Radical ideology replaces competence at the NYC Health Department

Source: Fox News
by Steve Forbes

“New York City is facing serious public health challenges. Drug overdoses are surging. Mental illness is rampant. Emergency rooms are under strain. Life expectancy in parts of the city has declined. So what are some employees at the New York City Department of Health reportedly studying? The effects of ‘global oppression’ on health. This is not a joke. It is a disturbing example of how ideology has displaced competence in city government — and how taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill. A public health department has a straightforward mission: protect people from disease, respond to health emergencies and ensure basic safety standards. It exists to prevent outbreaks, combat addiction, improve maternal health and keep food and water safe. It is not a political theory workshop.” (02/12/25)

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/steve-forbes-radical-ideology-replaces-competence-nyc-health-department

Cuba: Two Mexican Navy ships laden with humanitarian aid dock, as US blockade sparks energy crisis

Source: SFGate

“Two Mexican Navy ships laden with humanitarian aid docked in Cuba on Thursday as a U.S. blockade deepens the island’s energy crisis. The ships arrived two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country selling or providing oil to Cuba, prompting the island to ration energy in recent days. The Mexican government said that one ship carried some 536 tons of food including milk, rice, beans, sardines, meat products, cookies, canned tuna, and vegetable oil, as well as personal hygiene items. The second ship carried just over 277 tons of powdered milk. Yohandri Espinosa, a 34-year-old engineer, observed the ships arrive with his daughter and took pictures. ‘This is incredibly important aid for the Cuban people at this moment,’ he said. ‘We are living through difficult times of great need and uncertainty, and we don’t know how long we will be like this.'” (02/12/25)

https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/2-mexican-navy-ships-laden-with-humanitarian-aid-21349400.php

A genius for friendship

Source: Power Line
by Scott Johnson

“Abraham Lincoln stands not only as America’s greatest president but also as its greatest lawyer. At the time of his election to the presidency in 1860 he was the most prominent practicing lawyer in the state of Illinois. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its ‘ancient faith’ that all men are created equal. How can it be that lawyers know so little of the giant of their profession?” (02/12/26)

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/02/a-genius-for-friendship-12.php

1953 Redux — Neocons Want To Saddle Iran With the Son of the Persian Stalin

Source: Antiwar.com
by Charles Goyette

“It’s getting a little old at this point, but as the Deep State log rolls for another U.S. attack on Iran, it is promoting a new Iranian national savior, one with a familiar name. Here’s a graphic seen on X, much like others showing up on social media, championing Reza Pahlavi as ‘the legitimate national leader of Iran.’ Because Pahlavi calls for more U.S. intervention in Iran including airstrikes, his champions are a midnight choir of failed voices from prior regime change calamities: Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey. He is featured frequently in the warmongering of the Empire’s lapdog press, in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and on Fox News. Pahlavi’s only claim to legitimacy is that he is the son of the late-Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was driven from Iran in the 1979 revolution.” (02/12/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/charles-goyette/2026/02/11/1953-redux-neocons-want-to-saddle-iran-with-the-son-of-the-persian-stalin/

Is a Mass Revolt Against Technocracy Starting to Happen?

Source: CounterPunch
by Tom Valovic

“Let’s be clear about what’s happening here: robots and AI are taking over our culture, our politics, our way of life and our relationships to each other as social beings. They’re becoming the advance guard for a new and unprecedented technocratic form of governance — the apotheosis of Western scientific materialism. Further, these new forms of governance are being carried out by unelected Big Tech overlords operating behind the scenes and in the backrooms of a mediated society well out of public view. I certainly hope that Gioia is right about a major cultural rejection of technocracy. There are indeed hopeful signs.” (02/12/26)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/12/is-a-mass-revolt-against-technocracy-starting-to-happen/

Judge orders return of Venezuelans formerly detained in El Salvador if they choose to come back

Source: NBC News

“A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to start allowing Venezuelans sent to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador to return to the United States for their immigration proceedings if they choose to. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in an order that it was requiring the administration to allow entry to any of the more than 130 Venezuelan men who were held for four months in the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. ‘It is worth emphasizing that this situation would never have arisen had the Government simply afforded Plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them,’ he wrote.” (02/12/26)

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-orders-return-venezuelans-formerly-detained-el-salvador-choose-c-rcna258755

What’s the Right-Wing Beef with Cuban Socialism?

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger

“Right-wing American statists are celebrating with great glee the U.S. government’s economic strangulation of the Cuban people through its embargo and oil siege because right-wingers say they’re opposed to socialism, which has long been the economic system of Cuba’s communist regime. What these right-wing statists and interventionists fail to recognize, however, is that they, like most Americans, fully embrace the socialist principles that undergird Cuba’s socialist economic system. They fail to recognize that communist Cuba has simply carried the socialist principles that underlie American socialism to their logical conclusions.” (02/12/26)

https://www.fff.org/2026/02/12/whats-the-right-wing-beef-with-cuban-socialism/

EU pols fantasize that they can control cryptocurrency transactions across borders

Source: Bitcoin.com

“The European Union (EU) is considering a sweeping ban on all cryptocurrency transactions with Russia as part of new sanctions designed to choke off alternative financial channels that have helped Moscow withstand existing restrictions. Officials argue that a blanket prohibition would be more effective than targeting individual Russian entities spun out of already-sanctioned platforms. According to the Financial Times, which cited an internal European Commission document, Brussels believes such entities are being used to facilitate trade in goods that support Russia’s war in Ukraine. The commission contends that simply blacklisting individual crypto service providers is insufficient.” (02/12/26)

https://news.bitcoin.com/eu-weighs-blanket-ban-on-crypto-transactions-with-russia/