Tag: donald trump

The Next Wars Were Always Here

The first U.S. missiles that struck the boats in the Caribbean in early September 2025 were described by Washington as a “counter-narcotics operation,” a sterile phrase meant to dull the violence of incinerating human beings in an instant. Then came the second strike, this time on survivors already struggling to stay afloat. Once the details emerged, however, the official story began to fall apart.

Local fishermen contradicted U.S. claims. Relatives of those killed have said the men were not cartel operatives at all, but fishermen, divers, and small-scale couriers. Relatives in Trinidad and Venezuela told regional reporters their loved ones were unarmed and had no connection to Tren de Aragua, describing them instead as fathers and sons who worked the sea to support their families. Some called the U.S. narrative “impossible” and “a lie,” insisting the men were being demonized after their deaths. U.N. experts called the killings “extrajudicial.” Maritime workers noted what everyone in the region already knows: the route near Venezuela’s waters is not a fentanyl corridor into the United States. Yet the administration clung to its story, insisting these men were “narcoterrorists,” long after the facts had unraveled. Because in Washington’s post 9/11 playbook, fear is a tool. Fear is the architecture of modern American war.

The U.S. did not emerge from the Iraq War into peace or reflection. It emerged into normalization. The legal theories invented and abused after 9/11 – elastic self-defense, limitless definitions of terrorism, enemy combatants, global strike authority – did not fade. They became the backbone of a permanent war machine. These justifications supported drone wars in Pakistan, airstrikes in Yemen and Somalia, the destruction of Libya, special operations in Syria, and yet another military return to Iraq. And behind every expansion of this global battlefield was a U.S. weapons industry that grew richer with each intervention, lobbying for policies that kept the country in a constant state of conflict. What we are seeing today in the Caribbean is not an isolated action; it is the extension of a militarized imperial model that treats entire regions as expendable.

The next wars were always there because we never confronted the political and economic system that made endless wars a profitable cornerstone of U.S. power.

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‘Kill Them All’

“Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?”
— Gordon Lightfoot (1938-2023)
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”

As we learn more about the events on Sept. 2, 2025, in international waters 1,500 miles from the United States, the behavior of the United States military becomes more legally troubling than at first blush. We have learned from members of Congress and others who have seen the videos of the attacks on the speedboat that day that the first strike mainly — but not completely — destroyed the boat and killed 9 of the 11 persons aboard.

The two survivors clung to the wreckage for 45 minutes, during which they frantically waved at what they hoped were American aircraft, expecting to be rescued. This attack was the first of many since ordered by President Donald Trump, and it was done without warning. After the passage of 45 terrifying minutes, three more attacks obliterated the two survivors and their wreckage, for “self-defense,” the White House said.

When two courageous persons privy to all this revealed it two weeks ago to reporters for The Washington Post who corroborated the revelations with five others, the Post published the story. Then, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth denied he ordered the survivors killed; it was, he said, “the fog of war.” Then, the White House countermanded that denial. Then, the admiral in charge acknowledged that he ordered the kills pursuant to the secretary’s initial orders.

The military has a duty to rescue the injured and the shipwrecked. And the military has a duty to disregard unlawful orders — a position that Attorney General Pamela Bondi herself argued to the Supreme Court when she was in private practice, and Hegseth himself argued when he was a private citizen.

Not rescuing these survivors was criminal. But the entire killing process is criminal.

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Rep Massie Introduces Bill For US To Dump ‘Cold War Relic’ NATO

Conservative and outspoken libertarian-leaning Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced legislation Tuesday for the United States for formally withdraw from NATO. Sen. Mike Lee is also helping lead the charge, introducing companion legislation in the Senate.

The bill argues that the US military cannot be seen as the police force of the world, and that given NATO was created to counter the long-gone Soviet Union, which no longer exists, American taxpayers’ money would be better spent elsewhere.

“We should withdraw from NATO and use that money to defend our own country, not socialist countries… US participation has cost taxpayers trillions of dollars and continues to risk US involvement in foreign wars… America should not be the world’s security blanket – especially when wealthy countries refuse to pay for their own defense,” Massie said.

That latter part is likely designed to gain Trump’s attention and sympathy, given the president has been emphasizing this point all the way back to his first term.

The bill if passed would require the US government to formally notify NATO that it intends to end its membership and halt the use of American funds for shared budgets. Republican Senator Lee actually introduced similar legislation earlier this year, but it stalled in committee.

Of course, most Congress members have viewpoints which merely reflect the ‘pro-NATO’ established position of the vast majority of Western politicians generally, so it’s very unlikely to ever be passed.

Massie wrote on X, “NATO is a Cold War relic. The United States should withdraw from NATO and use that money to defend our country, not socialist countries. Today, I introduced HR 6508 to end our NATO membership.” 

“Our Constitution did not authorize permanent foreign entanglements, something our Founding Fathers explicitly warned us against,” he said additionally. 

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War with Venezuela Won’t Solve America’s Economic Woes

n April 1939, American unemployment reached 20.7 percent. For Henry Morgenthau Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury, this was bad news. In a private meeting he confessed to two senior congressmen: “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work… After eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And an enormous debt to boot.” 

Today, Americans know how the Great Depression ended. It ended with the onset of war in Europe. FDR truly believed that, if Britain and France went to war with Germany, the quagmire would make the British and French Governments heavily dependent on access to U.S. credit markets and resources, thereby ending America’s economic Depression. FDR welcomed the stimulus that war provided.

In 1939, Joseph Stalin hoped war in the West would be a quagmire fatally weakening Germany and its opponents. Stalin believed this development would open the door to a massive Soviet invasion from the East that would supplant Nazism with Communism. Thus, Stalin eagerly supplied the German war machine with the oil, iron, aluminum, grain, rubber, and other mineral resources Berlin needed to launch its war against Britain, France, and the Low Countries.

Ultimately, both FDR and Stalin miscalculated just how costly and risky the new conflict in Europe would be. War broke out in 1939, and in 1940 German military power rapidly defeated Western allies, though Britain fought on. The next year Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

Today, the Trump administration faces some conditions that FDR would recognize. Scott Bessent, President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary, confronts a national sovereign debt of approximately $38 trillion. Liquidity strains also persist in parts of the financial system, and the dollar’s long-term reserve status is under significant pressure and scrutiny. 

Among the ideas under discussion by Bessent is a more enthusiastic official embrace of stablecoins—cryptocurrencies deliberately engineered to remain boringly pegged one-for-one to the dollar by holding equivalent reserves of cash or high-quality cash-equivalents in regulated accounts. In plain language: digital dollars that promise never to fluctuate like Bitcoin but can circle the globe in seconds without ever touching a traditional bank. 

Bessent publicly argues that well-regulated stablecoins will also extend the dollar’s dominance into the blockchain era. Trump appears sympathetic; there is, after all, not enough gold on the planet to return to a metallic standard, and simply printing more fiat currency will further debase the dollar. Wall Street, ever helpful, is delighted to assist in kicking the can a little further—ideally down a blockchain-paved road.

Meanwhile, the Trump White House is charting a new course to war, this time in the direction of Venezuela. Has the administration concluded that the rapid conquest of Venezuela could induce the kind of economic stimulus that rescued FDR’s failed policies and restore economic prosperity inside the United States?

Compared with the Russian or Iranian armed forces, Venezuela’s military is almost Lilliputian. Nicolás Maduro presides over a hard-left, bitterly anti-American regime that is bankrupt, internationally isolated (save for Havana, Moscow, and Tehran), and yet sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves—303 billion barrels, according to OPEC’s latest assessment.

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FBI Is Making an Enemies List—and Most Corporate Media Didn’t Even Check It Once

The Trump FBI is drawing up an enemies list that could encompass well over half the US public: Do you “advance…opposition to law and immigration enforcement”? Do you have “extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders”? Show an “adherence to radical gender ideology,” meaning you think trans people exist? Do you exhibit (what the Trump administration would interpret as) “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism” or “anti-Christianity”? Do you display “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion and morality”?

Congratulations—you may be headed for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism.” “Terrorism,” of course, is the magic word that strips you of all sorts of legal protections, especially in the post-9/11 era.

This is from a Justice Department memo obtained by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein (12/6/25)—which goes on to instruct the FBI to set up “a cash reward system” for people who turn in those promoting such thoughtcrime, and “establish cooperators to provide information and eventually testify against other members” of groups with these dangerous ideas.

This is the implementation of the Trump administration’s avowed policy of criminalizing dissent—in the words of the NSPM-7 decree, outlawing “organized campaigns of…radicalization…designed to…change or direct policy outcomes” (FAIR.org, 10/3/25; CounterSpin, 10/17/25)—and as such is another giant step towards authoritarianism. Establishment media didn’t see it that way, however.

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Jaw-dropping moment US commandos storm Venezuelan ‘terror tanker’ in breathtaking airborne takedown as tensions rocket toward conflict

This is the dramatic moment when US commandos stormed a Venezuelan oil tanker in a breathtaking airborne takedown amid ratcheting tensions in the Caribbean. 

Footage released by the Trump administration on Wednesday showed American forces swooping on the tanker in helicopters and rappelling down ropes.

Troops with guns drawn darted up stairs to the bridge to take control of the vessel off the coast of Venezuela.

Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a statement on X: ‘Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.

‘For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.’

The release of the video comes hours after it was reported on Wednesday that the tanker had been seized, sparking fears of a potential blockade and spiking oil prices. No name was given for the ‘stateless’ vessel, nor was it confirmed precisely where off the coast of Venezuela the raid unfolded.

Trump called it ‘the largest one ever seized’ and warned that ‘other things are happening.’

The capture sent oil prices climbing sharply, with Brent crude rising 1.21 percent to $62.69 a barrel amid fears the escalation could disrupt global supply. 

Venezuela is one of the largest suppliers of oil to China, which has been the destination of between 55 percent and 90 percent of the country’s oil exports. 

A Bloomberg report called the move ‘a serious escalation’ after Trump demanded Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro step down. Caracas did not immediately respond.

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Tourists to US would have to reveal five years of social media activity under new Trump plan

Tourists to the United States would have to reveal their social media activity from the last five years, under new Trump administration plans.

The mandatory new disclosures would apply to the 42 countries whose nationals are currently permitted to enter the US without a visa, including longtime US allies Britain, France, Australia, Germany and Japan.

In a notice published on Tuesday, the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) said it would also require any telephone numbers used by visitors over the same period, and any email addresses used in the last decade, as well as face, fingerprint, DNA and iris biometrics. It would also ask for the names, addresses, birthdates and birthplaces of family members, including children.

CBP said the new changes to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) application were required in order to comply with an executive order issued by Donald Trump on the first day of his new term. In it, the US president called for restrictions to ensure visitors to the US “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles”.

The plan would throw a wrench into the World Cup, which the US is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico next year. Fifa has said it expects will attract 5 million fans to the stadiums, and millions more visitors to the US, Canada and Mexico.

Tourism to the US has already dropped dramatically in Trump’s second term, as the president has pushed a draconian crackdown on immigrants, including recent moves to ban all asylum claims and to stop migration entirely from more than 30 countries.

California tourism authorities are predicting a 9% decline in foreign visits to the state this year, while Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles reported a 50% fall in foot traffic over the summer. Las Vegas, too, has been badly hit by a decline in visits, worsened by the rise of mobile gambling apps.

Statistics Canada said Canadian residents who made a return trip to the US by car dropped 36.9% in July 2025 compared with the same month in 2024, while commercial airline travel from Canada dropped by 25.8% in July compared with the previous year, as relations between the two countries plummeted.

The US has already started squeezing foreign tourism in other ways, slapping an additional $100 fee per foreign visitor per day to visit national parks, such as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, on top of the regular admission fees. Nor will national parks have free admission on Martin Luther King Jr Day any longer: they will now only be free to visit on Trump’s birthday.

The notice gives members of the public two months to comment. The Department of Homeland Security, under which CBP operates, did not respond to media outlets’ requests for comment. Meta, which owns two of the biggest social media platforms – Facebook and Instagram – did not immediately respond to questions.

The Trump administration had already launched a more widespread crackdown on visas for people hoping to live and work in the country. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said in August that it will start looking for “anti-American” views, including on social media, when assessing the applications of people wanting to live in the US.

The administration has also demanded that prospective foreign students unlock their social media profiles; those who refuse will be suspected of hiding their activity. Several high-profile foreign-born students have been detained for voicing support for Palestinians. The social-media policy also applies to anyone applying for an H1-B visa for skilled workers, which are now also subject to a new eye-watering $100,000 fee.

As recently as last week, the administration told consular officials to deny visas to anyone who might have worked in factchecking or content moderation, for example at a social media company, accusing them in blanket terms of being “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the US”.

It has suggested reducing visa lengths for foreign journalists from five years to eight months, and has started demanding any visitors who are not from the 42 visa-exempt countries pay a new $250 fee.

CBP claims the authority to search the devices of any prospective entrant to the US. Although you can refuse, you may then be denied entry. While CBP said in 2024 it searched about 47,000 devices of the 420 million people who crossed the US border that year, experts said the number may be much higher under the new Trump administration.

There were already fears that the World Cup could become chaotic if US immigration raids continue at the same torrid pace.

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Venezuela and the Most Blatant Coup in History

There was a time, not long ago, when the U.S. had the social etiquette to conduct its coups clandestinely. That is important because it means they recognized that it is wrong. Coups were carried out by the CIA, and we often only found out years later. Now, they are carried out by the navy for the world to watch on television. The change is a reflection of Washington’s hubris and the belief that they can do what they want.

There may never have been a more public and obvious coup than the coup attempt unfolding in Venezuela. Hardly under cover of the dark of night, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, the nuclear powered USS Gerald R. Ford, brought its, at least, 40 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, its EA-18G Growlers, its two squadrons of helicopters, its five destroyers and it B-52 Stratofortress and much more to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, about 560 miles from the coast of Venezuela. Its more than 4,500 troops join the more than 10,000 troops with their Aegis guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 Poseidon spy planes, assault ships and a secretive special-operations ship who were already in the waters off the coast of Venezuela.

The U.S. military buildup is too small for a full-scale invasion and too large for stopping small boats carrying drugs. But it is perfect for a coup. The threat and pressure it exerts on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is overwhelming and unbearable.

U.S. coups in Venezuela are not new. They were not new in 2002 when the democratically elected Hugo Chávez was briefly removed from office in a coup before the people and the military restored the popular leader to power.

But the script has changed little since they were new in 1908 when the U.S. helped oust the left leaning Cipriano Castro and his objections to American power and influence in Latin America.

From its birth, Venezuela, along with Cuba, has represented an unacceptable challenge to the spread of America’s vision of form of government and leadership in what it perceives as its own backyard. Conceived almost in conversation with the 23 year older American constitution, the first constitution of Venezuela, as Greg Grandin has pointed out in America, América: A New History of the New World, sought to balance America’s preoccupation with individual liberty with the common good. The constitution calls for the “renunciation of the dangerous right to unlimited freedom” and insists that “because governments are constituted for the common good and happiness of men, society must provide aid to the destitute and unfortunate and education to all citizens.”

From Francisco de Miranda and Simón Bolívar, who fought first for Venezuela’s independence and then for a united Latin America, to Hugo Chávez who united and galvanized the Latin American left, Venezuela has been a challenge to the spread of American ideology and hegemony in the western hemisphere.

But the American response has never been so public and bellicose. In late November, Donald Trump spoke to Maduro by phone. The phone call lasted less than 15 minutes. Precisely what transpired on that phone call remains unknown. But one thing is clear. Like a sheriff in a bad western movie, Trump, with guns drawn, Trump told Maduro to get out of town. He told him that he had one week to leave.

What happened next is not clear. It is not entirely clear whether Maduro refused to leave or if Trump refused Maduro’s conditions for leaving. According to reporting by The Miami Herald and Reuters, Trump told Maduro that safe passage would be granted to him, his wife and his son if he agreed to resign right away and flee Venezuela for the destination of his choice.

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Hey, Guess What the Experts Were Wrong About This Time!

Experts: “Trump said weaker gas mileage rules will mean cheaper cars. Experts say don’t bet on it.”

Carmakers: “Hold my kei.”

Kei trucks are ultra-compact, ultra-efficient pickup trucks designed specifically to fit Japan’s kei-jidosha (light vehicle) regulations, and they’re beloved around the world. But you could never buy one here, thanks to Washington’s ever-tightening Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations, first imposed on new cars and trucks in 1975.

You know, the regulations President Donald Trump rolled back last week.

Trump said, “If you go to Japan, where I just left, and if you go to South Korea and Malaysia and other countries, they have a very small car—sort of like the Beetle used to be with the Volkswagen—they’re very small, they’re really cute, and I said, ‘How would that do in this country?'”

“And everyone seems to think good, but you’re not allowed to build them, and I’ve authorized the secretary to immediately approve the production of those cars… Honda, some of the Japanese companies do a beautiful job, but we’re not allowed to make them in this country and I think you’re gonna do very well with those cars, so we’re gonna approve those cars.”

But the Associated Press’s Alexa St. John is having none of that, apparently, in a piece explaining why Trump is wrong and CAFE is right and just get used to expensive cars forever.

Without doing a Full Frontal Fisking of St. John’s “THE FACTS” article, let me present the facts she missed or ignored.

Trump promised that new car prices might drop by $1,000 under his relaxed standards — really, just going back to the CAFE standards we used just a few years ago, when the planet still wasn’t dying. And that’s great, as far as it goes.

But consumers might be more interested in new, much less expensive, product categories that CAFE forced carmakers out of and American car-buyers away from.

“Average prices have also skewed higher as automakers have leaned into the costly big pickups and SUVs that many American consumers love,” St. John wrote — did I detect a note of disdain? — without mentioning that CAFE is the reason Americans moved away from affordable sedans and station wagons, and into trucks and SUVs.

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6 Major Warning Signs That Indicate That Military Strikes On Venezuela Could Be Imminent

They are getting all of their ducks in a row for a war with Venezuela.  Do you think that it is just a coincidence that Southern Command just canceled leave for Thanksgiving and Christmas?  And do you think that it is just a coincidence that the Trump administration just designated “Cartel de los Soles” as a foreign terrorist organization?  This is going to allow the Trump administration to take military action against Venezuela without formally declaring war.  As you will see below, so many of the things that we would expect to see just before a major military operation commences are happening right now.  The following are 6 major warning signs that indicate that military strikes on Venezuela could be imminent…

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