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This evening's music features Detroit blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and harmonica player, Eddie Burns. Enjoy!

"No man is infinitely strong; for every creature that runs, flies, hops or crawls there is a terminal nemesis which he will not circumvent, which will finally do him in."

-- Philip K. Dick

News and Opinion

We’re Always Told That Everyone In The Empire-Targeted Nation Hates Their Government

The regime change supporter’s favorite trick is to pretend the people in the targeted country are an ideological monolith. All Iranians hate their government, all Venezuelans wanted freedom from Maduro, etc. They do this constantly.

Thing is, it requires them to dehumanize the very population they’re claiming to care about. They need to pretend the people in the empire-targeted nation are these weird creatures with some kind of Pluribus-style alien brain virus that makes them all think the same as each other, unlike any other human population they themselves have ever encountered.

You have never been to a country where everyone has the same attitude toward their government. Neither have I. That would be freakish and abnormal. That’s not how humans are. But whenever the warmongers are trying to make the case for US regime change interventionism in a given nation, suddenly “the people” of that nation all have the exact same political opinion, and they know what that opinion is, and they presume to speak for all of them.

Of course there are people in Iran who want their government gone. There are also people in Iran who want their government to stay. That’s normal. That’s how humans work. But whenever there’s a regime change intervention to manufacture consent for we’re asked to believe the people have stopped acting like humans and are now operating more like robots, or ants in an ant colony.

That’s what they’re saying when they tell you “Talk to Iranians”, you know. They’re actually telling you to speak to a very specific faction of Iranians, and are generally referring to the English-speaking diaspora whose family left the country for a reason, who stand nothing to lose from American bombs landing on Tehran. They frame it like it’s the unanimous consensus of all Iranians, but in actuality they’re only talking about one specific political faction in one specific demographic.

Unlike the regime change fanatics, I personally do not presume to speak for all Iranians. I see it as none of my business what they do in their own country with regard to their own government, and trust them to sort out their own affairs. I absolutely do see it as my business when my fellow westerners start clapping along with the war drums and regurgitating justifications for western bombs to land on a foreign country, however.

Iran, Venezuela, Palestine: The Collapse of International Law | Craig Mokhiber

Trump ‘unafraid to use military force on Iran’, White House says

Donald Trump is “unafraid to use military force on Iran” the White House said on Monday as the Iranian regime still faces widespread unrest across the country. Speaking to Fox News, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that although diplomacy remained Trump’s “first option”, he was “unafraid to use the lethal force and might of the United States military if and when he deems that necessary”.

“Airstrikes would be one of the many, many options that are on the table for the commander-in-chief,” Leavitt continued, adding: “He’s made it quite clear he certainly doesn’t want to see people being killed in the streets of Tehran, and unfortunately, that’s something we’re seeing right now.” Pointing to last year’s US strikes on Iran’s three major nuclear sites – which subsequent satellite imagery suggested caused more limited damage than Trump had claimed – Leavitt said of Trump’s potential use of US military force: “Nobody knows that better than Iran.”

Leavitt also said that Iran’s private and public messaging to the US had been “quite different”, adding: “I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages.” She did not elaborate on the nature of the messages.

Following Leavitt’s comments on Monday afternoon, Trump announced on Truth Social: “Effective immediately, any country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America.” In recent weeks, the Iranian regime has confronted its largest protest movement since 2009, which its leadership has sought to downplay, attributing the unrest to “American-Zionist terrorism”.

On Monday, tens of thousands of pro-government demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran in a state-organized rally intended to show support for the regime and counter the growing unrest.

Douglas Macgregor: U.S. War on Iran Risks Triggering World War

Russia Helps Iran Jam Starlink Ending Protests; Trump Hits BRICS 25% Iran Tariff; US Prepares Strike

Excellent work by MOA, worth a click and a full read:

Regime Change Riots In Iran Fail Faster Than Expected

Just two days ago I opined that the riots in Iran would lead nowhere.

Iran Shrugs Off Another Round Of U.S./Israel Sponsored Regime Change Riots – MoA, Jan 10 2026

I especially pointed out that the U.S. had delivered Starlink satellite terminals to organizers of the riots – 40,000 of them is a rumored number – but that the Iranian government had acquired the means to detect them and to shut down their traffic. Just a day later Forbes reports that the government did indeed used its new tools:

‘Kill Switch’—Iran Shuts Down Starlink Internet For First Time – Forbes, Jan 11 2026

The Iranian government did not bother to track down single terminals but used the new Russian and Chinese equipment to shut down all Starlink traffic in Iran. Packet loss rates of 90% have made the connections unusable.

Today pro-government marches are held in all major cities of Iran. They are much bigger than anything the opposition could ever assemble. The Iranian system has again demonstrated that it is astonishingly stable. Not one official has changed side.

The riots are, for now, over. The streets tonight will likely be quiet. During the next weeks the riot leaders and instigators will be tracked down and punished – harshly one hopes in sight of the casualties on the government side. The total blocking of Internet traffic and international phone communication in Iran was the decisive step taken to end the riots.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : An Unchecked Presidency

No staff, no equipment, no medicine: a doctor on returning to Gaza after 665 days in an Israeli prison

The only thing that kept Dr Ahmed Muhanna going during his 22 months inside Israeli prisons and detention centres was dreaming of his return to his family and to Gaza. When he was finally released after 665 days as a prisoner, he arrived home to find every place he had returned to in his memories had been obliterated.

While in prison, he and the other inmates were “completely cut off from the outside world”, he says. When he was released he was driven over the border and through Gaza to his hospital, the al-Awda. The scale of the destruction he saw “made my skin crawl … my chest tightened and my tears began to flow”.

When Muhanna, one of Gaza’s most senior anaesthesiologists and emergency care consultants, was detained by Israeli forces in December 2023, the al-Awda hospital was under siege. Now, barely three months after his release, despite the ceasefire officially still in place, he says he and his colleagues are facing another onslaught as the devastated healthcare system battles to cope with a wave of disease and preventable deaths.

Muhanna says he returned to a hospital hollowed out of staff, medical equipment and medicine. While in detention, 75 of his colleagues at al-Awda were killed, he says. Since 7 October 2023, 1,200 Palestinian healthcare workers have been killed and 384 detained by Israel’s military, according to the NGO Healthcare Workers Watch.

Dozens of artists call for end to Israel’s ‘systematic attacks’ on Gaza hospitals

Dozens of artists, including Cynthia Nixon, Mark Ruffalo and Ilana Glazer, have joined with doctors, human rights leaders and humanitarian organizations to call for the immediate restoration of medical care in Gaza in a letter addressed to the state of Israel and world leaders.

“Israel’s systematic attacks on hospitals and unlawful blockade have collapsed Gaza’s healthcare system,” says the letter, which was shared exclusively with the Guardian. “Through its policies and military activities, the government of Israel has deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza and then denied the very help that could save them.”

The first signatory on Monday’s letter is the mother of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl from Gaza City who was killed by Israeli fire in January 2024 while waiting for a team of Palestinian paramedics whose ambulance was shelled while trying to reach her. Her story has been memorialized in the Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s latest film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, which has been shortlisted for an Academy Award.

“Hind Rajab did not die because help was impossible, but because it was denied,” Ben Hania said in a statement to the Guardian. Ben Hania joined with Hind’s mother, Wesam Hamada, to sign the letter assembled by a group of non-profits.

Other signatories include Brian Eno, Rosie O’Donnell and Morgan Spector. The Israeli organization B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights are among the human rights groups that signed the letter, which will be presented to UK and EU leaders in parliamentary meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. The letter calls for the “immediate, unconditional, unhindered and sustained humanitarian access into Palestine”, including the entry of medical and humanitarian personnel.

Yanis Varoufakis: Trump's MASTER PLAN On Fed, Venezuela, AI

Trump threatens to block ExxonMobil from Venezuela after CEO calls country ‘uninvestable’

Donald Trump has said he might block ExxonMobil from investing in Venezuela after the oil company’s chief executive called the country “uninvestable” during a White House meeting last week. Darren Woods told the US president that Venezuela would need to change its laws before it could be an attractive investment opportunity, during the high-profile meeting on Friday with at least 17 other oil executives.

Trump had urged the group to spend $100bn to revitalise Venezuela’s oil industry in a meeting less than a week after US forces captured and removed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from power in a brazen overnight raid.

Woods’ sceptical remarks quickly emerged as the dominant headline, undercutting the White House’s hopes of building momentum from its engagement with the world’s most prominent oil executives. “I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on his way back to Washington on Sunday. “I’ll probably be inclined to keep Exxon out. I didn’t like their response. They’re playing too cute.”

Exxon, ConocoPhillips and Chevron – the three largest US oil producers – were for decades the most prominent partners of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA. The government of late president Hugo Chávez nationalised the industry between 2004 and 2007, and while Chevron negotiated deals to partner with PDVSA, ConocoPhillips and Exxon left the country and filed for prominent arbitration cases shortly after. Venezuela now owes over $13bn collectively to ConocoPhillips and Exxon for the expropriations, according to court rulings. ...

Trump said on Friday that his administration would decide which firms would be allowed to operate in the South American country. “You’re dealing with us directly. You’re not dealing with Venezuela at all,” he said. “We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela.” On Saturday, Trump signed an executive order to block courts or creditors from seizing revenue tied to the sale of Venezuelan oil held in US Treasury accounts.

U.S. Central Bank THREATENED As The Dollar Collapses – USD Assets Are DONE, Gold Explodes

Ex-Fed chairs condemn Trump’s bid to weaken central bank’s independence

Every living former head of the Federal Reserve condemned an “unprecedented” attempt by the Trump administration to weaken the US central bank’s independence, after the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into its chair, Jerome Powell.

Ex-Fed chairs Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen warned similar prosecutorial attacks in other countries had led to “highly negative consequences” for the cost of living – and argued they had “no place” in the US.

Late on Sunday, it emerged that the justice department had served the Fed with grand jury subpoenas on Friday, threatening a criminal indictment related to Powell’s testimony before the Senate banking committee in June last year, regarding renovations to the Fed’s historic office buildings in Washington DC.

In response, Powell argued he had been threatened with criminal charges because the Fed had set interest rates “based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president”.

The move amounts to a significant escalation in Donald Trump’s extraordinary attack on the Fed’s independence. The US president has repeatedly blasted Powell and the central bank for declining to bow to his demands for rapid interest rate cuts, and launched an aggressive campaign to and exert greater control over its decisions.

The CIA Has Been FUNDING The Academic Left (w/ Gabriel Rockhill)

Mark Kelly sues Hegseth over ‘chilling’ effort to reduce military retirement rank

Democratic US senator Mark Kelly filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to nullify the “chilling” attempt by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to reduce the military veteran’s rank and pension as punishment for speaking out against the Trump administration.

Hegseth had previously issued a formal censure to Kelly, a decorated retired navy captain and Nasa astronaut, for alleged “seditious statements” he made urging service members to resist unlawful orders. It began a process that could lead to Kelly, a senator for Arizona since 2021, being demoted and having his pension cut.

The lawsuit, filed in Washington DC federal court, argues that comments made by Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers – all military or intelligence veterans – in a short video to service members in November were protected free speech.

The 46-page court filing accuses Hegseth, the Department of Defense, the US navy, and John Phelan, the navy secretary, of “trampling” on constitutional protections “essential to legislative independence”. The filing said the defense secretary was attempting to dismantle the “bedrock principles of our democracy”, freedom of speech and the separation of powers.

“His unconstitutional crusade against me sends a chilling message to every retired member of the military: if you speak out and say something that the president or secretary of defense doesn’t like, you will be censured, threatened with demotion, or even prosecuted,” Kelly said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

Federal Investigator DISMANTLES Kristi Noem’s Shooting Defense!

Minnesota sues Trump administration to end surge of ICE agents in state

The Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, announced a lawsuit on Monday against the federal government, seeking to end the surge of ICE agents in the state. The lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials comes in the aftermath of an ICE agent fatally shooting resident Renee Nicole Good behind the wheel of her vehicle last week, leading to protests across the city, and country.

“We allege that DHS’ use of excessive and lethal force, their warrantless, racist arrests, their targeting of our courts, our churches, houses of worship and schools, our violation of the administrative procedures act on arbitrary and capricious federal actions. And we ask that the courts will end the surge of thousands of DHS agents in Minnesota.”

“The deployment of thousands of armed DHS agents to Minnesota has done our state serious harm. This is in essence a federal invasion of the Twin Cities and Minnesota, and it must stop,” Ellison said during a press conference, noting the shutdown of schools and the closure of local businesses. “This surge has made us less safe.” A motion for a temporary restraining order will be filed today ahead of the lawsuit, said assistant attorney general Brian Carter.

Ellison described the federal agents as poorly trained, and contrasted them with the training of Minneapolis police, noting that local police have had to respond to 20 instances of ICE agents’ apparent abduction of Minneapolis residents. “They’re making unconstitutional arrests and using excessive force,” Ellison said. “DHS agents have barged into restaurants, asking to access secure areas. And when asked to present a warrant, which is required by law, they respond, ‘We don’t need one.’ This has to stop. Let’s be clear; this should have never started.”

Ellison noted that Minnesota’s noncitizen immigrant population is just 1½ percent, “which is half the national average. Our state’s percentage is lower than Utah, Texas, and Florida’s,” he said, suggesting that the Trump administration has targeted Minnesota out of political bias.

Democrats go all in on affordability in bid to turn voters against Trump

In their quest to undo Donald Trump’s grip on voters, Democrats have staked their hopes on one word above all others: affordability. It has become a staple of press conferences, a priority of candidates and a subject of legislation ahead of the November midterm elections. When Democrats don’t like something that Trump does – a frequent occurrence – their counter-argument is that Americans would have been better off if the president instead concentrated on making life less expensive.

“Democrats in the House and Senate [are] focusing on lowering your costs, dealing with affordability. Republicans, led by Donald Trump, are focused on spending treasure and, God forbid, lives on military adventurism overseas,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told reporters this week, just before the chamber voted to advance a resolution halting further attacks on Venezuela without congressional permission.

It’s a turning of the tables for Democrats, who spent much of Joe Biden’s presidency struggling to respond as a historic wave of pandemic-related inflation rippled through the US economy and sent his presidency to a desultory end after a single term.

Trump returned to the White House after a campaign spent insisting that he could lower prices on “day one”. The promise was widely viewed as an economic impossibility, and now the chickens are coming home to roost for the president, with Democrats the likely beneficiaries. ...

While the bill is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate without changes, Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries hailed its approval as a sign the party’s strategy is working. “Democrats in the minority, governing as if we’re in the majority, because we believe that we have to get things done for the American people in the midst of this affordability crisis, which is not a hoax,” he said after the vote.

US judge lets Danish firm resume Rhode Island offshore wind project halted by Trump

A federal judge on Monday cleared Danish offshore wind developer Ørsted to resume work on its nearly finished Revolution Wind project, which Donald Trump’s administration halted along with four other projects last month. The ruling by US district judge Royce Lamberth is a legal setback for Trump, who has sought to block expansion of offshore wind in federal waters.

Ørsted’s Revolution Wind lawsuit is one of several filed by offshore wind companies and states seeking to reverse the interior department’s 22 December suspension of five offshore wind leases over what it said were national security concerns. There was no immediate comment from the interior department or Ørsted.

Government attorneys had argued that the pause was justified by new, classified information regarding offshore wind’s impacts on national security revealed by the Pentagon in November.

Lamberth rejected the administration’s argument that national security concerns justified halting the project, which he said would be irreparably harmed without an injunction. “You want to stop everything in place, costing them one-and-a-half million a day, while you decide what you want to do?” Lamberth, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, asked justice department attorney Peter Torstensen during the hearing.

Revolution Wind attorney Janice Schneider argued the government’s pause had violated federal laws governing administrative procedure and due process, adding that the developer had not been able to review the classified assessment on offshore wind. “This court should be very skeptical of the government’s true motives here,” Schneider said.

Trump’s move to pull US from key UN climate treaty may be illegal

The Trump administration’s long-anticipated decision this week to pull the US from the world’s most important climate treaty may have been illegal, some experts say. “In my legal opinion, he does not have the authority,” Harold Hongju Koh, former head lawyer for the US state department, told the Guardian.

In a Wednesday presidential memorandum, the president said the US “shall withdraw” from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), along with 65 other organizations, agencies and commissions that it deemed “contrary to the interests of the United States”. It marks the first time any country has ever moved to exit the agreement.

The UN climate body requires one year’s notice for withdrawal, so the United States will not cease being a party for a year. Trump’s memo did not specify whether or not his administration will submit a formal notice of termination to the UN. ... Because the country entered the UNFCCC with the consultation and approval of the Senate in 1992, “there is an open question” about whether or not the president can unilaterally exit the agreement, Michael Gerrard, a climate law expert at Columbia University, wrote in an email.

The UNFCCC and the Paris climate agreement – the landmark 2015 climate pact underpinned by the UNFCCC, from which Trump pulled the US last January – both say that parties may withdraw with one year’s written notice. But unlike the UNFCCC, the Paris agreement was never ratified by the US Senate, Gerrard noted.

Some scholars argue that the president has the ability to unilaterally end treaties – if not legally, then practically, because Congress has previously acquiesced to the executive branch. ... But in Koh’s view, congressional silence should not be interpreted as consent to exit the treaty. A “mirror principle” should dictate that the same amount of congressional input needed to enter into a treaty should be required to withdraw from it, said Koh, now an international legal expert at Yale University. “If I had an agreement that I made by myself, it would make sense that I could leave by myself,” he said. “But if my wife and I made an agreement that both of us had to sign, could I withdraw from it by myself? I believe we would both have to withdraw.”

US plan to exploit Venezuela’s oil could eat up 13% of carbon budget to keep 1.5C limit

US plans to exploit Venezuela’s oil reserves could by 2050 consume more than a tenth of the world’s remaining carbon budget to limit global heating to 1.5C, according to an exclusive analysis. The calculation highlights how any moves to further exploit the South American nation’s oil reserves – the largest in the world, at least on paper – would put increasing pressure on climate goals, and risk plunging the Earth further into climate catastrophe.

Venezuela’s proven oil reserves are so vast that if they were fully tapped, they would, by themselves, exhaust the entire carbon budget for keeping the world within the 1.5C temperature rise that climate scientists say is the limit for avoiding the worst effects of climate breakdown.

Such an eventuality is unlikely. After years of sanctions, Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is decrepit and crumbling. But in the week since US special forces kidnapped Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and rendered him to New York, Donald Trump has urged oil companies to invest $100bn (£74bn) to get Venezuela’s wells flowing.

An analysis for the Guardian by ClimatePartner, a carbon accounting firm, modelled the carbon impact of the growth of Venezuela’s oil production by +0.5m barrels per day by 2028, ramping up to +1.58m barrels per day from 2035 to 2050. Such a scenario – which would still fall far short of the 3.5m barrels a day produced during Venezuela’s last oil boom in the 1990s – would by itself consume 13% of the total remaining carbon budget to keep global heating within 1.5C.

US frackers were already facing a global oil supply glut. Trump’s Venezuelan dream could make it worse

US shale-oil producers were already contending with oil prices at four-year lows. News that they may soon face a significant competitor in their back yard probably wasn’t how frackers wanted to greet 2026. ... Over the last 20 years, the US fracking industry has built itself into the main driver of domestic oil production: it accounted for 64% of total US crude oil production in 2023. With average production levels of 13.6m barrels a day (BPD), the US is the world’s largest crude-oil producer. ...

Oil prices have been trending down since passing $100 in early 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. With supply overwhelming demand, nearby Nymex West Texas Intermediate crude-oil futures prices – agreed rates for assets to be bought at a later date – are trading at about $56 a barrel. Longer-dated futures contracts for the US oil benchmark forecast prices range between $56 and $57 a barrel until June 2028.

US fracking is expensive, so the industry will not welcome more price pressures. Potentially, this is a threat to Republicans who have championed fracking in swing states like Pennsylvania, where the shale revolution has been an economic boon. ... The economics of US oil production, when oil is about $57 a barrel, are troublesome in the longer term. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimates that break-even prices for existing wells, in both shale and non-shale production, are between $26 and $45 a barrel, but that break-even rises to between $61 and $70 for any newly drilled wells.

Despite sluggish returns, the shale-oil industry is in better shape than in 2020. Producers’ balance sheets were already laden with debt when prices briefly turned negative during the Covid lockdown, says Rob Thummel, senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital. Many smaller producers went bankrupt. Those that survived started to focus on generating cashflow and return on invested capital, rather than hiking production. That capital discipline means companies are in better fiscal shape to weather lower oil prices, and are likely to keep a close eye on the bottom line, Thummel says. “What that means is they’re going to cut back on spending and [rein in] production.”

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: Grand Illusion

Patrick Lawrence: Imperial Boomerang

Trump is repeating the mistakes of Iraq in Venezuela

Trump’s other Latin American feud: why Colombia’s Petro is not Maduro

What Must Happen Before Trump Strikes Iran /Larry Johnson & Lt Col Daniel Davis

A Little Night Music

Slim Pickens (Eddie Burns) - Notoriety Woman

Eddie Burns – I Love To Jump The Boogie

Eddie Burns – Gangster Blues

Eddie Burns – She Keeps Me Guessing

Eddie Burns – Squeeze Me Baby

Eddie Burns - Don't Cha Leave Me Baby

Eddie Burns - Hard Hearted Woman

Eddie Burns - Dealing With The Devil

Slim Pickens (Eddie Burns) - Papa's Boogie

Eddie Burns - Orange Driver