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By Jonathan Kuttab

Last week, Palestinian Christians following the Eastern Calendar celebrated Christmas. January 6 is recognized by the Palestinian Authority as a national holiday, with government and municipal offices closed for Eastern Christmas, just as they are on December 25 for Western Christmas and major Muslim holidays. This may come as a surprise to many Americans, who are still fed the line that Palestinian Christians are persecuted by the Palestinian Authority and that the dwindling Christian population is shrinking as a result of Islamic extremism rather than the ongoing Israeli occupation.

Netanyahu has also recently announced that Israel needs to be the “defender of Christians” throughout the region and that Israel would be prepared to act militarily to support and defend minorities, especially Christians in Africa and elsewhere. Already, Israel is interfering in Syria, here claiming to support the Druze minority, and it has moved into Somaliland with similar justifications. Now, he is aspiring to become a dominant regional power as a so-called defender of Christians.

All this sounds absolutely bizarre to Palestinians, who know Israel’s long record of harassment towards Christians, their churches, and their holy places. Christian priests in Jerusalem are spat upon and berated by religious Jews on a daily basis. Christian Palestinians face the same enmity, and their property and land is equally coveted by Israel because the state views them in the same light as it views their Muslim compatriots.

This became particularly clear to me this week as I visited the Christian village of Taybeh, in the Ramallah area of the West Bank. The ancient church in that village was attacked by Jewish settlers who also set fire to part of its property. Churches and church institutions in Gaza have been attacked and bombed by the Israeli army, including the third oldest Christian Church in the world, the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City, as well as the Arab Al Ahli “Baptist” hospital in Gaza City. Israel is also moving to tax church property in Jerusalem in violation of the centuries old tradition of exempting such properties from taxation, a potential death blow for local Christian institutions.

A recently-leaked secret memorandum from AIPAC reveals that Zionist propagandists, after doing some field research, have decided that the best argument in support of Israel is to attack Islam. While support for Israel is rapidly declining, there still exists a lot of suspicion, ignorance and hatred for Islam and Muslims in the West. Americans, who may not feel much sympathy towards Israel these days, are still vulnerable to ads and arguments stoking fear of Islam and Shari’a law. References to so-called “Judaeo-Christian values” deliberately exclude and cast suspicion on Islam and Muslims as a dangerous or inferior “other,” while positing a unity of purpose between the state of Israel and Christians in the West. Interfaith activities often ignore Islam, seeking to project unity and affinity between Christians and Jews at the expense of Muslims.

It is important to firmly oppose such trends for a number of reasons. For one thing, the Muslim community in America is still very vulnerable, and it does not have access to the solidarity, resources, official backing and acceptance that the Jewish community has achieved after many years of discrimination and marginalization. While anti-Jewish attitudes still persist in some significant portions of the population, it is often quickly exposed and properly confronted. Private and official bodies are constantly on the lookout for anti-Jewish animus. Publications, speeches and statements are assiduously monitored and any hint of perceived anti-Jewish antisemitism is duly denounced and dealt with. This is as it should be. Unfortunately, the fight against such antisemitism has also been effectively weaponized to shield Zionism and Israel from criticism and to stifle any reasonable discussion of Palestine/Israel. Bias against Islam and Muslims, by contrast, is regularly tolerated, at times even celebrated, and hardly results in proper rebuke or serious consequences.

Another reason to oppose such trends is that the core issues between Israel and Palestinians are purely political, involving disputes over land and population. Viewing the situation as a religious conflict between Judaism and Islam (with Christianity weighing in on the side of the Jews, whom they persecuted in the past) is both inaccurate and dangerous. It pits groups against each other, with God supposedly taking sides. It also justifies the most extreme positions, as adherents of each faith feel they are doing God’s will when they oppose their infidel enemies. And with “God on their side,” it is both useless and even “sacrilegious” to give in to others who are considered heathen and infidels. This is true both for Jews and Muslims. Thankfully, since the times of the Crusades, Christians do not raise exclusive claims to the Holy Land in the name of their God. Yet, adherents of all three religions have a religious connection to the Holy Land, with sacred sites, places of worship and important pilgrimage interests in Palestine. This renders them vulnerable to manipulation and persuasion by political (often secular) elements in the name of their respective religions. In this sense, Christian Zionism, which provides a religious cover for pro-Israeli policies as a Christian duty, is as dangerous as Jewish fanaticism or Muslim fundamentalism.

Therefore, Netanyahu’s pronouncement that he sees Israel as the “defender of Christians” in the region is nothing more than a cynical ruse that should fool no one. Ask the Christians of Palestine how they feel about Netanyahu, Israel, and Zionism first.

And while you are at it, ask why despite repeated efforts, the Israeli prison services are refusing to allow a Christian Palestinian prisoner with whom we are in contact, a Catholic, to have a Bible with or have a priest visit him and administer the sacraments. The Israeli prison authorities state that such religious “privileges” could be given to regular criminals but not to so-called “security detainees.”

The unspoken truth is that many, particularly religious Israelis have more animosity towards Christians than even towards Muslims. This may be understandable in light of their bitter historic experiences with anti Jewish bigotry in the Christian West. Yet these attitudes are never admitted publicly in English, or in the West. It is more politically expedient to garner support for Israel by promoting a Jewish-Christian alliance against Muslims and Islam. This is the cynical truth behind Netanyahu’s proclamation that he is a defender of Christians.

16 January 2026

Source: fosna.org

By Ray Thek

Europe, and Germany in particular, postures as the moral conscience of the postwar world.

No society has invested more intellectual and institutional energy in confronting its crimes than Germany has with the Holocaust. Yet faced with the mass death, forced displacement, and systematic destruction of life in Gaza, Europe has responded with paralysis, euphemism, and procedural caution. This contradiction is not incidental; it exposes the fatal limit of Europe’s moral imagination.

Germany’s postwar settlement rejected inherited collective guilt but embraced an eternal responsibility. Holocaust memory was cemented into law, education, and political culture, culminating in the doctrine that Israel’s security is Germany’s Staatsräson—a national reason of state. This commitment was intended to prevent the repetition of past crimes.

Instead, it has produced a rigid ethical framework, one that fails to recognize injustice when it falls outside the specific historical template of the Third Reich. The problem is not ignorance of Palestinian suffering, but a moral architecture never designed to perceive it.

Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, argued that colonial violence is not exceptional but structural. It does not manifest as a rupture demanding moral reckoning, but as a condition to be managed. Civilian deaths under occupation are rendered tragic yet tolerable, regrettable yet inevitable. Order is privileged over justice; stability over liberation.

Europe’s response to Gaza is, from this perspective, grimly predictable. Palestinian suffering is processed as a humanitarian problem, not a political emergency. Aid is debated; accountability is deferred. Violence is condemned rhetorically while the structures that enable it are insulated from critique. As Fanon warned, colonial violence becomes invisible precisely because it is continuous.

Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism further explains why this suffering fails to command full moral recognition. Within dominant European discourse, Israel is legible: a familiar, Western-aligned state—strategic, rational, juridical. Palestinians, by contrast, appear as emotional, opaque, and threatening; their voices are treated as advocacy rather than testimony. This discursive asymmetry determines who is believed, who is mourned, and whose deaths require justification before they can elicit outrage. Even when acknowledged as victims, Palestinians are rarely recognized as full political subjects with legitimate claims. They remain objects of concern, not bearers of rights.

Germany’s particular paralysis sits at this intersection. A Holocaust memory, rightly treated as singular, has hardened into a moral firewall. Any forceful critique of Israel is instantly scanned for historical inversion: Germans judging Jews, perpetrators lecturing victims. Faced with this specter, German policy defaults to the least destabilizing position—verbal concern paired with material and diplomatic continuity. This is not unconscious guilt; it is overcorrection institutionalized as doctrine.

As philosopher Zahi Zalloua argues, ethical frameworks collapse when they trap us in fixed identities: absolute victim, absolute perpetrator, moral debtor, moral creditor. Ethics must be relational, responsive to present vulnerability, not frozen in historical accounting.

Europe’s moral language remains backward-looking, Neanderthal and categorical. It asks whether today’s violence fits yesterday’s template, whether suffering meets inherited thresholds, whether recognition risks odious comparison. In doing so, it forecloses ethical responsiveness. Palestinian suffering becomes legible only insofar as it confirms established roles.

This is also why the word genocide is so meticulously avoided. The hesitation is not merely legal; it is imaginative. In European memory, genocide is industrial, bureaucratic, unmistakable—evil in a recognized form. Violence that unfolds through siege, starvation, and asymmetric warfare does not “look right.” It is reclassified downward, managed linguistically, and stripped of its power to rupture moral comfort.

What we are witnessing, therefore, is not a failure of memory, but a failure of universality. “Never Again” was never operationalized as an ethical principle capable of restraining allies or confronting colonial logics. It became a promise bounded by geography, history, and power.

This is why the current moment is so profoundly unsettling. The images are ubiquitous; the suffering is documented in real time. The justifications—complexity, lack of leverage, fear of escalation—sound dreadfully familiar. What returns is not the psychology of genocide, but the logic of the bystander, now wrapped in the sterile language of humanitarianism and legal caution.

Former perpetrators, Europe does not lack lessons. It lacks the courage to apply them.

Until Holocaust memory is integrated with a full reckoning of colonial violence, and until moral imagination is freed from fixed identities and geopolitical loyalty, Europe will continue to remember the past with solemnity while failing the ethical tests of the present.

“Never Again” will remain a commemorative slogan, not a living ethic—invoked sincerely, yet constrained by the very structures it was meant to overcome.

Indeed.

Former Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) captain and now Professor of genocide history at Brown University, Omar Bartov, put it,

“(i)n terms of the whole culture of memory, commemoration, teaching, pedagogy that use the Holocaust with very good intentions to teach tolerance and humanity — that is becoming increasingly difficult now because those institutions and many of the individuals in those institutions who were charged or appointed themselves to disseminate that culture of commemoration, of memory with the humanistic message of ‘never again’ — never again what? Never again in humanity. Never again genocide. Never again indifference to human lives. They have been silent over what is happening in Gaza. They have not spoken out now for two years. And that, I think, has greatly diminished their authority. And I’m afraid the result of that may be that this culture of commemorating the Holocaust may recede back to where it began, which is a kind of ethnic enclave of Jews talking about their suffering with other Jews.”

Ray Thek is a pseudonym for a Myanmar writer who needs to remain anonymous.

16 January 2026

Source: forsea.co

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

Chairman

World Forum for Peace & Justice

January 15, 2026

The Committee on the Rights of the Child opened its one hundredth session in Geneva from 12 to 30 January 2026 at a moment of profound concern for children worldwide. In his opening statement, Mahamane Cissé-Gouro, Director of the Human Rights Council and Treaty Mechanisms Division at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, emphasized that the Committee was convening at an exceptionally difficult time for children’s rights. Across the globe, children are increasingly affected by violations of international humanitarian law and by growing challenges to their fundamental rights. At the same time, international support for human rights mechanisms is shrinking, while treaty bodies face unprecedented financial and political constraints. Against this backdrop, he stressed, the Committee’s work has never been more vital.

Sophie Kiladze, Chair of the Committee, described the one hundredth session as a truly remarkable milestone. Over more than 35 years, the Committee has reviewed hundreds of State party reports, issued thousands of recommendations, adopted 26 general comments, convened days of general discussion, conducted inquiries, adopted individual decisions, and organized numerous events promoting the child as a rights holder. Yet, despite these sustained efforts, Ms. Kiladze acknowledged that the suffering of millions of children remains beyond imagination. \

We all know that the question of children’s rights involves deep moral complexity. All children are born with equal moral worth and deserve an equal chance in life. Yet perfect equality is unattainable in practice, requiring societies to seek fair and humane alternatives that protect the most vulnerable. Nowhere is this challenge more visible than in situations of protracted armed conflict.

In this context, the plight of children in Indian occupied Kashmir demands urgent attention. The heavy military presence—estimated at approximately 900,000 Indian troops, number cited by internationally renowned Indian novelist Arundhati Roy—has profoundly altered the daily reality, perceptions, and psychological development of Kashmiri children. Many grow up in an atmosphere of constant fear: fear of midnight raids, warrantless searches, arbitrary detention of young boys under draconian laws such as the Public Safety Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, physical abuse of elders, and violations of the dignity and safety of women within their households. Such experiences leave lasting scars on young minds.

Armed conflict in Kashmir has affected all inhabitants of the valley, but its most severe consequences are borne by children. Exposure to violence fills young hearts with anger, frustration, and helplessness, depriving them of peace of mind. Health—one of the most valuable assets of childhood—is severely compromised, as many children suffer from anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The conflict has robbed them of a carefree childhood and imposed adult responsibilities far too early. Some children are placed in orphanages after losing their caretakers at the very moment when parental support is most crucial. Education, essential for the future development of any society, is repeatedly disrupted, producing long-term consequences for both individuals and the broader community.

Despite these hardships, the children of Kashmir possess immense qualities and capacities. What they urgently need are reliable and dependable educational spaces. No child’s education should be allowed to suffer because of insecurity, unpredictability, violence, or administrative neglect. Protecting education is a critical first step toward safeguarding Kashmir’s most valuable asset—its young minds—and ensuring that the next generation inherits not despair, but opportunity, learning, and hope.

Numerous credible Indian and international organizations have documented the psychological toll of conflict on Kashmiri children. In early May 2025, a team from the child psychiatry department at the Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (IMHANS), Kashmir, supported by UNICEF India, visited psychosocial mental health camps in Uri, Kashmir. Over two weeks, clinicians observed dozens of children exhibiting symptoms of panic, anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, irritability, and persistent fear of renewed violence. UNICEF has repeatedly warned that armed conflict is particularly traumatic for children and can result in long-term mental health consequences if left unaddressed.

Media and clinical reports corroborate these findings. Mumbai Mirror reported in September 2025 on a 16-year-old girl from Kupwara who presented with severe anxiety following shelling in her neighborhood after the May 10, 2025, ceasefire between India and Pakistan. According to professionals at the Child Guidance and Wellbeing Centre in Srinagar—the only fully operational government facility dedicated to child and adolescent mental health in Kashmir—girls often present in greater numbers, as they tend to express distress more openly. Children as young as eleven have reported intense fear of being alone, even while using the washroom, due to constant exposure to violent imagery and war-related media.

Recent data further underscores the gravity of the crisis. The 2022–2023 annual report of the Child Guidance and Wellbeing Centre at IMHANS documents a sharp rise in mental health cases among children aged 0–18, with the highest number in the 7–14 age group. Moreover, the National Crime Records Bureau reported in December 2023 that Jammu and Kashmir recorded the highest number of attempted suicide cases in India in 2022, a deeply alarming indicator of widespread psychological distress.

As the Committee on the Rights of the Child commemorates its one hundredth session, this historic milestone must serve not only as a moment of reflection, but as a call to renewed moral and institutional responsibility. For the children of conflict-affected regions such as Kashmir, declarations, general comments, and recommendations—however valuable—remain hollow unless they translate into tangible protection, accountability, and relief on the ground.

The Committee is uniquely mandated to ensure that the Convention on the Rights of the Child is not reduced to an aspirational document but upheld as a living instrument of protection for children trapped in situations of prolonged occupation and armed conflict. The children of Kashmir continue to experience violations of their most basic rights: the right to life, the right to education, the right to physical and mental health, and the right to grow up free from fear and violence. These violations are neither isolated nor incidental; they are systemic, long-standing, and well-documented by credible national and international sources.

We therefore urge the Committee on the Rights of the Child  to: (a) give sustained and heightened attention to the situation of children in Jammu and Kashmir in its dialogue with the State party; (b) explicitly address the psychological trauma, disruption of education, arbitrary detention, and family separation affecting Kashmiri children in its concluding observations; (c) call for unrestricted access for independent child-protection and mental-health mechanisms, including UN agencies and humanitarian organizations; and (d) recommend concrete, time-bound measures to ensure compliance with the Convention and its Optional Protocols.

Children living under conflict cannot wait for political settlements to enjoy their rights. International law does not permit the suspension of childhood. If the Convention on the Rights of the Child is to retain its credibility and moral authority, it must speak most forcefully for those children who are least able to speak for themselves. The children of Kashmir are entitled not to sympathy alone, but to protection, justice, and a future free from fear.

Dr. Fai is also the Secretary General

World Kashmir Awareness forum.

He can be reached at: 

WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435  or gnfai2003@yahoo.com  

www.kashmirawareness.org

By Miguel Santos García

The uncertainty about Venezuela’s future has become a focal point for global politics and energy geopolitics analysis. While the ultimate outcome remains unpredictable, a common narrative suggests that China, as a key purchaser of Venezuelan crude, faces significant disruption and must urgently seek alternative suppliers.

This assumption, however, overlooks some fundamental realities that insulate Beijing from such global instability.

The scale of Venezuela’s production is simply too small to sway the global market meaningfully. Although Venezuela is a member of OPEC, its current output of approximately 700,000 to 900,000 barrels per day is a fraction of the oil cartel’s total production of nearly 29 million barrels.

For context, Saudi Arabia produces almost 15 times more, while non-OPEC giant Russia produces over 11 times Venezuela’s volume. Therefore, the potential loss of Venezuelan crude, while significant for Caracas, constitutes a marginal blip in the vast global supply pool, easily absorbed by other major producers. Venezuela’s historically low oil production is a consequence of prolonged and crippling US and European sanctions that have systematically strangled its energy sector. These sanctions have directly blocked Venezuela’s access to the foreign investment, specialized equipment, and advanced technology required to maintain and modernize its aging oil fields and infrastructure. They have also effectively severed the nation from key global financial markets and shipping insurance, making it nearly impossible to fund operations, pay service companies, or export crude efficiently.

Moreover, a more profound reason is China’s strategic transformation from a passive price-taker to an active market stabilizer, heavily insulated from supply shocks. As the world’s largest crude importer and consumer, China has historically been subject to the pricing power of producer cartels. Today, however, its massive and rapidly expanding strategic petroleum reserve has fundamentally altered this dynamic. This infrastructure allows China to act as a giant price buffer: it aggressively purchases and stockpiles crude when prices are low, establishing a price floor, and can subsequently reduce imports or draw from inventories when prices rise, effectively setting a ceiling.

China has been channeling substantial surplus imports, an estimated 500,000 barrels per day or more which go directly into storage. Consequently, the Venezuela supply shick problem is neutralized by the sheer flexibility and scale of China’s procurement network. In a single month, increases in imports from other suppliers in the global south like for instance Saudi Arabia and Iran can nearly match Venezuela’s entire daily production. The global market is flush with willing sellers, and tankers can easily be rerouted from the Caribbean to the Middle East or Russia, not to mention the important fact that currently there is a global oil glut meaning there is an oversupply of the black gold currently in the markets.

Thus, far from being vulnerable, China is leveraging this period of lower prices and geopolitical flux to accelerate its stockpiling further cushioning itself from any supply shocks created by US foreign policy. With an additional 170 million barrels of oil storage capacity coming online, the nation is systematically building an immense financial and energy security buffer. This inventory flow, that is, the movement of oil into and out of Chinese tanks has become a primary driver of global oil prices. In this context, regional conflicts or the total loss of a supplier like Venezuela have negligible impact on China’s energy security. Its versatile trade network and strategic reserves ensure that it remains impervious to the ruckus, turning potential vulnerability into a position of formidable market strength.

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Miguel Santos García is a Puerto Rican writer and political analyst who mainly writes about the geopolitics of neocolonial conflicts and Hybrid Wars within the 4th Industrial Revolution, the ongoing New Cold War and the transition towards multipolarity.

13 January 2026

Source: globalresearch.ca

By CST Research

As the Indian Parliament moves into the February 2026 Budget Session, there is a sense of déjà vu in the country. While the world celebrated the repeal of the 2020 Farm Laws as a victory for farmers and their year-long protest, the underlying blueprint never left the table. It has simply been rebranded and digitised.

Today, the introduction of the Seeds Bill 2025—frequently called the 2026 Seed Act—completes a pincer movement that was first inked 35 years ago in the halls of the World Bank and the IMF.

The story begins in 1991. Facing a balance-of-payments crisis, India accepted a structural adjustment package that evolved into a massive cumulative debt through decades of servicing and conditional reform. Over three decades, this financial hook grew to more than $120 billion in cumulative obligations. When adjusted for 2026 inflation in today’s dollar terms, that commitment represents around $286 billion.

The ‘interest’ has been the systematic dismantling of India’s sovereign food systems through successive policy realignments to make way for global corporate players, steadily shifting the nation from a focus on food security to a dependency on cash-crop exports and expensive external inputs. These reforms have progressively aligned Indian agriculture with global trade, intellectual property and financial regimes.

Many of the long-term dynamics set in motion in 1991 are analysed in detail in Food Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order (2022), which examines India’s agrarian crisis, neoliberal ‘reforms’, and the 2020–21 farmers’ protest (available as a free download here).

This 35-year plan has now entered its bio-digital phase. Two pieces of legislation are currently working in tandem to finalise the enclosure of India’s farmers. First is the National Policy Framework on Agricultural Marketing (NPFAM), the sophisticated successor to the repealed farm laws. It utilises ‘Digital Public Infrastructure’ and Silicon Valley ‘AgriStack’ to create a unified national market that effectively bypasses the regulatory protections of the traditional mandi system.

By declaring private warehouses as ‘deemed markets’ and linking farmer IDs to a centralised digital grid, the NPFAM would enable unprecedented price-setting power for global asset managers and Indian billionaires to monitor harvests and dictate prices before a single seed is even planted.

The second half of this pincer is the 2026 Seed Act. Scheduled for full implementation this year, it introduces mandatory registration and QR-code traceability for all commercial seeds. While the government claims the Act protects farmers’ rights to share ‘unbranded’ seeds, this is a hollow promise.

Under the NPFAM, only ‘certified’ and ‘traceable’ produce can enter the high-value digital value chains. This makes indigenous, unbranded seeds commercially invisible—relegating them to a subsistence-only bubble while corporate-patented hybrids take over. Furthermore, the Act introduces graded penalties that can reach ₹30 lakh ($33,300) for administrative errors, a figure that would pose an existential risk for any small-scale seed-saving collective.

This predatory commercialisation was forged in Washington 35 years ago: a drive for monopolisation by a handful of global agribusiness giants and tech firms under the guise of ‘modernisation’.

Federal states like Punjab and Kerala now pass resolutions to reject the NPFAM and protect their own seed sovereignty, while others are being financially coerced or ‘incentivised’ to play along.

The forces of human displacement and dispossession are attempting to finalise a decades-long corporate hijack through debt, digital infrastructure and legislative control. The 1991 deal was the beginning. What began as a financial adjustment is now rapidly evolving into a total restructuring of India’s food sovereignty, agriculture and—given that around 64% still live in the countryside—society.

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13 January 2026

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Uriel Araujo

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy has stated that “it would be the end of NATO” if the US were to annex Greenland, a remark prompted by President Donald Trump’s declaration that Washington would “do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not”.

Such alarmist-sounding warning has now suddenly become part of mainstream debate across Europe, as Germany pledges a larger Arctic role and senior officials in France, Poland and Denmark openly discuss contingency plans against a threat coming not from Moscow, but from within the Atlantic Alliance itself.

Trump’s renewed fixation on Greenland cannot be dismissed as yet another rhetorical excess. Jeremy Shapiro (Research Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations) has outlined how US pressure could win Greenland, by exploiting economic vulnerabilities, manipulating security arrangements, and even resorting to outright military intimidation. The scenario is no longer purely theoretical. Media outlets such as The Guardian, CNN, Al Jazeera, CNBC and the Financial Times have all reported, in recent days, on emergency consultations within NATO and the EU about how to respond if a NATO member were to threaten another with invasion.

For years, analysts across the ideological spectrum predicted that Trump, sometimes wrongly portrayed as a “pro-Russian” isolationist, would “kill” NATO by withdrawing from it. Both Atlanticists and some anti-imperialist commentators converged on the same conclusion, albeit with opposite moral judgments. Ironically enough, Trump is not threatening the future of NATO through retreat, but is risking its collapse through escalation so aggressively that it turns the Alliance’s logic inside out. As it turns out, an alliance premise on collective defense against external threats cannot survive if its leading power openly threatens to conquer allied territory.

Back in 2024 I argued that Trump was no “peacemaker” at all. One may recall that, during his first term, the American leader scaled up aerial warfare, particularly in Yemen, relaxed rules for drone strikes, increased troop deployments in several theaters, and lowered the threshold for lethal “direct action” outside declared war zones.

Now, the recent US-backed intervention against Venezuela clearly signals Washington’s determination to reassert control over its hemisphere, thereby resurrecting a crude, 21st-century version of the Monroe Doctrine.

Many assumed that Trump’s hostility to NATO, far from being motivated by “isolationism”, was purely centered on burden-sharing issues. There was some truth to that. As discussed in mid-2024, Trump’s harsh rhetoric did prompt massive increases in European defense spending (which was probably his goal, anyway).

Trump in any case has effectively abandoned “America First” as a slogan of retrenchment and instead embraced aggressive interventionism worldwide, even going beyond the neo-neocons, with 19th century territorial ambitions, openly contemplating annexations and protectorates. This is the context of today’s crisis.

The irony then is striking. Trump may indeed “kill NATO”, but not with “isolationism” or by withdrawing US troops. He risks killing it by making Article 5 absurd. If Denmark is threatened by the US over Greenland, whom does NATO defend? If France and Germany are forced to plan against an American move in the Arctic, the Alliance’s credibility collapses from within. Thus, NATO’s purpose is undermined by American hyper-interventionism to encircle Russia and conquer resource-rich territories. Such interventionism recognizes no allies, only subordinates and vassals.

The broader strategic picture reinforces this reading. As I argued back in 2024, parts of the US foreign policy establishment were already urging for pivoting away from Europe, thereby forcing Europeans to “defend themselves” while Washington focused elsewhere. Yet Trump’s approach is even more radical and contradictory. He signals willingness to downgrade involvement in Ukraine, while simultaneously cornering Russia in the Arctic through explicit threats against Greenland.

At the same time, he pivots not only to Asia or the Pacific, but aggressively to the American continent itself, threatening Mexico, pressuring Colombia, hitting Brazil with tariffs and sanctions, while openly declaring intentions to “run” Venezuela.

The Greenland threats are of course inseparable from US energy and resource interests, particularly rare earths and Arctic routes. These threats reveal long-standing US strategic goals, now bluntly expressed without diplomatic camouflage or ambiguity. Once the mask has fallen, the discourse becomes raw enough to shock even seasoned observers.

European reactions reflect this shock. Interestingly, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, together with France’s Emmanuel Macron, is now calling for Europe to reopen dialogue with Russia, partly out of fear of being trapped between Washington’s unpredictability and an underfunded European defense. EU policymakers are openly debating how to deter a US military takeover of Greenland, an idea that would have seemed absurd only a few years ago. These discussions underscore the fact that Atlantic cohesion depended less on shared values than on Washington’s self-restraint.

The hard truth is that Trump is far from being NATO’s only problem. The Alliance has long been strained by corruption scandals and deep internal contradictions, not least the Turkish Question, as I call it. NATO has for years accommodated mutually incompatible strategic priorities, selective applications of “shared values,” and unresolved intra-alliance disputes. Washington’s extreme posture today exposes and aggravates fault lines that were already embedded in the Alliance’s structure. The “Trump factor” may well be the tipping point, opening the way for, say, Turkey openly antagonizing Greece and what not.

Be as it may, the US President now announces that the US will govern Venezuela, the Gaza Strip in Palestine, and also Greenland. Is it about “pivoting to the Pacific” or owning the Western Hemisphere in a neo-Monroeist approach that eyes even Canada? The Atlantic superpower, overburdened as it is, wants everything, and then some. And Trump proclaims it blatantly, without humanitarian pretexts and without embarrassment. With humanitarian and democratic masks finally gone, the king is now naked. And furious.

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Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

13 January 2026

Source:  globalresearch.ca

By DROP SITE NEWS

Israel launches weekend attacks in Khan Younis, the Al-Bureij refugee camp, and Gaza City, killing at least two Palestinians on Saturday and seven more on Sunday. Two more children freeze to death in Gaza. Grave and headstone built for renowned Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer ten months after he is laid to rest. Israel released twelve detainees into Gaza on Sunday. Israel is filling Gaza with junk food, while blocking food with nutritious value and medicine. The shooting of the director of police investigations in Khan Younis is under investigation. A Palestinian summit on Gaza’s governance is expected in Cairo this week. The last Bedouin community in the southern Jordan valley is being forcibly displaced, B’Tselem says. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he hopes to “taper” Israel’s reliance on U.S. military aid. The death toll in Iran amid nationwide protests may be as high as 544. Iran’s army pledges to defend the country’s “national interests.” President Donald Trump says Iran’s leaders have reached out to discuss a nuclear deal. U.S. Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent says more sanctions on Venezuela might be lifted this week, as Trump signs an E.O. declaring Venezuela’s oil funds “sovereign property.” The Venezuelan government releases at least 18 prisoners, human rights groups say. ICE buys a surveillance system with the capacity to monitor entire neighborhoods. Federal Reserve Chair Powell addresses the threat of criminal charges. U-Haul truck attacks protestors in Los Angeles. Rapid Support Forces seize Jarjira in Darfur, as Sudanese government returns to Khartoum. Pakistan nears an arms deal with the Sudanese Army. An anti-Houthi “Supreme Military Committee” is announced in Yemen. Fighting ceases in Aleppo’s Kurdish neighborhoods. Bolivia’s government will restore fuel subsidies after protests. Somalia’s defense minister says Israel wants to move Palestinians to Somaliland.

New reporting from Drop Site: New reports over the weekend on the threat of U.S. escalation in Cuba and increasing international pressure on Pakistan.

The Gaza Genocide, West Bank, and Israel

• Casualty counts in the last 24 hours: Over the past 24 hours, the bodies of seven Palestinians, including five recovered from under the rubble, arrived at hospitals in Gaza, while four Palestinians were injured, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 is now 71,419 killed, with 171,318 injured.
• Total casualty counts since ceasefire: Since October 11, the first full day of the ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 442 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 1,240, while 697 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Ministry of Health.
• More Palestinian children freeze to death: A one-week-old infant and a four-year-old child froze to death in Gaza over the weekend, bringing the total number of child deaths from the cold since the beginning of winter to six, according to the health ministry. Israel continues to heavily restrict the number of aid trucks to Gaza carrying crucial shelter supplies.
• Israeli quadcopter kills three in Khan Younis: An Israeli quadcopter drone killed three Palestinians in Khan Younis on Monday, according to Al Jazeera. The attacks came after Israeli army forces carried out air strikes and shelling across several parts of the enclave on Monday.
• Attacks on Khan Younis, Al-Bureij, and Gaza City on Saturday: At least two Palestinians were reportedly killed in three separate Israeli attacks on Saturday in Khan Younis and farther north in Gaza City, according to local sources. Israeli aircraft also bombarded the eastern areas of Al-Bureij Refugee Camp, according to local reports.
• Israel kills seven more Palestinians on Sunday: A Palestinian man was killed Sunday by Israeli fire outside the army’s declared deployment areas west of the “yellow line” in the Tuffah neighborhood, east of Gaza City, according to Shehab News. Two more Palestinians, Mohammed Iyad Shaker Abu Assi and Anas Fuad Shaker Abu Assi, were killed by Israeli fire and airstrikes in Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Younis. Their bodies have arrived at Nasser Medical Hospital. Seven Palestinians died on Sunday due to Israeli attacks, according to Gaza’s rescue services.
• Palestinian summit expected in Cairo this week: Palestinian factions are expected to meet in Cairo later this week to discuss Gaza governance and the second phase of the ceasefire, after the talks were postponed twice without a final date, Ultra Palestine reported. The meeting will center on the proposal to transfer administration of Gaza to a temporary technocratic committee made up of independent figures—a step mediators see as key to unlocking phase two of the agreement
• Bahbah says that a “Gaza Peace Council” will precede this week’s talks: Palestinian-American academic Bishara Bahbah, who has served as an informal mediator between Hamas and U.S. officials, reported that a Gaza Peace Council is expected to be announced next week ahead of talks in Cairo. He expects that the 12-member technocratic committee to govern Gaza will be named in full, and that it will launch its reconstruction bodies within 30 days. He also reported that Israel is pushing to transfer humanitarian aid responsibilities to private firms, adding that the Rafah crossing should reopen after the final Israeli body is handed over.
• Grave and headstone built for Refaat Alareer: Ten months after the body of Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer was recovered and laid to rest in the Ibn Marwan cemetery, his loved ones were finally able to build his grave and place the headstone after immense difficulty reaching the site near the yellow line. Alareer was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in December 2023.
• Israel releases Palestinian 12 detainees on Sunday: Israeli occupation forces released 12 detainees from the Gaza Strip on Sunday evening, with those freed transferred to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, according to the Asra Media Office. Around 9,500 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons and detention centers known for torture, starvation, and medical neglect.
• Shooting in Al-Mawasi under investigation, may be tied to Israel-backed militias: Gaza’s Ministry of Interior and National Security said its officials are investigating a shooting in the Al-Mawasi area that killed the director of police investigations in Khan Younis, without providing further details. The killing comes as Israel-backed militias, including those connected to the now-deceased leader Yasser Abu Shabbab, have strengthened their position.
• MOH head says Israel is filling the strip with junk food while blocking food with nutritious value and medicine: The director-general of the Gaza Health Ministry, Dr. Mounis Al-Boursh, said Israel is allowing trucks loaded with “soda, chips, and chocolate” into Gaza while blocking real food, medicine, vitamins, and infant formula, accusing Israel of “orchestrating a genocide with cold calculation—through a sinister engineering of slow death.” He warned the impact is falling hardest on children, citing soaring malnutrition and anemia, rising miscarriages and premature births, and an unprecedented increase in congenital anomalies, “as if even the womb has become a battlefield.”
• Last Bedouin community in the southern Jordan valley is being removed, B’Tselem says: The last Bedouin community in the southern Jordan Valley is being emptied out, with more than 120 Palestinians forcibly displaced from the hamlet of Ras Ein al-Auja by organized settler groups operating in coordination with, and backed by, the Israeli military and the police, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. The group said the displacement—intensified after a new Israeli outpost was established just 200 meters away—is part of a broader campaign to clear Palestinians from Area C in the West Bank.
• Netanyahu says he hopes to “taper” Israel’s reliance on the U.S. military aid: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hopes to taper Israel’s reliance on U.S. military aid, aiming to bring it to “zero” within the next decade, while saying that Israel has “come of age” militarily in an interview with the Economist. The Obama administration signed a 2016 memorandum of understanding with Israel to provide U.S. aid through September 2028, allotting $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment, and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
• Palestinian journalist arrested south of Hebron: Israeli forces arrested Palestinian journalist Yasser Jaradat while he was reporting in the town of Al-Zahira, south of Hebron, according to Shehab News. Jaradat was previously detained by Israeli forces in late September 2025 during a raid on the town of Sa’ir.

Iran

• Death toll in Iran’s protests may be as high as 544: The death toll from Iran’s nationwide protest crackdown has risen to at least 544 people, including 496 protestors and 48 security force members, with more than 10,600 detained, according to the U.S.-based group Human Rights Activists in Iran, which warned the figures are likely to rise. The Associated Press said it cannot independently verify the toll with the internet shut down and phone lines cut off. Iranian state media reports at least 109 security officials have been killed but has released no comprehensive casualty figures.
• Unrest “under total control,” says Iranian foreign minister: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insisted on Monday that the situation has “come under total control,” though the claim could not be verified with an internet and telecommunications blackout still in place. Araghchi made the comments to foreign diplomats in Tehran. He also claimed that western powers had turned peaceful protests “violent and bloody to give an excuse” for military intervention. President Donald Trump had previously suggested that the U.S. might intervene militarily if protestors in the country were killed. Iranian state TV broadcast footage on Monday of tens of thousands of pro-government demonstrators after the country’s president called for a “national resistance march.” Araghchi said earlier today that internet services will be restored in coordination with security authorities.
• Iran’s army pledges to defend the country’s “national interests” amid protests: Iran’s army vowed on Saturday to defend the country’s “national interests,” with Iranian officials saying the protests are formally legal, while asserting that security forces are targeting arsonists and saboteurs rather than demonstrators. Authorities accused Israel and “hostile groups” of fueling the unrest, as security forces intensified the crackdown. Iran’s army warned in a statement that anyone suspected of arson could face capital charges as an “[enemy] of God.”
• President calls concerns of the protestors “legitimate,” but denounces “rioters and terrorists”: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged the ongoing protests and said demonstrators have legitimate concerns in a statement on Sunday, while alleging that “rioters” and “terrorists” have killed security forces, emergency workers, and protestors. Iranian state media aired footage it claims shows attacks on police and acts of arson, including a deadly incident at a medical center. State television highlighted funerals held Monday—including that of a three-year-old girl in Kermanshah—while officials called for mass pro-government rallies Tuesday to condemn what they labeled “terrorism.”
• A “very bloody” state clampdown in Iran: Iranian expert and Quincy Institute Vice President Trita Parsi said evidence of a “very bloody” state clampdown in Iran is emerging from people who have connected to the internet via Starlink or left the country with videos, noting that even Iranian state television is now reporting from morgues showing large numbers of body bags. “Perhaps most importantly,” Parsi said, the state TV reporter acknowledged that, while some of the dead may have been violent or armed, “the majority of them are ordinary people, and their families are ordinary people as well.”
• Trump says Iran’s leaders have reached out to discuss a nuclear deal: President Donald Trump said aboard Air Force One that Iran’s leaders have reached out to the U.S.to discuss arranging a meeting for a new “nuclear deal,” while warning Washington could act first amid Iran’s violent protest crackdown. The comments followed Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s return to Tehran on January 9 for talks with Oman’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al-Busaidi. Oman hosted indirect U.S.-Iran nuclear talks that preceded the so-called “12-Day War.”
• Netanyahu is “closely monitoring” the situation: Netanyahu said Israel “strongly condemns the mass slaughter of innocent civilians” in Iran. He said he is “closely monitoring developments in Iran,” and added that he hopes that the “Persian nation will soon be freed.”

Venezuela

• Bessent says more sanctions can be lifted this week: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States could lift additional sanctions on Venezuela as soon as next week to facilitate oil sales and help restart economic investment, adding that nearly $5 billion in Venezuela’s frozen International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) “special drawing rights” could be unlocked to support rebuilding the economy. Bessent also has plans to meet with leaders of the IMF and World Bank to facilitate Venezuela’s international economic engagement, Reuters reported.
• Trump signs an E.O. declaring Venezuela’s oil funds “sovereign property: President Donald Trump signed an executive order blocking U.S. courts and creditors from seizing Venezuela’s oil revenue held in U.S. Treasury accounts, declaring the funds sovereign property to be used inside Venezuela to promote “peace, prosperity, and stability,” Reuters reported. The move comes amid pressure from companies like ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil for the government to recognize its claims to lost property and profits. Trump told ConocoPhillips’s CEO the company would recover “a lot” of its losses but dismissed past nationalizations as their “fault.”
• The Venezuelan government has released at least 18 prisoners, human rights groups say: The number of prisoners released in Venezuela has risen to 18, human rights groups told Reuters. The UN Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela reported that 2,220 people were detained after the 2024 election, with 2,006 later released. More than 200 have been arrested since.
• Protest against U.S. imperialism in Mexico City: Thousands marched through Mexico City to protest U.S. imperialism and foreign intervention, chanting slogans rejecting the Monroe Doctrine and U.S. influence in Latin America, with demonstrators carrying flags and banners defending Venezuelan sovereignty.

U.S. News

• Powell addresses the threat of criminal charges: U.S. prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell over a $2.5 billion renovation of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters. Powell received grand jury subpoenas and a threat of criminal indictment from the justice department on Friday. The indictment’s allegations are related to his testimony before Congress last summer about the renovation. Powell addressed the Trump administration and the public on Sunday, saying the legal actions were based on pretexts and are meant to curtail the Federal Reserve’s independence to set interest rates.“This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings,” Powell said, adding “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
• ICE buys a surveillance system with the capacity to monitor entire neighborhoods: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) purchased access to a powerful neighborhood-wide surveillance system that sweeps up cellphone location data and tracks people over time, according to documents obtained by 404 Media. Built by Penlink, the tools—Webloc and Tangles—enable warrantless geofencing and social-media monitoring. The purchase has drawn criticism from civil-liberties groups, who say that the technology will facilitate dragnet surveillance that will intensify the agency’s increasingly lawless deportation crackdowns.
• U-Haul truck attacks protestors in Los Angeles: A U-Haul truck drove into a crowd at a protest in Westwood, Los Angeles, where demonstrators were rallying in support of protests in Iran. Police and local media report that the vehicle “plowed into” protestors and injured multiple people. The truck displayed slogans against Iran, including “NO SHAH. NO REGIME,” but authorities have not confirmed a motive or announced any arrests.
• Israel worked with Trump’s campaign manager on U.S. propaganda: Foreign agent filings show Israel expanded its contract with Brad Parscale, President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, through his firm Clock Tower X. The firm is expected to continue creating Israeli propaganda for U.S. audiences using generative artificial intelligence systems. A full investigation of the collaboration is linked here.
• Lobbying may account for revised HHS guidance concerning alcohol consumption, a new report says: The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services dropped long-standing guidance limiting alcohol to one or two drinks per day, a shift welcomed by beverage industry groups that have spent millions lobbying the administration. Mehmet “Dr.” Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, defended the change, saying that alcohol is a “social lubricant” that “allows people an excuse to bond and socialize.” Read more about HHS’ choice from The Lever here.
• Noem continues to defend ICE’s killing of Renee Good, ICE crackdowns: A day after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents killed legal observer Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held a press conference in New York to highlight an unrelated shooting of a border agent and to threaten an expanded crackdown tied to the “Operation Salvo” crackdown in the city. Dismissing video and eyewitness accounts, Noem called Good’s protest “an act of domestic terrorism,” and declared that the administration remains “on [the] offense” against sanctuary cities. “If you are a criminal illegal alien,” Noem said, “we are coming to get you.” Read more from The American Prospect here.
• Trump says that the U.S. is “talking” to Cuba and claims a forthcoming deal: President Donald Trump said the U.S. is “talking to Cuba” and that details of a potential deal will emerge soon, adding that a priority for his administration is Cubans who were forced out of the country and are now U.S. citizens. Trump dodged a direct answer to a question about whether the U.S. might seize oil tankers headed to Cuba and, instead, pointed to interest from oil companies.

Other International News

• Wave of Israeli strikes kills at least one in Lebanon: Israeli strikes killed a municipal council member in Bint Jbeil, as part of a rapid escalation of hostilities across southern Lebanon on Sunday. In roughly thirty minutes, at least 25 airstrikes hit seven locations across three districts in the country, according to L’Orient Today.
• RSF seizes Jarjira in Darfur: Rapid Support Forces seized the town of Jarjira on Saturday, after a coordinated assault that forced Sudanese army units and allied groups to withdraw north, Darfur 24 reported. The capture further narrows the Army’s foothold in Darfur, with sources warning the RSF may advance next on nearby Al-Tina as it consolidates control over most of the region.
• Sudanese government returns to Khartoum: Sudan’s government has returned to Khartoum after nearly three years operating from Port Sudan, following the army’s recapture of the capital in May 2025 and the gradual reopening of federal ministries, Sudan Tribune reported. Prime Minister Kamil Idris called the move “final and comprehensive” and a step toward peace, as Abdel Fattah al-Burhan pledged imminent victory for the Army. The reality on the ground is more complicated (as evidenced above), and even in the capital, much of the damage done to government facilities by the RSF has yet to be repaired.
• Attacks put hospitals out of service in central Sudan: Three major hospitals in Dilling, central Sudan, have been knocked out of service by shelling and drone strikes, according to the Sudan Doctors Network, with these attacks killing at least four medical personnel. The network blamed the Rapid Support Forces and the allied Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, warning that as Dilling remains under siege, its communications remain cut, and it is suffering from acute shortages of food and medicine, it is vulnerable to a catastrophe similar to the one suffered by the people of El Fasher.
• Pakistan nears arms deal with the Sudanese Army: Pakistan is in the final stages of negotiations for a roughly $1.5 billion arms deal to supply the Sudanese Armed Forces with aircraft, drones, and air-defense systems, Reuters reported. The deal would significantly bolster the army’s air power, providing it with Karakoram-8 light attack jets, Super Mushshak trainers, and potentially JF-17 fighters. Funding for the deal remains unclear, however, with sources suggesting Saudi Arabia may be financing and brokering the agreement. The Rapid Support Forces have expanded their own drone capabilities with United Arab Emirates support.
• Anti-Houthi “Supreme Military Committee” announced in Yemen: Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council, announced the formation of a “Supreme Military Committee” to unify coalition-aligned armed forces under a single, centralized command. He framed the move as an effort to consolidate military authority and streamline coordination among anti-Houthis factions.
• Fighting ceases in Aleppo’s Kurdish neighborhoods: Fighting in Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh eased Saturday, after an internationally mediated ceasefire was announced following roughly five days of clashes between Syrian government forces and Kurdish fighters that killed at least 22 people and displaced more than 140,000, according to the Associated Press. Mazloum Abdi, head of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, said the deal secures the evacuation of the dead, wounded, and stranded civilians and fighters to northern and eastern Syria.
• Bolivia’s government will restore fuel subsidies: Bolivia’s government agreed to repeal Decree 5503 and restore fuel subsidies after days of nationwide, union-led blockades, reaching a deal with the Central Obrera Boliviana in El Alto, according to Infobae. President Rodrigo Paz, elected in October 2025 after more than two decades of MAS rule, signed the decree on December 17, with unions agreeing to lift roadblocks. The unions say they remain on alert, however, until formal protections preserving these subsidies are announced.
• Somaliia’s Defense Minister says Israel wants to move Palestinians to Somaliland: Somalia’s Defense Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi accused Israel of planning to forcibly displace Palestinians to Somaliland, calling the alleged plan a serious violation of international law, and urged Israel to withdraw its recognition of the separatist region in an interview with Al Jazeera. Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, denied that Palestinian resettlement was part of any agreement.

More from Drop Site

• Potential U.S. escalation in Cuba: Havana residents are worried over possible U.S. escalation in Cuba, as Cubans speculate that the state’s lack of strategic petroleum reserves may be its only shield from attack after the assault on Venezuela. “Everyone knows it’s about oil,” one resident told Drop Site. “I don’t think they’ll come and bomb Cuba,” she added, expressing hope that scarcity—not sovereignty—may deter Washington. Read Ryan Grim’s new report on Cuba here.
• Commonwealth Secretariat pressure on Pakistan: An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan sentenced prominent journalists, commentators, and former military officers—including Moeed Pirzada, Wajahat Saeed Khan, and Adil Raja—to double life sentences in absentia over alleged “terrorism-related” online speech on January 2. The accused were convicted for their support for jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan and the 2023 protests triggered by his arrest. The defendants said they were never properly summoned, represented, or given a written judgment to appeal. The Commonwealth of Nations sent a private letter—obtained by Drop Site—to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif to criticize the “democratic backsliding of the country.” Read the latest report about Pakistan, from Drop Site’s Ryan Grim, Waqqas Ahmad, and Murtaza Hussain here.
• Drop Site’s José Luis Granados Ceja joins Al Jazeera’s “Listening Post”: Latin America desk editor José Luis Granados Ceja told Al Jazeera’s Listening Post that many major media outlets have been unwilling to describe the U.S. operation in Venezuela in clear terms, arguing that what he calls a “brazen act” by the U.S. should have “rung all of the alarm bells.” He warned that the muted response and lack of forceful condemnation risk “opening the door to a kind of future… that makes everybody less safe.” The full video of his appearance is available here.
• Drop Site’s Ryan Grim spoke at a panel in DC: In Washington DC, Ryan Grim spoke yesterday at an event on the phenomenon of transnational repression in the context of Pakistan and the continued incarceration of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Part of the discussion is available here.

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12 January 2026

Source: dropsitenews.com

By Manlio Dinucci

On 3 January, President Trump announced from his Mar-a-Lago residence:

“On my direct orders, the United States Armed Forces have conducted an extraordinary military operation in the Venezuelan capital to bring the outlaw dictator Nicolás Maduro to justice. He and his wife, who was also arrested, will now face criminal proceedings based on a 2020 indictment by the US Department of Justice for multiple federal crimes, including narco-terrorism and drug trafficking.”

The real purpose of this large-scale military operation, involving 150 aircraft and helicopters, warships, and special forces, is to seize control of Venezuela’s oil reserves. The country has the largest oil reserves in the world. After US forces kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the substantial military presence deployed by the US in the Caribbean region – consisting of 15,000 troops, aircraft and warships – serves as a warning to the Venezuelan authorities to act in a manner favourable to the United States, to avoid the risk of a “second wave of attacks”. This force also serves to impose a “quarantine” around Venezuela, preventing oil tankers from entering and leaving the country. In terms of its international implications, the most serious incident was the “seizure” of a Russian-flagged oil tanker escorted by a Russian submarine.

According to the Pentagon, the ship was seized in the North Atlantic, between Scotland and Iceland, for “violating US sanctions”. The ship, which was not carrying oil, had previously attempted to reach Venezuela to load crude oil, managing to evade US forces for over two weeks.

On 7 January, Trump announced on Truth Social:

“I am pleased to announce that the interim authorities of Venezuela will deliver between 30 and 50 million barrels of high-quality oil, subject to sanctions, to the United States of America. This oil will be sold at market price, and the proceeds will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure that it is used for the benefit of the citizens of Venezuela and the United States! I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to immediately implement this plan. The oil will be transported by tankers and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States.”

At the same time, several US oil companies announced that they want compensation from Venezuela – Conoco Phillips for 12 billion, Exxon Mobil for 20 billion dollars – for damages suffered when, in 2007, President Hugo Chávez expropriated the assets of foreign oil companies that had refused to restructure their holdings to grant majority control to Petroleos de Venezuela, the Venezuelan National Company. This means that the small portion of oil revenues that would be used “for the benefit of the citizens of Venezuela,” as Trump stated, would be even more limited and would go almost exclusively to the Venezuelan elites who guarantee US interests, rather than to the citizens themselves.

*

Manlio Dinucci, award-winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

11 January 2026

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Drago Bosnic

President Donald Trump has “renewed his threat of using military force to annex Greenland“.

“saying he wouldn’t rule it out to make the self-governing Danish territory a part of the United States”

His objective: seizing control of the resource-rich island, which he insists the US needs for national security purposes.

“I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything.”

Denmarks Prime Minister has responded forcefully to the threats of the President of the United States. One NATO Member State threatening another NATO State. Trump’s posture could contribute to the destabilization of NATO.

.

Reach out to People Worldwide

Reach out to people in all major regions of th World:

Greenland and Denmark, Western Europe, The Americas, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, China, India, East and South East Asia, The Pacific

Our longstanding commitment is to world peace and “true democracy.”

Original in English.

GRTV Video: Freezing “Cold War” in the Arctic. Trump Wants Greenland

[https://rumble.com/v746gou-cold-war-in-the-arctic-donald-trump-wants-greenland-michel-chossudovsky-and.html]

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

11 January 2026

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Akbar E. Torbat

The United States, along with its regional proxy Israel and the European Troika, tries to destabilize Iran to rip the country apart. Failing to achieve this purpose during the 12-day war, they now want to use violent protests like the Arab Spring in 2011 to achieve the same objective.

In recent months, the rate of inflation in Iran has been high, ranging from 40% to 50%. The US unilateral economic sanctions have hurt the country’s international trade. As sanctions tightened, Iran’s national currency, the rial, plummeted in value, reaching about half of its original value by late December.

In late December 2025, the reformist government of President Pezeshkian decided to end the subsidized preferred exchange rate for importing essential goods. Furthermore, his government increased the price of energy products, mainly gasoline, which had been at generally very low levels. All of these at once created an economic shock and provided the precondition for protests. The economic crisis and the demonstrations played into the hands of the imperialists, allowing them to fan the flames of the crisis and instigate riots.

Following the collapse of the national currency, the rial, a series of protests began on December 28 in the Tehran Grand Bazaar and in the retail district of central Tehran. Then, the protests spread to some other cities and turned violent against the theocratic regime. On the tenth and eleventh days of the nationwide livelihood protests, merchants in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, as in previous days, refused to open their shops. Other retail markets, as well as mobile phone and audio-visual equipment shops, also closed in protest.

Taking advantage of these protests, the Western media spread propaganda to destabilize Iran. They propagate Reza Pahlavi’s speeches, the son of the last Shah of Iran, as a candidate to bring back the monarchy in Iran. According to Haaretz,

“Israel ran a covert influence operation using fake accounts and AI-generated content to promote Iran’s exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi and push for restoring the monarchy.”[1]

However, the real intention of the imperialists is to rip the country apart and control its oil, as is being done in Venezuela. They have used all sorts of propaganda in the form of false reports and videos made up by artificial intelligence to aggravate the crisis.

President Donald Trump pledged to support the demonstrators. On January 9, Trump issued a new warning to Iran’s leaders, saying,

“You better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting too.”

Additionally, Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed the US’s support for the protesters.[2] Furthermore, Senator Lindsey Graham, Mike Pompeo, the former director of the CIA, Zionist officials, and “Hannah Neumann”, a German member of the European Parliament, have all stated that they stand with the protesters in Iran.

Yet, the Wall Street Journal reported,

“President Trump has threatened repeatedly to intervene in the event of a bloody crackdown on Iranian protesters. That has prompted US officials to examine possible strikes on Iranian military sites.”[3]

The Islamic Government’s Response

On January 11, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the Parliament Head, said Iran recognizes peaceful protests over economic concerns but stands firmly against armed terrorists.

“To prevent miscalculation, understand that should you [Trump] take action to attack Iran, both the occupied territories [Israel] and all American military centers, bases, and ships in the region will be legitimate targets,” Qalibaf warned. [4]

Also, on January 9, 2026, after Iran witnessed the largest street demonstration of the people on the 12th night of the protests, Ali Khamenei, the religious Leader, called the protesters “foreign mercenaries.” He also added about Donald Trump,

“If he knows that the arrogant men of the world, such as Pharaoh and Nimrod, Reza Khan and Mohammad Reza [the Shah and his father], were overthrown at the height of their pride, he too will be overthrown.”

Furthermore, in a letter to the United Nations Security Council, Amir Saeed Iravani condemned the US government’s illegal actions and its coordination with the Zionist regime to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs and provoke riots and unrest in Iran.[5]

The Western imperialists have instigated some ethnic groups, mostly the Kurds in western Iran, to destabilize the country by violent protests and riots in some cities. The arrest of some Mossad-related agents in various cities, such as Ilam, Tehran, Lorestan, etc., revealed that the Zionist regime has hired villains to provoke riots. These people use the “knock and run” tactic to kill and set on fire public and private properties. According to Tasnim News, with the arrest of some riot leaders in Tehran, it was revealed that they had collaborated with the Kurdish Komoleh rebel group. These people had mostly come to the capital from the western provinces of the country. They were in contact with Komoleh and were receiving sabotage instructions and weapons from them. Some agitators from the ethnic groups were armed with rifles, knives, and Molotov cocktails to kill law enforcement personnel, set on fire banks, mosques, and public properties.

There were widespread terrorist acts, such as attacks on businesses, shops, and stores that were still operating, warehouses, public transportation, government and law enforcement centers, Basij bases, and police stations, carried out in the most severe criminal ways on their agenda.

To control the riots and unrest, the Iranian government cut off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls. Some reports indicate that at least 100 rioters and four security personnel were killed, and 2,200 arrested during the unrest.

Crisis of the National Currency

In the past, Iran’s central bank had adopted a dual exchange rate system, allowing for a lower preferred exchange rate for the import of essential goods. The justification for adopting the preferred rate was to keep the price of some imported essential goods low for consumers; however, a small part of the difference between the preferred rate and the free rate went to the consumer, and the rest went to firms that received the foreign exchange at the preferred rate from the government. These firms had demanded maintaining the preferred rate, as they benefited from this huge source of rent-seeking arrangements. They obtained foreign exchange at the preferred rate for importing essential goods, but in some cases, they used it for other purposes or sold it for higher prices in the free market by employing various manipulation techniques.

Image: The Lion and Sun flag has become a widely used symbol of opposition to the Islamic Republic. Although its display inside Iran is strictly banned, protesters have increasingly begun waving it despite the serious risks involved. (Public Domain)

In December 2025, the central bank decided to unify the exchange rate, fixing it to bring the rate closer to the free market rate and thereby ending the corruption associated with the preferred exchange rate. By eliminating preferential currency and transferring subsidies directly to the final consumer, the government wants to both maintain the purchasing power of households and increase transparency in the allocation of subsidies.

Consequently, the devaluation immediately affected the price of certain imported goods, which hurt the retailers. The government has instead allocated subsidies to most of the population to compensate for higher prices on certain essential goods. A monthly subsidy of one million Tomans is deposited into the accounts of most households. This credit is given in the form of vouchers for the purchase of 11 specific essential goods. Nonetheless, the rise in the money supply over the past few decades has been the primary cause of inflation in Iran.

The Iranian government should be wary of controlling inflation, particularly the price of food items. The Iranian people must be aware that Israel and its Western culprits intend to partition and destroy Iran, not be fooled by their propaganda, and be prepared to defend the country.

*

Akbar E. Torbat, Ph.D., is the author of “Politics of Oil and Nuclear Technology in Iran,” Palgrave Macmillan (2020). Farsi translation of the book is available here. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

12 January 2026

Source: globalresearch.ca