Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“When government shoves its nose into markets, the supposed beneficiaries usually end up losing. Politically connected businesses pocket more money. Government bureaucrats enjoy more power. Everyone else pays through the nose. Politicians’ assertions of contrary motivation just add insult to injury.” (01/10/26)
Source: euronews [EU]
“Hamas announced on Sunday that it will dissolve its current administration in Gaza after a Palestinian technocratic leadership committee assumes control of the region, as is required by the US-brokered plan for the enclave. The Gaza militant group and the rival Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians’ internationally recognised representative, have not announced the names of the technocrats, who are not supposed to be politically affiliated, and it remains unclear if they will be cleared by Israel and the US. The government and other elements of the truce that went into effect on 10 October, such as disarming Hamas and sending an international security force, are to be supervised by the ‘Board of Peace,’ an international body headed by US President Donald Trump. The members of the board are still unknown.” (01/12/26)
Source: New York Post
by James Bovard
“Mayor Mamdani promised New Yorkers Jan. 1 he would ‘replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.’ Luckily, psychiatrists have not yet classified ‘rugged individualism’ as a mental illness. But Mamdani’s vision of cozy collectivism is tricky to reconcile with what I saw in Communist Romania in November 1987. … In Romania, ‘warmth’ was an abstraction that existed primarily in propaganda campaigns exalting the supreme leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu. To save energy to fulfill the Five-Year Plan for factories, the government routinely cut off the electricity to hospitals, causing 1,000 deaths the previous winter. The infant mortality rate was so high, the government refused to register children as being born until they survived their first month. On the streets …. People stopped me and pleaded for packs of Kent cigarettes — the de facto second currency — they could use to bribe doctors to get health care for their sick children.” (01/10/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/01/10/opinion/mamdanis-collectivist-warmth-is-a-lot-like-commmunist-chill/
Source: New York Times
“Mounting outrage over an ICE agent’s [murder] of a woman in Minneapolis spilled into streets across the country on Saturday, as crowds of protesters mobilized against what they called the excesses of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. The ‘Ice Out for Good’ campaign held demonstrations in small towns and major cities, including some that have been central targets of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. The protests came three days after an ICE agent in Minneapolis [murdered] Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen at the wheel of a car, during an encounter in South Minneapolis.” (01/10/26)
Source: The Intercept
by Alain Stephens
“From a purely tactical standpoint, the operation was a textbook display of American might: fast, overwhelming, and successful, with U.S. forces in and out of Venezuela before most of the world had even processed what was happening. But almost immediately, that show of force collided with a harder reality at home: Only 1 in 3 Americans say they support it, an unusually low level of approval at the very outset of a U.S. military operation. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken January 4 to 5 found that just 33 percent approved of the U.S. removing Maduro, while 72 percent reported their concerns about the U.S. getting too involved in Venezuela. Support breaks sharply along party lines, with Republicans backing the operation at far higher rates than Democrats and independents. Historically, Americans have given new conflicts much more leeway. ” (01/10/26)
https://theintercept.com/2026/01/10/venezuela-trump-pointless-wars/
Source: New York Post
“Ukraine struck three Russian oil rigs operating in the Caspian Sea on Sunday following Moscow’s large-scale bombardment over the weekend that left thousands without heat or power in Kyiv. Footage released by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) revealed the moment Kyiv launched three separate explosive drones overnight targeting drilling platforms belonging to Lukoil, one of Russia’s largest oil producers. … Ukraine has ramped up its attacks on Moscow’s oil and gas plants as a way to cripple Russia’s war machine after targeting oil rigs in the Caspian Sea last month. Along with the drone strikes on the oil rigs, Ukraine also targeted the Russian city of Voronezh on Sunday, killing one woman and injuring three others, according to regional Gov. Alexander Gusev.” (01/11/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Brandan P Buck
“‘[T]herefore you may rest assured that if the Nicaraguan activities were brought to light, they would furnish one of the largest scandals in the history of the country.’ Such was the concluding line of a letter from Marine Corps Sergeant Harry Boyle to Idaho Senator William Borah on April 23, 1930. Boyle’s warning was not merely an artifact of a bygone intervention, but a caution against imperial hubris — one newly relevant in the wake of ‘Operation Absolute Resolve’ in Venezuela. The Trump administration has amplified the afterglow of its tactical success with renewed assertions of hemispheric hegemony through a nostalgic and often ahistorical reading of the Monroe Doctrine. Despite the administration’s enthusiasm for old-fashioned hemispheric imperialism, the historical record ought to caution for restraint, not revisionism.” (01/09/26)
Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard
“Was the 2016 election a turning point for American democracy? Did political shenanigans and the election destroy so much credibility and legitimacy that the system will never fully recover? In 2016, ignorant voters were reviled like never before. However, the entire political-media system floundered badly. Never before had American voters been obliged to choose between two such widely despised candidates. A few months before the election, an Associated Press poll ‘found that 86 percent of Americans were angry or dissatisfied with the state of politics in the nation.’ Routine deceit by both candidates helped make ‘post-truth’ the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year for 2016.” (01/09/26)
https://jimbovard.com/blog/2026/01/09/2016-the-year-american-democracy-became-post-truth/
Source: Associated Press
“A Virginia man has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of planting two pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican national parties on the eve of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Brian J. Cole Jr., of Woodbridge, Virginia, entered the plea at a brief hearing on Friday. He is facing two counts of transporting and attempting to use explosives. Justice Department prosecutors have said that Cole confessed to placing pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee headquarters only hours before a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. Cole said he hoped the explosives would detonate and ‘hoped there would be news about it,’ prosecutors wrote in court documents.” (01/10/26)
https://apnews.com/article/pipe-bomb-capitol-riot-cole-rnc-dnc-7c737b5bf881c01011777c586ed41e12
Source: Unattended Baggage
“The NWO is dead, Long Live the NWO.” (01/10/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-324-the-nwo-is-dead-long