“In the annals of modern international relations, few moments carry as heavy a legacy as the speech given by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003. With solemn authority, Powell presented what he called ‘facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence’ regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The world watched. The Security Council listened. The invasion of Iraq soon followed. Yet nearly every core assertion Powell made that day collapsed under post-war scrutiny. Iraq, it turned out, had no active WMD program. The biological labs, the chemical weapons, the nuclear revival – none existed. The damage, however, had been done: hundreds of thousands of lives lost, regional instability that persists two decades later, and a critical blow to the credibility of the international system.” (12/29/25)
“Just saying the words ‘Letters of Marque’ is to conjure the myth and romance of the pirate: Namely, that species of corsair also known as Blackbeard or Long John Silver, stalking the fabled Spanish Main, memorialized in glorious Technicolor by Robert Newton, hallooing the unwary with ‘Aye, me hearties!’ Perhaps it is no surprise that the legendary patois has been resurrected today in Congress. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has introduced the Cartel Marque and Reprisal Reauthorization Act on the Senate floor, thundering that it ‘will revive this historic practice to defend our shores and seize cartel assets’. If enacted into law, Congress, in accordance with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, would license private American citizens ‘to employ all reasonably necessary means to seize outside the geographic boundaries of the United States and its territories the person and property of any cartel or conspirator of a cartel or cartel-linked organization.'” (12/29/25)
Source: The American Prospect
by Matthew Cunningham-Cook
“On Friday, November 21, as most Americans were prepping for Thanksgiving, President Trump went on a tirade on his Truth Social platform. Egged on by unsubstantiated claims by noted right-wing pugilist Chris Rufo, he posted: ‘Minnesota, under Governor Waltz [sic], is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity …. Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back where they came from. It’s OVER!’ … In recent months, there has been ever greater attention paid to a spate of fraudulent activity in Minnesota, with most of those implicated being Somali. (The ringleader of the largest fraud, Feeding Our Future, is a white American, and nearly all of those indicted are naturalized or natural-born American citizens.)” (12/29/25)
“With a triumphant Zohran Mamdani taking over as New York City mayor Jan. 1, many of my patients tell me they finally feel ‘seen’ in their resentment toward the wealthy. The anger feels righteous and moral. But it’s rarely about tax policy, wages or housing. It’s merely emotional. It’s about envy, inadequacy and the relief that comes from blaming someone else rather than looking inward. Mamdani declared during the campaign, ‘I don’t think that we should have billionaires,’ and he’s chosen Sen. Bernie Sanders, who regularly rages about them, to administer the public oath of office at City Hall. In my therapy practice, I hear what plays out in the streets. Resentment of the wealthy has become emotional currency. It gives temporary relief from feelings people don’t want to confront. Hating billionaires feels noble, but psychologically it functions as a shortcut to moral superiority.” (12/27/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It’s such an insult to our intelligence how Israel supporters pretend it’s the WAY pro-Palestine protests are happening that they object to, and not the protests themselves. Like if protesters were saying different chants they’d be totally cool with opposition to Israel’s crimes. They’re like, ‘We’re not trying to suppress your free speech and stomp out criticism of Israel, we’re just concerned about slogans like ‘globalize the intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea!’ We’re worried that expressions of support for Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran that we’ve seen in some demonstrations are going to cause acts of terrorism!’ Bullshit. Lies. They’re fucking lying. If they weren’t concern-trolling about ‘globalize the intifada’ they’d make up some other excuse to express their concern, and they know it. Their objection is to criticism of Israel, not to the way those criticisms are being expressed.” (12/29/25)
“I think we would all agree that education is one of the most important facets of any society. I’m not just talking about ‘going to school;’ there is much more to education than that. Education can even begin in the womb, and takes off from birth. Everything we are surrounded by ‘educates’ us, in one way or another — for good or ill. Not all education is ‘good.’ It should be unnecessary to say that. People can only know and act upon what they have been taught. If people don’t know what ‘freedom’ and ‘tyranny’ are — and the source of both — then they will not know how to protect the former and guard against the latter.” (12/26/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It’s just sitting there minding its own business trying to do a little genocide in peace while aggressively lobbying your government to crush your freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and you’re OBSESSING about it for NO REASON. You just hate Jews. That’s the only possible reason you could spend so much time obsessing about this one tiny little harmless country: you’ve got a crazy, irrational fixation on a small abrahamic religion, because you’re a weirdo. Stop saying it’s actually about all the wars and atrocities and apartheid and starving children and lobbying and propaganda and nonstop assaults on your civil rights and your government’s complicity in genocidal abuses …. No. That’s not it. It’s because you get freakishly enraged by small hats. Don’t you know there was a shooting on Bondi Beach?” (12/23/25)
“For writers, the future has long been a tricky terrain. While the past can prove unsettling and the present uncomfortable, the future seems to free the mind from reality’s restraints and let the imagination soar. Yet it has also proven full of political pitfalls. Sometimes writers can tweak a trend of their moment to produce a darkly dystopian future, as with George Orwell’s omniscient tyranny in 1984, Margaret Atwood’s institutionalized misogyny in The Handmaid’s Tale, or Ray Bradbury’s book-burning autocracy in Fahrenheit 451. And ever since H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds (about technologically advanced Martians invading this planet) was published in 1898, space has been a particularly fertile frontier for the literary imagination. It has given us Isaac Asimov’s seven-part galactic Foundation fable, Frank Herbert’s ecological drama Dune, and Philip K. Dick’s post-nuclear wasteland in Blade Runner, opening us to possible techno-futures beyond our mud-bound presence on this small planet.” (12/23/25)
“If anyone doubted that the rich would use their control of the media to push their agenda and silence dissent, CBS removed it with its decision to censor the scheduled ’60 Minutes’ broadcast on CECOT prison. CECOT is the notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador where President Donald Trump has sent a number of the people that he has deported. There have been numerous accounts of torture and abusive treatment in the prison, which presumably would have been highlighted in the segment. CBS, under its new ownership, decided that we shouldn’t see the ’60 Minutes’ segment, or at least not the one its team had prepared for broadcast last night. Apparently, they were worried it would offend the Trump administration..” (12/23/25)
“For Americans wondering about the future of China and its relationship with the West, the latest verdict in the Jimmy Lai case proves an ominous harbinger of Hong Kong’s continued slide towards authoritarianism. Lai, the self-made billionaire, media entrepreneur and pro-democracy activist, has been held prisoner of the Chinese Communist Party for five years under Hong Kong’s National Security Law. He was finally convicted Dec. 14 on trumped-up charges of sedition. This verdict, handed down in 855 pages of meaningless gobbledygook, is Lai’s second conviction during his state-sponsored persecution since Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests. Lai was previously found guilty of lease violations in connection with Apple Daily, his popular former newspaper that was closed by the Chinese government in 2021, and sentenced to 69 months in prison. The latest charges, for which Lai will be sentenced in early January, carry a penalty of 10 years to life in prison.” (12/23/25)
