Did US Land Strikes On Venezuela Begin Last Week & No One Knew It?

President Trump on Friday in a radio interview disclosed something which missed the attention of the US and global media. He let slip that a large land site had been knocked out by a strike from US forces in the Caribbean – however without specifying which country was hit (whether Venezuela or perhaps Colombia).

Trump may have actually assumed the attack which he disclosed publicly for the first time was already being reported on, but it had not. He was being interviewed by John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire who owns the WABC radio station in New York on his The Cats & Cosby Show, and the two were talking about the Venezuela campaign. 

The United States had knocked out “a big facility” last week, Trump described somewhat vaguely, in apparent reference to a drug facility on the Latin American coast. 

“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Trump said, though he did not explicitly identify the exact location or even country attacked. “Two nights ago we knocked that out.”

According to the full remarks in context, the president said:

“But every time I knock out a boat, we save 25,000 American lives. It’s very simple. And what’s happening is they’re having a hard time employment-wise, they can’t get anybody.

And we just talked out, I don’t know if you read or you saw, they [Venezuela] have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard. But drugs are down over 97 percent. Can you believe it?”

Some unnamed American officials suggested to the New York Times that the Commander-in-Chief was referring to a drug facility in Venezuela

Trump did not name the location of the facility, though American officials told the New York Times that the president was referring to a drug facility in Venezuela that was eliminated. The president’s comment is the only report of such an attack. No other Latin American government, including Venezuela, has disclosed a strike of this sort.

But information or confirmation other than that disclosure remains a mystery, as neither the CIA nor Pentagon have commented, as the NY Times notes:

If Mr. Trump’s suggestion that the United States had struck a site in the region proves accurate, it would be the first known attack on land since he began his military campaign against Venezuela. U.S. officials declined to specify anything about the site the president said was hit, where it was located, how the attack was carried out or what role the facility played in drug trafficking. There has been no public report of an attack from the Venezuelan government or any other authorities in the region.

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Kremlin claims Ukraine ‘attacks Putin’s residence’ – shortly after Trump hailed progress in peace talks

The Kremlin has claimed that Ukraine attempted to attack Vladimir Putin‘s residence in a long-range drone attack hours after Donald Trump hailed progress in peace talks.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov ​said on ​Monday ​that ⁠Kyiv had attempted ​to ‍attack President ​Putin’s remote retreat in ‍the ‍Novgorod region and so ⁠Moscow‘s negotiating position ⁠would change, Interfax reported.

‘Such reckless actions will not ⁠go unanswered,’ Lavrov was quoted as saying, adding that the attack involved 91 long-range drones. 

Zelensky has denied the claims, calling them ‘lies’. 

It was ⁠not immediately clear if Putin was in the residence at the time. ‍

The attempted attack comes as the warring countries edge closer to signing a peace deal after almost four years of conflict. 

Trump on Sunday celebrated the success of his highly anticipated peace talks with Zelensky, revealing they are ‘very close’ to striking an agreement on all but ‘one or two thorny issues’.

The President had earlier welcomed the Ukrainian leader to his Mar-a-Lago estate with open arms when he arrived in Florida to discuss a 20-point plan aimed at ending the war with Russia.

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Zelensky Wants 50-Year(!) Security Guarantee From Trump

There were no substantial breakthroughs in the latest Trump-Zelensky talks on Ukraine peace at Mar-a-Lago resort on Sunday, and fresh reporting on Monday reveals why.

A major point of disagreement remains security guarantees. Ukraine has been pushing maximalist demands for something akin to NATO Article 5 protections. It would be like getting all the benefits of being in NATO but without being a formal member of the Western military alliance.

The Ukrainian side has revealed that President Trump had offered security guarantees for 15 years following a peaceful settlement, but Zelensky considered this much too short to protect from future potential Russian aggression.

But in classic Zelensky fashion, he wants way more than this. Also, maximalist demands are something that European leaders have backed him on all along – and they may have even put him up to. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Kyiv had asked for security guarantees to last up to 50 years after the end of the conflict during weekend discussions. In the documents currently being discussed, the U.S. offered a 15-year guarantee with the possibility of extension, Zelensky said in audio messages to journalists on Monday.

That’s half a century! Would Congress and the American public sign off on this? Congressional hawks like Lindsey Graham surely would, but others might not want to be hitched to the Ukraine wagon for yet decades more to come.

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Iranian President Says His Regime in a ‘Full-Fledged’ War With America and Its Allies

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Saturday that Iran is engaged in what he described as a “full-fledged war” with the America and its allies.

Speaking in an interview published on a website affiliated with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Pezeshkian said Western powers are attempting to prevent Iran from becoming economically and politically self-sufficient.

“In my opinion, we are in a full-fledged war with America, Israel, and Europe,” Pezeshkian said. “They do not want our country to stand on its feet.”

“This war is worse than Iraq’s war against us,” he said, referring to the conflict between the two nations that ended in 1988.

”If one understands it well, this war is far more complex and difficult than that war,” he added.

The remarks come as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to travel to Washington for meetings with Trump focused on Iran.

Trump ordered strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites in June, a move that escalated a nearly two-week armed conflict between Iran and Israel, later referred to as the “12 Day War.”

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Trump at Zelenskyy Presser: ‘If the 2020 Election Weren’t RIGGED and STOLEN, You Wouldn’t Have Had This War’

President Donald Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday to discuss ongoing peace negotiations aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war.

Flanked by American and Ukrainian flags, Trump delivered a no-holds-barred assessment of the conflict, tying its origins directly to the stolen 2020 election.

Trump didn’t mince words, stating, “I’ve said and nobody’s disputed it: If the election weren’t rigged and stolen in 2020, you wouldn’t have had this war. It didn’t happen for four years. Never was even thought to happen.”

The US president emphasized his good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite what he called the “total hoax” of the Russia-Russia investigation, and noted that he had recently spoken with Putin about Ukraine.

“Russia WANTS to see Ukraine succeed! It sounds a little strange! But I was explaining to [Zelensky], Putin was very generous in his feeling toward Ukraine succeeding. Including supplying energy, electricity and other things at very low prices,” Trump said. “A lot of good things came out of that call.”

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Peace President? Yeah, Right.

On December 17, surrounded by festive holiday decorations, US president Donald Trump delivered an upbeat — one might even say manic — address to the nation, preempting — and enraging fans of — network TV shows such as SurvivorThe Floor, and Christmas in Nashville.

While many expected something weighty (perhaps announcement of further military escalation versus Venezuela), what they got was laundry list of Trump’s “accomplishments” since his inauguration in January.

Most of those “accomplishments” — ruinous tariffs on American consumers, immoral and economically damaging immigration raids, etc. — were things we already knew about from watching our bank balances draw inexorably down.

One, however, stood out to me as the most risible. “For the first time in 3,000 years,” Trump said, he’s brought “peace to the Middle East.”

He said that, with as close to a straight face as he ever shows, hours after saluting the flag-draped caskets of two US National Guard members and a civilian interpreter killed in Syria the previous week.

He said that as thousands of Saudi-backed (and therefore US-backed) forces massed on the Yemeni border, preparing for an offensive against one of that country’s dueling political/military factions.

He said that as (US-backed) Israeli forces continued to conduct deadly strikes in Gaza and Lebanon, and raids in Palestine’s occupied West Bank, despite supposed “ceasefires.”

Words can mean more than one thing, but only in the Newspeak Dictionary from George Orwell’s 1984 might we expect to find any of the above defined as “peace” — or Donald Trump described as a “peace president.”

In his first term as president, Trump escalated every war he inherited and re-started the previous war in Somalia. He “surged” troops into Afghanistan and Syria.

In Syria, he dectupled the US military presence, had Marines fire more artillery rounds than were used in the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, briefly feinted toward withdrawing, then decided to stay to “keep the oil.”

In Afghanistan, he eventually negotiated a US withdrawal … but then failed to complete that withdrawal, leaving it to his successor and complaining bitterly about it.

He reneged on the US government’s obligations under the “Iran nuclear deal,” and ordered an Iranian general assassinated while on a diplomatic mission in Iraq.

In Yemen, he ordered the murder of eight-year-old American girl Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki by US Navy SEALs.

The list goes on and on.

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US Missiles Hit Two Nigerian Villages Far From Intended Target: Nigerian Government

Two villages in Nigeria that were hit by US missiles as part of the first US strikes in Nigeria launched on Christmas Day were not the intended target, according to a statement from the Nigerian government.

On Friday, Nigeria’s Information Minister Mohammed Idris said the strikes, which were launched by a US warship in the Gulf of Guinea, targeted “two major Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist enclaves” in the forests of the Tangaza district in Nigeria’s northwest Sokoto State, an area that’s not known as a hub for ISIS-affiliated militants, raising questions about why it was the US’s first target.

Idris also said that debris from US missiles landed in the village of Jabo in Sokoto, as well as Offa, a village in the central western Kwara state, hundreds of miles from Sokoto. Idris downplayed the damage to the villages, saying there were no civilian casualties, but residents of Offa say several homes were destroyed by the US missile, and some injuries were reported.

“At first, we were confused about what happened,” Benji Omale, a resident of Offa, told News Central TV, describing the loud sound he heard when a munition landed on the village. “So, we ran toward the area to find out. When we got there, we saw that several houses had been destroyed and many properties damaged.”

Omale added that the residents of the village are now “appealing to the government to take steps to address the destruction and provide some form of assistance.” Reports based on images of debris posted on social media suggest that at least three Tomahawk missiles fired by the US warship fell short of their target.

Tajudeen Alabi, a former special assistant to the Kwara State governor, told the BBC that some people were injured by the falling debris. “At least about five structures were destroyed in different locations. We saw some objects in a popular hotel, which we call Offa Central Hotel. It looked like a bomb,” he said.

In Jabo, residents described fear and confusion after US missile debris landed in a field, though there were no casualties in the village. “Our rooms began to shake, and then fire broke out,” Abubakar San, a resident of Jabo, told The Associated Press. “The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before.”

Residents of Jabo questioned President Trump’s claims that he launched the airstrikes to defend Nigeria’s Christians. “In Jabo, we see Christians as our brothers. We don’t have religious conflicts, so we weren’t expecting this,” Suleiman Kagara, a villager, told CNN.

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Israel’s ‘Game-Changing’ Iron Beam Laser System Enters Combat, Offering U.S. Blueprint for Future Missile Defense

Israel has begun field deployment of its “game-changing” Iron Beam laser air defense system, according to the country’s Defense Ministry, which confirmed the technology is now operating as part of the country’s layered missile defense network, with its combat performance expected to inform U.S. missile defense planning.

The announcement, made Sunday, follows months of phased rollouts and testing by Israel’s defense establishment and domestic industry partners. Defense officials said the system is already being positioned at multiple sites nationwide.

Senior defense officials have described the high-energy laser as a system that will “fundamentally change the rules of engagement” as Israel confronts sustained rocket and drone threats from Iran and its regional terror proxies.

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As support for Israel drops, the mainstream media is becoming even more Zionist

During a recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, CNN’s Van Jones told the studio audience that young people protesting Israel’s genocide are actually falling for an Iranian-Qatari disinformation campaign.

Jones proceeded to do an impression of a young person’s social media feed. “Dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, Diddy, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby!,” he joked.

Jones’s callous attempt at humor was condemned across social media, and he quickly apologized for the comments, acknowledging that they were “insensitive and hurtful.”

However, as Howard University law professor Ziyad Motala notes in an Al Jazeera op-ed, Jones’s apology failed to engage with a dark reality at the root of his joke: the consistent dehumanization of Palestinians.

“A true apology would have confronted the deeper problem: the instinct, common in US media, to distrust evidence of Palestinian pain unless it is filtered through Western validation,” wrote Motala. “It is an impulse rooted in hierarchy, the same hierarchy that divides the grievable from the disposable, the innocent from the suspect.”

That hierarchy has been on full display in recent days, as the mainstream media has centered stories of released Israeli captives while largely ignoring stories of Palestinians.

In a Middle East Eye, Doha Institute professor Mohamad Elmasry identifies a number of such examples.

“Since Trump announced his plan two weeks ago, western coverage has focused heavily on Hamas’s requirement to release the remains of 28 dead Israeli captives,” points out Elmasry. “Much less attention has been devoted to Israel’s obligation, under Article 5 of the plan, to return the remains of 420 Palestinians it has long withheld.”

Such bias has been par for the course throughout the genocide. Media critic Adam Johnson recently noted that the Sunday cable news shows have not featured a single Palestinian guest since October 7.

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China Deploys Humanoid AI Robots to Guard Border

China is dispatching a new kind of recruit to its bustling border with Vietnam: humanoid robots. The UBTECH Walker S2 machines will patrol the Fangchenggang crossing in a high-stakes trial of AI technology.

The above video from UBTECH shows hundreds of these bipedal bots marching in formation, “staring” out at the world with two eye-sized cameras mounted over digital displays. Sophisticated sensors and software help them balance and navigate crowded spaces, and the droids also autonomously swap their own batteries to minimize downtime. At the end of the video, the bots file into multiple Chinese shipping containers and give a salute.

Border officials claim the robots’ roles will be diverse, from guiding passenger lines to checking cargo IDs and seals. The deployment is part of China’s national strategy to lead the global robotics race; footage released earlier this month shows a different model of android soldier deployed near the country’s border with India.

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