Music: Dhafer Youssef — ‘The Epistle of Love (Pt. 2)’
Intoxicated by their wealth, power, and insularity, the billionaires are unprepared for a societal backlash
Michael Hirschorn writes: An ever-more-stratified scale of luxury allows the staggeringly rich to avoid coming into contact with even the merely wealthy, let alone the rest of the world, “to glide through a rarefied realm unencumbered by the inconveniences of ordinary life,” as The Wall Street Journal reported. Chuck Collins, who gave away his family fortune and who now investigates inequality, describes it this way: “Wealth is a disconnection drug that keeps people apart from one another and from building…
Wall Street sees AI bubble coming and is betting on what pops it
Bloomberg reports: It’s been three years since OpenAI set off euphoria over artificial intelligence with the release of ChatGPT. And while the money is still pouring in, so are the doubts about whether the good times can last. From a recent selloff in the shares of Nvidia Corp., to Oracle Corp.’s plunge after reporting mounting spending on AI, to souring sentiment around a network of companies exposed to OpenAI, signs of skepticism are increasing. Looking to 2026, the debate among…
Germany’s Chancellor Merz compares Putin to Hitler: ‘He won’t stop’
Politico reports: Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler in a speech Saturday evening, warning that the Kremlin leader’s ambitions won’t stop with Ukraine. “Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz said, referring to a part of Czechoslovakia that the Allies ceded to the Nazi leader with an agreement. Hitler continued his expansion into Europe after that. “If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop there,” Merz said, referring to…
Cuba denounces U.S. seizure of oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast as ‘piracy’
The Guardian reports: Cuban officials have denounced the US seizure of the Skipper oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday, calling it an “act of piracy and maritime terrorism” as well as a “serious violation of international law” that hurts the Caribbean island nation and its people. “This action is part of the US escalation aimed at hampering Venezuela’s legitimate right to freely use and trade its natural resources with other nations, including the supplies of hydrocarbons to Cuba,” the…
American contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead
The Guardian reports: Trump administration insiders and well-connected Republican businesses have been jostling to dominate pending humanitarian aid and reconstruction logistics in the shattered Gaza Strip, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Guardian. With three-quarters of Gaza’s structures damaged or destroyed by two years of Israeli strikes, the rebuilding effort to come – estimated at $70bn by the United Nations – could be a rich prize for companies that specialize in construction, demolition, transportation and logistics. But there’s…
Praise for Syrian-Australian man who tackled Bondi Beach shooter
Middle East Eye reports: Praise has flowed in for a Syrian-Australian businessman who tackled the Bondi Beach gunman during his rampage at a Hanukkah event on Saturday that left at least 11 dead. Ahmed al-Ahmed, a 43-year-old fruit shop owner from Idlib in northern Syria, was shot twice while confronting the attacker but managed to grab the shotgun off him and aimed it at the shooter as he retreated. Video showed Ahmed ducking behind a car before jumping at the…
White-supremacist influencer, Nick Fuentes, is laying the groundwork to go even bigger
Ali Breland writes: Before each episode of America First With Nicholas J. Fuentes begins, a surreal mix of images and video clips runs, like a screen saver, for an unpredictable and seemingly eternal amount of time. Gentle plains of swaying grass, trickling streams, and the show’s logo flash across the screen. EDM kicks in. Psychedelic depictions of Christian imagery, including Jesus’s crucifixion, come and go. So do snippets of Fuentes talking about, among other things, borders, drag queens, and his…
Music: Dhafer Youssef — ‘The Epistle of Love (Pt. 1)’
New Yorkers band together to protect street vendors from ICE
The Guardian reports: On a December day when temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, Street Vendor Project staff walked along a busy commercial street in the Bronx, handing out “know your rights” information to vendors selling fruits and vegetables. Several vendors mentioned they were scared after watching videos of immigration raids across the city. “We used to go around helping vendors apply for permits so they wouldn’t get fined,” said Eric Nava-Pérez, Street Vendor Project’s Spanish-speaking member organizer. “But now, we’re…
Federal grand jury indicts Cincinnati ICE officer for sexually assaulting immigrants under his care
CityBeat reports: A former Cincinnati-based officer with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency was indicted Dec. 8 for allegedly sexually assaulting detained immigrants under his care. Documents from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Ohio show that Andrew Golobic, 51, was arrested Dec. 7 for allegedly coercing sex from vulnerable immigrants. Golobic was an ICE officer between 2006 and 2020, operating from the agency’s office in Blue Ash. A federal grand jury charged Golobic with…
Cincinnati ICE supervisor accused of strangling woman held on $400k bond
CityBeat reports: A Cincinnati-based Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) supervisor is being held in Hamilton County Jail on $400,000 bond after allegedly strangling his partner. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations official Samuel Saxon, 47, was arrested on Dec. 5 after police say he attacked a woman he lives with in their Corryville apartment. In court Monday, an officer testified that police have been called to the apartment roughly two dozen times in the last year and a half. Prosecutors also…
ICE is holding a Chinese man who documented Uyghur prison camps
The Wall Street Journal reports: A Chinese citizen who fled the country after gathering evidence of alleged human-rights violations against the nation’s Uyghur population is at risk of being returned there after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his supporters said. Heng Guan is jailed in upstate New York awaiting an immigration hearing on Monday that could lead to his removal from the U.S. and ultimately land him back in China, according to his lawyer and a New…
U.S. immigration and assimilation debates have roots in patterns of settlement that go back centuries
Colin Woodard writes: It is said that America is a nation of immigrants, and for a truism, that’s pretty accurate. But it’s also true that the United States hasn’t always been a nation of immigrants — or at least not all at the same time and not in all the same places. These days, the debate over immigration still revolves around age-old issues — whether immigrants can assimilate, whether they must assimilate, whether the nation is augmented by newcomers or…
Oracle’s plunging stock shows the AI boom is running into two hard limits: physics and debt markets
Fortune reports: Oracle’s rapid descent from market darling to market warning sign is revealing something deeper about the AI boom, experts say: no matter how euphoric investors became over the last two years, the industry can’t outrun the laws of physics—or the realities of debt financing. Shares of Oracle have plunged 45% from their September high and lost 14% this week after a messy earnings report revealed it spent $12 billion in quarterly capital expenditures, higher than the $8.25 billion…
Compassion makes people happy
University of Mannheim: People who treat others with compassion often feel more at ease themselves. This is the key finding of a new study by Majlinda Zhuniq, Dr. Friedericke Winter, and Professor Corina Aguilar-Raab from the University of Mannheim. The study was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports. While the link between self-compassion and well-being is well established, this effect has hardly been researched with respect to compassion for others. In a meta-analysis, the research team analyzed data from…