“Venezuelans today are waking up to an unrecognizable country. Like every dictatorship, Maduro’s had invested heavily in the myth of its own invincibility. And yet the regime is very much still in place, albeit in a weird, decapitated state. State TV is still running regime propaganda, Vice President (soon, one surmises, to shed the ‘vice’) Delcy Rodríguez is still fulminating on behalf of the Venezuelan government, the hardline interior minister Diosdado Cabello is still giving fire-breathing speeches condemning American aggression, Maduro’s notoriously repressive attorney general, Tarek William Saab, is still out mining the night’s events for propaganda points. The entire ghastly apparatus of state repression that Hugo Chávez built and Nicolás Maduro perfected appears, for now, to be fully in control of the country. Maduro is gone. It’s tempting to think that, without him, the regime will implode. But Maduro’s was never the kind of personalist system that depends on a single leader.” (01/03/26)
“Talk is cheap — but Polymarket lets you put your money where your mouth is. Nearly four years after being shut down by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the online betting company that allows you to stake money on future events has become CFTC-compliant and relaunched for U.S. residents at the end of 2025. Not everybody is thrilled about Polymarket’s return. Commentators across the political spectrum have warned that betting, on sports or on anything, can cause financial and psychological harm, especially for those with a history of addiction. It’s prudent to abstain from speculating with money you can’t afford to lose, but Americans should still welcome Polymarket’s comeback.” (for publication 0/26)
“That Nicolás Maduro is a monster is patent, as was the illegitimacy of his government, which disdained respect for the consent of the governed. But the urgent argument begins, not ends, with those two facts. Heartbreak, a risk inherent in puppy love, today afflicts those who believed this president’s reiterated disparagements of U.S. involvement in regime changes, wars of choice and nation-building. The lovers will recover. … When Theodore Roosevelt asked Attorney General Philander Knox to concoct a legal justification for the unsavory U.S. measures that enabled construction of the Panama Canal, Knox replied, ‘Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.’” (01/03/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“I’ve noticed a lot of angry comments underneath my posts these past few days which bizarrely mention the words ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’ completely out of the blue. ‘Why don’t you turn your attention sometimes to the genocidal intent of the radical Muslims, or does that suit your racist narrative?’ reads one tweet. ‘What can you say about Islamic Jihadists Muslims murdering thousands of Christians in Sudan and other parts of Africa?’ reads another. ‘The muslims must be irradicated’, reads another. There are too many examples to quote here, but here’s what’s so funny about all this: I haven’t been saying anything about Islam or Muslims on Twitter — I’ve been tweeting about Israel. Hasbarists just babble about Islam when they can’t defend Israel’s actions.” (01/03/25)
“National public health policy under the leadership of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made no shortage of headlines in 2025. As a short list, RFK made controversial statements about vaccines, vowed (but failed) to find the root cause of autism, initiated efforts to ban some food dyes, cut funding, cut employment, misused AI, and tried to eliminate medical scientists from publishing in select academic journals based on their funding. Less importantly, he also wears jeans when he works out. In contrast, the Food and Drug Administration, easily the most powerful sub-agency overseen by the HHS and RFK, has had a quiet 2025. It began the process of banning red dye #3 in food products, reassessed some safety standards for cosmetics, and implemented a rule now requiring complete safety disclosures in drug advertisements. Most of the FDA’s planned major reforms are still underway.” (01/02/26)
“Relations between China and India – the world’s two most populous nations, which also rank among its top five economies – have been fraught and frosty for decades, starting with armed conflict in 1962 along their shared Himalayan border and, more recently, a serious clash in 2020. But going into this new year, there are encouraging signs of a gradual thaw between the two nuclear-armed Asian powers. Even this slight warming – which one Indian diplomat described to a news magazine as a “state of armed coexistence” along disputed border areas – helps temper potential military flash points. On the political and economic fronts, the prospects are somewhat brighter. The leaders of both countries have met in recent months; flights and tourist travel are slowly resuming. And officials are exploring avenues for economic diversification and integration – moves that could boost regional growth as well as strengthen Global South economies jolted by the unexpectedly steep U.S. trade tariffs of 2025.” (01/02/25)
“Elon Musk recently put forth a bold vision: that within two decades, AI will automate virtually all productive activity, work will be optional, and money will lose meaning. Coming from Musk, such pronouncements carry gravitas. And noticeably, the expressed vision unsurprisingly dovetails neatly with Musk’s admittedly exciting entrepreneurial visions. Yet variants of those claims have circulated for years, usually without reference to economic theory, institutional constraints, or political risk. Rigorously examining those assertions is essential to decouple technological optimism from the practical realities that will shape the next two decades.” (01/02/26)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Michelle Ellner
“Overnight, the United States government bombed civilian and military sites across Venezuela and illegally kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. These are blatant and illegal acts of war by the Trump Administration. This act of aggression is a continuation of US attempts to seize and plunder Venezuela’s natural resources and undermine Venezuela’s sovereignty as well as the sovereignty of other countries in Latin America. This war also does not reflect the will of the people. Nearly 70% of Americans oppose another war and reject the endless cycle of military interventions carried out in their name. … The U.S. now claims Maduro will face ‘criminal charges’ in a US court. This sham proceeding will be done under the auspices of ‘drug trafficking’ — but we know it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with Trump’s policy of regime change.” (01/03/25)
“Both extremes are recycling old ideologies, but liberalism has a far stronger hand to counter them before they cause the death and destruction of the last century.” (01/02/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Sven Beckert
“It is impossible to pinpoint an exact place or moment when capitalism began. Capitalism is a process, not a discrete historical event with a beginning and an end, and it did not drop fully formed into a particular location. Even today, no society is organised along fully capitalist lines, and some have argued that a fully capitalist world is a theoretical impossibility. Efforts to isolate one patch of soil as capitalism’s place of origin — Florence, Barbados, Amsterdam, Baghdad, the southern English countryside, or Manchester, for example — have all proved insufficient. That is because the capitalist revolution had always been a process that drew energy from myriad sources.” (01/02/26)
