Trump administration to persecute Francesca and in clear violation of the diplomatic immunity granted to U.N. officials — prohibits any financial institution from having someone on the list as a client. A bank that permits someone on the OFAC list to engage in financial transactions is banned from operating in dollars, faces multimillion-dollar fines and is blocked from international payment systems.”

“But she is not cowed. Her next salvo will be a report that documents the torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. While torture, she says, was “not widespread,” before Oct. 7, it has now become ubiquitous. She is collecting testimonies of those released from Israeli detention.

““It reminds me of the stories and testimonies I read from Argentina’s dictatorship,” Francesca tells me. “It’s that bad. It’s systemic torture against the same people. The same people are taken, raped and brought back, taken, raped and brought back.”

““Women?” I ask.

““Both,” she answers.

““To have women tell you they have been raped, multiple times. They’ve been asked to masturbate soldiers. This is incredible,” Francesca says. “For a woman to say that. Imagine what they have endured? There are people who have lost their words. They cannot talk. They cannot speak after what they’ve endured.””

““In April, I reported the first cases of sexual harassment and rape that had taken place in January and February 2024,” she says. “People didn’t want to listen. The New York Times interviewed me for two hours. Two hours. They didn’t write a line about it.””

““The Financial Times had — because of the relevance of the topic — an embargo’d version of ‘From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,’” she says. “They didn’t publish it. They didn’t even publish a review, an article, days after the press conference. But they did publish a critique of my report. I had a meeting with them. I said, ‘This is really depressing. Who are you? Are you paid for the work you do? Who are you loyal to, your readers?’ I pushed them. They said, ‘Well, we didn’t find that it was up to our standards.’””

“Palestine has shocked people. Italians in particular. Maybe because we are who we are in the sense that we cannot be silenced that easily, we cannot be scared as has happened to the Germans and the French. I was shocked in France. The fear and repression is incredible. It is not as bad as Germany, but it’s much worse than it was two years ago. The minister of education in France cancelled an academic conference on Palestine at the Collège de France — the highest institution in France. The minister of education! And he bragged about it.””

How Reporting Facts Can Now Land You in Jail for 14 Years as a Terrorist by Jonathan Cook (Antiwar.com)

“[…] saying truthful things about any of these matters – if they could lead a reader or listener to take a more favorable view of Palestine Action or the political wing of Hamas – are now a terrorist offence. Any journalist, human rights activist or lawyer making factual observations risks 14 years behind bars.”

“In these circumstances, news organizations make one of two choices. They simply ignore factual things because it is legally too dangerous to speak truthfully about them. Or they lie about factual things because it is legally safe – and politically opportune – to speak untruthfully about them.”

“The government itself is taking full advantage of this lacuna in reporting, injecting its own self-serving deceptions into the coverage, knowing that there will be – can be – no meaningful push-back.”

“The government has proscribed Palestine Action on the grounds that it is a terrorist organization. It has justified its decision by implying, without producing a shred of evidence, that the group is funded by Iran […]”

“Were I to try to make the case that the alleged actions of one individual – only one person is charged with assault – prove nothing about the aims of the organization as a whole, I would be risking a terrorism conviction and 14 years’ imprisonment. Which is one, very strong reason not to make such an argument.”

“The abuse of the Terrorism Act discourages research, analysis and critical thinking. It forces all journalists, human rights activists and lawyers to become lapdogs of the government. It creates a void into which the government can spin events to its own advantage, in which it can avoid accountability and in which it can punish those who dissent. It is the very antithesis of democratic behavior.

“This ought to appall anyone who cares about the truth, about public debate, about scrutiny. Because they have all been thrown out of the window.”

Five Craziest Things About the Epstein Case, Part 2 by Michael Tracey (Racket News)

“The vindictive moralistic frenzy that attaches to this issue means that by simply calling attention to objectionable government conduct, you can expect to be instantly spun as somehow condoning the personal proclivities of Jeffrey Epstein. And who wants to deal with that headache? Therefore: out of sight, out of mind. Which is a recurring pattern for how civil liberties invariably end up getting eroded. It’s always a crowd-pleaser to direct punitive state action at the most reviled figures in society — the most notorious of which in previous eras have included “terrorists,” “domestic extremists,” “drug dealers,” and the like. The more untamable the public animus against a particular category of wrongdoer, the more readily civil liberties can be chucked aside. So when it comes to “pedophiles” and “child sex-traffickers” — forget it. All bets are off. Perpetrators of quadruple homicide are less culturally anathema these days. Here’s a neat trick for prosecutors and politicians: if you want to make the Constitution vanish, just say you’re punishing “pedos.””

“Details of this decades-old encounter were tearfully recounted by Arden, with Allred by her side, as recently as August 6, 2025, and again on November 17, 2025, at press conferences convened by Allred in Los Angeles. None of the attending journalists asked what the allegation, even if true, would have to do with the “child sex-trafficking” theories that tend to dominate the public’s conception of the Epstein matter, seeing as Arden was 27 years old at the time. Allred told me in a September 3, 2025, interview that at some point Arden did speak to federal law enforcement about Epstein, but evidently, nothing ever came of it. When I inquired if Arden had sought or received any of the profligate settlement monies that became available after Epstein’s death — including for alleged adult “victims” — Allred would not say, citing client privacy concerns.”

“So not only was Judge Berman holding this elaborate, essentially extra-judicial hearing, where self-described “victims” who had never been adjudicated as such could pile into court and blast off whatever damning commentary they wanted about a dead defendant — taxpayers were also going to subsidize the brouhaha. More details on the mechanics have begun to trickle out in the long-awaited “Epstein Files” production earlier this month. Emails show the superstar Epstein “victim” Virginia Roberts Giuffre — a proven serial fabulist who had to recant a succession of her most sensational claims — scrambling to arrange last-minute travel from Australia to New York, so she could take part in the hotly-anticipated August 27 hearing. Prosecutors were eager to assist in whatever way they could. Taking up the offer, Virginia writes that since it had been decided that U.S. taxpayers would underwrite her hotel, ground transportation, and airfare, “I would need to fly business.” This was “needed,” she claimed, due to “an ongoing medical condition.” Perhaps what she was referencing was the universal “condition” of preferring spacious and comfortable First Class seating on a long-haul flight. The cost for a one-way ticket was $10,673.40 — and the government seemingly picked up the tab.”

“Ransome first entered Epstein’s orbit as a 22-year-old fashionista who earned an income by having “dinner” with “gentlemen,” for which she would be paid $1,500, and would sometimes have sex with these gentlemen if she found them attractive. She also claimed to possess sex tapes of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, and Prince Andrew. “I have backed up the footage on several USB sticks and have securely sent them to various different locations throughout Europe,” Ransome said. She later admitted this was all completely fabricated — there were never any sex tapes.”

“Ransome was a certified nutcase. This didn’t stop her from getting a HarperCollins book deal, for a memoir touchingly entitled Silenced No More — nor was her nuttiness any impediment to being named as a plaintiff in some of the most consequential litigation against the Epstein estate, which ultimately led to the creation of the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program, from which Ransome undoubtedly received a generous (tax-free!) payout — likely in the millions.”

“Viral videos still routinely circulate of Ransome speaking to the media that day in August 2019, alleging that factory-style mass rape went on at Epstein’s property in the US Virgin Islands, or as she called it, a veritable “conveyor belt of abuse.” Of course, nothing was ever remotely proven to this effect.”

“[…] in 2008, when she was 31 years old, De Georgiou was writing flirtatious emails to Jeffrey Epstein (while he was incarcerated in Florida!) offering to send him racy photos, and even to come visit. She continued to initiate similar communications in 2010 and 2011, always keen to pay Jeffrey a wholesome social visit. However, by 2019, she realized she was in fact a “survivor,” and reaped $3.25 million (tax-free!) from the Epstein estate, not to mention whatever remuneration she also surely received from other settlement funds. By 2021, her survivorship had been upgraded to “child sex-trafficking” survivor, as she was called forth by the government to send Maxwell to prison. By 2025, she was delivering soaring oratorical performances at rallies and press conferences in front of the US Capitol, flanked by politicians enthralled with her bravery. She has also launched her own podcast.”

“Among those permitted to make “Victim Impact Statements” against Ghislaine Maxwell at a June 28, 2022 hearing were Anouska De Georgiou, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Sarah Ransome, and Juliette Bryant, the latter of whom claims she was abducted by UFOs, and once witnessed Jeffrey Epstein morph into a reptilian humanoid creature.”

The NY Times Would Like You To Rewrite History & Forget The Truth by Lee Camp (Substack)

“In fact, articles like these are a key piece of the rewriting of history to help cover the tracks of war criminals and bloodthirsty sociopathic oligarchs. Once the genocide has been committed (Gaza) or the bloody regime change has succeeded (Syria) or the terror attacks have been perpetrated (Lebanon) or another genocide has been committed (Yemen), then it’s time for imperial outlets like The NY Times to say, “You know what? Let’s look past all this ugly bloodshed and create a better world — one in which no one screams about past war crimes and none of the psychopaths are prosecuted and none of the ill-gotten gains from genocide are bickered about. Let’s just move on.””

“The Times authors then quote Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli author and historian: “There is complete exhaustion in Israel, the military is exhausted and there’s been entirely too much reserve duty. These factors weigh against renewed fighting.” Damn, committing genocide is so exhausting. Let us here at The NY Times detail how tough it is to commit genocide. The perpetrators are downright pooped. The people being genocided rarely just throw up their hands and allow it to happen. This means it’s real rough going for the genociders. Have some sympathy, world.”

“The New York Times has its propaganda blueprint down to an art. (They are bullshartisans after all.) They tell their readers to ignore the reality created by the US/Israeli imperial war machine and move forward. They use a mixture of poetic language, straight-up lies and lies by omission to create a new reality. Then they tell everyone it’s the peaceful thing to believe. Don’t you want peace?”

The rise of the troll state by Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day)

“Most of the footage you’ve seen of Venezuelans celebrating appears to be either old World Cup footage or shot in Miami.”

Of course it is. Either that or generated. They’re forming the narrative. There is no need to waste time with accuracy because the intended audience doesn’t care.

Ah, here we go, an article I just got to, From Musk to TikTok: How AI Fakes Fueled a Disinformation Frenzy Around Maduro by Joshua Scheer (Scheer Post), writes,

“[…] social media erupted with images and videos claiming to show Venezuelans “celebrating their liberation” by the United States. The posts went viral, amplified by high-profile accounts—including Elon Musk—but fact-checkers confirm that much of the content was entirely AI-generated […]”

“Even more elaborate disinformation spread through fake celebration photos from Caracas and protests in New York. Flags had incorrect colors or star patterns, protest signs were illegible, and images were clearly manufactured by AI rather than capturing real-world events. Fact-checkers at PolitiFact rated the posts “Pants on Fire!””

“Another major problem arises when scenes from movies are circulated and presented as real news […]”

The following discussion is very, very good, as well:

AI FAKE Venezuelan Celebrations EXPLODE On Social Media by Breaking Points | Saagar Enjeti & Krystal Ball (YouTube)

“The coup.” by Patrick Lawrence (The Floutist)

“There were brief video snippets Saturday morning, not quite real-time but nearly, showing lots of American aircraft above Caracas and lots of explosions across the nation’s capital. Reports since, by non–American correspondents writing from Caracas, indicate U.S. fighter jets had the capital ablaze within two hours, electricity and communications knocked out. Among much else, they also bombed and destroyed La Guaira, 30 miles north of the capital and the nation’s principal port. This was a very major assault—excuse me, law-enforcement operation—and it is possibly unprecedented in Venezuelan history.

“And then I read that this was not your usual C.I.A. operation. “It was the product of a deep partnership between the agency and the military,” The New York Times reported. We like products of deep partnerships, I suppose is the thought. We don’t like invasions, but damn it, get with the program, this was no an invasion. And then this from Julian Barnes and Eric Schmitt, Times correspondents well-versed in how to mind their manners while covering “the intelligence community,” as they are wont to call it:”

“While the C.I.A. played a critical role in planning and carrying it out, the mission was a law enforcement operation by the U.S. military’s special operation forces, rather than an operation carried out under the agency’s authority.”

“A law-enforcement operation. Whose law, enforced under whose jurisdiction? Special op soldiers now enforce the law? I never heard of that before. In this case 2,000 miles and across international frontiers from the legal authority claiming jurisdiction? Never heard of that, either. But thank goodness this wasn’t one of those criminal C.I.A. ops you read about if you read the better histories of America’s post–1945 conduct. No, it was a deep partnership enforcing the law—this even if it looks like a breach of more laws than one can count.

“Anything anything anything, I tell you, to avoid calling this a “coup”—a word you will never ever read in the pages of The Times or any of the other corporate dailies. In the Venezuelan case, we don’t even get to call it “regime change,” which I have always thought was fun as these sorts of euphemisms go. The Times went daringly far Sunday to suggest the Venezuela op “seems like regime change,” which is The Times’s way of tell[ing] readers not to believe their own eyes because this only looks like regime change but really and truly isn’t. You have to love the paper for this kind of thing.”

““We’re going to stay until such time as we’re going to run it,” Trump said, a little incoherently, in his speech to the nation Saturday morning. We are back in the “nation-building” business, in other words. As Washington’s adventure in Iraq should have taught the policy cliques, if only they were capable of learning anything, this is a commitment the magnitude and duration of which cannot be foreseen. Reminder: Venezuela is a nation of 30 million people. If you go in for these kinds of stats, it is twice as large as Spain, two and a half times the size of Germany, and four times larger than Great Britain.”

“Bold, audacious, stunning”: A servile US media hails Trump’s Venezuela war crime by Kevin Reed (WSWS)

“The response by the Washington Post—owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos—set the political and ideological tone for the entire corporate media. In its editorial, the Post hailed the invasion as a “stunning demonstration of American resolve” and a “bold, tactically flawless operation” that removed “a tyrant long allied with hostile powers.”

“The Post praised Trump and the military high command for an operation of “audacious reach and surgical precision,” stressing that the action sent “an unmistakable message” to rival powers and to any government that “defies US security interests in the hemisphere.”

“Not a single line in the Post editorial questioned the legitimacy of the action or raised the slightest concern that the United States had unilaterally violated the most fundamental norms of state sovereignty. Instead, the Post complained that the White House lacked a sufficiently elaborated “post‑Maduro plan” to manage Venezuela’s transition under de facto US colonial control.

“Throughout the broadcast and print media, the vocabulary used to describe the operation was strikingly uniform, revealing a tightly coordinated propaganda campaign taking its line from CIA briefing documents.”

“The coordination between the media and the military went beyond cheerleading. According to a report by Semafor, the New York Times and Washington Post, “learned of a secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin Friday night—but held off publishing what they knew to avoid endangering US troops.” That is, the media was actively involved in covering up a war crime, making it an accomplice.”

“These outlets do not “cover” imperialist operations from the outside; they are integrated into the state’s ideological apparatus, briefed by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies and aligned with Wall Street’s demand for control of Venezuela’s vast oil and strategic resources.

“Second, the propagandistic repetition of “bold,” “audacious,” “daring” and “stunning” serves a specific ideological function: to transform a crime into a spectacle of virtuosity. By saturating the public with admiration for the operation’s “tactical success,” the news media seek to preempt questions about its colonial character and legitimize the openly declared aim of placing Venezuela under US control.”

“[…] polling highlighted by national outlets, including CBS/YouGov and CNN, also confirmed that a majority of Americans oppose the invasion and kidnapping, with skepticism toward the claim that such operations have anything to do with “democracy” or “fighting drugs.” This chasm between public opinion and media propaganda proves that the corporate press does not “reflect” public opinion but regurgitates the strategic interests of the state and the billionaire class it serves.”

“The media’s fawning coverage of the kidnapping of Maduro is a warning that the ruling class is tossing aside all legal norms in pursuit of global domination.”

It’s always been like this, my whole adult life. It’s just that we always think that the moment we’re in is unique. Maybe. Maybe it is worse this time but a student of history would be able to cite dozens of examples where it’s been just as bad, or worse. And that’s just from the perspective of a reasonably well-off U.S.-American: poor U.S-Americans have been getting the shaft for years., that more well-off people these days are just starting to feel. People in other countries—I mean, do they even exist? Can we really even call them people if they’re not elite U.S.-Americans?—have been undergoing U.S. colonialism and imperialism for years. Trump bombed Nigeria on Christmas, just because he can.

Occupation: Public Figure feat. Seth Harp by Chapo Trap House | Will and Felix (YouTube)

At about 1:01:00,

“What’s important is that you can enforce discipline on anyone who’s like this is wrong or like do better, try harder.”

“When I when I think about this woman and her mom, […] this is sort of an invasive species and it’s now being treated like an endangered species, is what I’m getting at here. It’s that you can’t interfere with them. You can’t notice them and, if they transgress, like, if one of these feral stupids wanders into your sphere of influence, or into your frame of reference, or just simply into your life in any way, and you sort of shoo them off the property—be like, ‘no, get out of my garbage,’— then it’s like, no, the commissariat will crack down on you and then, within a couple hours, you’re going to have to be apologizing to the Kristy Fulneckys of the world because they ran over your dog with their car.”

History, Myth, and Media in an Age of Disinformation by Federico Campagna and Bill Yousman | Eleanor Goldstein (Project Censored)

“talian philosopher and author Federico Campagna joins the show to discuss his most recent book, Otherworlds: Mediterranean Lessons on Escaping History. Federico outlines the role of imagination in shaping our reality, the censored histories of those who refused an oppressive reality not because they denied its existence but because they denied its acceptability, and built worlds to shield, shelter, survive and in some cases thrive in some of history’s most difficult times. Federico also discusses how myths and nostalgia work for and against us, the nuance missing in an ever-narrowing world view which buries and censors the possibilities of both the past and the present.”

That interview was brilliant. Eleanor had very clearly deeply engaged with the material and Federico is an eloquent and gifted orator, very capable of delivering the crux of his ideas succinctly and beautifully.

Economy & Finance

Trickle-down economics is like if two people were standing next to a big pile of money that they had both just dug up, and then one of them says,

‘I’m gonna take all this money and I’m gonna go make more money with it and then I’m gonna come back here and give you some of it’

And the other guy goes, ‘OK I guess I’ll wait here then.’

The first guy doesn’t believe in trickle-down economics. He just said whatever he thought he needed to say in order to get away with the money right now.

The other guy believes in trickle-down economics.

Only suckers actually believe in trickle-down economics.

The Minnesota Day Care Fraud Story: Trump Says Fraud is a Big Problem When Black People Do It by Dean Baker (CounterPunch)

“At this point in his second term, Donald Trump has probably pardoned more fraudsters than all prior presidents combined. The list of people Trump pardoned, who were either convicted or plead guilty to fraud charges, is extensive. Clearly, fraud is something that is not a concern for the guy sitting in the White House.

“The story of fraud in Medicaid and other government programs in Minnesota is also not really news. It was investigated years ago under Biden and has already resulted in more than 60 people pleading guilty or being convicted.”

“When there is big money to be stolen, people will be there to steal it, and that applies to both the public and private sector. We will likely have some great fraud stories when the AI bubble collapses. To paraphrase Warren Buffet’s great line: when the tide goes out, we find who was swimming naked.”

“When people hear about Minnesota Medicaid or childcare fraud they should be thinking about the Epstein files. This is what the story is about. The fraud stories are old news and already well-reported and were being investigated by Biden’s Justice Department.

“What needs to be reported now is why Trump is so desperate to push such blatant racism. It looks bad even from a Trumpian perspective.”

This Is the Real SNAP Fraud by Timothy Noah (ZNetwork)

“If some crook hacks your Visa or Mastercard and goes on a shopping spree, Visa or Mastercard will make you whole. Federal law limits to $50 a consumer’s liability for credit card fraud, and the more reputable credit card companies typically won’t hold you liable at all. But if you’re a SNAP recipient and some crook hacks your electronic benefits transfer, or EBT, card, you’re out of luck. No federal statute extends you the slightest protection, and, except California and Maryland, no state will reimburse you out of its own funds. You just go hungry.”

“Between the federal government’s determination to cut SNAP spending 20 percent over 10 years—the largest reduction in the six decades of the program’s existence—and the massive increase in what states will have to spend on SNAP, there’s little appetite at the federal or state level to resume reimbursing beneficiaries whose benefits get stolen […]”

“The other thing that happened during Covid was that Congress expanded SNAP eligibility and increased the average monthly benefit from about $120 per person to about $230. Ever-adaptive, criminal gangs shifted their target from newly secure credit cards to newly flush SNAP EBTs, which still relied on insecure magnetic stripes.

“The obvious solution is to upgrade all EBTs with chips and tap-to-pay. But only one state, California, has done that so far, because it’s expensive; California’s upgrade cost about $75 million. And because those corner grocery stores and bodegas will once again be slow to upgrade their POS devices, California’s new card has a magnetic stripe, too, which still leaves it somewhat vulnerable to fraud.”

$75M for the entire state of California? In what world is that expensive? Shall we guess how much the mission to kidnap Maduro cost? STFU.

“In November 2024, then-Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack sent a letter to governors in 50 states announcing that the nonprofit American National Standards Institute had developed technical specifications showing how states could transition to the more secure chip and tap-to-pay technology. That same year, the Agriculture Department directed grocers to an online guide to help them make the changeover and said a proposed regulation would be forthcoming to “establish timeframes for upgrading to secure payment technologies.”

“We’re still waiting for that proposed regulation. Vilsack’s successor, Rollins, included SNAP benefit theft among the items targeted in her “National Farm Security Action Plan,” but her main solution was to punish retailers judged insufficiently vigilant. In general, Rollins seems more preoccupied with chasing undocumented immigrants, penalizing states that didn’t suspend full SNAP payments during the government shutdown, and making all SNAP recipients reapply for benefits. Addressing actual SNAP fraud committed by real criminals like the Dorneanu Organized Crime Group is a low priority.”

Revealing MELTDOWN Over Zohran's Childcare Plan While Trump Unveils $1.5 TRILLION Pentagon Budget by Glenn Greenwald (YouTube)

Excellent analysis and discussion of people’s priorities. Great report. This is the kind of report that makes those people who follow FOX’s and Trump’s orders wince because they realize that they’re cheering on the wrong things. People are legitimately hoping that the day-care programs fail so that they don’t have to change anything about their ideology. They will work to make those programs fail, or starve them of money, or lie and cheat—and then will point to the wreckage and say, “See! Socialism doesn’t work.”

The year 2025 when everything changed in global capitalism by Nick Beams (WSWS)

“Gopinath concluded that the question was whether 2026 will be the year “we correct course.”

““There is an opportunity: the US holds the G20 presidency and France the G7 presidency. Together they can spur action to restore stability to an uncertain and increasingly fragmented global system.”

“Under conditions where the US is acting as an imperialist gangster, tearing up all the institutions and arrangements, economic and political, of the post-war order, regarding them as inimical to its interests, and where it is even threatening military action to take over Greenland from its NATO ally, Denmark, we shall leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions about the viability of such a perspective.”

That was as dryly ironic as anything I’ve seen Nick Beams write. It’s the closest he’s come to saying, “It that’s our only hope, then we are triple-fucked.”

“Long-time FT financial columnist John Plender has also issued a stark analysis of the global financial system in a major comment piece published last weekend.

“At the outset amid “rampant” AI euphoria, “crypto lunacy,” credit bubbling in private markets and the US “at the heart of a global fiscal and financial maelstrom,” he posed the question: “does another 1929 crash loom?”

“He found it “curious” that people even needed to debate whether the euphoria around AI and crypto constituted a bubble “given that they so manifestly meet all the usual bubble prerequisites,” the fundamental characteristic of which was “an inspirational narrative that fires up investors’ expectations of super profits.”

“Few doubted, he said, that AI would be a transformative technology leading to productivity gains but there was “huge uncertainty as to how this will come about.”

“Another aspect of a bubble, he noted, is leverage and while at the beginning of their investment splurge into AI the tech giants were “awash with cash,” they are now starting to borrow large sums and in the case of Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have become net debtors.

“Summarising the situation, Plender concluded that there was a plausible case for a 1929-type scenario, though it was difficult to tell when the bubble would burst, but if it did take place the central bankers would put a safety net under markets as they did in the 2007–09 crisis.

“There is no question that, as Plender maintains, central banks, led by the US Fed, will pour trillions into the financial markets in the event of a crisis.”

It is not clear that the U.S. will be able to float the loans required for such an effort.

Medicine & Disease

Long COVID and the concealment of pandemic harm by Benjamin Mateus (WSWS)

“According to the PMC’s December 22, 2025 national estimate of the scale of transmission in the United States, based on wastewater surveillance, around 732,000 people are being infected daily. In the current year, there have been a total of 232,000,000 infections. The same dashboard estimates that one in 67 people (1.5 percent of the population) is actively infectious on a given day, and that cumulative infections per person since the start of the pandemic have reached 4.86, a clear reflection of the official policy of repeated exposure.”

“The PMC estimates that new infections are generating 224,000 to 890,000 Long COVID cases per week. Even under conditions of lowered acute fatality risk compared to the first two years of the pandemic, the PMC estimates 220 to 360 excess deaths per day from new infections and 1,300 to 2,200 excess deaths per week from new infections. These are deaths “in excess” of expected baselines, and are frequently not recorded as “COVID deaths” in routine tallies.”

““Observed COVID deaths” typically refers to death certificates where COVID-19 is listed as the single underlying cause. This narrow category depends on access to testing, physician attribution and coding practices that have deteriorated sharply since the end of the federal public health emergency.”

“COVID-19 is a multi-organ vascular disease that increases the risk of respiratory failure, thrombosis, cardiac events, stroke, renal failure and immune dysregulation. When the initiating viral infection is not documented—perhaps because it is politically inconvenient to do so—it disappears from the record, replaced by downstream diagnoses such as pneumonia, heart disease, or metabolic decompensation.

“This is why epidemiologists distinguish between COVID-coded deaths and COVID-attributable deaths. The latter includes deaths where SARS-CoV-2 plausibly initiated the causal chain, even if it is not listed as the underlying cause. Excess mortality analysis—used by EuroMOMO in Europe and the UK Office for National Statistics—consistently shows that total deaths remain elevated well above pre-pandemic baselines, even as official COVID death tallies decline.

“In other words, COVID has not stopped killing. It has been administratively erased.”

“Taken together, these studies establish Long COVID as the primary mechanism through which hyperendemic SARS-CoV-2 transmission translates into cumulative social harm. In the context of repeated infection waves, each surge generates new cohorts of chronically ill individuals while worsening outcomes for those already affected. Long COVID therefore reveals that the pandemic has not ended but has entered a protracted phase of population-level morbidity, largely obscured by weakened surveillance, yet increasingly evident in healthcare strain, labor force attrition and excess mortality.”

Art, Literature, Music, & Cinema

Among the Prophets by Nicholas Russell (The Baffler)

“At the end of the novel version of The Running Man, when Ben Richards realizes he’s lost everything, he decides to fly the hijacked plane directly into the Network’s skyscraper. Mortally wounded from a shootout, entrails dragging behind him on the floor, Richards does not save the world nor incite lasting rebellion. It’s uncertain whether or not what he’s accomplished will change anything—or for how long. There’s only blood and metal. The novel’s final sentence as the plane crashes into the tower rings backwards and forwards from 1982 to 2001 to now, a boldly austere and truncated conclusion to one of King’s darkest experiments: “The explosion was tremendous, lighting up the night like the wrath of God, and it rained fire twenty blocks away.””

“in this alarm I feel for what we are losing, I’m with the conservatives, not in the MAGA way, but in a what-has-happened-to-human-decency way. It’s hard not to look at what is happening socially as a gradual crumbling of social glue, and not only between skin colors and ethnicities, natives and immigrants, upper class and underclass. The erosion of habits and customs in in-place communities, that at very least gave a standard everyone knew by which to measure and judge behavior, leaves us incredibly socially crippled. Trump is not the cause of this crumbling of decency. He is merely exploiting it for his own purposes, a means for keeping all eyes upon the spectacle/himself.”

“Fire moves away” by Mary Cadwalladr (Hinternet)

“I have become convinced over this past year, for example, that Joanna Newsom is a great American artist — great like Whitman or Gershwin, and American like both of them in her ability to forge something entirely new, in an entirely new voice, out of older lineages. I have listened to Ys (2006) more than any other album this year, by far.”

“Did any good music come out in 2025? I don’t know, maybe. Who cares. I might get around to caring about it 20 years from now. There are many ways to be a critic. Here at The Hinternet, unlike, say, the New Yorker or the New York Times, there simply is no economic imperative to pretend that we are not living in an era of decline and mediocrity, or to make as if some recent culture-industrial production is worthy of our current attention, when in fact it is not.”

“But let’s be honest: there are only two reasons people preoccupy themselves with the present as if it mattered more than the past, only two reasons why they come up with lists of their listening habits for 2025 that consist primarily of music released in 2025: because they are vapid and don’t know any better, or because their vapid and ignorant readership expects it of them and their prosperity therefore depends on their willingness to do so.”

Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture

But Wouldn’t It Be Nice? A Paean to Decency by Kim C. Domenico (CounterPunch)

“The Netflix mini-series Death By Lightning, about the assassination in 1881 of President Garfield has caused much excitement locally because of the large role in it for Roscoe Conkling, Senator from Utica, and also for its depiction of the Oneida Community, the ambitious Utopian social experiment in nearby Sherrill, where the assassin Charles Guiteau had sojourned briefly.”

“It may be the fact I read Dickens every night before going to sleep that keeps me acutely attuned to this distinction between normal decency and the brave new heartless world of “whatever.” The decency in, say, Scrooge’s nephew, or little Nell, or Little Dorrit, is nearly impossible for a modern person to see as anything besides impossibly old-fashioned sentimentality. But still, wouldn’t it be nice? I believe virtue is so hard for us to recognize because it comes from positive self-regard – not naiveté, but it depends upon an active religious function which, in Dickens’ time, could still be commonly referred to. Without spiritual enlargement, the personal “self” is reduced to neurotic narcissism and self-loathing, authentic, non co-dependent kindness from a simple good heart hard to come by.”

“[…] have valued other things than “success” on materialist terms. To be this kind of person, to be good positively, one needs the confidence accessed by means of creativity. That is why, like Allen Ginsberg, I advocate that each person become “mindful of… your own art, your own beauty,” that you “go out and make it for your own eternity.” I’m at a loss for whatever else might work. I think we must open ourselves to the unhappiness that’s in our personal hearts, let it speak its deep truth; this is where decency starts.”

Technology & Engineering

Surveillance Tech Is Shockingly Advanced by Sabine Hossenfelder (YouTube)

This is just a public-service announcement that the reason they want you to do everything on your phone, on-line, and in the cloud is that they can then track every last little thing you do.

And then they will draw conclusions from it.

Will they draw the correct conclusions?

It doesn’t matter!

Whichever conclusions they come to will ex-post-facto be the right conclusions because technology is never wrong.

Then they’ll cut you off. No more phone contract. No more online accounts. No more online banking. No more banking. Funds frozen. Have fun fighting back now.

A Cyberattack Was Part of the US Assault on Venezuela by Bruce Schneier

“[…] t would mark one of the most public uses of U.S. cyber power against another nation in recent memory. These operations are typically highly classified, and the U.S. is considered one of the most advanced nations in cyberspace operations globally.”

I’m just recording that Bruce Schneier mentioned, at least once, that the U.S. is a leader in cyber-warfare. It’s funny that he doesn’t remember the extremely well-publicized cyber-attacks against everyone in the world, outed by Edward Snowden. It wasn’t that long ago that he proved to everyone that the U.S. is cyber-attacking everyone all of the time. It continues to do so, as it readily admit nearly all the time. I’ve been following him long enough to understand, though, that Schneier has an extreme blind-spot for the cyber-crime activities of the U.S. and Israel.

LLMs & AI

Scammers in China Are Using AI-Generated Images to Get Refunds by Zeyi Yang (Wired)

“[…] scammers submitted over a million dollars worth of refund claims using AI-altered images that showed cracks or dents in various home goods. The requests were submitted in a tight time window, seemingly to overwhelm the system, and the fraudsters also used rotating IP addresses to conceal their identity.”

“[…] an earlier backlash that happened on Chinese digital marketplaces, when sellers were the ones being criticized for using AI-generated product photos. Shoppers complained that buying online had become like gambling, and you never knew if the product that arrived would actually look like the pictures.

“But really, these trends are two sides of the same problem: Ecommerce relies heavily on trust, and widespread availability of AI is making it increasingly difficult to operate under the assumption that the majority of people are honest actors. Existing guardrails, like AI watermarks, are often too easy to remove. If shopping platforms want systems built for humans to keep working, they’ll need to figure out how to respond, whether with new verification rules, revised refund policies, or better accountability mechanisms for AI-enabled scams.”

Or, and hear me out: online shopping between countries is over.

LLM Hallucinations Are Still Absolutely Nuts by Freddie deBoer (Substack)

“The point is, this is folk antipsychiatry of the most insipid kind, put together by a stochastic parrot that was incapable of ascertaining basic facts about the institution and thus pulled impressions from the ether. It’s true that a place like Connecticut Valley Hospital is a difficult thing for an LLM to assess; state hospitals like that one both live in text in a way LLMs like (there is an immense public record about CVH) and yet the actual experience of the place, its brick-and-mortar, flesh-and-blood reality is opaque thanks to privacy laws, the type of patients who populate it, and the reticence most of them feel about talking about it publicly. But of course, the thing to do when you don’t know something is to say that you don’t know something. LLMs hate to do that; they constantly respond to scenarios where they have insufficient information to correctly answer a question by just winging it − by hallucinating. That’s because these are probabilistic engines that have been built to provide plausible seeming answers, to make users feel that they have been informed. Actually informing them is a secondary goal at best.”

“[…] do you really want these systems to take over mission-critical jobs from human workers? Do you think they’re ready, when they constantly go on wild hallucinatory journeys like this? You want to give this system the ability to influence medical decisions, legal decisions, economic decisions? Decisions of life and death? I am just baffled, baffled, baffled by the refusal of our media to stop and say, guys, this technology does not work.”

Programming

Software engineers should be a little bit cynical by Sean Goedecke

“The only thing an ethical software engineer can do is to try and find some temporary niche where they can defy their bosses and do real, good engineering work, or to retire to a hobby farm and write elegant open-source software in their free time.”

Well, no. That’s egotistical. Instead of crawling under a rock where they are personally safe, they should dedicate their skills, talents, and knowledge to building a society where assholes don’t run everything.

“It’s a cynical way to view the C-staff of a company. I think it’s also inaccurate: from my limited experience, the people who run large tech companies really do want to deliver good software to users.”

Cynics describe C-staff behavior as a group, not as individuals, which is the only way we feel its effects. Their individual intentions—assuming they’re good—don’t seem to have any influence on preventing the bad outcomes we often see.

If we want to avoid these bad outcomes, then we can’t over-value their professed intentions, we can’t overvalue how nice they seem at lunch. We have to shift the group’s incentives. Even people’s supposedly “good” intentions are people deluding themselves and deluding others about what are usually egoistic decisions. How many “nice” people even think about how they make money with their investments? They buy Nvidia. Palantir. Crypto. Gotta get that nut.

Chapter 12 Language extensions − 24 Effect handlers (OCaml Manual)

“Effect handlers are a mechanism for modular programming with user-defined effects. Effect handlers allow the programmers to describe computations that perform effectful operations, whose meaning is described by handlers that enclose the computations. Effect handlers are a generalization of exception handlers and enable non-local control-flow mechanisms such as resumable exceptions, lightweight threads, coroutines, generators and asynchronous I/O to be composably expressed.”

This sounds interesting but most of the documentation, while comprehensible to someone versed in language constructs and terminology, serves as a perfect example of “why no-one uses OCaml.” It is dense. Even something like exception-handling has been abstracted away into a generalized effect mechanism that is described as follows,

“We run the computation comp1 () under an effect handler that handles the Xchg effect with a continuation bound to k. Here effect is a keyword which signifies that the Xchg n pattern matches effects and not exceptions. As mentioned earlier, effect handlers are a generalization of exception handlers. Similar to exception handlers, when the computation performs the Xchg effect, the control jumps to the corresponding handler, and unhandled effects are forwarded to the outer handler. However, unlike exception handlers, the handler is also provided with the delimited continuation k, which represents the suspended computation between the point of perform and this handler.”

Though the documentation is quite long and replete with examples, Concurrent Programming with Effect Handlers (GitHub) offers another view on it. It purports to do the following,

“An algebraic effect handler is a programming abstraction for manipulating control-flow in a first-class fashion. They generalise common abstractions such as exceptions, generators, asynchronous I/O, or concurrency, as well as other seemingly esoteric programming abstractions such as transactional memory and probabilistic computations.

“Operationally, effect handlers offer a form of first-class, restartable exception mechanism. In this tutorial, we shall introduce gently algebraic effect and handlers with gentle examples and then continue on to more involved examples.”

Don’t get me wrong, I find reading about a generalized mechanism that collects all of the effect-ful mechanisms hard-coded into other languages fascinating. Where “elegance of the language” is low on the priority list, “provability of the program” is quite high on the list. Research into mechanisms like this is important and leads to improvements in other, more mainstream languages.

I started this investigation with the article Are we rational? About exceptions and effects by olleharstedt (OCaml Community), which was sent to me by a colleague. It writes,

“I was thinking about the fact that there’s no consensus about exceptions and whether to include them or not in a programming language. Think about Go. They decided to not add support for exceptions. Did they cite any study to support this decision, that supports the notion that exceptions in general lower the quality[1] of the ecosystem? Not that I know of. Now OCaml goes in the opposite direction − adding more ways to jump around in the code, with effects. Also no studies, no experiments.”

Related to this all is a practical implementation using effects for a laudable goal: inversion of control and dependency injection, described in detail in Basic dependency injection with objects (Grim's web corner), which discusses two common approaches to DI in OCaml and then proposes a more practical alternative.

On the effect-based approach, the author writes,

“an Effect system is often described as a systematic way to separate the denotational description of a program, where propagated effects are operational “holes” that are given meaning via a handler, usually providing the ability to control the program’s execution flow (its continuation), unlocking the possibility to describe, for example, concurrent programs.”

“It’s quite amusing to see that dependency injection and exception capturing can be considered two special cases of effect abstraction, differing only in how the continuation is handled.”

Spoiler: the author ends up using objects rather than modules (weak type-inference support, overly verbose) or effects (weak type-inference support, complexity).

The Evolution of Signals in JavaScript by Ryan Carniato in February 2023 (Dev.To)

This is a good history of reactive programming, giving proper credit to libraries like Knockout (2013) and MobX (2015), both of which I’ve used extensively. With Signals, we’re kind of back to where we started over a decade ago, but with more industry acceptance and now with compiler support in languages like Svelte or in libraries like SolidJS.

“Signals and the language of reactivity seem to be where things are converging. But that wasn’t so obvious from its first outings into JavaScript. And maybe that is because JavaScript isn’t the best language for it. I’d go as far as saying a lot of the pain we feel in frontend framework design these days are language concerns.”

Fun

Unskippable cut scene

“Anyone: Hey (asks about a special interest of mine)?
Me: Becomes an unskippable cutscene”

“Oh good I get to get explain this to you.

“You will regret this.”

“This section may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience.”

Apple 3 by Zach Weinersmith (SMBC)

SMBC: Apple

“Boy: Wait. The apple gave Adam and Eve knowledge of good and evil?
Priest: Yes.
Boy: So, before that, they didn’t know anything? Like, they could strangle a cat and just be like “maybe this is fine?”
Priest: Well…
Boy: And then a snake comes along and effectively says “you need morals around here,” and he’s the villain?
Priest: The point is…
Boy: And then God kicks them out for doing wrong, even though they literally can’t know good from bad!
Priest: Morality is obedience to God, which they did know.
Boy: Has God eaten an apple yet? Is they why there are so many hurricanes?
”

When your health-insurance premiums doubled and yo…run by pedophiles but you regime-changed Venezuela

Roaming Charges: In ICE Cold Blood by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“C. Wright Mills: “People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves ‘naturally’ elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.””

This is nice and all but there’s a folksy aphorism that fills the bill exactly the same and is much more memorable.

“They were born on third and think they hit a triple.”

It does require that you know the basic rules of baseball, though.