Source: CounterPunch
by John W Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“What was once dismissed as a joke — ‘Santa is watching’ — has morphed into a chilling reality. Instead of elves, the watchers are data brokers, intelligence agencies, predictive algorithms, and fusion centers. Instead of a naughty-or-nice list, Americans are sorted into databases, risk profiles, and threat assessments — lists that never disappear. The shift is subtle but profound. Innocence is no longer presumed. Everyone is watched. Everyone is scored. Everyone is a potential suspect. This is the surveillance state in action.” (12/18/25)
“European Union leaders have struck a deal to give Ukraine a €90bn (£79bn; $105bn) loan after failing to agree on using frozen Russian assets …. This EU loan is about two-thirds of the €135bn that Kyiv is thought to need to stay afloat over the next two years.” (12/19/25)
“Venezuela’s navy has escorted commercial oil tankers to Asia in direct defiance of a U.S. military blockade targeting the country’s oil industry. Three ships carrying urea, petroleum coke and other oil-based products sailed on Tuesday and Wednesday and were accompanied by naval escorts ordered by President Nicolas Maduro, according to the New York Times. A U.S. official said that Washington was aware of the escorts and was considering various courses of actions. The vessels were not on a list of sanctioned tankers maintained by the Treasury and threatened with attack, according to a review by the publication.” (12/18/25)
“The war on drugs has always been stupid and evil; its application to marijuana particularly so. Far too many people have spent far too many years in prison for possession and use of a common and benign plant, and taxpayers have been mulcted of far too much money to put them there.” (12/18/25)
“Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was found guilty of a felony count of obstructing federal agents seeking to make an immigration [abduction] outside her courtroom, a precedent-setting case that has been closely watched nationally and drawn passionate protests. A jury of seven men and five women deliberated more than six hours before delivering a split verdict. They found the judge not guilty on a lesser misdemeanor charge of concealing a wanted person. … The case has become a bellwether in the clash between the judiciary and the Trump administration as it executes a sweeping immigration crackdown nationwide.” (12/18/25)
“For years, pointing out the obvious was considered impolite: America’s biggest, most distortionary transfer of wealth does not flow from elites to the working class. Nor does it show up as corporate welfare. It flows from the relatively young and poor to the relatively old and wealthy. It’s the defining injustice of our fiscal regime, the largest driver of our government debt, and the quiet engine behind the malaise of Millennials and Gen Z. More than a decade ago, Reason editor at large Nick Gillespie and I wrote a piece arguing that Social Security and Medicare had together become the great cause of America’s generational inequity. We noted that senior households were wealthier than ever while young households still working to make ends meet had to prop them up further.” (12/18/25)
“TikTok has signed a deal to divest its U.S. entity to a joint venture controlled by American investors, per an internal memo seen by Axios. A deal would end a yearslong saga to force TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance to sell the company’s U.S. operation to domestic owners to alleviate [fake] national security concerns. … Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will collectively own 45% of the U.S. entity, which will be called ‘TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.’ Nearly one-third of the company will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors, and nearly 20% will be retained by ByteDance.” [editor’s note: MGX used Trump’s “World Liberty Financial” stablecoin for a $2 billion deal; Oracle’s Larry Ellison is also a Trump crony – TLK] (12/18/25)
“[George L.] Mosse had a particular genius for identifying second and third-rate thinkers that nevertheless had deep cultural impact, particularly in the half-century before Hitler’s rise. Figures like Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn easily fade from the historian’s view because they were gauche and intellectually unserious; revisited today, their works are easily dismissed as trash. It’s far more interesting to debate real philosophical luminaries like Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, whose genuinely groundbreaking work did nevertheless have real connections to fascism. Those thinkers are extremely abstruse, however. Normal people don’t read or understand them. Mosse grasped the importance of looking at the ‘sub-intellectual realm,’ where cranks and grifters peddle conspiracy theories and paranoid just-so stories. These, he suggests, were the men who truly paved the way for Hitler’s rise.” (12/18/25)
“India’s parliament passed a bill that will open up its nuclear industry to private firms and unlock investment opportunities worth $214 billion, after tight regulations stifled the sector for decades. The bill comes at a time of renewed global interest in nuclear as a steady source of clean energy, and as part of India’s plan to expand its atomic fleet to to support economic growth and help decarbonize its coal-dependent economy. The proposed law abolishes the decades-old state monopoly in atomic power generation and makes sweeping changes to the country’s liability provisions that had spooked investors.” (12/18/25)
