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Oct 11, 2025 - World

Last weekend, Donald Trump ordered another summary execution of people on a fishing boat off the Venezuelan coast. The administration claims the dead were engaged in drug trafficking. Despite international outcry over the violence, Trump officials have provided no intel, no intercepted communications, no photos — no evidence whatsoever — that drugs were even onboard when the strike command was given.It was the fourth such strike by the US in as many weeks. The ship exploded on contact, bringing the death toll to 21 people killed on mere suspicion of drug trafficking. Trump defends the strikes as countering “narco-terrorist” members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang Trump has unilaterally designated a foreign terrorist organization. But equipment analysis rebuts his claim, because the small fishing boats could not have reached the US mainland due to distance and fuel limitations of the vessels’ small size. Whether they were engaged in drug trafficking or not, law-abiding nations do not kill without honoring protocol and process. The United Nations condemned the strikes because “International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers.” Under international law, suspected drug traffickers should be “disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation.” Extrajudicial killings are also forbidden under the US Uniform Code of Military Justice.Excessive force against Americans Instead of careful introspection in the wake of what appears to be murder on the high seas, Trump’s Secretary of “War” published snuff videos bragging about the violence, offering up raw meat for MAGA fans watching Fox News. During his recent speech to officers gathered in Quantico, Virginia, Pete Hegseth made his yearning for unrestrained “lethality” known, as he and Trump push Border Patrol, ICE and the US military to escalate barbarism at home. Trump’s unconstitutional war of brutality against Democratic-run cities has centered on LA, Chicago, D.C., and Portland, but it is just beginning. In last week’s middle-of-the-night ICE raid on a Chicago apartment building, sleeping families were jolted awake by masked strangers suddenly in their bedrooms. Children ripped from their beds were zip-tied and thrown outside, naked and screaming. Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down doors, pulling men, women and children from nearly every apartment in the five-story building, most of them U.S. citizens. Federal agents used flashbang grenades to burst through doors, deployed drones and helicopters, and left the building trashed. Trump is champing at the bit to do the same and worse in Portland, Oregon, where he promised this week to send troops to attack “domestic terrorists,” authorizing the use of “Full Force, if necessary.” Trump justified the command in Portland by claiming it is necessary to protect ICE facilities, which he falsely described as “under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists.” Brutality without restraintRobert Arnold, “the Poet of the South,” has recorded a hauntingly beautiful rejoinder to the Trump administration’s lust for violence. After witnessing Trump and Hegseth’s shameful speeches at Quantico, where Hegseth called for lessening the rules of conflict in favor of muscular lethality, Arnold wrote “On the silence of the generals.” Arnold’s talk is a seven-minute review of why military restraint makes nations strong, and how discipline rather than unbridled “lethality” advances humanity through peace. Every American should watch it. Arnold observes correctly that lethality without restraint is not strategy. It is butchery. As if responding to Trump’s and Hegseth’s snuff videos, Arnold notes that even during the Civil War, “General Grant, bloody and relentless, knew victory meant binding the wounds of the nation — not gloating in violence.” Arnold rejects Hegseth’s call for weakening the rules of conflict, and noted the silence of the generals in the room at Quantico as they listened to Hegseth and Trump debase the seriousness of combat: “Our Generals understand war is the most consequential of human actions — their decisions carry lives in the balance. They know that raw violence is a tool only to be used with precision, justification, and the dignity of restraint. They know war has consequences that echo for generations.Hegseth does not know this.Hegseth mistakes slogans for wisdom, violence for professionalism, brute force for strategy. He preaches lethality like a child who’s never had to carry the ghosts from a battlefield home with him. He sees the military as a weapon to be swung, not a burden to be borne.”Heed Arnold’s warningArnold’s words are haunting because they are true. The US military is the most lethal force on earth, “not because it is the most violent, but because it has chosen discipline over chaos, professionalism over cruelty.” Arnold warns correctly that the world will backslide into barbarism if Trump doesn’t stop. He stresses our nation’s “pride in knowing that we do not wage war like a third-rate regime.” If we abandon rules under the Geneva Convention and “reduce ourselves to brutality and call it strength, then the world will follow us into the pit. Other nations will cast off restraint, and humanity will slide backwards into darkness.”Trump and Hegseth know this. They know that murdering helpless people at sea will create permanent enemies, radicalized South Americans who hate us. Arnold points this out: “Every officer in the room at Quantico has seen insurgencies grow of careless violence. (They’ve seen) reports that turned into viral recruitment videos for radicals. (They’ve) knelt next to cots where names were written on slips of paper and learned that nothing erases a family’s grief except truth and restraint and accountability.”The silence of the generals at Quantico reflected the arithmetic of consequence: “For every enemy struck without care, there are 10 who will rise in hatred, and 50 children who will remember the smoke … To adopt third world cruelty is not to become stronger. It is to become smaller than what we claim to be.”The generals who sat quietly at Quantico did not need to say this out loud. Their silence said it for them. Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Oct 11, 2025 - World

Promised crackdown on corruption is not happening fast enough for many who saw government toppled within a day of protestsPrakash Bohora was one of the first of Nepal’s gen Z protesters to feel the sting of a police bullet. Like thousands of other young people, he had taken to the streets of the capital last month to protest against corruption and a draconian ban on social media.He had no idea that day in Kathmandu would escalate into what is now described as Nepal’s gen Z revolution, which saw the toppling of the government within a day, the dissolution of parliament and appointment of a new interim prime minister, the anti-corruption hardliner Sushila Karki, by the end of the week. Continue reading...

Oct 10, 2025 - World

After years of advocating "America First," President Donald Trump's administration, the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on Friday, "I'm also proud that today we're signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Airbase in Idaho."It led to a swift meltdown from some of the president's top allies. Constitutionalist and MAGA influencer "The General" was furious, calling it outright "treason." "We are in the middle of rolling out military across the entire USA and then bringing in a non-NATO country military into the USA is TREASON. U.S. and Qatar sign deal to open a Qatari 'air force facility,' in the U.S., at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho," he wrote on X. "Is this what 'shared defense goals' means now — or just the latest way our politicians get paid to sell out our country?" asked Amy Mek, the editor-in-chief of RAIR, an organization that advocates for the U.S. to return to a country run by Judeo-Christian values. "Twenty-four years after foreign nationals trained in our flight schools flew planes into our buildings, our leaders are inviting their financiers to train inside our bases. This is what happens when you gut national-security training, scrub every mention of Islam, jihad, and Sharia from the manuals, and let Obama- and Biden-era bureaucrats turn counterterrorism into cultural sensitivity class. We’re being led by officials who no longer recognize or refuse to name the enemy they’re inviting into our own backyard.'Close ally to President Trump, Laura Loomer, lamented the news after advocating that the administration declare the Muslim Brotherhood an international terrorist organization. "Well, I guess this isn’t going to happen since we just gave the Muslim Brotherhood an air base in Idaho. So much for my decade worth of hard work trying to protect Americans from the threat of Islamic terror," said Loomer about the new base. "No foreign country should have a military base on U.S. soil," she also said. "Especially Islamic countries. I have never felt more betrayed by the GOP than I do now watching Islamic jihadists get away with implementing Sharia law in the US and now they are getting their own airbase where they will train to kill Americans."She went on to warn that it would make America less safe by setting up "for America to be attacked by Islamic savages from Qatar, the biggest funders of Islamic terror in the entire world. So much so, the Saudis and Emiratis find Qatar to be TOXIC. I need to see how much more of my life I am going to dedicate to a party that won’t address the threat of Islam in the West. The betrayal stings. WE ARE LOSING OUR COUNTRY!"Content creator and influencer Red Eagle Politics denied the reporting. "We aren’t giving Argentina a free $20 Billion handout, and we aren’t building an Air Force Base for Qatar in Idaho. The amount of dishonest lunacy on this app is reaching new heights," he wrote on X.Utah state Sen. Nate Blouin, a Democrat, pointed out that Idaho Republicans "have been crowing about" legislation similar to that his state enacted "blocking foreign ownership of land in their state."Dan Caldwell, former senior advisor to Hegseth, wrote on X that it wasn't that big of a deal. "The freak out around this is of course totally unwarranted since this is actually a pretty common practice with countries that buy and operate a lot of U.S. military aircraft. Singapore has a similar facility and detachment for its F-15 training unit at this very same airbase," he said. Caldwell is one of the DOD aides who was forced out amid Hegseth's Signalgate scandal. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Oct 9, 2025 - World

President Donald Trump announced Sunday that both Israel and Hamas had agreed to the “first phase” of his 20-point plan to end hostilities in Gaza, but multiple high-ranking Israeli officials are already pouring cold water on the proposal.Under the peace plan, Hamas would return all of the remaining Israeli hostages and commit to peaceful co-existence, and in exchange, Israel would begin a phased withdrawal of Gaza and release 1,950 Palestinians it currently holds captive – 250 serving life sentences, and 1,700 detained after Oct. 7, 2023. Israel currently holds an estimated 9,500 Palestinians captive, around 3,660 of them without criminal charge.Hamas would also be granted amnesty under the plan, granted they agree to end hostilities and not play any role in future governance of Gaza. It’s this point, however, that has some high-ranking Israeli officials already souring on the deal.“Mixed emotions on a complex morning,” wrote Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in a social media post on X Thursday, according to an automated translation of his post, originally written in Hebrew.“...We cannot join the short-sighted celebrations and vote in favor of the deal. A tremendous responsibility to ensure that this is not, God forbid, a deal of ‘hostages in exchange for stopping the war,’ as Hamas thinks and boasts.”As pointed out by Arab Center Washington DC Fellow Assal Rad, however, Smotrich’s comments were in direct contradiction with a core component of the deal as was presented by Trump.“Israeli officials are already contradicting Trump,” Rad wrote in a social media post on X Thursday morning.“Here is Smotrich saying they want to ‘ensure that this is not, God forbid, a deal of hostages in exchange for stopping the war.’ That is, in fact, exactly the point of a ceasefire.”Smotrich, who last year argued it was “justified and moral” to allow Palestinian civilians to “die of hunger” amid Israel’s aid blockade, was not alone in his opposition to one of the key components of Trump’s peace plan. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir also spoke ill of the plan, going as far as to threaten Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his far-right party would leave the Israeli government if Hamas “continues to exist” following the hostage exchange.“We will not be part of a national defeat which will be an eternal disgrace, and which will turn into a ticking time bomb of the next massacre,” Gvir said on Saturday, according to The Times of Israel. “...[We] can in no way agree to a scenario in which the terror group that brought about the greatest ever catastrophe upon the State of Israel will be able to resurrect itself.”Both Smotrich and Gvir pledged to vote against the peace plan, and Israel, despite Trump’s demand that the nation “immediately stop the bombing of Gaza,” has continued to strike Gaza, killing dozens.“Israeli Finance Minister and de facto West Bank governor Bezalel Smotrich directly contradicts contours of ceasefire agreement this morning, saying it must not be a ‘hostages in exchange for end of war’ deal – which is precisely what it is, if Trump holds Israel to it,” wrote New York Times opinion writer Mairav Zonszein Thursday in a social media post on X.Still, both Israelis and Gazans have been seen rejoicing at the news that an agreement had been reached on the peace plan, with millions hopeful for an end to the hostilities that began exactly two years ago as of Tuesday.Israeli officials are already contradicting Trump. Here is Smotrich saying they want to “ensure that this is not, God forbid, a deal of hostages in exchange for stopping the war.”That is, in fact, exactly the point of a ceasefire. https://t.co/bv7BnDZoEP— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 9, 2025

Oct 9, 2025 - World

Donald Trump’s obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and his inability to stop talking about it, is likely dragging down his chances despite getting multiple nominations, according to new reporting.According to a report from the Washington Post, this year's prize will be announced on Friday, and betting markets are against the 79-year-old American president despite his best efforts to lobby for himself.As the Post’s Michael Birnbaum and Dan Diamond dryly wrote, “Trump maintains he is not politicking for the prize, which he has mentioned publicly every few weeks since reclaiming the Oval Office — a habit people familiar with the award warned could hurt his chances.”Noting that Trump recently stated that, if he doesn’t win, “it’ll be a big insult to our country, I will tell you that,” there was a feeling that the president was pressuring negotiators to wrap up the ceasefire agreement in Gaza because he felt it would help his chances, despite the Nobel committee traditionally using an end of January deadline for nominations.RELATED: Trump phone call boast about Nobel Prize nomination set off feud with major ally: report With the Post describing Trump’s attempt to sway the Nobel Committee as “naked hunger” for more accolades, observers described his desperation for the honor as unusual and unseemly."Trump’s not-a-campaign campaign has little precedent in the subdued world of Nobel peace picks, where five Norwegians appointed by their country’s parliament meet in conclave for months of studious deliberation. Winners almost never campaign publicly — and few lobby privately, according to people familiar with Nobel history. His public interest in the award could backfire, according to a person familiar with the operations of the prize,” the Post is reporting.According to one insider, “The pressure from Trump is rather extraordinary and comes across not least as remarkably self-centered. That rhetoric and his whole approach must be said to collide quite dramatically with the traditions of the prize, even if that in itself may not be disqualifying.”Nina Graeger, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, which compiles a short list for the prize, admitted the American president did not make the cut, and noted Trump’s pressure and called it, “unprecedented, and it’s very unusual.”Graeger did concede that, if Trump’s last-minute success in Gaza sticks he would receive consideration; however, she added, “They would also, however, look at whatever else he’s doing in the world, but at least they would have to consider him.”You can read more here.