@chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca2026-01-03 14:52:12
WTAF.
“Maduro is being transported to New York, where he will face charges in Manhattan federal court, according to people briefed on the matter. US Attorney General Pam Bondi says the Venezuelan leader has been indicted on drugs and weapons charges.
• Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said”
…….
How does a judge accept a case like this!?
If this sham is allowed to go ahead I’ll lose so much respect for the American justice system. And in New York no less… how many blocks from the UN. What an embarrassment and total disrespect for the UN.
#venezuela #usa #uspoli
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/venezuela-explosions-caracas-intl-hnk-01-03-26?cid=ios_app
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-03 19:00:16
Venezuela’s mission to the U.N. has requested an emergency Security Council meeting
and has asked the Council to condemn the U.S. military strikes against the country.
Venezuela’s ambassador, Samuel Reinaldo Moncada Acosta, said in a letter to the Council’s president:
“The United States of America always uses lies to fabricate wars.
It is an international tyranny imposed with the propaganda of death:
the recent past confirms this.”
Russia and China, allie…
@lucy_idk@mastodon.world2026-01-04 08:33:54
von demokratischen Politiker*innen wird #aufrüstung und #waffenexport standartmäßig mit "Verantwortung" begründet.
Warum heißt Verantwortung für demokratisches Regierungspersonal eigentlich die Anschaffung und Verteilung von Tötungswerkzeugen, und nicht die beseitigung z.b…
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-03 17:46:49
Trump has made various comments during this news conference showing that this military operation was at least in part about gaining more access to oil in Venezuela.
Asked about the potential presence of U.S. forces in Venezuela, Trump said that there would be a “presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil.”
@nico@lepoulsdumonde.com2026-01-01 17:50:13
Interview du créateur du poison neurotoxique russe le novichok
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/helped-create-novichok-never-thought-putin-use-4096102
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-11-28 23:49:06
Just finished "Orsinian Tales" by Ursula K Le Guin. It's... good, but not nearly as anarchist as a lot of her other work. These are short fiction stories weaving mostly through a fictional Eastern European country during the cold war, although some stretch farther back into history.
As typical for Le Guin a bunch of male protagonists, and a few parts that might seem to excuse sexual assault, which I've always found an odd thing in Le Guin's work (the rape in "The Dispossessed" bothered me too; the lack of strong female characters in "A Wizard of Earthsea" also sticks out to me). On the other hand, I've read from an interview that she wrote "Earthsea" absolutely knowing her audience (teenage boys) and intentionally writing something that would sell, which speaks to true mastery of her craft (I think the opening of "The Word for World is Forest" demonstrates what an expert can do wielding an intimate understanding of pulp science fiction tropes with intent, for example).
In any case, she writes sublime similes and sparse characters who nevertheless seem to embody deep wisdom about the human condition. I feel that often enough just a few words or sentences in a story bear forth hefty wisdom while around them Le Guin constructs something like an austere painting in muted tones, full of rich details that one can easily miss.
#AmReading #ReadingNow
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-11-20 22:27:26
After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol
@buercher@tooting.ch2026-01-03 19:39:14
There are arguably discrete acts of hypocrisy by earlier presidents, who claimed exceptions from international laws in the pursuit of US interests, but mostly embraced global norms in the knowledge that the “rules-based system” overwhelmingly favoured America.
Trump has complete disdain for that system. He looks at the world through the eyes of a 19th-century imperialist, but with 21st-century weapons.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/putin-russia-us-foreign-policy-venezuela?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-01-26 11:23:39
Documents: China's military is focused on harnessing AI to deploy swarms of drones, robot dogs, and other autonomous systems, learning from hawks and coyotes (Josh Chin/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-ai-w
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-01-25 19:39:35
I explained something for a friend in a simple way, and I think it's worth paraphrasing again here.
You cannot create a system that constrains itself. Any constraint on a system must be external to the system, or that constraint can be ignored or removed. That's just how systems work. Every constitution for every country claims to do this impossible thing, a thing proven is impossible almost 100 years ago now. Gödel's loophole has been known to exist since 1947.
Every constitution in the world, every "separation of powers" and set of "checks and balances," attempts to do something which is categorically impossible. Every government is always, at best, a few steps away from authoritarianism. From this, we would then expect that governments trand towards authoritarianism. Which, of course, is what we see historically.
Constraints on power are a formality, because no real controls can possibly exist. So then democratic processes become sort of collective classifiers that try to select only people who won't plunge the country into a dictatorship. Again, because this claim of restrictions on powers is a lie (willful or ignorant, a lie reguardless) that classifier has to be correct 100% of the time (even assuming a best case scenario). That's statistically unlikely.
So as long as you have a system of concentrated power, you will have the worst people attracted to it, and you will inevitably have that power fall into the hands of one of the worst possible person.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. The alternative is to not centralize power. In the security world we try to design systems that assume compromise and minimize impact, rather than just assuming that we will be right 100% of the time. If you build systems that maximially distribute power, then you minimize the impact of one horrible person.
Now, I didn't mention this because we're both already under enough stress, but...
Almost 90% of the nuclear weapons deployed around the world are in the hands of ghoulish dictators. Only two of the countries with nuclear weapons not straight up authoritarian, but they're not far off. We're one crashout away from steralizing the surface of the Earth with nuclear hellfire. Maybe countries shouldn't exist, and *definitely* multiple thousands of nuclear weapons shouldn't exist and shouldn't all be wired together to launch as soon as one of these assholes goes a bit too far sideways.