“A gambler made nearly half a million dollars on the capture of Venezuela’s president just before it was officially announced, raising questions about whether someone profited from inside knowledge of the US operation. Wagers on Polymarket, a crypto-powered platform, that Nicolás Maduro would be out of power by the end of January rose in the hours before President Donald Trump announced on Saturday the Venezuelan leader had been seized. One account, which joined the platform last month and took four positions, all on Venezuela, made more than $436,000 (£322,000) from a $32,537 bet. It remains unclear who placed the bet.” (01/06/25)
“Is there any media outlet in the country that does actual journalism? I’ll save you the time, the answer is a resounding ‘no!’ None, not one, is worth their weight in post-digested food, and neither are the people who work there (and I say this as someone who knows a lot of people who work there, and likes some of them). It is getting harder and harder to come away from consuming any ‘news’ from anywhere and not be dumber for the experience. No matter how much you dislike these people and that profession, you cannot hate them enough. How many ‘journalists,’ upon seeing the original video about fraud in the Minnesota welfare system committed by Somalis, set out to report on the substance of the story versus how many reports did you see of reporters calling Nick Shirley’s reporting ‘a viral video’ by ‘a right-wing blogger?'” (01/06/25)
“Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said ‘fuck you’ to the Supreme Court over its decision to temporarily uphold Texas'[s] new congressional districts. In a video posted to her YouTube account on Sunday, Crockett commented on what she claims are efforts by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party to ‘rig the system’ ahead of the 2026 midterm elections using redistricting tactics. ‘Obviously, Trump is still doing his bidding with these state Houses and state Senates and governor’s mansions to try to rig the system,’ Crockett said. ‘Kudos to Indiana for saying f— you. Kudos to California for saying we’re going to fight back.’ She continued, ‘Definitely kudos to the Trump justice who wrote the 160-page opinion denouncing what took place in Texas and fuck you to the Supreme Court for what they did as well …'” (01/06/25)
“Republican Doug LaMalfa, a seven-term U.S. representative from California and a reliable vote on President Donald Trump’s agenda, has died, reducing the GOP’s narrow control of the House. He was 65. A former state lawmaker and rice farmer, LaMalfa had more than a dozen years in Congress, where he regularly helped GOP leaders open the House floor and frequently gave speeches. His death, confirmed by Majority Whip Tom Emmer and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson, trims the Republicans’ margin of control of the House to 218 seats to Democrats’ 213.” (01/06/25)
“The West Shore school board policy committee meeting came to a halt almost as soon as it began. As a board member started going over the agenda on July 17, 2025, local parent Danielle Gross rose to object to a last-minute addition she said hadn’t been on the district’s website the day before. By posting notice of the proposal so close to the meeting, charged Gross, who is also a partner at a communications and advocacy firm that works on state education policy, the board had violated Pennsylvania’s open meetings law, failing to provide the public at least 24 hours’ notice about a topic ‘this board knows is of great concern for many community members interested in the rights of our LGBTQ students.’ The committee chair, relentlessly banging her gavel, adjourned the meeting to a nonpublic ‘executive session.'” (01/06/25)
“When New York’s new mayor vowed to replace rugged individualism with collectivism, he echoed an ideology history has already tested, and buried. Ayn Rand warned us what happens when societies punish excellence. In 2026, New York chose to learn the lesson anyway. On January 1, 2026, in his inaugural address as Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani stated it plainly: ‘We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.’ This was not a flourish or a metaphor gone astray. It was a governing declaration, delivered from the seat of American commerce and offered as the philosophical blueprint for how the nation’s largest city would now be run … Socialist (cough, cough—Communist). History has heard this language before, and it has always ended the same way.” (01/05/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It’s not just that they stole Venezuela’s president in order to steal its oil, it’s that they’re working to steal the whole damn country. To steal its sovereignty. Its right to conduct its own affairs on its own terms as an independent nation. Dopey right wingers who learned the phrase ‘Monroe Doctrine’ like ten seconds ago have been mindlessly parroting those words all day to defend Trump’s Venezuela assault, and what’s grating about it is they actually think they’re talking about a real thing. They’re like, ‘No no it was totally legit, see there’s this thing called the Monroe Doctrine which says we get to control everything that happens in the western hemisphere and treat half the planet like it’s our own personal property.'” (01/05/25)
“The American capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro as an alleged fugitive from U.S. justice – while an impressive military feat – has opened a vigorous, global debate about its legality. Is unilateral foreign intervention justified when a failing authoritarian state commits atrocities at home and exports drugs and migrants? Yet for millions of Venezuelans – joyful over a dictator’s exit – the question is less about international law than about their quest for the very basis of law: the freedom of sovereign individuals to choose their government and maintain a shared civic identity. ‘The time has come for popular sovereignty and national sovereignty to prevail in our country,’ Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado declared in a weekend social media post.” (01/04/25)
“As 2026 begins, what a strange planet we find ourselves on. The two great empires of my youth, the Soviet Union (now Russia) and my own country, are clearly experiencing some version of imperial decline, even if Vladimir Putin is acting otherwise in Ukraine (as is Donald Trump in his own strange fashion in the Caribbean Sea and Venezuela). No less curiously, the country visibly on the rise, China, is distinctly not acting like a typical imperial power of history (at least the history I’ve known). In a world where the United States still has 750 or so military bases around the world, China, as far as I can tell, has at most just one (in Djibouti, Africa).” (01/05/25)
“For three years, the Washington foreign policy establishment has insisted that there is only one acceptable outcome in Ukraine: total victory over Russia achieved through relentless military aid, indefinite financial support and escalation readiness regardless of the risks. But strategy and morality are not always the same thing — and real leadership demands confronting reality as it exists, not as we wish it to be. I write this not as an academic or pundit, but as someone who worked at the center of this conflict. As U.S. ambassador to the European Union during the first Trump administration, President Donald Trump tasked me with bringing Europe into alignment — truly into alignment — behind Ukraine. That meant ending the EU’s habitual double-game: proclaiming solidarity with Kyiv while enriching Moscow through energy purchases and dragging its feet on serious sanctions.” (01/05/25)
