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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Dr. Feelgood

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues-rock band Dr. Feelgood. Enjoy!

^{Dr Feelgood – Lights Out / Great Balls Of Fire}

"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the one right which they first of all strike down."

-- Frederick Douglass

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News and Opinion

The Australian Israel Lobby Is Flat-Out Saying They Want A Ban On Criticism Of Israel

Australians everywhere should be made acutely aware that the Australian Israel lobby is now explicitly advocating a ban on criticism of the state of Israel.

Not just hate speech against Jews. Criticism of a foreign state. They’re coming right out and saying it.

During a recent public video conference with the American Jewish Committee on the topic of the Bondi Beach shooting, the Executive Manager of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) explicitly says he wants pro-Palestine protests to be banned by the Australian government, and that addressing the problem of antisemitic hate speech in Australia necessarily means stopping opposition to Israel’s actions.

About 40 minutes into the American Jewish Committee’s YouTube video of the conference, AIJAC Executive Manager Joel Burnie demands that the Australian government take much stronger action to regulate freedom of expression regarding Israel and Zionism in Australia, saying the following:

“They need to act swiftly. They need to go to their own arms and their own institutions: no longer can you refuse service to a Zionist. We are going to prosecute people that spew hate speech against your people, and we’re not going to tip toe around the fact that the central problem here is Israel. I for one as Jewish leader will no long talk about antisemitism in isolation from Israel, because it’s the rhetoric and language on Israel that motivates the people to come and kill us. Those two terrorists were motivated by what was going on in Israel, and that’s what motivated them to come and kill us. So if they had Israel on their minds why are we acting as though it has nothing to do with the vitriolic binary nature of the pro-Palestinian advocacy movement?”

Burnie goes on to say that he wants a complete government ban on protests against Israel’s abuses throughout the nation:

“So overnight what we want immediately if you ask any Jew, what do you want, what do you want? No more protests! No more protests! No more no-go zones for Jews. I can’t, for two years, cannot take my kids to downtown Melbourne for two years on a Sunday, because of the pro-Palestinian marches, because of the violent nature of them. No more! Because that is an acceptance of the connection between the two. And until the prime minister is willing to do that, this is gonna happen again.”

Burnie is lying here, for the record. Anyone who has gone to the pro-Palestine demonstrations in Melbourne as I have will tell you that the protests are not even slightly violent in nature, and that there are Jews among the demonstrators who actively make their presence known. Those demonstrations have never been “no-go zones for Jews”; Joel Burnie doesn’t want to take his kids to downtown Melbourne on a Sunday because he doesn’t want to expose them to ideas and information which reveal the depravity of his Israel-supporting worldview.

Australians would probably benefit from watching the entire hour-long video of the conference, whose contents I first saw spotlighted on Twitter by Information Liberation’s Chris Menahan.

"No more protests! No more protests!"

AIJAC Executive Manager Joel Burnie demands Australians lose their right to protest Israel following Bondi Beach shooting.

He also demands prosecutions for "hate speech" and insists all security costs for Jews be put on Aussie taxpayers. pic.twitter.com/xvIskGjfGx

— Chris Menahan (@infolibnews) December 17, 2025

Some other highlights:

At 4:20 Burnie says that part of his role at AIJAC is “to take non-Jewish politicians and journalists and diplomats and other Australian officials to Israel.”

At 14:00 Nick Aronson, who is Chief of Staff to Australia’s so-called “antisemitism envoy” Jillian Segal, regurgitates the bogus propaganda line we’ve been hearing nonstop from Israel apologists throughout the western political/media class, “the words globalise the intifada actually mean globalise the intifada; it means kill Jews wherever they are”. Pro-Israel spinmeisters have been spouting this line with creepy uniformity ever since the Bondi shooting in order to justify government crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly to protect Israeli information interests.

At 15:00 Burnie says “the gloves are off now” with regard to stomping out free speech in Australia, saying Jews need stop saying “not all pro-Palestinian supporters are antisemitic”, saying “The pro-Palestinian movement, or the things within the pro-Palestinian movement that we all are exposed to in the public, is too binary: you’re pro-Palestinian so you need to be viciously anti-Israel.”

At 16:20 Burnie claims the Bondi shooting “happened because of the protest movements on the streets”, citing no evidence.

At 17:30 Burnie again makes his “no more protests” demand, saying “If I could ask for one thing of the government today: no more protests. If they cannot utilise language that is not inciting violence, that does not marginalise and dehumanise Jews, they have no right to be on the streets.”

At 21:10 Burnie complains that there haven’t been any prosecutions and arrests for antisemitic speech.

At 33:30 Burnie singles out Australian Muslims, saying “there needs to be more monitoring and surveillance of Islamic hate preachers” and an auditing of their education syllabus because of an “antisemitism problem amongst the Australian Muslim community.”

At 36:25 Burnie says Jillian Segal’s notorious speech-suppressing plan for fighting antisemitism in Australia “wasn’t about quashing debate on Israel, it just happens to be that language on Israel invading all of our social spaces in Australia have made this country a very unsafe space and place for Jews.”

At 46:00 Aronson says “there’s absolutely no doubt that people need to go to jail” for antisemitic hate speech in Australia, but says that won’t be enough to fix the problem because “we can always arrest more people, make no mistake, but you can never arrest enough, to be honest.”

At 54:00 Aronson speaks of the need for regulating online speech, complaining that “a number of the online platforms pride themselves on what they call free speech — obviously we would disagree; we would call it hate speech.” At 56:00 he says “we need to continue to put pressure on these platforms to understand the role they have to play in social cohesion, and how far short they are falling of community standards.”

This comes as the Australian government announces plans to ramp up its war on free speech in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack. We can be sure to see more authoritarian measures rolled out in the weeks to come as Israel’s supporters seize on this opportunity to advance the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state.

Amb. Chas Freeman & Trita Parsi: The Middle East You Knew Is Disappearing

ICC Slams New US Sanctions on Judges as ‘Flagrant Attack’ on Rule of Law

The International Criminal Court and human rights groups on Thursday condemned new US sanctions on two more of the tribunal’s judges, which brought the total number of sanctioned ICC jurists to 11 amid the Trump administration’s escalating campaign of retaliation against people and institutions seeking to hold Israel and the United States accountable for their alleged crimes.

“Today, I am designating two International Criminal Court (ICC) judges, Gocha Lordkipanidze of Georgia and Erdenebalsuren Damdin of Mongolia, pursuant to Executive Order 14203, ‘Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,’” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, referring to President Donald Trump’s February edict.

“These individuals have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent, including voting with the majority in favor of the ICC’s ruling against Israel’s appeal on December 15,” Rubio added, referencing Monday’s rejection of an Israeli bid to block a probe into alleged war crimes committed during the genocidal two-year war on Gaza.

Although Israel and the US are not ICC members and do not recognize the Hague-based tribunal’s jurisdiction, Palestine is a state party to the Rome Statute governing the court. The treaty says that individuals from nonsignatory nations can be held liable for crimes committed in the territory of a member state.

Last year, the ICC issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation in a war that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing.

The Trump administration had previously sanctioned nine other ICC jurists: Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan (United Kingdom), Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan (Fiji), Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang (Senegal), Judge Solomy Balungi Bossa (Uganda), Judge Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza (Peru), Judge Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou (Benin), Judge Beti Hohler (Slovenia), Judge Nicolas Yann Guillou (France), and Judge Kimberly Prost (Canada).

The affected judges have recently described how the US sanctions have left them and their families—who are also blacklisted—“wiped out economically and socially.”

Responding to the new US punitive measures, the ICC said Thursday that “these sanctions are a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution which operates pursuant to the mandate conferred by its states parties from across regions.”

“Such measures targeting judges and prosecutors who were elected by the states parties undermine the rule of law,” the court continued. “When judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk.”

“As previously stated, the court stands firmly behind its personnel and behind victims of unimaginable atrocities,” the ICC added. “It will continue to carry out its mandate with independence and impartiality, in full accordance with the Rome Statute and in the interest of victims of international crimes.”

Human Rights Watch also slammed the new US sanctions, which the group called “the latest attempt by the Trump administration to blatantly interfere with independent justice.”

Australian authorities: 'paid actors' spreading antisemitism from abroad

Chris Hedges has created his own genre. True, credible, reasonable, but awful.

Chris Hedges: Rebranding Genocide

First, it was Israel’s right to defend itself. Then it was a war, even though, by Israel’s own military intelligence database, 83 percent of the casualties were civilians. The 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, living under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade, have no army, air force, no mechanized units, no tanks, no navy, no missiles, no heavy artillery, no fleets of killer drones, no sophisticated tracking systems to map all movements, or an ally like the United States, which has given Israel at least $21.7 billion in military aid since Oct. 7, 2023.

Now, it is a “ceasefire.” Except of course, as usual, Israel only abided by the first of the 20 stipulations. It freed around 2,000 Palestinian captives held in Israeli prisons — 1,700 of whom were detained after Oct. 7 — as well as around 300 bodies of Palestinians, in exchange for the return of the 20 remaining Israeli captives. Israel has violated every other condition. It has tossed the agreement — brokered by the Trump administration without Palestinian participation — into the bonfire with all the other agreements and peace accords concerning Palestinians.

Israel’s extensive and blatant flouting of international agreements and international law — Israel and its allies refuse to abide by three sets of legally binding orders by the International Cout of Justice (ICJ) and two ICJ advisory opinions, as well as the Genocide Convention and international humanitarian law — presage a world where the law is whatever the most militarily advanced countries say it is.

The sham peace plan — “President Donald J. Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” — in an act of stunning betrayal of the Palestinian people, was endorsed by most of the U.N. Security Council in November, with China and Russia abstaining. Member states washed their hands of Gaza and turned their backs on the genocide. ...

The message the genocide sends to the rest of the world, more than a billion of whom live on less than a dollar a day, is unequivocable: We have everything and if you try and take it away from us, we will kill you. This is the new world order. It will look like Gaza. Concentration camps. Starvation. Obliteration of infrastructure and civil society. Mass killing. Wholesale surveillance. Executions. Torture, including the beatings, electrocutions, waterboarding, rape, public humiliation, deprivation of food and denial of medical care routinely used on Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Epidemics. Disease. Mass graves where corpses are bulldozed into unmarked pits and where bodies, as in Gaza, are dug up and torn apart by packs of ravenous wild dogs.

We are not destined for the Shangri-La sold to a gullible public by fatuous academics such as Stephen Pinker. We are destined for extinction. Not only individual extinction — which our consumer society furiously attempts to hide by peddling the fantasy of eternal youth — but wholesale extinction as temperatures rise to make the globe uninhabitable. If you think the human species will respond rationally to the ecocide, you are woefully out of touch with human nature. You need to study Gaza. And history.

Trump STUNNED as Venezuela's Navy Calls His War Bluff | Greg Stoker & Elina Xenophontos

63% of US Voters Oppose Attack on Venezuela as Trump’s March to War Accelerates

A new poll from Quinnipiac University found that 63% of voters oppose military operations inside Venezuela, with just 25% registering support.

What’s more, a US military strike in Venezuela would draw significant opposition even from Republican voters, 33% of whom told Quinnipiac that they would oppose such an action. Eighty-nine percent of Democratic voters and 68% of independent voters said they were opposed to a US military campaign in Venezuela.

Trump’s policy of bombing suspected drug trafficking boats in international waters, which many legal experts consider to be acts of murder, drew significantly less opposition in the new survey than a prospective attack on Venezuela, but it is still unpopular, with 42% in favor and 53% opposed.

pic.twitter.com/1xxIoAJ7oR

— mike luckovich (@mluckovichajc) December 17, 2025

4 More Killed in Pacific Boat Strike as White House Ramps Up Demands for Venezuelan Oil

Hours after US House Republicans voted down a war powers resolution Wednesday aimed stopping the Trump administration from continuing its attacks on “presidentially designated” terrorist organizations, the death toll of the Pentagon’s continued boat strikes was brought to 99 with the latest bombing in the Pacific Ocean.

US Southern Command reported Wednesday night that at the direction of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the military had killed four people in a “kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization in international waters.”

As with the rest of the more than two dozen bombings that the administration has carried out in the Caribbean and Pacific since September, the Pentagon said that intelligence had confirmed the boat was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”

The White House has not released evidence that the boats it’s targeted were carrying drugs. In the past, the US military has been involved in intercepting vessels suspected of drug trafficking and charging passengers with a criminal offense, but President Donald Trump has insisted the US is engaged in an armed conflict with drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere, including in Venezuela.

US and international intelligence agencies have not found Venezuela to be a significant source of drugs flowing into the US and have found the country to play virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the biggest cause of drug overdoses in the US.

The latest boat bombing came a day after Trump announced a “total and complete blockade” on oil tankers approaching and leaving Venezuela, accusing the country of stealing “Oil, Land, and other Assets” from the US.

Venezuela nationalized its petroleum sector in 1976, taking control of its own vast oil reserves. Previously, US-based companies had largely controlled the country’s oil industry. In 2007, then-President Hugo Chavez further pushed out US oil giants such as Exxon Mobil when he nationalized foreign oil projects in Venezuela.

There seem no real limits to the arrogance and avarice of Washington. Trump aides echo his megalomaniacal delusions over #Venezuela. But will they risk another large scale war for Trump's deluded greed? https://t.co/gpyU8ROQYg pic.twitter.com/l7UYzbrJUa

— tim anderson (@timand2037) December 18, 2025

Stephen Miller, a top adviser to Trump, accused Venezuela’s government of “theft” on Wednesday.

“American sweat, ingenuity, and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela,” Miller said in a social media post. “Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries, and drugs.”

Poland to Weaken Global Treaty by Making Landmines for Eastern Border and Possibly Ukraine

Just a couple of weeks after the annual Landmine Monitor highlighted rising global casualties from explosive remnants of war, Reuters reported Wednesday that Poland plans to start producing antipersonnel landmines, deploy them along its eastern border, and possibly export them to Ukraine, which is fighting a Russian invasion.

As both the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) monitor and Reuters noted, Poland is among multiple state parties in the process of ditching the Mine Ban Treaty. Citing the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the news agency reported that “antipersonnel mine production could begin once the treaty’s six‑month withdrawal period is completed on February 20, 2026.”

Asked about the prospect of Poland producing the mines as soon as it leaves the convention—also called the Ottawa Treaty—Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski told Reuters: “I would very much like that... We have such needs.”

“We are interested in large quantities as soon as possible,” Zalewski said. He added that “our starting point is our own needs. But for us, Ukraine is absolutely a priority because the European and Polish security line is on the Russia-Ukraine front.”

Notes from Poland pointed out on social media Thursday that the mine plans come amid other developments in Poland’s East Shield operation. As the Kraków-based outlet detailed Sunday, “Germany will send soldiers to Poland next year to support its neighbor’s efforts to strengthen its borders with Russia and Belarus, which are also NATO and the European Union’s eastern flank.”

For more on Poland's plans to bolster its security infrastructure on the borders with Russia and Belarus, including its withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention banning the use of anti-personnel mines, see our recent report https://t.co/eJt21EzJkb

— Notes from Poland (@notesfrompoland) December 18, 2025

Humanity & Inclusion (HI), a group launched in 1982 by a pair of doctors helping Cambodian refugees affected by landmines, said in a statement to Common Dreams that it “strongly condemns Poland’s decision to resume production of antipersonnel mines as soon as its withdrawal from the Ottawa Treaty becomes official in February.”

HI stressed that “antipersonnel mines disproportionately harm civilians. They render land unusable for agriculture, block access to essential services, and cause casualties decades after conflicts end. Their use is devastating for civilian populations. Producing landmines is cheap, but removing them would be even more expensive and complicated.”

“Plus, new production of landmines would make this weapon more available and easier to purchase,” the group warned. “Such a decision normalizes a weapon that has been prohibited since 1999, when the Ottawa Treaty entered into force, and fragilizes the treaty.”

“The Ottawa Treaty has been incredibly effective in protecting civilians and drying up the landmine market, a weapon that was no longer produced in Europe, and only assembled by a limited number of countries, including Russia, Iran, and North Korea, among others,” HI added, citing the drop in landmine casualties since the convention entered into force.

In 1999, casualties were around 25,000 annually, according to ICBL. By 2023, they had dropped to 5,757 injured or killed. However, as the campaign revealed in its latest report at the beginning of December, there were at least 6,279 casualties in 2024—the highest yearly figure since 2020 and a 9% increase from the previous year.

In the report, ICBL outlined recent alleged mine use by not only Russia and Ukraine but also Cambodia, Iran, Myanmar, and North Korea. The group also flagged that, along with Poland, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania are in the process of legally withdrawing from the Ottawa Treaty, while Ukraine is trying to unlawfully “suspend the operation” of the convention during its war with Russia.

ICBL director Tamar Gabelnick said at the time that “governments must speak out to uphold the treaty, prevent further departures, reinforce its provisions globally, and ensure no more countries use, produce, or acquire antipersonnel mines.”

Fake Diplomacy & Permanent Conflict - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Struggle continues in the european clown car:

‘Money today or blood tomorrow’: EU leaders race to secure deal for Ukraine

EU leaders are racing to secure a funding deal for Ukraine that has been cast as a choice between “money today or blood tomorrow”, but Belgium continues to oppose a loan secured against Russia’s frozen assets. At a summit billed as make or break, EU leaders are discussing an unprecedented move to tap some of Russia’s €210bn sovereign assets frozen in the bloc days after the full-scale invasion of 2022. ...

EU leaders have been presented with two options to meet Ukraine’s estimated €136bn funding needs in 2026 and 2027: a “reparations loan” secured against Russian frozen assets or joint EU borrowing to fund Kyiv. The European Commission, which proposed the €90bn loan, expects Ukraine’s other western allies to make up the rest.

Germany and other frugal countries, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, strongly support tapping Russian assets, rather than European taxpayers. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the reparations loan was the only option. “We are basically faced with the choice of using European debt or Russian assets for Ukraine, and my opinion is clear: We must use the Russian assets.” But Belgium, which hosts most of the Russian assets, said it had not received adequate guarantees from the rest of the EU if the scheme went wrong. ...

A draft summit text presented on Thursday pledged “full solidarity” and risk-sharing with countries and financial institutions in the context of the reparations loan. But the text seen by the Guardian was scant on details sought by Belgium, such as how quickly guarantees would materialise, or how long they would last. ...

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said she would not leave the summit without a solution. The meeting is scheduled to finish on Friday.

INTEL Roundtable : w/ Johnson & McGovern WEEKLY WRAP 19-Dec

US prices continued to rise despite Trump claims they are ‘rapidly’ falling

US prices rose 2.7% in the year to November, according to federal data released a day after Donald Trump claimed they were falling “very fast” on his watch. The latest consumer price index, released on Wednesday morning, was down from 3% in September, and short of economists’ expectations of about 3.1% for last month.

It comes amid questions over the strength of the US economy. The longest US federal government shutdown in history halted collection of key data. There was no inflation report for October, and data was only collected for the second half of November.

In a live TV address on Tuesday night, Trump claimed prices were falling “rapidly”, despite evidence to the contrary. “I am bringing those high prices down, and bringing them down very fast,” the US president said.

Price growth, which surged in the US to its highest level in a generation three years ago amid economic disruption wrought by Covid, fell back sharply. It has stubbornly remained above standard levels, however, and after retreating to 2.3% in April, it has since climbed higher – amid persisting concerns around affordability.

The latest rise in prices coincides with a climbing unemployment rate, which hit 4.6% in November – a four-year high. Despite this growth, the number of jobs added to the economy last month was higher than economists anticipated, rising 64,000 after 105,000 jobs were lost in October.

FCC chair suggests agency is not independent

The Federal Communications Commission is not an “independent” agency, its chairman suggested on Wednesday, as the word was scrubbed from its online mission statement. Brendan Carr’s declaration to senators raised concerns of a further power-grab by the White House, amid concerns surrounding efforts by Donald Trump and his officials to exert greater control over independent agencies since his return to office in January.

The FCC, Carr told the Senate’s commerce, science, and transportation committee on Wednesday, “is not an independent agency, formally speaking”. Shortly before Carr spoke, the FCC recorded its status as “an independent US government agency overseen by Congress” in a mission statement on its website, according to a screenshot captured by Axios. During his testimony, however, the word “independent” was removed.

Carr is a vocal Trump supporter, and was accused in September of threatening TV networks that broadcast content the president did not like, notably ABC, after critical comments about Trump made by the late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel’s show was reinstated after a short suspension, prompting more tirades from Trump that continued into last month.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Democratic senators challenged Carr on comments he made related to Kimmel. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told a conservative podcaster amid rightwing attacks over comments Kimmel had made following the death of Charlie Kirk. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Trump signs order reclassifying marijuana as less dangerous

Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to move cannabis out of the most restrictive drug category, a change that would loosen limits on research and certain regulations but stop short of making marijuana legal nationwide.

“I’m pleased to announce that I will be signing an Executive Order to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance with legitimate medical uses,” the president said from the Oval Office.

“This reclassification order will make it far easier to conduct marijuana-related medical research, allowing us to study benefits, potential dangers and future treatments,” Trump added. “It’s going to have a tremendously positive impact.”

The action allows for a pilot program that reimburses Medicare patients for products containing CBD, a widely used cannabis-derived compound that does not produce a high.

Under the order, marijuana would be shifted from Schedule I, a category that includes heroin, to Schedule III, which also includes ketamine. The move, however, would not legalize marijuana as some states have done, and would not change how law enforcement agencies handle marijuana-related arrests, according to senior administration officials who spoke to the New York Times.

Trump Moves to Denaturalize Citizens, End Birthright Citizenship, Halt Visa Lottery

TikTok signs Trump-backed deal to sell US entity to American investors

TikTok has signed a deal to sell its US business to three American investors – Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX – ensuring the popular social video platform can continue operating in the United States. The deal is expected to close on 22 January, according to an internal memo seen by he Associated Press and Reuters. The TikTok chief executive officer, Shou Zi Chew, said in the memo that ByteDance and TikTok have signed binding agreements with the three investors.

The new TikTok US joint venture will be 50% held by a consortium of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX with 15% each. Another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance, according to the memo.

White House officials have said Oracle, which was co-founded by Donald Trump’s supporter Larry Ellison, will license a copy of TikTok’s recommendation algorithm as part of the deal, in a partnership that will expand on Oracle’s existing management of TikTok’s trove of data collected about its US users.

Ellison’s role in the new ownership of the most popular social media platform in the US has raised concerns about the decreasing share of media firms not under the control of pro-Trump billionaires, with Ellison’s son David now driving wholesale changes at CBS, Elon Musk in control of X, formerly known as Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg overseeing both Instagram and Facebook, and Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post.

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I guess they're not transparent enough to tell us that they ran a shit candidate with a shit platform.

Democrats won’t release 2024 election loss ‘autopsy’, DNC chair says

The Democratic National Committee won’t release a review of its election loss in 2024, saying it would be a “distraction” from helping the party win going forward.

The party has been working on a so-called autopsy of 2024 since Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump.

Ken Martin, the DNC chair who previously said he would publicly release a review of the 2024 election, said in a statement that the review was complete and that the committee was “already putting our learnings into motion”.

“We’re winning again – even in places that haven’t gone blue in decades,” Martin said. “In our conversations with stakeholders from across the Democratic ecosystem, we are aligned on what’s important, and that’s learning from the past and winning the future. Here’s our North Star: does this help us win? If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.”

As part of the review, the committee interviewed people across all 50 states about issues with both the presidential and down-ballot races in 2024 and any previous structural challenges, a DNC official said. The results include lessons about organizing, communications, fundraising and spending, though the report found Democrats outspent Republicans at all levels, the official said.

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AI boom has caused same CO2 emissions in 2025 as New York City, report claims

The AI boom has caused as much carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere in 2025 as emitted by the whole of New York City, it has been claimed. The global environmental impact of the rapidly spreading technology has been estimated in research published on Wednesday, which also found that AI-related water use now exceeds the entirety of global bottled-water demand.

The figures have been compiled by the Dutch academic Alex de Vries-Gao, the founder of Digiconomist, a company that researches the unintended consequences of digital trends. He claimed they were the first attempt to measure the specific effect of artificial intelligence rather than datacentres in general as the use of chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini soared in 2025.

The figures show the estimated greenhouse gas emissions from AI use are also now equivalent to more than 8% of global aviation emissions. His study used technology companies’ own reporting and he called for stricter requirements for them to be more transparent about their climate impact.

“The environmental cost of this is pretty huge in absolute terms,” he said. “At the moment society is paying for these costs, not the tech companies. The question is: is that fair? If they are reaping the benefits of this technology, why should they not be paying some of the costs?”

De Vries-Gao found that the 2025 carbon footprint of AI systems could be as high as 80m tonnes, while the water used could reach 765bn litres. He said it was the first time AI’s water impact had been estimated and showed that AI water use alone was more than a third higher than previous estimates of all datacentre water use.

‘Uniquely evil’: Michigan residents fight against huge data center backed by top tycoons

A who’s who of the nation’s most powerful politicians and tech tycoons are forcing through a proposal for a massive data center in rural Michigan as locals from across the political spectrum have come out in force against it, with one calling it “uniquely evil”. Saline Township, Michigan, residents fear the $7bn center would jack up energy bills, pollute groundwater, and destroy the area’s rural character. The 1.4 gigawatt center would consume as much power as Detroit, and would help derail Michigan’s nation-leading transition to renewable energy.

Responding to resident pressure, Saline Township’s board of trustees in September voted down the plans, but the data center’s powerful backers – including Donald Trump, Open AI’s Sam Altman, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, utility giant DTE Energy, and Stephen Ross, the real-estate billionaire and Trump donor who owns Related Co – fought back. Related Digital sued, and, vastly outgunned, the township board quickly folded and reversed its decision over strong resident objections. Now the project’s backers are trying to avoid minimal regulatory scrutiny on energy costs and pollution.

The controversy over the data center is representative of the David v Goliath fights playing out across the US, pitting working- and middle-class residents against the interests of billionaires and the political establishment. “This is part of an experience that America and the world is having around tech billionaires who are seizing power and widening the gap between those have much too much … and the working and middle classes,” said Yousef Rabhi, a former Democratic state legislative leader and clean energy advocate who opposes the plans. “That’s what these data centers are symbolic of, and they’re the vehicle for is the furtherance of this divide,” Rabhi added.

The proposal is part of the broader “Stargate” project composed of five data centers backed by the Trump administration, which granted $500bn in federal subsidies for them. It’s the largest project in Michigan history in terms of investment, and it also received subsidies on taxes that could have gone to roads and schools, among other uses, Rabhi said.

The plan’s supporters say the center would provide essential AI infrastructure, in part for national security, and create a few hundred jobs. Huge sums of money are at stake for the tech and utility companies. ... Big tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Open AI, which often own data centers, typically have enough political support at the state and federal levels that inexperienced local leaders who are comparatively poorly resourced are left on their own to defend their town from the centers. Saline Township supervisor Jim Marion conveyed that challenge when he told angry residents during a contentious November discussion that the township’s “hands were tied”.

“This township doesn’t have the money to fight these big companies. You got to understand that,” Marion told the crowd. “We were dealt the cards we were dealt.”

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Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Assange Files Complaint to Block Machado From Nobel

Jonathan Cook: Milking the Bondi Beach Massacre

Prison denies ambulance to Palestine Action hunger striker in ‘life-threatening state’

Shining a Light on How Exxon Mobil Bankrolls Think Tank “Experts” Pushing for Regime-Change War in Venezuela

Russia Is In A Security Dilemma – Europe Pretends To Be In One

We Don’t Have To Live In Hell

DOJ may miss Epstein files deadline as Democrats warn of legal consequences

Candace Owens EXPOSES Piers Morgan As Coward & Establishment Shill

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A Little Night Music

Dr Feelgood – She Does It Right

Dr Feelgood – I'm A Man

Dr Feelgood – Get Rhythm

Dr Feelgood – You'll Be Mine

Dr Feelgood – Going Back Home

Dr Feelgood – Educated Fool

Dr Feelgood – Down At The Doctors

Dr Feelgood – The More I Give

Dr Feelgood – Ninety Nine And A Half Won't Do

Dr Feelgood – Roxette

Dr Feelgood - Rolling And Tumbling

Dr Feelgood – Checkin' Up On My Baby

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