Gaddafi’s son assassinated

Comment: CIA-MI6-Mossad cleaning up "loose ends". 

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RT

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been assassinated, a source close to the family confirmed to RT on Tuesday.

He was killed by four people “who quickly fled the scene after shooting him in his garden,” a family source told Al Arabiya. According to media reports, for the last several years Gaddafi had been living in hiding in Libya.

In 2015, a Libyan court sentenced Saif al-Islam to death for his role in the crackdown on protests during the 2011 unrest that led to the downfall of his father’s government. The International Criminal Court separately charged him with crimes against humanity. Saif al-Islam was released in 2017 as part of a general amnesty.

In 2021, he registered as a candidate for the presidential election scheduled for December, but the vote ultimately collapsed amid political deadlock.

Muammar Gaddafi seized power in a 1969 coup and ruled the oil-rich country until his killing in 2011 by insurgents backed by a US-led military intervention.

Libya has since experienced intermittent civil war and remains divided between rival governments in the west and east. Presidential and parliamentary elections have repeatedly been postponed as political tensions persist.

Dear ICE Protestors: We Need to Talk

Comment: An interesting commentary contrast to mass media fake concern.

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Jenna McCarthy | Jenna's Side

Because, well... what if you win?

Dear ICE Protestors,

It's been a rough few months out there. You've shown up. You've resisted. You've rallied. You've organized. You've made signs. So. Many. Signs. You've launched illegal fireworks, damaged property, blocked traffic, broken the law, bashed in windows, assaulted agents, and berated scores of strangers simply for doing their jobs. You must be exhausted. I see you. I feel you. I am in awe of your stamina.

So let's pretend, for argument's sake and to give you a desperately-needed break, you win.

Let's pretend all the chanting, the honking, the whistling, the street-blocking, the papier-mâché puppets, the Sharpie signs, the interpretive screaming, and the celebrity Instagram threats finally break the will of the federal government and ICE collapses under the sheer weight of your moral outrage.

Congratulations. Please enjoy a festive evening of vegan hors d'oeuvres, pronoun-affirming drum circles, and self-congratulatory chanting. You've earned it.

After you shake the ethically-sourced, biodegradable confetti out of your hair, I just have one question: Now what?

No, seriously. What's your plan?

Because tragically, our towns are teeming with dangerous, law-breaking repeat offenders — many of them wanted for horrific, unspeakable crimes here and in other countries. Blaming ICE for trying to remove them would be like blaming the home inspector for finding asbestos in the dream house you just fell in love with.

These bad actors are here. You don't have to like it, but you do have to accept it. (I know! Objective reality isn't really your thing. But try.) So what do we do about them? Do we ask a bunch of fugitives to kindly turn themselves in to the nearest Department of Feelings & Hugs? Do we hand big red "PLEASE STOP, YOU'RE BEING NAUGHTY" paddles to community volunteers? Do we just leave the child rapists, domestic abusers, drug smugglers, home invaders, human traffickers, carjackers, murderers, and violent felons exactly where they are and hope they find God without a map or a moral compass?

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Fifth 'male model' arrested over arson attacks against British PM's properties in north London

Comment: Starmer and his circle of sexual deviants have been careless it seems...D-Notice anyone? 

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Matt Strudwick | UK Daily Mail

A fourth man, 48, who was arrested at Stansted Airport in June last year on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life has been released without charge.

Three men have already been charged in connection with the fires: Ukrainians Petro Pochynok, 35, and Roman Lavrynovych, 21, and 27-year-old Romanian national Stanislav Carpiuc.

Pochynok has been charged with conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life, Lavrynovych with three counts of arson with intent to endanger life, while Carpiuc has been charged with conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life.

They all deny the charges and have been remanded in custody ahead of a trial at the Old Bailey on April 27.

The charges relate to three arson incidents: a vehicle fire in Kentish Town, a fire at the Prime Minister's private home in the same street, and another blaze at an address where he previously lived in the Islington area.

One of the fires took place in the early hours of May 12 at the property where Sir Keir lived before he became Prime Minister and moved into Downing Street.

A car was torched in the same street four days earlier on May 8.

The other fire took place on May 11 at the front door of a house converted into flats in Islington.

Sir Keir has let his £2million private home in the Kentish Town area of north London to his sister-in-law on a peppercorn rent since he moved into 10 Downing Street following his general election victory.

The property was set alight in the early hours of May 12, with the London Fire Brigade alerting police to reports of a fire there at 1.35am.

The blaze damaged the porch of the property but no one was hurt.

Firefighters were able to bring it under control within 20 minutes, stopping it from spreading further indoors.

It came just 24 hours after a flat the Prime Minister previously lived at, in the nearby Islington area, caught fire.

Firefighters attended the blaze, helping one person to safety, with the door of the property suffering fire damage.

On May 8, in the same street as Sir Keir's Kentish Town property, a car he sold to a neighbour last year also burst into flames.

The new owner of the Toyota Rav 4 is understood to have thought the fire started because of a faulty battery.

The hybrid car was completely destroyed in the blaze, which occurred on VE Day.

The Met's Counter Terrorism Command is leading the investigation as all three targets of the alleged arson attacks have 'previous connections with a high-profile public figure'.

Zero Hour approaching

Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation

The hour is getting late. Virtually all pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

Even as his "massive armada" is being deployed, neo-Caligula social posts/vociferates to Iran: "MAKE A DEAL" (originally in caps). That's maximum pressure in effect. Not even the possibility of negotiation. It's Capitulation or War.

Neo-Caligula's Top Three demands:

Iran should ditch its - civilian - nuclear program, as in total cessation of uranium enrichment.

Iran must reduce its missile program to a minimum.

Iran must stop supporting "proxy forces" - as in Hezbollah, Yemen's Ansarallah and Iraqi militias.

There's absolutely no way that Ayatollah Khamenei, the IRGC and the Majlis - the Iranian Parliament - will agree to any item on this ultimatum, dictated, of course, by the Zionist axis. Hence no capitulation.

Cue to Tehran dramatically raising the stakes.

The Majlis has already approved the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The final decision is in the hands of the Iranian government/security apparatus. This is in fact binding for the government and the military, de facto authorizing the IRGC, under full constitutional cover, to seal the Strait of Hormuz.

I've extensively written about that on Asia Times during the past decade. At the time, Goldman Sachs derivative experts were adamant: if Hormuz is blocked, before or during a full-scale naval war in the Gulf, oil may reach $700.00 a barrel.

And this will only be temporary - because the entire global economy will collapse.

Most of all, the blocking of Hormuz would trigger the detonation of the TWO QUADRILLION (caps mine) dollars derivative market - updating the initial, misleading calculation by the BIS (Bank for International Settlements), placed at $700 trillion. Over the years, several Gulf traders, off the record, have agreed with the "quadrillion" numbers.

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Stop The Hate UK: The Shadowy Israel-Aligned Group Targeting MintPress staff & anti-genocide organizers

Mint Press News (Dec 2025)

In October, Mint Press graphic designer and field photographer, Ibrahim Abul-Essad opened his door to find Patrick Sawer of The Daily Telegraph demanding answers.

A prolific writer who has penned 28 pro-Israel articles in the past two months alone, Sawer asked the British Palestinian journalist to respond to pro-Israel pressure group Stop The Hate U.K.’s campaign for him to be prosecuted for “anti-Semitic hate crimes.”

Abul-Essad’s “crime” was attending an October 2024 demonstration in London protesting an event featuring former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert speaking on the future of Gaza – a case that the Metropolitan Police have already looked into and dismissed.

Sawer has previous connections to Stop The Hate U.K. A 2024 Daily Telegraph article framing pro-Palestine marchers as racists, for instance, appears to have been based largely on intelligence gathered by Stop The Hate U.K., and features multiple images of protestors taken without their knowledge.

But who are Stop The Hate U.K.? And where did they come from? MintPress News explores the group’s rise, its agenda, and its scandalously close links to both the British and Israeli governments.

Israeli Front Group?

Stop the Hate U.K. was founded in early 2024, at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza, in order to stymie and oppose the growing wave of support for Palestinian liberation across Great Britain. The group has attempted to equate support for human rights with terrorism. As their official Twitter bio reads, “We stand in opposition to the hate marches that have swamped our country since the 7.10 massacre. We shall not be cowed. Terrorist supporters off our streets!” The organization has repeatedly pressured the British government to ban demonstrations, and condemned the police for their insufficient vigor in suppressing the movement.

Although it states that it is a non-profit organization, MintPress could find no registration of the group with the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

The organization’s website describes it was founded “in response to the repeated failures of the Metropolitan Police to address anti-Semitic incidents at Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) marches.” This will be news to many in the U.K., where police have arrested over 2300 people under the Terrorism Act of 2000 for peacefully opposing the designation of activist group Palestine Action as a terrorist entity, putting it on a par with the likes of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. So aggressive has British authorities’ repression of free speech been, that it was officially rebuked by Amnesty International as a grave breach of human rights.

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Marco Rubio: An Abhorrent Choice for Secretary of State

Comment: A reminder of who Trump's Marc Rubio is...Unfortunately, despite the scope of this article (from November 2024) it does not focus on where the real danger lies with this man: his rampant loyalty to Israel and his worship of the very worst elements of Zio-conservatism.

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Jeremey Kumarov | Covert Action Magazine

He is part of a group of extreme right-wing hawks devoid of ethics set to run Trump’s foreign policy team

President-elect Donald Trump named Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his nominee for Secretary of State, an abhorrent choice that shows Trump’s claim to be a peace candidate to be a complete illusion.

The New York Times reported that, since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rubio has “staked out a position as a foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba in particular.”

Supportive of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, 2011 U.S. bombing of Libya and genocidal U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen, Rubio has further expressed unalloyed support for Israel’s war in Gaza, claiming that Hamas was to blame for Palestinian civilian deaths.

The New York Times emphasized that Rubio has been among the most outspoken senators on the need for the U.S. to be more aggressive on China.

While sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee, he demanded that the Biden administration block sales to Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, after it released an artificial intelligence processor chip-powered laptop.

Sanctioned by the Chinese government for supporting an anti-Chinese uprising in Hong Kong, Rubio introduced the “Taiwan Peace Through Strength Act” that would fast-track U.S.-Taiwan military coordination, and has called for Taiwan to increase its defense spending, which is not a majority view in Taiwan.

Zhu Junwei, a former researcher in the People’s Liberation Army and director of American research at Beijing’s Grandview Institution think tank, told the Australian Financial Review that Rubio’s appointment would “be a nightmare coming true.”

Rubio’s selection is also a nightmare for Cubans, given his stature as a leader of Miami’s anti-Castro Cuban expat community.

Falsely claiming that the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime has served as a puppet for Communist China, Iran, and most recently Russia, Rubio’s overriding priority as Secretary of State will be to achieve Washington’s long-standing goal of overthrowing Cuba’s socialist government by expanding on an already crushing embargo, and by supporting dissident movements through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other State Department-linked agencies.

The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio asserted on the campaign trail that his family came to the U.S. to escape persecution by Fidel Castro’s government. However, a review of government immigration records revealed that Rubio’s parents actually came to Miami in 1956 in order to escape persecution by U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista whom Castro overthrew.

Rubio’s grandfather Pedro Victor Garcia went back to Cuba after the Cuban Revolution to take a job in the Cuban Treasury Ministry, though later had a falling out with the Castro regime.

During Rubio’s 2016 presidential run, The New York Times quoted from a Havana resident living on the street where Rubio’s father grew up who gave Rubio a vigorous thumbs down when asked about him. Héctor Montiel, 66, said that, “if Marco Rubio becomes president, we’re done for. He’s against Cuba in every possible way….Rubio and these Republicans, they are still stuck in 1959.” Echoing similar sentiments, Alain Marcelo, 46, told The New York Times: “He [Rubio] wants to kill us!…Viva Fidel. Rubio’s our enemy!”

Born in 1971, Rubio was an indifferent student who played football at Tarkio College in Missouri before earning degrees from the University of Florida and the University of Miami School of Law.

Rubio’s dishonesty was evident when he claimed to be unaware of his brother-in-law Orlando Cicilia’s direction of a $75 million cocaine smuggling ring from his home in West Kendall, Florida, in the 1980s where Rubio lived as a teenager.

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Despite rapes and violence, the Netherlands refuses to shut down integration living project between students and migrants

Comment: Woke insanity strikes again, totally oblivious to reality.

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Remix

Despite sparking global news coverage documenting violence, sexual assaults, and drug-related crimes in the shared living integration project "Stek Oost," the city of Amsterdam refuses to shut the project down. According to public broadcaster BNNVARA, the municipality has rejected calls to shutter the facility early and plans to run the project until its scheduled end in April 2028.

The project, which launched in 2018, was the subject of a recent NPO 2 report where residents detailed an environment of frequent violence. Records indicate that the housing association responsible for the site, Stadgenoot, had requested an intervention plan from police and city officials as early as 2019 to address sexual abuse.

The news report highlighted serious cases and interviewed the victims in some instances, which has been translated by Remix News.

A Syrian resident was linked to a rape in 2019, but the case was initially closed due to insufficient evidence. However, the individual remained at the dormitory until March 2022, when a second sexual offense led to his expulsion and a subsequent prison sentence.

The former resident said that a Syrian raped her after she went to his room to watch a film and he would not let her leave. He then raped her. The woman, Amanda, said: "He wanted to learn Dutch, to get an education. I wanted to help him."

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Israel and its relationship to the Islamic State

Jonathan Yen | Mises Institute

This week, ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), also known as ISIL, IS, or Daesh, has reappeared in the headlines following the killing of two Iowa National Guardsman — Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard — in an ISIS airstrike in Palmyra, Syria. These two American men are only the latest of the over 40,000 soldiers, from numerous different nations, who have lost their lives in the war against ISIS — a war which America's supposed greatest ally against terrorism, Israel, has not assisted.

The AIPAC website proudly proclaims that Israel is an "Indispensable Ally" against terrorism; and indeed, the Trump administration has continued funding the Israeli government at massive expense, including a $4 billion dollar military aid package earlier this year.

Just this last week, a Newsweek Opinion author insisted that the United States must continue to support Israel, claiming:

"Instability around Israel does not stay local. It affects energy markets, counterterrorism efforts, nuclear proliferation, regional power balances and American credibility worldwide. A weakened Israel would invite wider conflict and embolden adversaries far beyond the region. Supporting Israel is not about subsidizing complacency. It is about preventing dangerous chain reactions in one of the world's most volatile regions."

A similar opinion piece in the New York Times bemoaned the breakdown of American support for Israel, claiming that Israel and the United States have been natural allies in the fight against "radical Islam." But is this true? Are these calls by regime media for a closer military relationship with Israel to stop terrorism based in fact? In fact, why does ISIS still have a presence in Syria at all?

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Israeli bullets found inside bodies of Iranian children killed in riots: Report

The Cradle.co

The Iranian supreme leader held the US and Israel directly responsible for the violence that swept the Islamic Republic.

Forensic examinations have revealed Israeli military-grade ammunition embedded in the bodies of children killed during recent rioting in Iran, Russian news agency TASS reported on 21 January, citing Iranian security sources.

The source described the case of an eight-year-old girl in Isfahan who was fatally shot while out shopping with her family during the unrest. She was hit in the stomach, chin, and back of the head, with forensic analysis confirming the bullets were Israeli military-grade.

Another incident involved three-year-old Melina Asadi, who was killed on the evening of 7 January 2026 in Kermanshah while returning with her father from a pharmacy. The child was shot from behind, with the source attributing the attack to armed terrorists.

The unrest began on 29 December 2025 following street protests sparked by a sharp fall in the Iranian rial.

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Bill & Hillary Clinton face prison for defying Epstein subpoena, their ties to trafficking exposed

Comment: Clintons in prison? Dream on.

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Liz Crokin | X.com

Bill and Hillary Clinton will be facing prison time if Congress votes to hold them in contempt this week after defying a federal subpoena and refusing to give testimony in the Jeffrey Epstein inquiry. The proof the Clintons were close with and working for Epstein and are involved in child trafficking and other sex crimes against children is overwhelming and the information is publicly available.

Before diving in, it's important for people to understand that sex trafficking and Satanic Ritualistic Abuse (SRA) often go hand-in-hand. It's not uncommon for a sex slave to also be a victim of SRA — especially those trafficked in elite pedophile rings. So it's important to factor in the Clinton's involvement in the occult before I lay out all their ties to pedophilia and child trafficking.

The Clintons & the Occult

For decades, the Clintons dabbled in the occult. As early as the 1970's, Bill and Hillary went to Haiti and took a course in voodoo theology from a voodoo priest and sat in on a dark ritual. This was documented in Bill's own words in his memoir My Life, according to The Washington Post. Bill described the ritual stating "spirits arrived, seizing a woman and a man". Bill then described how the woman screamed in a frenzy and proceeded to grab a live chicken and bite off the animal's head. Years later the Haitian publication, Haiti Observateur, reported that Bill returned to the island in 1995 to reaffirm his faith in voodoo by participating in another ritual. Also, it's rumored in Haiti that Hillary returned to the island as well and participated in more voodoo rituals too.

Former Clinton insider, Larry Nichols, who was known as their "fixer" said that Hillary regularly flew to California once a month decades ago to take part in a ritual at a witch's coven. The Clintons tasked Nichols to keep stories like this out of the media. However, Bob Woodward reported in his book The Choice that Hillary refused to talk about Jesus Christ, and also that she frequently held necromantic seances in the White House where she attempted to communicate with the dead including with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Fast forward to 2018, Hillary was awarded a lifetime membership by the witch's coven The Wing which is comprised of occult-practicing feminist witches. The Wing scrubbed some of their references to the occult and witchcraft online; however, there's still some evidence that has been left up on social media.

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Iran didn't erupt, it was ignited: The hidden hands behind a manufactured crisis

21st Century Wire | Freddie Ponton

When the first chants rose up in Tehran's Grand Bazaar at the end of December 2025, they came from merchants worn down by real, everyday suffering: inflation eating away savings, a collapsing currency, and the unceasing grind of uncertainty. Yet within days, what began as a grassroots protest against economic hardship abruptly became a battleground for global geopolitical forces, reflecting not just Iran's internal struggles but a war over narrative, power, and influence that spans continents.

Foreign capitals watched with interest, while intelligence agencies saw opportunity. Media networks amplified messages that served strategic interests, but amid these swirling forces, ordinary Iranians became actors in a drama orchestrated in part by powers far beyond their cities. This is not a recounting of statistics; this is a story about how a nation's protest against the price of bread became a potential spark for wider conflict, and what that says about the world we live in today.

The Anatomy of Interference: Intelligence, NGOs, and Manufactured Momentum

Almost immediately, the protests were framed in global media as a moral struggle for freedom, a narrative that dovetailed neatly with the interests of Western powers seeking to exert pressure on Tehran. Social media lit up with slogans like "Trump must intervene, save the Iranian people!" and "Free Iran!", messages that would soon be echoed by political elites in Washington. But behind these slogans lay something far less organic.

Western intelligence services, notably Mossad, CIA, and MI6, have a long history of operations aimed at destabilising Tehran. According to regional reporting, counter‑government elements linked to foreign intelligence were embedded among pockets of unrest, with accusations that these operatives helped precipitate violence and chaos that went far beyond spontaneous civil discontent. The effect was not subtle: targeted sabotage of peaceful protests, direct engagement with activists, and narrative shaping via digital and human channels. These efforts were designed to transform economic protests into a broader political crisis, ripe for exploitation.

Compounding this were the roles of Western‑aligned NGOs. Organisations such as the Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA/HRAI) and its news arm HRANA, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights in Iran (ABCHRI), and the Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) were presented globally as independent voices documenting the turmoil. In reality, their funding and alliances reveal a much deeper entanglement with U.S. political and security interests. HRANA, for example, is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a body established by the U.S. Congress and widely criticised as a civilian proxy for CIA regime‑change operations. According to investigative sources, HRANA received over $900,000 from NED in 2024 alone, a fact rarely disclosed by Western media when reporting their casualty figures and "expert" testimonies.

These groups became the foundation for many Western media narratives about casualty counts, repression, and protest dynamics, figures that were amplified without adequate scrutiny. Their role introduces a crucial question: to what extent were narratives designed to justify external pressure, and possibly intervention, rather than merely inform?

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ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt suggests they are 'helping' Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro 'take down' Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes

Information Liberation | Chris Menahan

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt suggested in a now-deleted interview that "behind the scenes" he is "helping" Senator Ted Cruz to "take down" Tucker Carlson and helping Ben Shapiro "take down" Nick Fuentes.

"I need people on the right to take down Tucker Carlson -- so I'm trying to help Ted Cruz," Greenblatt revealed. "I need people on the right to take down Nick Fuentes -- so I'm trying to help people like Ben [Shapiro]," Greenblatt told Rabbi David Wolpe and a gathering at Sinai Temple in West Los Angeles on Saturday.

He also named Hasan Piker as one of his targets and said the ADL is doing the "same thing on the left."

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Unmasking the Flames: Israel's shadow over Patagonia and Milei's betrayal of Argentina

Sarah B. | ddgeopolitics.substack.com

From Conspiracy to Reality? Fires Clear the Way for Foreign Control in the Last Frontier

As I was scrolling through news feeds, trying to keep up with some of the chaos unfolding around the world, I stumbled across a flurry of reports from Argentina about raging wildfires tearing through Patagonia. Starting around January 5, 2026, flames have devastated thousands of hectares in Chubut province, areas like El Hoyo, Puerto Patriada, and near Epuyén, and prompting evacuations amid thick smoke, destroyed homes, and threatened ecosystems. Thousands of Argentines and other Spanish speakers were flooding the replies on X posts about the blazes, most of them incredibly irate at the Milei government. Phrases like "The Zionists are trying to steal Patagonia!" and "Milei has sold us out to Israel!" popped up repeatedly in viral threads, with users sharing videos of suspicious activity and linking the fires to foreign interests.

I thought, sure, these could be bots amplifying outrage, but Elon's bot army has always been staunchly pro-Milei, relentlessly boosting his image as a free-market hero and his tight alliances with Israel. So why were genuine locals, from southern Patagonians to urban commentators, reacting with such raw, widespread fury, accusing their own president of enabling a Zionist takeover? I jumped down the rabbit hole, cross-checking eyewitness accounts, viral clips, and the mounting public backlash, and what I discovered was yet another stark instance of Zionist imperialism sweeping across the globe, this time setting South America's pristine frontiers ablaze to pave the way for control and exploitation.

In footage captured by Argentine hiker Martín Morales, one suspect is seen kneeling and igniting dry grass and branches in a high-risk zone amid extreme fire danger conditions, while his companion stands watch. Morales confronts them in Spanish, yelling, "How can you be making a fire, brother?" The men scramble to extinguish the flames with water from a nearby stream, gather their gear, and flee down the trail without a word, leaving Morales to ensure the fire is fully out before alerting park rangers via radio. He later posted a follow-up video explaining his actions: "I was alone, I couldn't get close — they had bad intentions. I made sure the fire was off and they left. I'm not crying from fear; it's the impotence, brother."

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Israeli ban on 37 aid organizations expected to have devastating impacts across Palestine

Qassam Muaddi, Tareq S. Hajja | Mondoweiss

Aid organizations say Israel's recent ban of 37 groups has dealt a severe blow to humanitarian work across Palestine. In Gaza, it means "cutting off a lifeline for over two million people," says Rahma Worldwide's Dr. Shadi Zazzah.

Israel's decision to cancel the registration of 37 international aid organizations at the beginning of the year has dealt a severe blow to the international presence in Palestine. Beyond that, it has delivered a serious blow to Palestinian society itself. The banning of dozens of international NGOs threatens many social assistance and development programs, many of which are Palestinian-run and crucial to sustaining essential services in communities across Palestine.

The ban followed a new set of registration conditions imposed by Israel on international organizations earlier in December, including a requirement to provide Israeli authorities with the personal data of Palestinian staff. Israel said the 37 organizations failed to comply with this requirement, with Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister, Amichai Chikli, saying the decision aimed to prevent the "exploitation of humanitarian aid for terrorism," although Israel has never provided evidence of such links.

The decision includes several prominent international humanitarian organizations, such as Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and even the Catholic Relief Services (Caritas), all of which were notified to cease operations in the Palestinian territories by March. The ban does not apply to any UN body.

The impact of the ban is expected to be felt most acutely in the Gaza Strip, where all two million Palestinians depend partly or entirely on humanitarian aid. Aid deliveries remain restricted following months of near-total shutdown prior to the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that came into effect in October 2025.

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US operation in Venezuela a 'flagrant violation' of international law - Lavrov

RT

The US attack on Venezuela earlier this month in which President Nicolas Maduro was abducted was a blatant violation of international law, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a press conference after meeting with Namibian Foreign Minister Selma Ashipala-Musavyi, Lavrov stated that Moscow's assessment of the US operation in Caracas remains unchanged. He added that the condemnation is shared by the overwhelming "global majority," including the Global South and East.

"Only Western Europeans and other allies of Washington try to shamefully avoid the principled assessments, although everybody understands that we're talking about a flagrant violation of international law," the foreign minister said.

Speaking at the UN Security Council last week, Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia described Maduro's abduction as "a cynical crime that cannot be justified." Chinese envoy Sun Lei also condemned the US, saying the military intervention in Venezuela threatens peace and security in the region.

The US military launched an attack against the oil-rich country on January 3, abducting Maduro and his wife. They were taken to a US warship and later flown to New York, where they appeared in court last week on charges of drug-trafficking conspiracy. Both pleaded not guilty.

After the kidnapping, US President Donald Trump said Washington would "run" Venezuela while cooperating with officials in Caracas until a transition is achieved. He stressed that the US needs "total access... to the oil and to other things in their country."

Days later, Trump announced that Venezuela's interim authorities would "turn over" 30 to 50 million barrels of "sanctioned oil" to be sold and "used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States."

Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez, a close ally of Maduro, said neither the US nor any other "foreign agent" will control Venezuela. Rodriguez signaled openness to "cooperation" with the US, but vowed that her country "will never return to being the colony of another empire."

Distinct AI models seem to converge on how they encode reality

Ben Brubaker | Quanta Magazine

Is the inside of a vision model at all like a language model? Researchers argue that as the models grow more powerful, they may be converging toward a singular "Platonic" way to represent the world.

Read a story about dogs, and you may remember it the next time you see one bounding through a park. That's only possible because you have a unified concept of "dog" that isn't tied to words or images alone. Bulldog or border collie, barking or getting its belly rubbed, a dog can be many things while still remaining a dog.

Artificial intelligence systems aren't always so lucky. These systems learn by ingesting vast troves of data in a process called training. Often, that data is all of the same type — text for language models, images for computer vision systems, and more exotic kinds of data for systems designed to predict the odor of molecules or the structure of proteins. So to what extent do language models and vision models have a shared understanding of dogs?

Researchers investigate such questions by peering inside AI systems and studying how they represent scenes and sentences. A growing body of research has found that different AI models can develop similar representations, even if they're trained using different datasets or entirely different data types. What's more, a few studies have suggested that those representations are growing more similar as models grow more capable. In a 2024 paper, four AI researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argued that these hints of convergence are no fluke. Their idea, dubbed the Platonic representation hypothesis, has inspired a lively debate among researchers and a slew of follow-up work.

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Second Nakba, Bibi's 9/11: The start of monumental destruction of the Middle East?

Peter Koenig | Global Research

On October 7, shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel, PM Benjamin Netanyahu declared the offensive as Israel's 9/11. He is right in more ways than one. The US 9/11 was a horrendous and deadly false flag, and so is the Israeli one, or the so-called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, assault by Hamas.

Both 9/11's are meant to "justify" endless and crushing retributions. In the US, an endless and worldwide war on "terror" which means the entire world, as Washington sees fit, according to its "rules-based order." Misbehaving nations are simply sanctioned and crushed, forced to their knees.

Israeli intel, as well as that of Egypt, the UK, the US, Brussels - EU - knew about the impending attack, planned by Israel in coordination with Hamas. A Jewish charity leader says Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to stand down for 7 hours during the Hamas invasion.

For Israel, it justifies a stepped-up war on Palestine, the end of Gaza, eventually forcing 2.3 million Gazans to flee through Rafah into the Sinai Peninsula in northeast Egypt.

Despite the official rejection of Israel to establish a corridor for Gazan refugees - an agreement with Israel and Washington to starve to death as many Palestinians as possible - Egypt eventually may allow to open the Rafah border for "humanitarian reasons." It is all part of the deal. 

[...]

This was planned for years.
Hamas was set up and funded by Israel and the US/UK secret services.

Hamas must do the bidding of its masters - namely periodically shooting back at aggressive Israeli attacks at Palestine settlements, mostly in the Gaza strip, and eventually launching a massive attack on Israel (on 7 October), thus, provoking an even more gigantic and deadly act of retribution - one that may not end until Palestine is erased from the map.

And then onwards - for the creation of Greater Israel, in the process absorbing one third to half of the current Middle East.

For broader understanding of the Israel-Palestine war, see also this.

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Behind The DoJ's Politicized Indictment of Maduro: a CIA-created 'Network' And Coerced Star Witness

 Max Blumenthal | The Gray Zone

The US Department of Justice indictment of Venezuela’s kidnapped leader, Nicolas Maduro, is a political rant that relies heavily on coerced testimony from an unreliable witness. Despite DOJ edits, it could expose more Americans to the CIA’s own history of drug trafficking.

The January 3 US military raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores was followed by the Department of Justice’s release of its superseding indictment of the two abductees as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello. The DOJ has also thrown Tren De Aragua (TDA) cartel leader Hector “Niño” Guerrero into the mix of defendants, situating him at the heart of its narrative.

The indictment amounts to a 25 page rant accusing Maduro and Flores of a conspiracy to traffic “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” relying heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction. It accuses Maduro of “having partnered with narco-terrorists” like TDA, ignoring a recent US intelligence assessment that concluded he had no control over the Venezuelan gang. Finally, the prosecutors stacked the indictment by charging Maduro with “possession of machine guns,” a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.

DOJ prosecutors carefully avoid precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the US. At one point, they describe “tons” of cocaine; at another, they refer to the shipment of “thousands of tons,” an astronomical figure that could hypothetically generate hundreds of billions in revenue. At no point did they mention fentanyl, the drug responsible for the overdose deaths of close to 50,000 Americans in 2024. In fact, the DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump’s watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.

By resorting to vague, deliberately expansive language larded with subjective terms like “corrupt” and “terrorism,” the DOJ has constructed a political narrative against Maduro in place of a concrete legal case. While repeatedly referring to Maduro as the “de facto… illegitimate ruler of the country,” the DOJ fails to demonstrate that he is de jure illegitimate under Venezuelan law, and will therefore be unable to bypass established international legal precedent granting immunity to heads of state.

Further, the indictment relies on transparently unreliable, coerced witnesses like Hugo “Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan general who has cut a secret plea deal to reduce his sentence for drug trafficking by supplying dirt on Maduro. Carvajal was said to be a key figure in the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” drug network which the DOJ claims was run by Maduro. If and when he appears to testify against the abducted Venezuelan leader, the American public could learn that the “cartel” was founded not by the deposed Venezuelan president or one of his allies, but by the CIA to traffic drugs into US cities.

As sloppy and politicized as the DOJ’s indictment might be, it has enabled Trump to frame his lawless “Monroe Doctrine” as an aggressive policy of legal enforcement, emboldening the US president to levy further threats to abduct or bump off heads of state who stand in the way of his resource rampage. This appears to be the real purpose of the imperial courtroom spectacle to come.

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The American blitzkrieg on Venezuela: No one is safe

Tarik Cyril Amar | RT.com

The military incursion and kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro shows how normalized the outrageous has become.

After five months - really two-and-a-half decades - of ever-escalating preparations by increasing diplomatic, economic, and clandestine warfare, the US has finally executed a full regime-change invasion in Venezuela. The final attack, focused on kidnapping the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores from the capital Caracas, was short. But the campaign has certainly not been bloodless. While we know little about what exactly happened on the ground, Washington's perfectly criminal strikes on alleged smuggling boats at sea which served as the core of the attack's preparatory propaganda barrage, have already killed over 100 victims, not to speak of the overlooked victims of sanctions.

Then, what American officials have called a "large-scale strike" against Venezuela in the early hours of January 3 targeted not only Caracas but several locations throughout the country. For whatever reason, resistance to this "dark and deadly" (in President Donald Trump's words) operation, seems to have been minimal. In view of the long and very visible military buildup, as well as psychological warfare campaign that preceded these night raids, it is hard to believe that they came as a surprise. Betrayal, subversion, and secret, nasty deals may well have played a role.

While such things will probably remain murky for a while - or forever - other, more important aspects of the US invasion of Venezuela are unambiguously clear: It is absolutely, irredeemably illegal, a massive and open breach of the UN Charter's prohibition of wars of aggression. Even some of America's most loyal 'Atlanticist' vassals in Europe have to admit that much, for instance, a recent op-ed in Germany's ultra-mainstream Die Zeit newspaper.

Washington's pretexts are, as so often, flimsy insults to everyone with half a brain. Venezuela and Maduro are not contributing anything significant - if anything at all - to America's very own and never-ending drug problems, neither with regard to cocaine nor fentanyl. And Maduro's election in 2024 may have been fair or not. The decisive, conclusive point is that such issues must be dealt with inside a sovereign country and can never justify military intervention from outside. Or who is going to be next? Germany for the extremely dubious way (polite expression) its mainstream parties have locked the New-Left BSW out of parliament in what may well amount to a cold coup?

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