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U.S. oil companies remain non-committal about investing in Venezuela

U.S. oil companies remain non-committal about investing in Venezuela

The Wall Street Journal reports: Investors appeared to like the idea that Venezuela could become a new frontier for U.S. oil companies, or a bigger one for Chevron. Chevron’s shares rose about 5% Monday. Exxon Mobil’s shares rose about 2%; ConocoPhillips was up almost 3%. For now, Chevron has no plans to increase spending or boost production significantly, people familiar with the matter said. The Houston oil giant is wary of committing new capital there until the country is more…

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How Trump reduced our government to the moral level of a gangster state

How Trump reduced our government to the moral level of a gangster state

Rep. Jamie Raskin writes: Trump’s incoherent revisionist mythology of Jan. 6 has become an organizing policy commitment of his administration. On Inauguration Day, he pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of each of the nearly 1,600 rioters and seditionists (apparently no longer antifa fighters). This move bypassed the U.S. pardon attorney and discarded centuries of understanding that pardons should go to petitioners who have shown true remorse and contrition, rehabilitation and a lack of dangerousness. Consider just a few pardonees:…

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Is the Iranian regime on the brink of collapse?

Is the Iranian regime on the brink of collapse?

  Iran is in the grip of its most intense unrest in years with protests spreading across the country and Donald Trump vowing that the US will defend Iranian protesters – prompting Tehran to accuse him of psychological warfare. What began in Tehran’s bazaar over soaring prices and a collapsing currency has spread across 27 provinces, with inflation above 50% and a government struggling to contain anger over corruption and falling living standards. Human rights groups say dozens have been…

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Fusion breakthrough: Energy researchers report tokamak experiments that exceed mysterious ‘plasma density limit’

Fusion breakthrough: Energy researchers report tokamak experiments that exceed mysterious ‘plasma density limit’

The Debrief reports: In a potential new milestone for fusion energy research, researchers in China report achieving a state once only theorized for fusion plasmas, enabling stable operation under conditions that significantly exceed normal limits. The achievement was made during experiments with China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), which reportedly produced fusion plasmas in a “density-free regime,” overcoming a longstanding hurdle to nuclear fusion ignition. The team’s findings were featured in a new study in Science Advances, offering a fresh…

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Stephen Miller: We live in a world that is governed by strength, force, and power

Stephen Miller: We live in a world that is governed by strength, force, and power

  Politico reports: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller says the U.S. is in charge of Venezuela following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. Miller told CNN on Monday the U.S. is “by definition” in control of Venezuela after it removed Maduro in a striking military raid and has established a naval blockade of the South American country. “We are in charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and…

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Trump’s Greenland threats push NATO toward an unprecedented crisis

Trump’s Greenland threats push NATO toward an unprecedented crisis

Olga Lautman writes: If the United States were to use military power against allied territory, it would bring the post–WW II security order to an end, collapse NATO from within, and hand Russia the biggest geopolitical victory it has never been able to secure on the battlefield, while placing the alliance on a path where American forces could, for the first time, find themselves in direct confrontation with NATO troops. I wrote about Greenland yesterday and will continue to focus…

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Europe must unite or it’s ‘finished,’ Poland’s Tusk warns as Trump salivates over Greenland

Europe must unite or it’s ‘finished,’ Poland’s Tusk warns as Trump salivates over Greenland

Politico reports: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk issued a dire warning about the future of Europe, saying the continent is “finished” without unity, following a week that saw fractures in the stances of EU countries on foreign policy. Tusk, a pro-European centrist, wrote on social media Monday that Europe won’t be taken “seriously” if it is “weak and divided: neither enemy nor ally.” “It is already clear now. We must finally believe in our own strength, we must continue to…

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Trump now ‘runs’ Venezuela because Machado accepted the Nobel Peace Prize

Trump now ‘runs’ Venezuela because Machado accepted the Nobel Peace Prize

Larry Diamond writes: To understand the depth of Donald Trump’s betrayal of the democratic movement in Venezuela, it is necessary to appreciate the consummate courage, planning, and organization behind the opposition victory on July 28, 2024. For her valiant efforts to organize and lead the campaign for democracy, María Corina Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. In her moving acceptance speech on Dec. 10, read by her daughter (due to her late arrival in Oslo from a perilous…

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Venezuela raid enriches MAGA ‘vulture’ investor, Paul Singer

Venezuela raid enriches MAGA ‘vulture’ investor, Paul Singer

Judd Legum writes: This June, when Trump sought funds to bankroll a primary challenger to Thomas Massie (R-KY), who raised Trump’s ire by supporting the release of the Epstein Files, Singer contributed $1 million, the largest contribution. Since Trump was first elected in 2016, Singer has met personally with Trump at least four times. “Paul just left and he’s given us his total support,” Trump declared after meeting with Singer at the White House in February 2017. “I want to…

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U.S. foes and allies denounce Trump’s ‘crime of aggression’ in Venezuela at UN Security Council meeting

U.S. foes and allies denounce Trump’s ‘crime of aggression’ in Venezuela at UN Security Council meeting

The Guardian reports: The meeting had been requested by Colombia, which delivered a carefully calibrated rebuke of Washington. The country’s ambassador, Leonor Zalabata Torres, condemned the US action as a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity. “Democracy cannot be defended or promoted through violence and coercion, and it cannot be superseded, either, by economic interests,” she said. “There is no justification whatsoever, under any circumstances, for the unilateral use of force to commit an act of aggression.”…

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Microbes may hold the key to brain evolution

Microbes may hold the key to brain evolution

Northwestern University: A groundbreaking new study reveals that changes to the gut microbiome can change the way the brain works. Humans have the largest relative brain size of any primate, but little is known about how mammals with larger brains evolved to meet the intense energy demands required to support brain growth and maintenance. A new study from Northwestern University provides the first empirical data showing the direct role the gut microbiome plays in shaping differences in the way the…

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Trump says the U.S. ‘needs’ Greenland — Europe should take him at his word

Trump says the U.S. ‘needs’ Greenland — Europe should take him at his word

Olga Lautman writes: When a sitting U.S. president openly claims the right to seize foreign territory for “security” and resources, Europe is no longer dealing with rhetoric but with timing. Yesterday should have been another clear wake-up call that these threats are no longer hypothetical. As with Venezuela, which Trump sought to act against during his first term, Greenland has been on his agenda since at least 2019. The difference is that during his first term, there were still restraints—Congress,…

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Trump and Rubio plan to control Venezuela through threats and coercion

Trump and Rubio plan to control Venezuela through threats and coercion

The New York Times reports: Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday appeared to pivot away from President Trump’s assertion a day earlier that the United States would “run” Venezuela, emphasizing instead that the administration would keep a military “quarantine” in place on the country’s oil exports to exert leverage on the new leadership there. When asked how the United States planned to govern Venezuela, Mr. Rubio did not lay out a plan for a U.S. occupation authority, like the…

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‘Naked imperialism’: How Trump intervention in Venezuela is a return to form for the U.S.

‘Naked imperialism’: How Trump intervention in Venezuela is a return to form for the U.S.

The Guardian reports: The US bombardment of Venezuela and the capture of its president, Nicolás Maduro, follow a long history of interventions in South and Central America and the Caribbean over the past two centuries. But they also mark an unprecedented moment as the first direct US military attack on a South American country. At a press conference after Maduro’s capture, Donald Trump said that “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again”. But since the mid-19th…

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