“Every time that the U.S. threatens or bombs the non-nuclear weapons state Iran, it vindicates North Korea’s decision to build its own deterrent. If there are any other would-be proliferators contemplating their next steps, they would have strong incentives to imitate North Korea and avoid making the same mistakes as Iran. That is one enduring legacy of our government’s incredibly awful Iran policy. The other is that our government’s policy has given the Iranian government every reason to acquire nuclear weapons despite its many formal commitments to reject that option.” (01/13/26)
“The regime change supporter’s favorite trick is to pretend the people in the targeted country are an ideological monolith. All Iranians hate their government, all Venezuelans wanted freedom from Maduro, etc. They do this constantly. Thing is, it requires them to dehumanize the very population they’re claiming to care about. They need to pretend the people in the empire-targeted nation are these weird creatures with some kind of Pluribus-style alien brain virus that makes them all think the same as each other, unlike any other human population they themselves have ever encountered. You have never been to a country where everyone has the same attitude toward their government. Neither have I. That would be freakish and abnormal. That’s not how humans are.” (01/13/25)
“Once we see ourselves as part of a group, we callously judge outsiders and rally to the cause of foolish insiders. Have you not noticed this in yourself? Once we see ourselves as part of a political whatever, part of a social whatever … it begins tainting what we think and feel. Left to continue, it poisons us against other identities. I’m not talking about simple, cooperative groups, mind you: those we feel free to jump in and out of; there’s not much identification involved. In practice, identification produces a free-for-all, each identity battling the others for whatever can be fought over.” (01/13/26)
Source: Wired
by Lily Hay Newman, Maddy Varner, & Matt Burgess
“If federal immigration agents are coming to your area — or have already arrived — you may be frantically making plans to lay low at home, or perhaps grabbing your whistle and lacing up your sneakers to join a neighborhood watch. It’s a terrifying situation for undocumented residents and all American immigrants, and the climate has even become fraught for US citizens too. There are no simple answers for how to protect yourself and others in every scenario, but there are frameworks you can use for weighing your options.” (01/13/26)
“‘Tom, I got nothin.’’ That’s all I wanted to say to Tom Engelhardt, the kindly and incisive editor of TomDispatch.com. He’d called to check in and see what I was planning for my next piece. I wanted to tell him, ‘I’m staring at starvation and genocide, the destruction of American democracy and the rule of law, along with the ongoing incineration of our planet. I’m a damp ball of grief, and I’ve got nothing useful to say about any of it.’ Furthermore, I wanted to add, ‘Anything I could say about the present disaster has already been said comprehensively and better by someone else.’ That ‘someone else’ includes myriad excellent journalists who have departed (voluntarily or otherwise) from a mainstream media that has repeatedly acquiesced to Trump, succumbing to a malaise of self-censorship at flagship newspapers like the Washington Post and even the New York Times.” (01/13/25)
“After retiring from active service, [General Smedley Butler] was frank about what his role had been. Professing to being a ‘racketeer’ and ‘gangster for capitalism,’ he went on to explain how: ‘I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Boys to collect revenues in. I helped the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.’ That was just a selection. With President Donald Trump in power, we do not need a Butler to give the game away or expose any frightful cabal. The empire is out of the closet, bolshie, bright and more thieving than ever.” (01/13/26)
“No government should pressure a bank to cut off customers innocent of any wrongdoing. Yet that is what happened with Operation Choke Point under the Obama administration and that is what happened again with ‘Operation Choke Point 2.0’ under the Biden administration. Even today, countless customers are debanked because the laws and regulations in place have made banks too cautious. It’s time to bring governmental debanking to an end.” (01/13/26)
“On Saturday, Larry Krasner, the elected Democratic district attorney of Philadelphia, posted a photo of himself on social media. It was a black-and-white picture of a stern-looking Krasner in a dark suit, one hand to his sunglasses. At the bottom of the photo, in all caps, was ‘FAFO’, which of course stands for ‘f*** around and find out.’ The accompanying message said, ‘To [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the National Guard: if you commit crimes in Philadelphia, we will charge you and hold you accountable to the fullest extent of the law.’ Made in the context of the Minneapolis shooting, the post was part of a new wave of tough-guy progressivism in which state and local Democratic officials around the country apparently hope to intimidate the federal government over the enforcement of federal immigration law.” (01/13/25)
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth censured Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, last week for truthfully instructing service members in November that they ‘can refuse illegal orders.’ If anything, Kelly — who on Monday sued Hegseth for violating his First and Fifth Amendment rights –put the matter too mildly: Troops must disobey — and also report — illegal orders. … Last week, in the wake of the U.S. military’s capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump spoke generally of his desire to obtain Greenland, while deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and press secretary Karoline Leavitt explicitly raised the possibility of the United States seizing territory belonging to our ally Denmark by force. Such orders are precisely the kind that our military must refuse to obey.” (01/13/26)
“The recent removal of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela’s presidency is a dramatic development after more than two decades of socialist experimentation under Hugo Chávez and Maduro, characterized by expropriation, macroeconomic mismanagement, and political repression. Although there is much uncertainty about the economic and political future of Venezuela, economics can offer some guidance — and warnings. One such lesson has to do with the dangerous temptation to base economic recovery solely on the oil sector. Venezuela’s prospects depend critically on the quality of its institutional and policy choices from now on.” (01/13/26)
