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How Washington’s Syrian Caper Debunks the Case for Empire

Sometimes a microcosm sheds a powerful light on large-scale macro issues. That was surely the case with respect to last weekend’s news that five US military personnel were involved in an ambush in Syria, which resulted in three deaths and three wounded. The incident apparently was caused by a member of the Syrian security forces, according to the Syrian Interior Ministry, who opened fire on a joint US-Syrian military patrol near the ancient ruins of Palmyra in central Syria (about 134 miles northeast of Damascus).

Needless to say, this news ignited a chorus of WTFs among the non-drinkers of the Deep State Kool Aid who post on X and elsewhere. After all, what other response was there when it became clear that these five servicemen were among more than 2,000 acknowledged US military personnel operating in the no count cipher of Syria; and that there are likely hundreds more covert forces working for the CIA and other US black operations there, as well.

And, yes, we do mean a spec of a country. After all, the tiny orange dot below is the essentially land-locked location of Syria on a representation of the global map. Relatively speaking, it has no economy, no technology, no military, no nukes, no oil, no minerals and, well, no nuthin’ that could possibly bear on the Homeland Security of America, way over here 6,000 miles away on the far side of the Atlantic.

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The Day PETA Looked Right, and Heads Exploded

Something happens every once in a while that makes you stop mid-sip and stare at the wall. Not because you’re stifling a burp; it’s not anything dramatic or historical. You need that second for your brain to catch up.

For me, that moment arrived when PETA praised work tied to RFK Jr. that aimed to end certain forms of monkey testing and limit the importation of primates for laboratory use.

Yes, that PETA.

The same group better known for shouting at people passing by, while wearing costumes, and drifting so far into odd territory that parody stopped trying to keep pace.

For a brief moment, reality tilted.

A Group Known for Noise

For years, PETA made noise and loud protests, sharing extreme claims, statements that felt designed to shock rather than persuade. Somewhere along the way, insects entered the conversation, and public patience quietly showed itself.

The organization that the legendary El Rushbo called “four people and a fax machine” — people of a certain age, do an internet search for “fax machine” — trained people to expect outrage on demand, where agreement never felt possible. People assumed punchlines when PETA supported something.

Which made praise tied to a Trump administration effort feel like discovering your smoke detector offers calm life advice — for free!

What Actually Drew Praise

What Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy pushed was an initiative to reduce reliance on primate testing by limiting imports and encouraging agencies to adopt alternative research methods.

Science, computer modeling, simulation, and non-animal testing have moved forward, already handling many tasks once assigned to live subjects.

Modern approaches promise less-to-no suffering, better data, and lower costs, which improve research and ethics and make red tape-loving bureaucrats lose ground. That proved to be a combination strong enough to break through any political reflex.

When Politics Trips Over Results

In this case, the humor sits in the source, not the policy, where PETA cheering a Trump-era move feels like cats endorsing vacuum cleaners, and somewhere in the distance, a megaphone hits the floor.

Once the dust settled, nothing collapsed, nobody combusted, and the planet kept spinning. Results mattered more than labels.

This moment feels so rare because modern politics trains people to react first and think later, where support follows teams, and opposition becomes a habit.

It’s a case where breaking that pattern seems awfully suspicious.

Regardless, outcomes don’t care who signs the paperwork.

Why Heads Really Exploded

PETA isn’t changing; there’s no grand shift taking place. The group simply approved something that aligned with its stated goals, even with an inconvenient source.

That moment alone shocked people; agreement, however brief, cut against years of predictable behavior.

Under all the settled dust, an uncomfortable truth was revealed: Good ideas survive bad company. Ethical progress doesn’t need perfect messengers. Sometimes it sneaks through cracks nobody expects.

That was a realization that unsettled people more than the policy itself.

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Volodymyr Zelensky’s Non-Compromise NATO Compromise

A key reason that Russia went to war in Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO; a key reason that Ukraine went to war with Russia was to defend their right to join NATO. On December 14, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave up Ukraine’s right to join NATO. He presented the concession as a compromise. But it is not really a compromise. Zelensky may intend the non-compromise to leverage concessions from Russia, but it may not really change anything.

That blocking Ukraine accession to NATO was Moscow’s primary motivation has been confirmed by NATO, by Ukraine and by the United States. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General at the start of the war, says that “no more NATO enlargement… was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine… [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

Davyd Arakhamiia, who led the Ukrainian negotiating team in Istanbul, says that an assurance that Ukraine would not join NATO was the “key point” for Russia. “It was the most important thing for them… They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to… neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.”  Zelensky said, in his first interview after the invasion, “As far as I remember, they started the war because of this.”

Amanda Sloat, the former Special assistant to President Biden and Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council, was recently caught suggesting that a guarantee that Ukraine not join NATO could have prevented the war. “We had some conversations even before the war started about, what if Ukraine comes out and just says to Russia, ‘Fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO, you know, if that stops the war, if that stops the invasion’ – which at that point it may well have done,” she said. “There is certainly a question, three years on now, you know, would that have been better to do before the war started, would that have been better to do in Istanbul talks? It certainly would have prevented the destruction and loss of life… If you wanna do an alternative version of history, you know, one option would have just been for Ukraine to say in January 2022, ‘Fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO, we’ll stay neutral. Ukraine could’ve made a deal, I guess, in, what, March, April 2022 around the time of the Istanbul talks.”

But Ukraine did not make that deal because the United States, the U.K., Poland and their partners pushed them not to. They promised Ukraine whatever they need for as long as they need it to fight Russia in defense of the “core principle” that Ukraine has the right to choose its alliances and that NATO has the right to expand.

Nearly four years and hundreds of thousands of deaths later, Ukraine has surrendered the right to join NATO. On December 14, Zelensky said that he is ready to give up the demand for NATO membership in exchange for “bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the United States – namely, Article 5–like guarantees… as well as security guarantees for us from our European partners and from other countries such as Canada, Japan and others.”

Zelensky presented this concession as “a compromise on our part.” But it is not really a compromise for three reasons.

The first is that the retraction of the promise that Ukraine would join NATO was already a done deal. Ukraine’s accession to NATO was never going to happen.

That reality was implicitly stated by Biden and explicitly stated by Trump. It is point number 7 in Trump’s 28-point peace plan. The reality has been recognized by Zelensky who has “understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine” since the start of the war. He has, since that time, “acknowledged” that Ukraine “cannot enter” the “supposedly open” NATO door and that, though “publicly, the doors remain open,” in reality, Ukraine is “not going to be a NATO member.” Any hope of resuscitating that dream died in the recently released 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States of America that states the policy priority of “Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.”

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Flushing Chicago’s Future When Rhetoric Replaces Revenue

It’s a sound we all dread: the toilet keeps running long after the handle drops. Water drains, money slips away, and the bill still comes. Anyone standing there nodding, pretending the noise signals progress, must live in Chicago politics—ignoring the damage quietly spreading beneath the floor.

A Mayor at War With Arithmetic

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson keeps insisting he likes business while governing as though payroll offends his values, despite policies that act like our running toilet: employers leave, investment slows, and taxes rise to plug holes, all while policies are openly hostile to growth.

Revenue is treated as an abstraction by leaders rather than wages earned by people who can still pack up and go. Budgets never care about slogans, because when employers exit, residents pay the difference. No matter how well-written, no speech fixes arithmetic.

A City Built on Strength, Undermined by Control

Once, in a time that seems like a galaxy far, far away, Chicago once stood for grit, industry, and upward mobility. Railroads, stockyards, steel, and trade rewarded their leaders’ effort and risk. Governance, consolidated power, and narrow decision-making did something that should never happen: they flushed that spirited grit away, leaving a political structure that rewards insiders and punishes independence.

It’s a script that never changes: predictable election outcomes, concentrated turnout that allows the machines to endure. Leaders hostile to growth arrive preselected rather than challenged.

When Rhetoric Replaces Revenue

The latest version of leadership talks endlessly about equity while ignoring flight. Taxes increase not by choice but by necessity after revenue leaves. Businesses respond to pressure the same way families respond when their neighborhoods become dangerous.

They move.

When each person or entity leaves, their departure tightens the vise on those left behind. Leadership talks endlessly about equity while ignoring flight. Taxes rise not by choice, but by necessity after revenue leaves

Businesses respond to pressure the same way families respond to unsafe neighborhoods. They move. Each departure tightens the vise on those left behind. With rising property taxes, multiplying fees, and already-weakened services, officials scold rather than adjust, blaming greed rather than reading the trail they’re leaving.

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Chuck Todd: Big Tech, Algorithms to Blame for Public Mistrust of Press

During an appearance on Saturday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “America Right Now,” political commentator and former moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press” Chuck Todd addressed the public’s apparent decline in trust in the media.

Todd attributed it to Big Tech and algorithms.

“Well, I think the short answer is yes, and I think, look, we haven’t had reliable political leadership,” he said. “And I think one of the things I like to remind people is one of the reasons I think trust in media has fallen to so low is remember what the media is. It’s a reflection of — I say I’m as good as the sources I have, not necessarily the sources I want at times, to borrow a phrase from the late Donald Rumsfeld, meaning, if you’re getting untrustworthy sources, you may be reporting untrustworthy information right? You get my drift here. And so, I think that the collapse of trust in overall institutions, the media in some ways is a reflection of that distrust and so that we may be reporting what the quote, unquote ‘experts’ tell us.”

Todd continued, “But if the public doesn’t trust those experts and then we in the media, are quoting those experts, they don’t trust us, too. It’s sort of across the board. And what you have now, I would argue, Tom, is essentially the left doesn’t trust the media now and the right doesn’t trust the media. We are in this siloed world. I put the blame on Big Tech and algorithms that sort of, I think, make it too easy for too many people to live in a bubble, a filter bubble. And I do think in some ways, there’s too many people — I always say we have too many journalists in Washington and New York, and not enough everywhere else.”

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Art dealer who told FBI about Epstein’s child porn affinity in 1996 says he threatened to BURN her house down

An art dealer who sounded the alarm on Jeffrey Epstein‘s sickening affinity for child pornography a decade before the FBI investigated the disgraced financier said he scared her into silence by threatening to set her home ablaze. 

Maria Farmer, who Epstein once hired to help him buy artwork, has long asserted that she filed a complaint against the sex offender in September 1996. 

On Friday, the FBI finally released a copy of the document – solidifying what Farmer has been arguing for years. 

‘I’ve waited 30 years,’ Farmer told The New York Times. ‘I can’t believe it. They can’t call me a liar anymore.’

But she said it does not negate the fact that investigators ‘harmed all of these little girls’ by not taking her concerns seriously

In the released complaint, which has Farmer’s name redacted, authorities wrote that she had taken photos of her 12 and 16-year-old sisters for her personal portfolio that Epstein stole. 

Farmer, who was 25 at the time, claimed that Epstein ‘sold the pictures to potential buyers’ and told her ‘that if she tells anyone about the photos, he will burn her house down,’ as per the document. 

The now 56-year-old visual artist clarified in an interview that the photos Epstein stole included nude images, according to the NY Times. 

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Kansas Attorney General And Law Enforcement Sued Over Raids On Hemp Businesses

A McPherson County lawsuit filed by a Kansas business owner challenges “unconstitutionally vague” enforcement operations leading to seizure of cash and hemp-derived products at direction of the state’s attorney general and director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

KBI director Tony Mattivi and Attorney General Kris Kobach said in October law enforcement officers raided CBD and vape shops to serve more than a dozen search warrants on businesses suspected of not complying with state drug law.

In a statement, Mattivi said targeted stores were “nothing but weed dealers” and the state must “enforce our controlled-substance laws when we have these substances causing bad effects on Kansas kids.”

Barry Grissom and Jake Miller, of a law firm based in Kansas City, Missouri, responded Monday by seeking on behalf of Mike Ballinger, owner of the McPherson CBD store Hanging Leaf, a court injunction to stop comparable raids and to compel return of seized property.

“The pleadings speak for themselves,” said Grissom, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Kansas and advocate for legalizing marijuana sales and consumption in Kansas.

Both Mattivi and Kobach, in their official capacity, were named in the filing requesting injunctive relief from “recent enforcement actions involving hemp products legally permitted under Kansas law.”

On October 1, Mattivi and Kobach disclosed their statewide “marijuana enforcement operation” focused on vape shops and CBD dispensaries. This law enforcement effort resulted in execution of at least 15 search warrants across Kansas.

The lawsuit said authorities seized $7,000 in inventory as well as cash from Hanging Leaf. A portion of cash taken into custody at Hanging Leaf was property of an unrelated business operated by the plaintiff, the suit said.

Attorneys for the plaintiff said Kansas law permitted hemp products with no more than 0.3 percent Delta-9 THC or tetrahydrocannabinol. The plaintiff alleged KBI testing with gas chromatography was capable of detecting “only the presence of THC and cannot determine the origin” of the substance. The suit says the KBI testing regimen improperly resulted in seizure of compliant goods.

In addition, the plaintiff asserted unconstitutional vagueness of Kansas law fostered “arbitrary enforcement that chills protected business activities.” The filing requested raids to be forbidden until the state adopted legal protection for products under 0.3 percent hemp derived from Delta-9 THC.

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Nine US attorneys resign over Trump administration’s ‘fraudulent’ anti-Semitism probe

Nine US attorneys resigned after being pressured by the administration of President Donald Trump to conclude that campuses had violated the civil rights of Jewish students and staff, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation exposing what has been described as a politically driven and legally baseless campaign targeting pro-Palestinian activism at the University of California (UC).

In interviews with The Times, nine former Department of Justice (DoJ) attorneys said they were instructed to prepare lawsuits against UC campuses even before investigations had begun, a practice one attorney described as a “fraudulent and sham investigation.”

“Initially we were told we only had 30 days to come up with a reason to be ready to sue UC,” said Ejaz Baluch, a former senior trial attorney tasked with probing alleged anti-Semitism at UCLA. “It shows just how unserious this exercise was. It was not about trying to find out what really happened.”

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At least 16 files disappear from DOJ site for Epstein documents, including Trump photo

At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.

The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Justice Department did not say why the files were removed or whether their disappearance was intentional. A spokesperson for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

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Democrat and CONVICTED Child Molester Runs for Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island

A Democrat with a documented conviction for child molestation has quietly entered the 2026 mayoral race in Providence.

According to reporting by the Providence Journal, the upcoming Providence mayoral contest currently includes incumbent Mayor Brett Smiley, state Rep. David Morales, and a third, lesser-known challenger: Michael English.

What voters are only now learning is that English is not merely an outsider candidate, he is a convicted child molester who served multiple prison sentences stemming from sexual crimes involving a 13-year-old girl.

English, now 54, acknowledged in a campaign announcement that he had been incarcerated, vaguely referring to “immature decisions” that derailed his life.

What he did not initially disclose is that those “decisions” resulted in four felony counts, including first-degree and second-degree child molestation, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

According to the Providence Journal, then 26-year-old English engaged in sexual acts with a minor between January and March of 1997, meeting the girl at various locations across northern Rhode Island, including the Lincoln Mall. In 1998, he pleaded no contest to the charges.

Despite prosecutors recommending a 40-year sentence, a Superior Court judge handed English a 20-year sentence with more than 90 percent suspended, meaning he served just 15 months before being released early for “good behavior.”

If that were not disturbing enough, English later violated a court-ordered no-contact order involving the same victim. In 2009, the victim reported that English drove to her home and attempted to initiate contact.

He was found guilty and sentenced to five more years, ultimately serving nearly two additional years behind bars before being placed under house arrest.

Yet today, English is not listed on the Rhode Island Sex Offender Registry, thanks to a court ruling that limited his registration requirement to ten years, which expired in 2007.

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