He's literally set himself up as Ruler of Venezuela. George Bush at least got a congressional resolution and an attempt at a UN resolution before invading and occupying Iraq. Trump didn't even consult with the Gang of 8 in Congress and now declares himself the ruler. Sheesh.

Moulton: "The parallels with Iraq are unmistakeable. Bush said there was WMD in Iraq. Turns out that was a lie. Trump just made up fentanyl being WMD, which doesn't even come from Venezuela, just to justify this war. We said this wasn't about regime change, but it is."

Sept 1 1939: The Führer announces that Poland is a clear danger to the nation, and that "In order to put an end to this lunacy I have no other choice than to meet force with force. Since 5:45 a.m. we have been returning fire, and from now on bombs will be met by bombs."

Best thing I’ve read this morning, from a human rights lawyer in Mexico. Translation is in the ALT-text.

Keir Starmer should condemn Trump’s illegal action in Venezuela. Maduro is a brutal and illegitimate dictator, but unlawful attacks like this make us all less safe. Trump is giving a green light to the likes of Putin and Xi to attack other countries with impunity.

Plausible worst case scenario with Venezuela in four steps: 1. Rubio and Venezuelan exiles sell the idea of decapitation strikes against Maduro to Trump as the one big thing that solves Venezuela, cartels and Cuba for the US.

'Unorthodox'

The US attack on Venezuela is an illegal act of aggression against a sovereign country (with lots of oil). Venezuela has become a more deeply repressive dictatorship & urgently needs democratic solution but this is unjustified & unjustifiable. Look forward to seeing swift UK Government condemnation.

Public Domain, an environmental news outlet, earlier reported some of the details of Mr. Falen’s financial relationship with Thacker Pass www.publicdomain.media/p/karen-budd...

Karen Budd-Falen, the No. 3 at the Interior Department, didn’t disclose a $3.5 million water-rights contract between her husband and the developers of a Nevada mine, records show. By NYT Lisa Friedman www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/c...

Europe and the UK’s decision to appease Trump was a moral disaster. He’s a far-right bully waging war with the world and our response has been insipid, supine acceptance.

Quite incredible that the EU’s top foreign affairs official can criticise Maduro’s lack of legitimacy but cannot condemn the blatantly unlawful aggression by the United States. A clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations.

Nigel Farage called Trump a “global peacemaker” who would prevent a “endless series of foreign wars” Boris Johnson said he would make the world "safe and stable" Why Trump's apologists were wrong and why those warning about the grave threat he poses were right www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/trumps-ill...

Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts. Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.

The bombing of Venezuela is an act of aggression: unprovoked, unjustified and unjustifiable.

X/grok creating and platforming sexually explicit material of children isn’t just a lapse, it’s criminal. Elon Musk and his companies should be held to account. It’s been over a year since I dumped X. It was the right decision then and even more so now. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

There is, to my mind, no justification for the continued use by the UK Government of X as a platform for official comms. There hasn't been for some time, in fact, but if the latest developments around AI-generated image abuse and CSAM don't change the policy I really don't know what will.

West Texas storm chaser Laura Rowe captured the picture of a lifetime, a fantastic shot of a mature supercell thunderstorm illuminated at varying heights by the setting sun.

ME (Terrified, tearfully repeating this over and over again under my duvet):

Remember when the right-wing press and the private schools lobby said VAT would mean an exodus to state schools causing a crisis? Not so much. (From this FT analysis: www.ft.com/content/c979...)

You can make LLMs say almost anything. A news organization reporting "what grok said" is engaging in journalistic malpractice. It doesn't know. It just creates plausible sounding words in response to a prompt.

Several French government ministers have reported the unlawful production of sexualised material without consent to the police and prosecutors. The UK government, which published a high profile strategy on misogyny just before Christmas, has yet to say or do anything www.politico.eu/article/fran...

French authorities investigating, say Politico www.politico.eu/article/fran...

guys, "the judges at the ICC are being sanctioned by the USA and can't access their iphones or bank accounts" and "why aren't any countries banning twitter or prosecuting elon musk for owning a site that manufactures CSAM" stories are the same story

This is a thread of major media outlets falsely anthropomorphising the "Grok" chatbot program and in doing so, actively and directly removing responsibility and accountability from individual people working at X who created a child pornography generator (Elon Musk, Nikita Bier etc) #1: Reuters

In coal-rich Bokaro, power cuts pushed girls in Dantoo village to learn solar tech during the pandemic. scroll.in/article/1089... Trained under a government programme, they built power banks and lights, taking clean energy from classrooms to homes and markets. Nolina Minj reports

The Cellular Operators Association of India, representing Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea, claimed ‘monopolistic arrangements’ by the operator. scroll.in/latest/10897...

So Boris Johnson, Prince Phillip, Andrew Bonar Law, Freddie Mercury, George I, George II, Richard E Grant, Douglas Carswell, Rudyard Kipling, Cliff Richard, Joanna Lumley and Spike Milligan weren't British? Interesting www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Question: But the president’s statements that he believed the election was rife with fraud—those are statements protected by the First Amendment, correct? Smith: Absolutely not. If they are made to target a lawful government function and are made with knowing falsity, then no, they are not.

Achal Agrawal uncovered a retraction crisis at Indian universities. His work contributed to a landmark policy change in how higher-education institutions in India are ranked. He’s part of the 2025 Nature’s 10. #Academicsky 🧪

This looks like something you'd see in a museum about fascism after 100 million people have died to defeat it

He should have added “but if you cowards aren’t willing to enforce the law, what good is it?”

It’s worth saying out loud that this is Nazi propaganda. They’re not winking and nodding. It’s pure unadulterated lebensraum.

Israel says it will suspend several humanitarian groups, including Doctors Without Borders, in 2026 for failing its new vetting rules for groups working in Gaza. Some international organizations have said that Israel’s rules are arbitrary and could endanger staff.

It is impressive how really committed they are to ending civilization.

The Epstein timeline, perfectly summarized.

Number crunching: Telegraph editorial columns in December highlighting ‘the unreliability of social media’ v corrections the Telegraph has had to publish so far this year due to inaccurate reporting From the new Private Eye, out now.

On the third day of Foxmas , Tina shared with me: three foxes on a lawn , judging you silently . Thank you Tina Rhodes #FoxOfTheDay

📝 The one from Substack I’m most pleased with from 2025. Primarily because people rarely make the comparison between Farage and Johnson, despite the fact they share the same brand of elitist, chaotic, egomaniac politics 👇🏻

ICE detain father shopping on Christmas Eve—then steal his family's groceries. Then 3 agents divvy up his paid for food—taking what they want for themselves. "Can I just get the wife's number to call and let her know?" woman asks. "No, guess he should've complied," agent says. Yakima, Washington

The regime’s position is that wherever an American corporation exists and operates is necessarily under the jurisdiction of the United States. Even when inside another country, a restriction on an American corporation is a restriction on American sovereignty.

If we can't kill foxes, we'll kill our dogs. Your move.

You know how Americans are surprised to learn that gun deaths are rare in most other countries, pedestrian-centered cities are normal, or everybody else uses metric? That, but discovering that the rest of the world moved to EVs.

After buying it for $18.8 billion, Walgreens' new private equity owner has eliminated paid holidays for all hourly workers on Christmas and New Year's. Last year, Walgreens had a CEO-to-Worker pay gap of 410 to 1. Corporate greed that would make even Scrooge blush.

Quick explainer I did last night for the other apps. Please watch and share- the Trump administration is trying to bury this arbitrary and cruel restriction of our colleagues’ rights during the holidays. Don’t let them.

“They’re not doing this because they have any evidence of censorship — they lost a Supreme Court case that made those claims. They’re doing this because the group of researchers and advocates have stood up to liars like Donald Trump and the platforms that enable them.” ~ @ninajankowicz.com

Who saw this coming.. Former EU commissioner and activists barred from US in attack on European tech regulators State department accuses group of pressuring tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints through regulation of disinformation www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

This is a serious escalation of the supposed war against “censorship”: in the name of free speech, five people are now having their visas revoked and are facing deportation. This is a narrative Bari Weiss’s Free Press was heavily involved in pushing, too.

open.substack.com/pub/broligar... Thank you @carolecadwalla.bsky.social for continuing to shine a light on how the techbros are graduating to techfascists. Its the ones that most people don't know the names of that scare me the most. Also, you won't regret subscribing to thenerve.news