No Me Importa

 The Baffler

on january 7, Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Donald Trump shared an amicable phone call, after which Trump declared that he would “look forward to meeting him in the near future” in Washington. 

Somebody less demented than the U.S. president might perceive an obstacle to his offer: in September, the Department of State announced on X that it would be revoking Petro’s visa “due to his reckless and incendiary actions,” which entailed denouncing the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip while in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly meeting. 

Objectively speaking, the campaign to flatten Gaza would seem rather more “incendiary”: an action that has officially produced seventy-one thousand dead, although some experts believe the toll to be as much as ten times higher. Among other remarks, Petro had taken it upon himself to critique the U.S. leader’s participation in the carnage: “If Mr. Trump continues to be complicit in genocide as he has been to date, he deserves nothing more than prison, and his army should not obey him.” READ MORE AT THE BAFFLER.

Europe cannot condemn colonialism à la carte

 Al Jazeera English

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – the annual Alpine gathering of the global elite – to declare that now is “not a time for new imperialism or new colonialism”.

This, of course, was a reference to the current ambitions of Macron’s counterpart in the United States, Donald Trump, who, in addition to recently kidnapping the president of Venezuela and repeatedly threatening to seize the Panama Canal, has made a great deal of noise about taking over the self-governing Danish territory of Greenland. . . .

Indeed, Trump’s designs on the island have got Europe’s panties in a bunch, and the European Parliament has announced its unequivocal condemnation of “the statements made by the Trump administration regarding Greenland, which constitute a blatant challenge to international law, to the principles of the United Nations Charter and to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a NATO ally”. . . .

Now, it goes without saying that the categorically demented Trump should by no means be encouraged in his predatory international endeavours. But it bears pointing out that, when it comes to colonialism and imperialism, Europe is hardly one to talk. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Trump’s neo-con turn on Iran

 Al Jazeera English

On Saturday, just under two weeks into the protests that are now sweeping Iran, United States President Donald Trump took to his social media platform of choice to post a message of support: “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

As usual, Trump’s random capitalisation scheme and excessive use of exclamation points would better befit an elementary schoolchild than the leader of the global superpower. But the promise of American help is also problematic in far more significant ways. 

For starters, “help” is not exactly a specialty of the US – and particularly not under the guidance of the man who bombed Iran just last summer, right after returning to power on a pledge to keep the US out of foreign wars. . . .

With his recent promises of assistance, one can’t help but wonder if Trump isn’t taking a page from the old playbook of former US President George W Bush, the ex-“war on terror” chief and the face of an administration that was dedicated to propagating the very neo-conservative ideology to which Trump has long ostensibly been so vehemently opposed. READ MORE AT AL JAZZERA ENGLISH.

Thomas Pain: Thirty years of Thomas Friedman

The Baffler

It is a sign of the extent to which Thomas Friedman has become simply another fact of life that 2025 passed with hardly any acknowledgement that it was his thirtieth anniversary as foreign affairs columnist at the New York Times. In his 2005 bestselling ode to corporate globalization, The World Is Flat, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner boasted with uncharacteristic prescience and characteristic incoherence of his own immunity from the disruptive effects of the economic system he devoted his career to championing: “There will be no outsourcing for me—even if some of my readers wish my column could be shipped off to North Korea.”

Now, twenty years after the publication of Friedman’s defining tome and three decades into his star columnist position, the United States’ newspaper of record has not yet found it necessary to replace him with someone who makes sense on a regular basis. Indeed, it seems Friedman’s devoted service as a mouthpiece for empire and capital has ensured his institutionalization at the paper, despite his relentless self-contradictions, failed prophecies, and inescapable cascade of gibberish.  READ MORE AT THE BAFFLER.

Venezuela: American regime change with a Trumpian twist

Al Jazeera English

United States President Donald Trump has kicked off the new year with a typically deranged bang by conducting massive air strikes on Venezuela and reportedly capturing the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, who has apparently been spirited off to an undisclosed location.

The attack does not come entirely as a surprise, given Trump’s track record of doing whatever the hell he wants with no regard for the law – or for his own promise to, you know, stop waging war abroad.

Indeed, Trump has been chattering for months about the possibility of enhanced US military action against Venezuela, as the US has gone about bombing boats willy-nilly off the country’s coast, supposedly in the name of combatting drug trafficking.

This has entailed numerous extrajudicial killings and rampant accusations of war crimes. But, hey, it’s all in a day’s work for an administration that couldn’t care less about legal justification for its behaviour, much less human rights and other such silly concepts. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Here is to a quarter century of US military havoc

 Al Jazeera English

The year 2025 has come to an end, and along with it, the first quarter of the 21st century. Reflecting on the course of the past 25 years, it is hard to understate the extent to which global events have been shaped by the military excesses of the United States – not that the same cannot be said for the 20th century, too. 

Shortly after the new century kicked off, the US launched the so-called “global war on terror” under the enlightened guidance of President George W Bush, who offered the professional call to arms following the 9/11 attacks of 2001: “We have our marching orders. My fellow Americans, let’s roll.” . . . 

Bush was succeeded as leader of the global superpower by premature Nobel Peace Prize recipient Barack Obama, who, in his final year in office alone, managed to drop no fewer than 26,172 bombs on seven different countries. . .

Joe Biden, who served as president in between the two Trump administrations, distinguished his time in office by expanding Washington’s traditionally egregious support for Israeli massacres of Palestinians to underwrite an all-out genocide in the Gaza Strip with the help of billions of dollars in US taxpayer money. . . .

Meanwhile, Trump’s resumption of control over imperial “counterterror” operations has been characterised by even less restraint this time around, as his newly rebranded Department of War goes about blowing up boats willy-nilly off the coast of Venezuela and extrajudicially murdering the folks on board. . . . 

And as we embark on the second quarter of a 21st century that is already defined by the catastrophic legacy of US militarism, one cannot help but recall those unfortunate “marching orders” that started it all: “My fellow Americans, let’s roll.” READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Trump’s Christmas gifts

 Al Jazeera English

If my memory serves me correctly, it was on Christmas Eve in 1992 that I found out there was no Santa Claus.

I was a 10-year-old elementary school student in Austin, Texas, and although I had already debunked the existence of the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny, I had held onto Santa for as long as possible, apparently unready to relinquish my youth.

When I caught my parents in the act of delivering the gifts that had supposedly arrived from the North Pole, I cried.

Fast forward more than three decades, and many Americans are feeling similarly deceived this holiday season by another man in red – MAGA red to be precise.

As United States President Donald Trump nears the end of his first year back in office, he has neglected to deliver on pretty much all of his key promises aside from manic deportations, which have helped convert the country into a holly, jolly police state. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The US is already at war with Venezuela

 Al Jazeera English

On Wednesday, the United States hijacked an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela – a new move in the ongoing aggression against the South American nation by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Over recent months, the US has gone about wantonly blowing up small boats in the Caribbean Sea along with their passengers, whom Trump has telepathically divined to be drug traffickers.

Exercising his passion for ridiculous overstatement, Trump proclaimed on Wednesday that the seized vessel was a “large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually”.

When asked at a news conference about the ship’s altered destination, Trump advised reporters to “get a helicopter and follow the tanker” – although folks might reasonably be wary of taking to the skies around Venezuela given Trump’s unilateral decree in November that the country’s airspace was “closed in its entirety”.

Of course, the airspace closure hasn’t managed to interfere with continuing US deportation flights to Venezuela. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

World Cup 2026: Re-disappearing Mexico’s disappeared

Al Jazeera English

The city of Guadalajara in Mexico is scheduled to host four World Cup matches next year, and labourers are working around the clock to revamp infrastructure in time for the tournament. 

On account of frenzied construction, the city’s roads are presently a bona fide mess, constituting a perpetual headache for those who must transit them. 

But Guadalajara has a much bigger problem than traffic. The metropolis is the capital of the western state of Jalisco, which happens to possess the highest number of disappeared people in all of Mexico. 

The official tally of Jalisco’s disappeared is close to 16,000, out of a total of more than 130,000 countrywide. However, the frequent reluctance of family members to report missing persons for fear of retribution means the true toll is undoubtedly higher. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Venezuela: A not-so-covert CIA disaster in the making

 Al Jazeera English

On Saturday, the Reuters news agency published an exclusive report claiming that the United States is “poised to launch a new phase of Venezuela-related operations in the coming days”. . . as a first step in this “new action” against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

This was less than shocking news given that more than a month ago, US President Donald Trump himself announced that he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela – a rather unique approach since one does not normally broadcast actions that are supposed to be, um, secret. . . . 

It should come as no surprise by now that the president who campaigned on keeping the US out of wars and then promptly bombed Iran has now found another conflict in which to embroil the country. And as is par for the course in US imperial belligerence, the rationale for aggression against Venezuela doesn’t hold water.

For example, the Trump administration has strived to pin the blame for the fentanyl crisis in the US on Maduro. But there’s a slight problem – which is that Venezuela doesn’t even produce the synthetic opioid in question. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.