“German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that the Trump administration’s new national security strategy underscores the need for Europe to become ‘much more independent’ from the United States in terms of security policy. Merz also pushed back against the notion that European democracy needs saving. The U.S. strategy, published Friday, paints European allies as weak, while offering tacit support to far-right political parties, and was critical of European free speech and migration policy. On Monday, European Council President António Costa warned the U.S. against interfering in Europe’s affairs and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them. Merz, the leader of the European Union’s most populous nation and its biggest economy, said he wasn’t surprised by the substance of the strategy as it was largely in line with a lecture U.S. Vice President JD Vance gave to European allies in Munich in February.” (12/09/25)
“Vladimir Putin last week sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner packing, passing on President Donald Trump’s latest peace plan, and has followed up with yet more aerial assaults on Ukrainian civilians; it’s plainly time for Trump to up the economic pressure to get Vlad to the table. Absent that, the only peace Putin is interested in is the total conquest of Ukraine. Trump may grumble about Volodymyr Zelensky, but Ukraine’s president has been happy to negotiate; Putin’s the one who keeps saying nyet, even as he orders his forces to prepare for winter operations. European leaders who met Monday with Zelensky say they’re going to up their aid to Kyiv and look to further squeeze Moscow; if they follow through, Trump can surely do the same.” (12/08/25)
“Australia at midnight (1300 GMT) on Wednesday became the first country in the world to ban social media for children under 16, blocking them from platforms including TikTok, Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook. Ten of the biggest platforms were ordered to block children or be fined up to A$49.5 million ($33 million) under the new law, which was criticised by major technology companies and free speech campaigners, but praised by parents and child advocates. The ban is being closely watched by other countries considering similar age-based measures as concerns mount over the effects of social media on children’s health and safety. ‘While Australia is the first to adopt such restrictions, it is unlikely to be the last,’ Tama Leaver, a professor of internet studies at Curtin University, said.” (12/09/25)
“A planned news conference on Tuesday by Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado was canceled after a several-hour delay, a day before the award ceremony in Oslo. Machado, who last appeared in public 11 months ago, had been due to hold a traditional news conference the day before the formal award ceremony. But the lunchtime event was delayed without explanation, until the Norwegian Nobel Institute said three hours after the scheduled time that ‘it will not take place today.’ ‘María Corina Machado has herself stated in interviews how challenging the journey to Oslo, Norway, will be,’ the institute said in an email. ‘We therefore cannot at this point provide any further information about when and how she will arrive for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.’ The institute did not specify whether the news conference would take place at a later point.” (12/09/25)
“The stock market has made gains at rates that are several multiples more than the growth of the real economy for three years running. Investor euphoria is always a sign of danger ahead, but this time there are other special factors signaling a pending crash. And of course, they all interact. Once investors head for the exits, others start bailing. I. Deregulation of Increasing Risk. Trump’s bank regulators are systematically dismantling the safeguards that were put in place after the financial collapse of 2008. That crash was caused by opaque financial instruments such as credit derivatives that allowed almost infinite amounts of leverage. When they turned out to be worthless, the collapse was also nearly infinite. In the aftermath, Congress and the regulators limited the risks that banks could take. In classic Wall Street form, the wise guys responded by creating non-banks that could do most of what banks do.” (12/09/25)
“It is hard now even for Democrats to defend illegal [sic] immigration, given that the Biden administration allowed in more than 10 million entrants. Among them were an estimated 500,000 criminals. No one believes that was wise or should ever be repeated. Worse, the message went out that there would be few, if any, deportations* and no real ICE kinetic activity beyond the border. The world’s poor, sick, both law-abiding and criminal, young and old, understood that anyone could now enter the U.S. at will. Deterrence and legality were lost. In its place, the message went out that if it was permissible to cross the border unlawfully [sic], then, by extension, it would be seen as equally fine to reside illegally [sic] as well, and perhaps further to ignore laws, on the theory that the host had sanctioned all such exemptions.” [editor’s note: * Trump still hasn’t caught up with Biden’s deportation numbers. Or Obama’s – TLK] (12/08/25)
“In recent months, the Trump administration has escalated a decades-long campaign against the Venezuelan government and people. The renewed, intensifying threats of regime change, justified through false or inflated claims that Nicolás Maduro, its president, is directing narco-terrorism against the United States, serve as a convenient pretext for deeper and more direct intervention. A recent wave of extrajudicial killings at sea, the directing of the CIA to launch covert ops inside Venezuela, the surge of US troops into the Caribbean, the reopening of a long-shuttered naval base in Puerto Rico, and the deployment of the aircraft carrier the USS Gerald Ford in the region represent striking but not surprising developments. These are little more than the latest expression of an ideological project through which Washington has long sought to shape the hemisphere in ways that would entrench US power further and protect the profits of Western multinationals.” (12/07/25)
“President Trump put the affordability crisis squarely in his sights this week when he announced a major regulatory reform that will save American families billions of dollars on vehicles in the coming years. By rolling back onerous overreach from the Biden administration, Mr. Trump is ensuring consumers will be able to buy the cars and trucks they want, and at lower prices. The regulation concerned here is the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which are promulgated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. CAFE standards regulate fuel economy for cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks. Under Biden, these standards were raised to completely unreasonable levels, forcing costly changes for consumers and automakers alike. The Biden-era regulation would’ve required automakers to meet a fleet average of more than 50 miles per gallon for cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks in model year 2031, which is just a few years away.” (12/08/25)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“Donald Trump campaigned on ending endless wars and now boasts that he has resolved eight wars. In reality, this claim is delusional, and his foreign policy is a disaster. The United States remains mired in ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and now Trump is careening blindly into new wars in Latin America. The dangerous disconnect between Trump’s delusions and the real-world impacts of his policies is on full display in his new National Security Strategy document. But this schism has been exacerbated by putting US foreign policy in the hands of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose neocon worldview and behind-the-scenes maneuvering has consistently undercut Trump’s professed goals of diplomacy, negotiated settlements and ‘America First’ priorities.” (12/08/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The blue whales have stopped singing / because the krill are vanishing / because the oceans are warming / because we are ruled by long-toothed liars / whose insides are full of dead leaves. / The great whales have gone silent / and my bird has gone blind / and there are chatbots in the basement / and corpses in the corn. / Under the overpass it is dry and still. / You would never know that everything is dying. / You should come and visit me. / Meet me over there under the sepia streetlights / with the strangleporn perverts and fentanyl fallen, / all the stillborn scar tissue extractions / from the wreckage of a banished womb, / the NAFTA-noosed factory towns full of deserted buildings / and the window-snarling meth towns full of deserted people, / where the cries of orphaned Palestinians mingle / with the cries of the last baby orangutan / ever born in the wild …” (12/08/25)
