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The Flotillas to Gaza Are the World’s Conscience

 January 16, 2026 By Chris Hedges , ScheerPost

OME, Italy — There will be a new flotilla in April 2026 that will attempt to break the 18-year-old Israeli blockade of Gaza. The mission is expected to be the largest maritime action for Palestine to date, involving more than 3,000 activists from 100 countries on 100 boats, including a medical fleet of 1,000 health care workers to deliver 500 tons of life-saving aid, equipment and medical supplies that Israel has blocked from entering Gaza.

Once again, activists from all over the world will sail toward Gaza in an attempt to end one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet. Once again, their journey will be minutely tracked on social media. Once again, Israeli drones will be sent out in international waters to intercept and attack the boats. Once again, the boats will be boarded by masked, heavily armed Israeli soldiers. Once again, activists will be arrested. Once again, they will be sent to high-security prisons. Once again, they will be physically abused, placed in solitary confinement, insulted, berated, forced to watch Israeli propaganda videos about Oct. 7, or raped by Israeli prison guards. Once again, Palestinians, many of whom wait on the beach in the hope that the latest flotilla will get through, will see they are not alone. And once again, the world will look away, ignoring its legal mandate to intervene to end the genocide, as per Article I of the Genocide Convention.

And yet, despite the almost certain outcome, the flotillas are imperceptibly chipping away at the Israeli stranglehold on Gaza. They are reminding the world of its moral and legal duty to intervene. They are shaming not only Israel, but the Western governments whose complicity sustains the genocide. They are illustrating that we are not powerless. We can act.

“How did you feel when you watched the flotilla?” I asked the Palestine ambassador to Italy, Mona Abuamara, when I joined the Italian dock workers strike in Genoa and national demonstration for Palestine in Rome at the end of November 2025.

“Like a child,” she answered. “You know how when you know the end of a movie but you still want it to be different. I kept thinking, ‘Let it pass. Let it pass.’ As if it could. We knew it wouldn’t. That’s part of the beauty of those people on those boats. They knew they’re not going to be allowed to pass, but they refused to accept the status quo.”

I met Thiago Ávila, a Brazilian activist, and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg early in the morning at the MAAM Museum in Rome, its labyrinth of halls, corridors and rooms filled with street art, including a sign that reads, “Spoiler YOU WILL DIE.” Some 200 migrants from various countries live as squatters in the abandoned slaughterhouse and museum. Artworks, including huge, elaborate murals by some of Italy’s best artists, cover the cement walls of the former meat factory. At the entrance, satirizing the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, in huge letters, is the word “FART.”

“For all the years I’ve been an activist, I have, every day, lost more and more hope — if I even had any — in the institutions and our so-called leaders, corporations, elected officials, banks, whatever it is, to come to our rescue,” Thunberg said. “They are the ones who have put us in this situation. The system is not flawed. It is designed to be destructive. It is designed, in my view, to have unequal power structures. It is designed to keep some people oppressed. It is designed to keep nature as a distant, separate entity that is not a part of us in order to exploit it. In order to oppress people, we have to dehumanize them. The only way out is to reclaim power, which is one of the main reasons why I’m here supporting the striking workers in Italy. This is such a clear, textbook example of what it looks like when people take back power and show where the real power is.”

Ávila organized the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and the newly formed Global Sumud Flotilla. He was part of the crew of the Madleen, a boat that departed in June 2025 with, among others, Thunberg and Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian Member of the European Parliament who was beaten in custody by Israeli prison guards.

The Madleen was intercepted by the Israeli navy in international waters and towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod. Ávila was held in solitary confinement in Ayalon Prison, where he took part in a dry hunger strike until he was deported.

“I’ve been on so many failed attempts I can’t count,” Ávila told me. “I’ve been in boats that were unfortunately bombed. I’ve been in boats that were sabotaged. Boats that were defeated bureaucratically by countries pressured by Israel. We’ve been trying for years to break that horrific siege. Eighteen years. The last two attempts I was with Greta. I made it close to Gaza twice.

While in prison, he said, Israeli guards kicked him and slammed his head onto the asphalt. They interrogated him for hours in an attempt to extract details about the flotillas while a guard pointed a shotgun at him. They sent snarling guard dogs into his cell. They constantly moved him from one cell to another. They woke him up repeatedly during the night.

“How many countries have you managed to mobilize?” Israeli interrogators asked Ávila.

“Who are the representatives in the countries?” they demanded to know.

“I’m not going to give you any information that would put anybody into a dangerous position,” Ávila answered. “But anything that is public, you can check on our website. We are very transparent.”

“Look, what you make your people go through,” the interrogators sneered. “Look at all the money that you spent, that you wasted. Think of what you could have done with this money?”

“Why are you doing this?” the army interrogators, intelligence agents and Israeli judges invariably asked.

“Because for eight decades you have been committing genocide and ethnic cleansing,” Ávila always answered. “You have structured an apartheid and colonial state. You are ruling this land, not by a religion, but by a racist and supremacist ideology, which is Zionism.”

“What’s their reaction?” I asked Ávila.

“They hate it,” he said.

“Most of the Israeli government wanted us out of there as soon as they could the last time we were held,” Ávila said. “It was a horrible PR situation. But Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of National Security — who manages the Israeli prison system — didn’t want to let us out. He wanted to punish us. He wanted to make a political statement. There was this internal struggle. Eventually they tried to get rid of people.”

“International solidarity has the responsibility to be more useful to the Palestinian cause,” Ávila said. “We need to have a bigger impact. This time, we managed. When we went with the Madleen, we had been trying for the previous five months. We tried three other missions that failed. And to be honest, the world barely knew about them.”

On one of the failed missions, shortly after midnight on May 1, 2025, 20 miles off the coast of Malta, one of the flotilla’s boats — the Conscience, registered under the flag of Palau — was struck by missiles launched from two drones. The missiles appeared to target the ship’s generators. The strikes caused a fire and a breach in the hull. Communication with the ship was lost. It was loaded with humanitarian supplies.

“The European Union didn’t condemn the attack,” Ávila said of the strike. “It was a hard defeat for us. But we knew we had to keep trying. We didn’t have any more big boats. All we had was a small boat for 12 people. It could only carry a symbolic shipment of aid. But that is when the world paid attention. There was a huge mobilization to support us.”

There is always the possibility the Israeli assaults will turn deadly.

In May 2010, the Mavi Marmara, carrying activists and humanitarian aid, was raided by Israeli naval commandos in international waters as it sailed toward Gaza. Nine people — eight Turkish citizens and one with dual Turkish American citizenship — were killed by the Israelis who claimed they were attacked by activists armed with clubs and knives. Another 24 were seriously injured by live ammunition fired by Israeli forces…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“The most heartbreaking thing was to be so close to Palestinians and at the same time not able to stop, for a second, the violence,” Lio said.

No nation, with the exception of Yemen, has made any effort to physically halt the genocide. The United States and European nations have supplied Israel with billions in weapons – the U.S. alone has provided $ 21.7 billion to Israel since Oct. 7 – to sustain the mass slaughter. These nations have criminalized those, such as members of Palestine Action, several of whom are in perilous physical conditions from a prolonged hunger strike in prison, who protest the genocide. They have shut down free speech in the media and on college campuses. They will support Israel until the final phase of the genocide – the mass deportation of the Palestinians from Gaza – is complete. It is up to us to act. If we fail, there will be no rule of law. Genocide will become another tool in the arsenal of industrial nations and the Palestinians, once again, will be betrayed.

The flotillas not only keep alive resistance, they keep alive hope. https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/16/chris-hedges-the-flotillas-to-gaza-are-the-worlds-conscience/

January 19, 2026 Posted by | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Revealed: The CIA-Backed Think Tanks Fueling The Iran Protests

Reading between the lines, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is attempting to build up a widespread network of media outlets, NGOs, activists, intellectuals, student leaders and politicians who will all sing from the same hymn sheet, that of “transitioning” from “authoritarianism” (i.e., the current system of government” to “democracy,” (i.e., a U.S.-picked government). In other words: regime change.

Mint Press News, January 15th, 2026. Alan Macleod

As waves of deadly demonstrations and counter-demonstrations hit Iran, MintPress examines the CIA-backed NGOs helping to stir the outrage and foment more violence.

One of these groups is Human Rights Activists In Iran, frequently referred to as HRA or HRAI in the media. The group, and its media arm, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) have become the go-to group of experts for Western media, and are the source of many of the most inflammatory claims and shockingly high casualty figures reported in the press. In the past week alone, their assertions have provided much of the basis for stories in CNN, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, ABC News, Sky News, and The New York Post, among others. And in a passionate plea for leftists to support the protests, Owen Jones wrote in The Guardian Tuesday that HRAI are a “respected” group whose death toll proclamations are “probably significant underestimates.”

Yet what none of these reports mention is that Human Rights Activists In Iran is bankrolled by the Central Intelligence Agency, through its cutout organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)

“Independent” NGOs, Brought to You By the CIA

Established in 2006, Human Rights Activists in Iran is based in Fairfax, Virginia, just a stone’s throw away from CIA headquarters in Langley. It describes itself as a “non-political” association of activists dedicated to advancing freedom and rights in Iran. On its website, it notes that, “because the organization seeks to remain independent, it doesn’t accept financial aid from neither political groups nor governments.” Yet, in the same paragraph, it notes that “HRAI has also been accepting donations from National Endowment for Democracy, a non-profit, non-governmental organization in the United States of America.” The level of NED investment into HRAI has been substantial, to say the least; journalist Michael Tracey found that, in 2024 alone, the NED had apportioned well over $900,000 towards the organization.

Another NGO widely cited in recent media reports on the protests is the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran (ABCHRI). The group has been quoted widely, including by The Washington Post, PBS, and ABC News. Like with the HRAI, these reports also fail to disclose the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center’s proximity to the U.S. national security state.

Although it does not mention it in its funding disclaimer, the center is supported by the NED. Last year, the NED described the center as a “partner” organization, and awarded its director, Roya Boroumand, their 2024 Goler T. Butcher medal for democracy promotion.

“Roya and her organization have worked rigorously and objectively to document human rights violations committed by the regime in Iran,” said Amira Maaty, senior director for NED’s Middle East and North Africa programs. “The work of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center is an indispensable resource for victims to seek justice and hold perpetrators accountable under international law. NED is proud to support Roya and the center in their advocacy for human rights and tireless pursuit of a democratic future for Iran.”

In addition to this, sitting on the center’s board of directors is controversial academic, Francis Fukuyama, a former NED board member and an editor of its “Journal of Democracy” publication.

If anything, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has gone further than HRAI or the ABCHRI. Widely cited across Western media (e.g., The New York Times, The Guardian, USA Today), the CHRI has been the source of many of the goriest and most lurid stories coming out of Iran. A Monday article in The Washington Post, for example, leaned on the CHRI’s expertise to report that Iranian hospitals were being overwhelmed and had even run out of blood to treat the victims of government repression. “A massacre is unfolding. The world must act now to prevent further loss of life,” a CHRI spokesperson said. Given President Trump’s recent threats about U.S. military attacks on Iran, the implications of the statement were clear.

And yet, like with the other NGOs profiled, none of the corporate media outlets citing the Center for Human Rights in Iran noted its close connections to the U.S. national security state. The CHRI – an Iranian human rights group based in New York City and Washington, D.C. – was identified by the government of China as directly funded by the NED.

The claim is far from outlandish, given that CHRI board member, Mehrangiz Kar, is a former Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the NED. And in 2002 at a star-studded gala on Capitol Hill, First Lady Laura Bush and future president Joe Biden presented Kar with the NED’s annual Democracy Award.

 A History of Regime Change Ops

The National Endowment for Democracy was created in 1983 by the Reagan administration, after a series of scandals had seriously damaged the image and reputation of the CIA. The Church Committee – a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation into CIA activities – found that the agency had masterminded the assassination of several foreign heads of state, was involved in a massive domestic surveillance campaign against progressive groups, had infiltrated and placed agents in hundreds of U.S. media outlets, and was carrying out shocking mind control experiments on unwilling American participants.

Technically a private entity, although receiving virtually all its funding from the federal government and being staffed by ex-spooks, the NED was created as a way to outsource many of the agency’s most controversial activities, especially overseas regime change operations. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Carl Gershman, the NED’s longtime president, said in 1986. NED co-founder Allen Weinstein agreed: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” he told The Washington Post.

Part of the CIA’s mission was to create a worldwide network of media outlets and NGOs that would parrot CIA talking points, passing it off as credible news. As former CIA taskforce leader John Stockwell admitted, “I had propagandists all over the world.” Stockwell went on to describe how he helped flood the world with fake news demonizing Cuba:

We pumped dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities, Cuban rapists [to the media]… We ran [faked] photographs that made almost every newspaper in the country… We didn’t know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans. It was pure, raw, false propaganda to create an illusion of communists eating babies for breakfast.”

Mike Pompeo, former CIA director, alluded this being active CIA policy. At a 2019 talk at Texas A&M University, he said, “When I was a cadet, what’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses [on] it!”

One of the NED’s greatest successes came in 1996, when it successfully swung elections in Russia, spending vast amounts of money to ensure U.S. puppet ruler Boris Yeltsin would remain in power. Yeltsin, who came to power in a 1993 coup that dissolved parliament, was deeply unpopular, and it appeared that the Russian public were ready to vote for a return to Communism. The NED and other American agencies flooded Russia with money and propaganda, ensuring their man remained in power. The story was cataloged in a famous edition of Time magazine, whose title page was emblazoned with the words, “Yanks To The Rescue: the Secret Story of How American Advisors Helped Yeltsin Win.”

Six years later, the NED provided both the finances and the brains for a briefly successful coup d’état against Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. The NED spent hundreds of thousands of dollars flying coup leaders (such as Marina Corina Machado) back and forth to Washington, D.C. After the coup was overturned and the plot was exposed, NED funding to Machado and her allies actually increased, and the organization has continued to fund her and her political organizations.

The NED would have more luck in Ukraine, playing a key role in the successful 2014 Maidan Revolution that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with a pro-U.S. successor. The Maidan affair followed a tried-and-tested formula, with large numbers of people coming out to protest, and a hardcore of trained paramilitaries carrying out acts of violence aimed at destabilizing the government and provoking a military response.

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (and future NED board member) Victoria Nuland flew to Kiev to signal the U.S. government’s full support of the movement to oust Yanukovych, even handing out cookies to protestors in the city’s main square. A leaked telephone call showed that the new Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was directly chosen by Nuland. “Yats is the guy,” she can be heard telling U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, citing his experience and friendliness with Washington as key factors. The 2014 Maidan Revolution and its aftermath would lead to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine eight years later.

Just across the border in Belarus, the NED planned similar actions to overthrow President Alexander Lukashenko. At the time of the attempt (2020-2021), the NED was pursuing 40 active projects inside the country.

On a Zoom call infiltrated and covertly recorded by activists, the NED’s senior Europe Program officer, Nina Ognianova, boasted that the groups leading the nationwide demonstrations against Lukashenko were trained by her organization. “We don’t think that this movement that is so impressive and so inspiring came out of nowhere — that it just happened overnight,” she said, noting that the NED had made a “significant contribution” to the protests.

On the same call, NED President Gershman noted that “we support many, many groups, and we have a very, very active program throughout the country, and many of the groups obviously have their partners in exile,” boasting that the Belarusian government was powerless to stop them. “We’re not like Freedom House or NDI [the National Democratic Institute] and the IRI [International Republican Institute]; we don’t have offices. So if we’re not there, they can’t kick us out,” he said, comparing the NED to other U.S. regime change organizations.

The attempted Color Revolution did not succeed, however, as demonstrators were met with large counter-demonstrations, and Lukashenko remains in power to this day. The NED’s actions were a key factor in Lukashenko’s decision to abandon his relationship with the West, and ally Belarus with Russia.

Just months after their failure in Belarus, the NED fomented another regime change attempt, this time in Cuba. The agency spent millions of dollars infiltrating and buying off pliant musical artists, especially in the hip hop community, in an attempt to turn local popular culture against its revolution. Led by Cuban rappers, the U.S. attempted to rally the people into the streets, flooding social media with calls from celebrities and politicians alike to topple the government. This did not translate into boots on the ground, however, and the fiasco was written off sarcastically as the U.S.’ “Bay of Tweets.”

So many of the most visible protest movements the world over have been quietly masterminded by the NED. This includes the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests, wherein the agency funnelled millions to the movement’s leaders to keep people in the streets as long as possible. The NED continues to work with Uyghur and Tibetan separatist groups, in the hope of destabilizing China. Other known NED meddling projects include interfering with elections in France, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Poland.

It is precisely for these reasons, therefore, that accepting funding from the NED should be unthinkable for any serious NGO or human rights organization, as so many that do have been front groups for American power and clandestine regime change operations. It is also why the public should be extremely wary about any claims made by organizations on the payroll of a CIA cutout organization, especially those that attempt to hide the fact. Journalists, too, have a duty to scrutinize any statements made by these groups, and inform their readers and viewers about their inherent conflicts of interests.

Targeting Iran

Apart from funding the three U.S.-based human rights NGOs profiled here, the NED is spearheading a myriad of operations targeting the Islamic Republic. According to its 2025 grant listings, there are currently 18 active NED projects for Iran, although the agency does not divulge any of the groups they are working with.

It also refuses to divulge any hard details about these projects, beyond rather bland descriptions that include:

Empowering” a network of “frontline and exiled activists” inside Iran;

“Promoting independent journalism,” and “Establishing media platforms to influence the public;”

“Monitoring and promoting human rights;”

 “Fostering internet freedom;”

“Training student leaders inside Iran;”

“Advancing policy analysis, debate, and collective actions on democracy,” and;

“Foster[ing] collaboration between Iranian civil society and political activists on a democratic vision and raise awareness on civic rights within the legal community, the organization will facilitate debate on transition models from authoritarianism to democracy.”

Reading between the lines, the NED is attempting to build up a widespread network of media outlets, NGOs, activists, intellectuals, student leaders and politicians who will all sing from the same hymn sheet, that of “transitioning” from “authoritarianism” (i.e., the current system of government” to “democracy,” (i.e., a U.S.-picked government). In other words: regime change.

Iran, of course, has been in American crosshairs ever since the removal of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79. Pahlavi himself had been kept in place by the CIA, who engineered a coup against the democratically-elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh (1952-53). Mossadegh, a secular liberal reformer, had angered Washington by nationalizing the country’s oil industry, carrying out land reform, and refusing to crush the communist Tudeh Party.

The CIA (the NED’s parent organization), infiltrated Iranian media, paying them to run hysterical anti-Mossadegh content, carried out terror attacks inside Iran, bribed officials to turn against the president, cultivated ties with reactionary elements within the military, and paid protestors to flood the streets at anti-Mossadegh rallies.

The shah reigned for 26 bloody years between 1953 and 1979, until he was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution.

The U.S. supported Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, who almost immediately invaded Iran, leading to a bitter, eight-year long conflict that killed at least half a million people. Washington supplied Hussein with a wide range of weapons, including components for chemical weapons used on Iranians, as well as other weapons of mass destruction.

Since 1979, Iran has also been under restrictive American economic sanctions, measures that have severely hindered the country’s development. During his first term, Trump withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal and turned up the economic pressure. The result was a collapse in the value of the Iranian rial, mass unemployment, soaring rents and a doubling of the price of food. Ordinary people lost both their savings and their long-term security.

Throughout this, Trump has constantly threatened Iran with attack, finally following through in June, bombing a host of infrastructure projects inside the country.

A Legitimate Protest

The current demonstrations began on December 28 as a protest against rising prices. Yet they quickly ballooned into something much bigger, with thousands calling for an overthrow of the government, and even the reinstatement of the monarchy under the son of the shah, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.

They were quickly supported and signal boosted by the U.S. and Israeli national security states. “The Iranian regime is in trouble,” Pompeo announced. “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…” he added. Israeli media are openly reporting that “foreign elements” (i.e., Israeli) are “arming the protesters in Iran with live weapons, and this is the reason for the hundreds of dead among the regime’s people.”

The Israeli intelligence services confirmed Pompeo’s not-so-cryptic assertion. “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the spying agency’s official social media accounts instructed Iranians: “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”

Trump echoed those words. “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” he roared, adding that American “help is on the way.”

Any debate about what Trump meant by “American help” was ended on Monday, when he stated that “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue… We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” He also attempted to place an all-out economic blockade, announcing that any country trading with Tehran would face an additional 25% tariff.

All of this, added to the increasing violence of the protests, makes it much harder for Iranians to express themselves politically. What started as a demonstration about the cost of living has spiralled into a huge, openly insurrectionist movement, backed and fomented by the U.S. and Israel. Iranians, of course, have every right to protest, but a wealth of factors have raised the very real possibility that much of the anti-government movement is an inorganic, U.S.-orchestrated attempt at regime change. While Iranians can argue about how they wish to express themselves and what sort of government they want, what is undebatable is that so many of the think tanks and NGOs called upon to provide supposed expert evidence and commentary about these protests are tools of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary:

 

January 19, 2026 Posted by | Iran, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s foreign policy: “I don’t need international law because I’m not looking to hurt people”

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL , 16 Jan 26,

Trump’s foreign policy: “I don’t need international law because I’m not looking to hurt people”

In dismissing international law, Trump went further and proclaimed regarding any limit on his authority to engage in military action, “the only limit is my own mind, my own morality…the only thing that can stop me.”

During the past year how has Trump’s own mind, own morality influenced his looking to not hurt people?

Trump supplied Israel with billions in bombs to slaughter tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

He’s bombed imagine bad guys in Somalia 124 times, doubling his previous record of 63 bombings in 2019.

He fired 12 Tomahawk missiles at imagined bad guys in Nigeria killing unknown Nigerians.

He bombed Syria after 3 US soldiers defiling Syrian sovereignty were killed by unknown attackers. Didn’t matter who Trump killed as long as he retaliated.

He bombed Iran to take out an imaginary nuclear bomb program. He may be on the cusp of bombing Iran again to achieve decades’ long US goal of Iranian regime change.

He obliterated 35 small, unarmed boats off Venezuela, killing over 100 unknown persons. Then he attacked Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro’s compound, killing over 100 guards in the process of kidnapping him back to the US.

He’s threatening to invade and take control of Greenland from Denmark.

He’s threatening to change out Cuba’s communist government that has been America’s goal for 66 years.

Back home, he’s sent thousands of masked, armed, poorly trained ICE thugs onto American streets to arrest, harass, beat up, occasionally shoot innocent persons trying to live the American Dream.

Gee, wonder what Trump’s foreign and domestic policy would be like if his stated goal was to hurt people?

January 19, 2026 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Biden knew Ukraine would lose proxy war with Russia….provoked it anyway

Yet..and yet, President Zelensky is refusing to accept the reality of Ukraine’s defeat, even demanding return of territory lost forever. NATO countries led by delusional leaders Starmer in UK, Merz in Germany and Macron in France, claiming they’re Russia’s next target, are still pledging war resources they don’t have and never will

Walt Zlotow, Jan 17, 2026, Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL

The US proxy war against Russia destroying Ukraine has largely disappeared from mainstream news. US warfare with Venezuela, possible renewed war with Iran, seizing Greenland from Denmark have put a virtual blackout on Ukraine war reporting.

But a bigger reason is the war is lost with no chance of reversing the destruction of Ukraine short of nuclear war with Russia. If that happens we’re all destroyed.

So Trump, his advisors, the national security state (A.K.A. war party) and the aforementioned mainstream news have moved on. They realize the war has become a spectacular defeat for America’s goal of bringing Ukraine into NATO to further weaken Russia and isolate it from the European political economy. Publically admitting defeat and failure is something none of them will dare not speak its name.

Trump, to his credit, is trying to get both Ukraine and NATO to give up and settle on Russia’ sensible terms: no NATO for Ukraine, Ukraine to be forever neutral between Europe and Russia, no return of land containing mainly Russian leaning Ukrainians brutalized by Kyiv for 8 years before Russia intervened.

How badly has Ukraine lost? Over a million and a half dead, wounded or MIA, a quarter million soldiers deserted and over 9 million fled to safer climes. The economy down by a third surviving on European life support. Reconstruction costs once war ends at a half trillion dollars and rising.

Russia meanwhile is thriving, economy up by pivoting away from trade with Europe to the Global South and others only too happy to degrade both US and European hegemony. Result is a tripling of NATO energy costs, collapse of leaders support with nationalist, antiwar opposition poised to take over next election.

Could it get any worse for Ukraine and NATO?

Yet..and yet, President Zelensky is refusing to accept the reality of Ukraine’s defeat, even demanding return of territory lost forever. NATO countries led by delusional leaders Starmer in UK, Merz in Germany and Macron in France, claiming they’re Russia’s next target, are still pledging war resources they don’t have and never will

The only logical explanation is that they know the inevitable defeat facing Ukraine and NATO but are terrified to admit it and do the right thing. Trump, while sensibly pushing Ukraine and NATO, refuses to pull all US support for the lost war. He’s cynically telling NATO to keep the weapons flowing…just as long as they buy them from America. For Trump, lost war can still be a profitable business deal. He’s also refuses to pull the plug on massive weapons Biden foolishly authorized in his last days knowing Trump had no stomach to continue the war.

Speaking of Biden, he knew Ukraine could not prevail when he provoked the Russian Special Military Operation in February, 2022. But he viewed Ukraine’s destruction as collateral damage to so degrading Russia in the process that they would be forever weakened and out of the European political economy. Biden likely viewed US/NATO Ukraine support as a repeat of US meddling that defeated Russia in Afghanistan in 1989. Big mistake as history didn’t repeat.

Biden’s Mother of all Sanctions and $150 billion in weapons backfired spectacularly. So not only did Biden destroy Ukraine by provoking war, he’s likely destroyed America’s dominance leading NATO in Europe. In fact he may have put NATO on the path to history with their impending defeat flailing away at a lost cause.

The only question, besides how badly the rump state of Ukraine will end up at war’s end, is whether Ukraine and NATO’s futile perseverance will end up in nuclear war with Russia still possible every day this nightmare continues.

However it ends, Joe Biden’s legacy will be making the greatest foreign policy mistake so far in America’s 250 years.

Say it wasn’t so, Joe.

January 19, 2026 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Founders of Deadly Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), ‘Shaping’ New US-Backed Administration for Gaza: Report

  Netanyahu’s top military advisor is among those central to the new executive committee, which is due to operate under Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’

News Desk, JAN 14, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/founders-of-deadly-ghf-shaping-new-us-backed-administration-for-gaza-report

Many of the figures emerging as key players in the new US-backed administration for Gaza were central to Washington’s Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the Financial Times (FT) reported.

The GHF was a deadly US-Israeli aid scheme introduced in May, which was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of starving Palestinian aid seekers. 

According to the FT report, the Gaza executive committee set to be announced soon – which will operate directly under a Trump-led ‘Board of Peace’ – is being “shaped” by several people close to Israel. 

This includes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief military advisor, Roman Gofman, and US-Israeli investor Michael Eisenberg, who has been advising the Israeli premier since the start of the ceasefire. 

Others involved are US-Israeli policymaker Aryeh Lightstone and Israeli cybersecurity entrepreneur Liran Tancman, who is Mossad-linked.

All four of these men were involved in the establishment of GHF. The deadly aid scheme resulted in the killing of around 2,000 Palestinians within half a year.

Under the pretext of humanitarian assistance, Palestinians were crammed into tight spaces and handed limited quantities of aid for months as Israeli troops and US contractors regularly opened fire at unarmed aid seekers.

The announcement of Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ was meant to take place this week, but has been delayed. According to reports, the executive committee that will operate under the board could be announced as early as Wednesday.

“Eighteen Palestinian officials have received invitations to join the committee that will replace Hamas,” sources told the New Arab. 

Ali Shaath, a former deputy planning minister in the Palestinian Authority (PA), has been designated to head the committee, while retired intelligence official Mohammed Nisman is expected to assume control over security.

According to the sources, the committee is scheduled to hold its meeting in Egypt’s capital on Thursday, the sources said.

The ‘Board of Peace,’ which will be announced later, is expected to include 15 world leaders from countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt.

Hamas has repeatedly vowed that it is ready to hand over governance to an independent body of technocratic Palestinians, as envisioned in the truce.

It rejects disarmament until an independent Palestinian state is formed, but has expressed openness to an initiative that would “freeze” its weapons for a period of time.

The group has stressed that the second phase of the ceasefire deal cannot commence until Israel halts all violations.

Israel has killed at least 442 Palestinians since the US-backed ‘ceasefire’ was reached in October last year, the Gaza Health Ministry reported. Over 1,200 have been injured.

Tel Aviv continues to indiscriminately target civilians, justifying the attacks under the pretext of alleged ‘security threats,’ while persisting in the violent pursuit of resistance leaders with no regard for the terms of the ceasefire agreement. The blockade on Gaza also remains in place, further deepening the humanitarian crisis.

Sources told Times of Israel in a report published on 11 January that the Israeli army has drawn up plans for a new assault in the Gaza Strip – aimed at expanding the areas under Tel Aviv’s control in violation of the ceasefire.

January 19, 2026 Posted by | Gaza, politics | Leave a comment

Fears over plan for ‘biggest data centre cluster on earth’ in Scotland

RESIDENTS in East Ayrshire are growing extremely concerned about whether they will be consulted on a hyperscale data centre that is set to become part of “the biggest cluster in the world”.

 Local concerns come after
it was revealed to residents that the developer of the site, the ILI group,
had never booked any venue for public consultations. Further, both East
Ayrshire Council and the developers set out dates for residents to attend
public consultations that were later cancelled with short notice. Local mum
Lisa Beacham said: “Councillors had been actively telling residents to
make themselves available for these public consultations, but I’ve
received confirmation that there were never any venue bookings made by the
developer.”

 The National 15th Jan 2026, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25766423.east-ayrshire-residents-speak-hyperscale-data-centre/

January 19, 2026 Posted by | technology, UK | Leave a comment

Russia says it awaits US response on ‘important’ issue of expiring nuclear treaty

By Dmitry Antonov, January 15, 2026, Reporting by Dmitry Antonov Writing by Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborn Editing by Andrew Osborn, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-awaits-us-response-important-issue-expiring-nuclear-treaty-2026-01-15/

MOSCOW, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Russia is still waiting for the United States to respond to President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to informally extend for a year the provisions of the last remaining nuclear arms pact between the two countries, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

The New START treaty is due to expire in three weeks, and President Donald Trump has not formally responded to the offer that Putin made last September.

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“No, we have not received a response. We are certainly awaiting a response to Putin’s initiative; we consider this a very important topic,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

New START, which was signed by presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, sets limits on the strategic weapons that each side would use to target the other’s critical political and military centres in the event of a nuclear war. It caps the number of deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 on each side, with no more than 700 deployed ground- or submarine-launched missiles and bomber planes to deliver them.

It is the last in a series of treaties dating back to the early 1970s that have enabled Moscow and Washington to maintain a stable nuclear balance even at times of acute international tension.

Trump told the New York Times this month that “if it expires, it expires”, and that he wanted to replace it with a more ambitious treaty including China.

China, whose arsenal is growing fast but remains a fraction of the size of Moscow’s or Washington’s, says it is unreasonable and unrealistic to ask it to join three-way disarmament talks.

Asked about Trump’s comments on a successor treaty, Peskov said this would be good for everyone but would involve a “very complex and drawn-out process”.

“As for our Chinese friends, their position is well known, and we respect it.”

Peskov reasserted Russia’s position that any discussion of strategic stability and security must take into account the nuclear arsenals of Britain and France.

January 19, 2026 Posted by | politics international, Russia | Leave a comment

On the Eve of Destruction: Has His Majesty’s Madness for War Led His Loyal Supporters Astray?

15 January 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/on-the-eve-of-destruction-has-his-majestys-madness-for-war-led-his-loyal-supporters-astray/

The Persian Gulf is no longer a tinderbox; it is an inferno. Just this morning, President Trump of the USA and Venezuela, as he now styles himself, has effectively issued a declaration of intent, telling Iranian protesters that “help is on its way.” Is that a threat or a promise? Survivors remember US help last time. But as B-2 bombers warm their engines and squadrons of Israeli Adir, as they call their versions of F35s, stealth fighter jets, sit fuelled on the tarmac, we must pull back the curtain on the “spontaneous” uprising that serves as the pretext for this looming catastrophe.

The Hand of the Provocateur

The economic misery of Iran’s people is raw and real; the rial has lost around four-fifths of its value since the June 2025 war; inflation is crippling. But the timing of this chaos cannot be ignored. Tehran is right to point to the meddling of foreigners. When former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, tweeted a “New Year” greeting to “every Mossad agent walking beside” the protesters, the mask wasn’t just slipping; it was discarded.

History repeats as farce: just as the CIA orchestrated the 1953 coup in Tehran by paying mobs to riot, today’s agents provocateurs are reportedly steering protesters toward IRGC outposts and banks. Iranian state media has showcased confessions from alleged Mossad agents, while reports of 40,000 Starlink terminals smuggled into the country by the CIA and Mossad lend credence to Tehran’s narrative; even as the protests’ roots in economic despair remain undeniable.

The CIA may have wasted its time with the Starlink. Iran has successfully disrupted 80% of Starlink service using military-grade GPS jamming; the first regime to effectively cripple what was thought to be “unjammable” satellite internet

Iran accuses the CIA of creating a level of “state-directed” “massacre” that provides the moral high ground for a “Humanitarian Strike.” The irony could not be any darker. The US mission is to save lives. Even if their agents have to shoot every protester themselves to create the pretext for a US-Israeli attack.

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi claims Trump’s warning of military intervention motivated “terrorists” to target protesters and security forces to encourage foreign intervention. Translation: he’s alleging provocateurs are shooting people deliberately to justify Trump’s promised intervention.

“Protesters are speculating” – CNN reports: “protesters are speculating whether the violence is being fuelled by the Iranian regime itself, or by foreign powers.” In the digital blackout, any atrocity can be committed and blamed on anybody. Qatari state broadcaster, Al Jazeera, is giving serious airtime to Tehran’s claim that terrorist groups are shooting people.

When Al Jazeera gives prominent airtime to Iran’s “armed terrorist groups shot people” narrative, that’s not neutral journalism – it’s Doha signaling to Tehran that they’re sympathetic to their version while trying to keep communication channels open

Classic Gulf realpolitik: publicly neutral, privately picking sides based on gas pipelines and base leases.

The Napoleonic Blunder: Two Fronts, Zero Carriers

But US forces may struggle. In his hubris, the President has committed the ultimate strategic error: the creation of a war on two opposing fronts. On January 3, US Special Forces captured Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, and the USS Gerald R. Ford; the Navy’s most advanced carrier, is now anchored in the Caribbean, not the Persian Gulf. This has left a catastrophic “Carrier Gap” in the Middle East. For the first time in years, there is no US aircraft carrier in the 5th Fleet’s area of responsibility.

To launch a war against a sophisticated adversary like Iran, while the Navy is playing colonial administrator in the Caribbean, is more than a mistake; it is a Napoleonic blunder of historic proportions. Or it’s Thiel and Miller’s idea of a military 4D Chess gambit.

The “Grey Figures” and the Fascist Blueprint

The common refrain that Trump “appoints the worst” is only half-true. As Robert Reich has pointed out, the real danger lies in the “grey figures” who are terrifyingly competent. Figures such as Peter Thiel, whose Palantir systems are now the “eyes” of the US military, and Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s most ruthless nationalist policies, are not bumbling sycophants. They are “highly capable fascists” who view the destruction of the Iranian regime as a necessary “disruption” to the global order.

Thiel’s Palantir isn’t just watching the war; it’s scripting it. The company’s AI platforms, honed in Ukraine and Gaza, are now the “eyes” of the US military, turning battlefield data into kill chains. The same AI that monitored Iran’s nuclear porgram, identified strike targets in June 2025. It now processes protest data, social media and Starlink traffic. It predicts “threats using predictive policing algorithms. This is “creative destruction” as geopolitical doctrine, with Thiel and Miller as its high priests.

Their criterion for service is not just sycophancy, but a shared disdain for the “old world” of diplomacy. They have led the President’s loyal supporters astray by rebranding a traditional regime-change war as a “populist rescue,” while simultaneously building the digital surveillance infrastructure to ensure that “liberty” abroad looks a lot like “control” at home.

Just to recap. When 12,000 Iranians die in two nights with the internet dark, and Palantir’s AI is processing every data point – who decided they were threats? An algorithm trained on Israeli battlefield data? A predictive model that flags “rioters” the same way it flagged Gaza civilians as “militants”?

Thiel’s company doesn’t just see the war – it authors it. And it’s making billions doing so.

The Retaliation Forecast: A Doomsday Scenario

If the “Iron Strike” protocols are triggered this week, the response will be a regional fireball:

Targeting the “Fixed” Assets: Without carriers, the US must fly from land bases like Al Udeid (Qatar) and NSA Bahrain. These are static targets. Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Ghalibaf, has already warned that these bases will be “totally obliterated” by ballistic missile swarms the moment the first US bomb falls.

The Strait Chokehold: Expect the mining of the Strait of Hormuz, which will send oil prices, already spiked by the Venezuela crisis, into territory that could collapse the global economy.

The “Shadow Fleet” Conflict: The recent US seizure of the Marinera (the renamed Bella 1) shows that the “Shadow War” has already turned kinetic.

With no carriers in the Gulf and US bases in Qatar and Bahrain sitting ducks for Iranian missiles, the “Humanitarian Strike” could quickly become a humanitarian catastrophe. The two-front trap is set; and the empire may have walked right into it.

The Periphery as a Laboratory: The “Donroe Doctrine”

Joseph Schumpeter spoke of “Creative Destruction” as the essential fact of capitalism, the incessant revolutionizing of the economic structure from within by destroying the old one.

In 2026, the Trump administration has applied this to geopolitics.


Under what independent commentators are calling the “Donroe Doctrine,” the administration is treating the global periphery – Venezuela in the West and Iran in the East – as obsolete structures to be liquidated.

The Venezuelan Template: The January 3rd abduction of Maduro wasn’t just about drugs; it was about the “destruction” of a non-compliant energy node to make way for a US-managed resource monopoly.

The Iranian Bait: Al-Jazeera’s recent reporting highlights that while Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi pleads for dialogue, the “Grey Figures” in Washington; the Thiels and Millers, are busy ensuring the “creative” part of the destruction. By baiting the regime into the January 8th massacre via agents provocateurs, they have created the “moral” vacuum necessary to install a new, techno-dependent order.

The Symbiosis: Sycophants vs. The “Highly Capable”

Trump is very useful to his key staffers; they need the distraction of his madness. The real power dynamic is not found in the sycophancy of a Pete Hegseth, but in the calculated brilliance of the ideologues.

The Architect: Stephen Miller has successfully pivoted from domestic nativism to a “Brute Strength” foreign policy. He isn’t just a sycophant; he is a practitioner of realpolitik who views the two-front war (Venezuela/Iran) as a necessary “stress test” for American hegemony.

The Engineer: Peter Thiel’s involvement represents the ultimate Schumpeterian shift. Through Palantir’s integration into the “Iron Strike” protocols, the war is being fought as an algorithmic liquidation. This is the symbiosis: Trump provides the populist gale, while the “Grey Figures” provide the silicon-grade precision to ensure the “destruction” is permanent.

The Australian Connection: The Mirror of Suppression

As we look at the suppression of speech in Australia, the parallels are chilling. The “Public Assembly Restriction Declarations” (PARD) in Sydney, ostensibly to “ensure safety” after the Bondi tragedy, are being used to silence those protesting the US attack on Venezuela.

In Canberra, the “Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill” is a masterclass in Orwellian doublespeak. Ostensibly targeting hate, its sweeping powers could just as easily silence critics of US wars or Israeli apartheid. And with a loophole for religious scripture, it may even protect the very extremists it claims to combat.

The Schumpeterian Irony: In the drive to “creatively destroy” foreign adversaries, the administration and its allies are destroying the very liberal-democratic structures they claim to defend.

Strategic Assessment: The Two-Front Trap

Despite the “capable fascists” at the helm, the Napoleonic blunder remains. With the USS Gerald R. Ford anchored in the Caribbean, the US is vulnerable. Iran knows this. Their “Arc of Fire” retaliation plan doesn’t target carriers; it targets the static, land-based infrastructure of the “Grey Figures’” digital war.

Next Update: I am currently tracking the flow of “emergency” data-sharing agreements between Canberra and Washington. It appears the suppression of the Sydney protests is being used as a training set for the very “Human Geography” mapping Thiel is deploying in Tehran.

In the next instalment, we’ll examine how the “Donroe Doctrine” is reshaping the global order, and why the “help” that is “on its way” may be the very thing that finishes us.

January 19, 2026 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

President Trump Urges Iran Protests To Continue, Says ‘Help Is on Its Way’

The president also said he cut off contact with Iranian officials

by Dave DeCamp | January 13, 2026 , https://news.antiwar.com/2026/01/13/president-trump-urges-iran-protests-to-continue-says-help-is-on-its-way/

President Trump on Tuesday called for the protests in Iran to continue and said “help is on its way,” suggesting he was making another threat of military intervention.

“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

The president also said he cut off contact with Iranian officials, a comment that came after he suggested he was open to diplomacy with Tehran. “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!” Trump added.

“MIGA” refers to “Make Iran Great Again,” a slogan Trump used during the 12-day US-Israeli war against Iran back in June 2025 when he floated the idea of regime change in the country. He also recently posed with a “Make Iran Great Again Hat” alongside Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has said the president is ready to kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, responded to Trump’s post, saying the “names of the main killers of the people of Iran” were the US president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Also on Tuesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed it disrupted “Israeli-linked terror teams” and seized US-made weapons.

Iranian officials have warned that the US would face a severe response to any attack. “Come and see what will happen to American ships and military bases in the region,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said at a pro-government rally over the weekend.

“Come and burn in the fire of the Iranian nation so severely that it becomes a lasting lesson in history for all oppressive US rulers. Come and find out what will happen to you and to the region,” he added.

January 19, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Militant Zionist Group Ceasing Operations In New York Following Settlement with Attorney General.

The far-right Zionist organization has agreed to a $50,000 suspended fine that it will only be forced to pay if it violates the terms of the agreement, which require it to stop engaging in organized harassment campaigns encouraging violence and making direct threats against its political opponents.

Although branded as a fringe group on the outskirts of the American Zionist establishment, evidence of the political influence of Betar U.S. became increasingly evident following the return of President Donald J. Trump to the White House.

Betar U.S. has deemed it cannot continue to operate if it is unable to engage in terroristic tactics.

blueapples, Jan 15, 2026, https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/militant-zionist-group-ceasing-operations?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769298&post_id=184510757&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

By virtue of its standing as the global center of the Jewish diaspora, New York City emerged as the main battleground in the United States for the fight between American Zionists and their opponents amid the deterioration of public support for Israel accelerated by its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. While critics of the State of Israel participating in widespread protests across the city have been branded as Jihadists by their opponents for protesting against the slaughter of innocent Palestinians at the blood-stained hands of the Israel Defense Forces (”IDF”), it is a pro-Israel group that has been exposed for engaging in a campaign of terrorism in the latest fallout from that ideological conflict. Betar U.S., the American chapter of an international militant organization created by the founder of the Zionist paramilitary the Irgun, has chosen to cease its operations in New York following a settlement with the office of the state’s attorney general after an investigation uncovered systemic campaigns of harassment, intimidation, and political violence led by the group.

In the wake of political unrest across the U.S. beginning in 2024 centered around protests against Israel on the campus of Columbia University, Betar U.S. engaged in organized harassment campaigns of pro-Palestinian protesters and activists, culminating in an investigation against them. The investigation into the organization began in March 2025, following a series of formal complaints made against the group. According to a statement from the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James announcing its settlement with Betar, “The Office of the Attorney General investigation determined that Betar U.S. engaged in a pattern of violence and harassment driven by explicit hostility toward protected groups.” The investigation also uncovered that despite registering with the Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit in 2024, Betar U.S. never registered itself with the New York State Charities Bureau, despite soliciting donations while operating in the state.

The far-right Zionist organization has agreed to a $50,000 suspended fine that it will only be forced to pay if it violates the terms of the agreement, which require it to stop engaging in organized harassment campaigns encouraging violence and making direct threats against its political opponents. Betar U.S. will be required to file annual compliance reports for the next three years proving it has not violated the terms of the settlement to avoid paying the suspended fine. As a result of the settlement, Betar U.S. will dissolve its nonprofit status in New York and has told the attorney general’s office that it intends to cease its operations within the state. Despite agreeing to the settlement, a spokesperson from Betar U.S. has denied any wrongdoing.

Although branded as a fringe group on the outskirts of the American Zionist establishment, evidence of the political influence of Betar U.S. became increasingly evident following the return of President Donald J. Trump to the White House. In late January 2025, shortly after Trump was inaugurated, the far-right Zionist group provided his administration with a list of students participating in anti-Israel protests whose identities it uncovered in order to have them deported from the country. Shortly after being sent that list, President Trump signed an executive order creating a task force against antisemitism. In response to continued protests against Israel, Trump signed another executive order to deport college students and other non-permanent U.S. residents in the country on green cards and visas by equating their participation in the demonstrations with support for terrorism. That decision emboldened Betar U.S. to launch what it named Operation Wrath of Zion as a coordinated doxing campaign to leak the personal details of protesters.

Evidence of the harassment campaigns the New York Attorney General’s office found Betar U.S. to have engaged in has been replete across social media since the group was revived in June 2023, just months before the conflict between Israel and Hamas led to full-scale war in the Gaza Strip following the attacks of October 7th, 2023. The group regularly posted threats on X, going as far as to publish videos of its members committing acts of violence against pro-Palestine protesters. Following a Mossad-led operation dubbed Operation Grim Beeper, in which Israeli intelligence targeted Hezbollah officials by detonating thousands of handheld pagers across Lebanon and Syria, leading to thousands of civilian casualties, Betar U.S. posted videos of its members taking to the streets of New York City to hand-deliver beepers to anti-Israel activists as an intimidation tactic. Jewish anti-Zionist activist Norman Finkelstein was one such critic of Israel whom Betar U.S. targeted in this coordinated harassment campaign, calling him a “fucking Holocaust denying piece of shit” when placing a beeper into the front pocket of his jacket.

Although Betar U.S. targeted pro-Palestinian activists with its militant tactics, the extremist ideology of the group also put it at odds with other Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League. The group accused the ADL of being too lenient on opponents of Israel, creating an irreconcilable schism between the two. The animosity it fostered led to the ADL putting Betar U.S. on its database of extremist groups, making it the only Jewish organization to earn that distinction.

In response to the announcement of its settlement with the New York Attorney General, Betar attempted to distance itself from the renewed attention placed on its militant ideology. “Betar is mainstream Zionism, an organization without which the State of Israel would not exist,” a spokesperson told The Times of Israel. Despite this protestation, Betar is impossible to separate from militant Zionist extremism. The organization was originally established by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in Riga, Latvia in 1923 as a fascist youth movement created to advance his ideology of Revisionist Zionism.

The sect of Revisionist Zionism created by Jabotinsky advocated for the reform of the Zionist ideology in opposition to the left-wing Labor Zionism movement led by the eventual first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion. In contrast to Labor Zionism, the ideology of Revisionist Zionism centered around the idea that the Jewish people had the right to sovereignty over the whole of what it saw as the Land of Israel, including the entirety of British Mandatory Palestine and Transjordan. Revisionist Zionism has served as the foundation for the right wing of modern Israeli politics, influencing the creation of the Likud party, now led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the Jewish supremacist Kahanism movement, which the Jewish Power party, led by Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, arose out of.

Jabotinsky was also behind the founding of the Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandatory Palestine from 1931 until years after his death in 1940, when it was eventually absorbed into the IDF following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. In its years operating as a Zionist paramilitary, the Irgun was responsible for acts of terrorism against Palestinian Arabs and other groups it labeled as opponents of its Zionist worldview, such as the Deir Yassin Massacre and the King David Hotel Bombing committed against the administrative headquarters of the British authorities of Mandatory Palestine in 1946. Betar served as a recruiting pipeline for the Irgun, in a manner like that in which the Hitler Youth was constructed.

It wasn’t until six years after the Zionist paramilitary was founded by Jabotinsky that the U.S. branch of Betar was established in 1929. Throughout its existence, opposition to its radical ideology and militant tactics had fragmented its operations in America. However, following its latest iteration being established in 2023, support from high-ranking Israeli political leaders has allowed it to flourish. During a visit to the U.S. in September to speak before the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with leaders of Betar U.S. in New York City. Yet, even that tacit support from the Israeli government was not enough to overcome the scrutiny the group has faced due to its militant tactics.

In the wake of the announcement of its settlement with the Office of the New York State Attorney General, Betar U.S. returned to its X account to continue to push propaganda framing itself as a victim of antisemitism. Betar U.S. accused New York Attorney General Letitia James of barring it from operating in the state. In reality, all the attorney general’s office has required of Betar U.S. is to stop targeting its opponents with campaigns of harassment, intimidation, and violence, or face paying a paltry $50,000 fine. That requirement alone was enough for Betar U.S. to voluntarily cease its operations. Given that it postures itself as a mainstream pro-Israel organization, the fact that Betar U.S. has deemed that it cannot continue to operate without engaging in those terroristic tactics is a damning distillation of what Zionism truly stands for.

January 19, 2026 Posted by | legal, USA | Leave a comment

The War On Free Speech In Australia Is Getting Cartoonishly Absurd.

Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 17, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-war-on-free-speech-in-australia?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=184831756&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

A mentally disabled Australian woman is being prosecuted for antisemitic hate crimes after accidentally pocket-dialing a Jewish nutritionist, resulting in a blank voicemail which caused the nutritionist “immediate fear and nervousness” because she thought some of the background noises in the recording sounded a bit like gunshots.

We’re being told we need more of this. There’s “hate speech” legislation presently in the works to make this worse. Australia’s controversial Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill appears to be explicitly crafted to dramatically increase the scale, frequency and consequences of the exact sort of dynamics we’re seeing in this case, and to eradicate opposition to Israel throughout the nation.

This is how overextended Australia’s freakout over “antisemitism” already is. You can literally just be sitting there not saying or doing anything and still find yourself getting arrested and prosecuted for an antisemitic hate crime. They have the authority to do this presently, under the laws that already exist. The argument for this bill is that our present horrifyingly tyrannical and abusive system is insufficiently authoritarian and tyrannical, and that prosecutors need more power to police speech far more forcefully.

Australians are being asked to trust a system that would take a woman with an intellectual disability to prosecution in a court of law over an accidental butt-dial to a person of Jewish faith with the authority to send people to prison for years over their political speech. And this is happening after we just spent years watching Australian authorities roll out authoritarian measures to stomp out criticism of Israel and quash protests against an active genocide.

This is madness, and it needs to be brought to a screeching halt. Immediately. This entire country has lost its damn mind.

The Bondi attack isn’t the reason, it’s the excuse. All these laws being rolled out to stomp out criticism of Israel in Australia were sought for years before the shooting occurred.

Immediately after the attack last month I tweeted, “Not a lot of info about the Bondi shooting yet but it’s safe to assume it will be used as an excuse to target pro-Palestine activists and further outlaw criticism of Israel in Australia, as has been happening to a greater and greater extent in this country for the last two years.”

They could have proved me wrong, but instead they’ve spent this entire time proving me one hundred percent correct. The frenzied efforts to crush anti-genocide protests and silence speech that is critical of Israel and Zionism in these subsequent weeks has plainly established this.

There is no connection between pro-Palestine demonstrations and the Bondi attack. None. It had nothing to do with Palestinians, and it had nothing to do with anti-genocide demonstrations. It’s a completely made-up claim that Israel’s supporters have been circulating in Australian consciousness through sheer repetition. They’re just pretending to believe it’s true in order to promote the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state.

Israel’s supporters need to use propaganda, deception, censorship and oppression to promote their agendas, because it’s all they have. They don’t have truth. They don’t have arguments. They don’t have morality. All they have is brute force. They are shoving support for Israel and its atrocities down our throats whether we like it or not, and if we refuse what we’re being force-fed they will punish us. That’s the only tool in their toolbox.

This needs to be ferociously opposed. The more Israel and its supporters work to assault our right to oppose their abuses, the more aggressively we need to oppose them. We are no longer fighting against war and genocide in the middle east, we are fighting against an assault on our own civil rights. It’s personal now. They’re coming for us directly.

January 19, 2026 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment