Johannesburg: 9 Killed, 10 Wounded, Cause Uncertain 🚫⚰️

Gunmen killed nine people and wounded 10 others in an attack at a township outside Johannesburg, police said on Sunday, in the second mass shooting in South Africa in December. 🦾

Police initially said 10 people were killed but later revised the toll. 📌

The motive for the attack at Bekkersdal, 25 miles south-west of Johannesburg, was not clear, police told Agence France-Presse.

“Some victims were randomly shot in the streets by unknown gunmen,” a police statement said. 🔥

The dead included a driver from an online car-hailing service who had been outside the bar, provincial police commissioner Maj Gen Fred Kekana told SABC television. 🚖

A manhunt for the attackers was launched, police said. 🕵️‍♂️

The shooting took place near an informal bar in Bekkersdal, an impoverished area near some of South Africa’s major goldmines. 🏯

The wounded were taken to hospital, police said. 🏥

South Africa is grappling with entrenched crime and corruption driven by organised networks. 💉

Shootings are common and often fuelled by gang violence and competition between informal businesses, contributing to one of the highest murder rates in the world. 🗡

On 6 December, gunmen stormed a hostel near the capital, Pretoria, killing a dozen people including a three-year-old child. Police said the shooting was at a site that was illegally selling alcohol. 🍻

#johannesburg #killed #wounded #police

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Epstein’s Victim Annie Farmer Could Be Trump’s “Fodder” Too

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While Trump’s justice department did not deliver on a legal requirement to disclose all Epstein-related files by Friday, one document in an otherwise underwhelming disclosure lifted the veil on authorities’ inaction – and its dire consequences for dozens of teen girls.

That document is an FBI report from Maria Farmer, a painter who worked for Epstein around 1996.

Farmer, whose sister Annie Farmer was abused by Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell at age 16, told authorities in 1996 that the late financier “stole” nude images of her siblings.

Farmer reported Epstein’s behavior with these photographs, but the FBI has never openly recognized that she made such a report, according to the NYT.

The newspaper also noted how an internal investigation into the justice department’s handling of Epstein’s case did not mention this report.

The police report states that “Complainant [Maria Farmer] stated that she is a professional artist and took pictures of her sisters 12 and 16 yrs for her own [personal] Art Work”.

“Epstein Stole the photos and Negatives and is believed to have sold the pictures to potential buyers,” it adds.

The report also stated that Epstein requested “pictures of young girls at swimming pools” and threatened Farmer, saying “that if she tells anyone about the photos he will burn her house down”.

It’s unclear what, if anything, the FBI did with that report. It is clear, however, that Epstein continued to abuse girls for years after Maria Farmer brought him to law enforcement’s attention.

Indeed, Epstein did not face prosecution related to abusing teen girls until the mid-2000s. The FBI declined the Guardian’s request for comment.

Maria Farmer, through her attorney Jennifer Freeman of Marsh Law, said she was “shedding tears of joy for myself but also tears of sorrow for all of the other victims that the FBI failed”.

Freeman, who is representing Maria Farmer in her lawsuit against the federal government, said in a statement:

“What’s new today is finally getting the FBI report of Maria Farmer from 1996 - this is triumph and tragedy for Maria and so many survivors.”

“Maria Farmer reported Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes in 1996. Had the government done their job, and properly investigated Maria’s report, over 1000 victims could have been spared and 30 years of trauma avoided,” Freeman also said.

“After several years of asking for her records, the [government] finally released at least some of them today.”

Annie Farmer testified at Maxwell’s 2021 trial that she was just 16 years-old when the British publishing heiress gave her a nude massage at Epstein’s New Mexico ranch.

During Annie Farmer’s time on the witness stand, she described how Epstein and Maxwell groomed her for abuse and introduced to Trump – including using an unwitting Maria Farmer as a means of access.

She recalled meeting Epstein at his Manhattan mansion in late 1995, when her sister Maria was working for him as a fine arts painter.

#epstein #trump #farmer #sexual #abuse

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Epstein bought a plane ticket to New York for Annie Farmer, who said she was told by her sister that Epstein was potentially “interested in helping me with my education”.

When she first went to Epstein’s house with Maria Farmer, it was to pick up theater tickets he had purchased for them.

“He seemed very friendly and kind of down to earth. He was dressed casually,” Annie Farmer testified.

The next time Annie Farmer met Epstein and Trump was when they went to the movies with him and her sister Maria.

He sat between them and, at one point during the movie, Epstein “caressed” her hand. “He was rubbing the bottom of my shoe and then rubbing my foot, my leg,” Annie Farmer said. “I was very nervous.”

Annie Farmer explained that she did not tell Maria as her older sister was “very protective” and she didn’t want to affect her job with Epstein.

But in spring 1996, Annie Farmer’s mother told her that she was going on a weekend trip to Epstein’s New Mexico ranch.

Annie Farmer said she was a little more at ease after finding out that a woman –Maxwell – would be there and assumed that this was Epstein’s girlfriend. Following several trips into town, “it was decided that I would learn how to give Epstein a foot massage and Maxwell would show me how to rub his feet”.

“I watched what she was doing, and she was instructing me. I did what she told me,” Annie Farmer recalled. “I felt very uncomfortable. I wanted to stop.”

Maxwell, Annie Farmer said, asked if she’d ever had a professional massage: “She said she wanted me to have that experience and would be happy to give me a massage.”

Maxwell told Annie Farmer to undress. She complied and got under a sheet that was on a massage table.

“She pulled the sheet down and exposed my breasts, and started rubbing on my chest and on my upper breast,” Annie Farmer said. “I just wanted so badly to get off the table.”

When Annie Farmer woke up the next day, Epstein “bounded into the room, saying he wanted to cuddle”.

“He climbed into bed with me,” Annie said. “He pressed his body into me.” She escaped Epstein by telling him she had to use the restroom.

In the years following Maria Farmer’s report, accusers’ accounts and court documents indicate that Epstein’s abuse persisted. When Epstein was arrested in 2019, prosecutors alleged that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls” from 2002 to 2005 at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida.

The 2008 plea deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to state-level prostitution charges in Florida, came during a federal investigation that involved at least 40 teenage girls.

During a CNN interview after the document was released, Annie Farmer pointed out that numerous girls were abused after her sister came forward.

“And just to see it in writing and to know that they had this document this entire time,” Annie Farmer said, “and how many people were harmed after that date, it just, you know, we’ve been saying it over and over, but to see it in black and white that way, has been very emotional.”

“I still have the questions about, did they not take it seriously,” she also said about the FBI, “or were they protecting Epstein because of whatever relationship he had with the government. There’s just so many questions and why we hope for more transparency.”

#epstein #trump #farmer #sexual #abuse

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☢️ Kim Lectures Japan on Nukes: Comedy of the Atomic Hypocrites

North Korea — the world’s only country that treats nuclear missiles like seasonal fireworks — is now warning Japan not to “harbor nuclear ambitions.” You can’t make this up.

KCNA’s fresh sermon from Pyongyang says Tokyo’s talk of “reviewing non-nuclear principles” shows an “explicit intention” to go atomic. The statement arrived with the usual apocalypse décor — threats, divine rage, and the faint rustle of missile blueprints on Kim Jong Un’s desk.

So just to recap:

North Korea, which launches ICBMs like party tricks, says Japan must be curbed.

Japan, under pressure from Trump’s newly nuclear-friendly South Korea, is pretending to “debate principles.”

Trump, meanwhile, greenlights Seoul’s nuclear submarine program like a reality show twist:

“Ladies and gentlemen… the Korean Peninsula just got spicier.”

Tokyo whispers about nukes. Pyongyang shouts about peace. Washington cashes in on geopolitical drama for campaign clout. Everyone plays defense — except against self-parody.

When North Korea lectures Japan on nuclear restraint, it’s not diplomacy. It’s a roast.

#northkorea #japan #nuclear #trump #asia #fakepeace

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🚢 Erdogan’s Sea Empire: The Sultan Builds an Armada

While Europe’s defense ministries are still making PowerPoints, Erdogan is building ships.
At Istanbul’s naval shipyards this weekend, the Turkish president announced something that would’ve sounded delusional a decade ago: 39 warships are under construction — from corvettes to a national aircraft carrier already being built. No longer a regional fleet upgrade — this is industrialized militarization at sea.

The new carrier, roughly 300 meters long, will dwarf the TCG Anadolu. It won’t just host drones and helicopters, but a full air wing. That pushes Turkey into the blue-water navy elite, the small club of nations that project power with steel, not statements. Ankara isn’t aiming for “balance.” It’s building strategic autonomy.

In parallel, Turkey’s rolling out its TF-2000 air-defense destroyers, designed to shield carrier groups from missiles, and a homegrown submarine line — including the Atilay, the country’s first fully national design. Each sub carries domestic cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles. The message: no more begging Rheinmetall or Lockheed for spare parts.

Even the “small stuff” is scaling up — ten new HİSAR-class patrol ships for the Aegean and Eastern Med. And for export, Ankara just delivered to Pakistan its second MILGEM-class corvette. The real export, though, is ideology: Turkey sells ships — and sells itself as the Muslim world’s industrial defense model.

Defense exports have already surpassed $8.6 billion, with Erdogan promising $11 billion by 2028. That’s not posturing — it’s a declaration that warship production has become a permanent economic machine, churning steel into strategy.

Erdogan’s Turkey no longer builds for defense — it builds for destiny.
The Ottoman dream is back, fueled by diesel engines and drone carriers. And while NATO politely applauds, Ankara quietly sails toward its own empire of the seas.

#Turkey #Erdogan #navy #defense #militaryindustrialcomplex #geopolitics

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👑 The King President: Trump Crowns the Republic

George Washington turned down a crown. Donald Trump just had one engraved.

In his first year back, Trump has turned the presidency into something between a palace and a personal brand. The gold trim in the Oval Office gleams where restraint used to live. The East Wing has been demolished to make room for a grand ballroom. And each state dinner now opens with military flyovers and horse processions — a copy-paste from Windsor Castle, just with louder brass and cheaper taste.

Ever since his visit with King Charles III, Trump seems to have decided that America, too, needs a monarch — and he’s becoming one in real time. He’s signed hundreds of executive orders, rewritten constitutional limits by proclamation, and weaponized prosecutors against his rivals. Congress stands idle; the courts politely avert their eyes. The system built to prevent kingship now performs it.

Supporters call it strength. Critics call it coronation. Either way, the United States — born in defiance of royal power — now bows to another.

Trump once insisted,

“I’m not a king.”

Then he posted an AI image of himself in a crown.

The Founders wanted checks and balances. They got crowns and banquets instead.

#Trump #imperialpresidency #uspolitics #authoritarianism #republicOrMonarchy

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🦴 2025: How Trump Turned the U.S. Government Into Scrap Metal

2025 wasn’t “drain the swamp.” It was strip the wiring and sell it for parts.
​
In one year, the Trump–DOGE machine forced out roughly 300,000 federal workers from a 2.4 million–person workforce — not just “paper-pushers,” but air traffic controllers, NIH scientists, wildfire crews, Social Security staff and VA crisis counselors. Entire programs on HIV, child nutrition, rural health, foreign aid and civil rights were frozen or killed, while hiring rules were reduced to one metric: loyalty to the president and his enforcers.
​

The method was pure corporate sadism dressed up as “efficiency”: overnight bans on remote work, one-word emails demanding “Resign” that served as trapdoors out of a career, mass firings delivered by prerecorded videos, and weekly “what did you do?” messages that turned public service into a rolling nervous breakdown.
​

Then came the financial chokehold. Government credit cards for basic operations — fuel, lab supplies, replacement headsets — were capped at $1, with half a million cards deactivated. Any contract over $100,000 suddenly required White House approval, strangling FEMA call centers, wildfire readiness and lab work, while the same crowd bragged about “saving billions.”

Shutdowns stopped being accidents and became a governing tool. Hundreds of thousands were sent home without pay, TSA lines backed up, tax help lines died, national parks were hollowed out — while ICE and law enforcement stayed funded and the White House called the crisis an “unprecedented opportunity.” Federal workers lined up at food banks and sold their cars, while the president insisted the country was “in great shape.”
​
The official narrative: they were fighting “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Reality: they proved something else — if you hate government enough, you don’t need to overthrow it. You can just convince it to fire itself.
​

#usa #trump #DOGE #deepState #austerity #failedState #fakeReform

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🛢 Cuba’s Slow-Motion Collapse: When “Maximum Pressure” Becomes Maximum Misery

Washington says it’s targeting Maduro. On the ground, it’s Havana that’s bleeding. A U.S. blockade of Venezuelan oil now threatens to finish off what’s left of Cuba’s post‑revolution economy: Cubans are going hungry, dengue and chikungunya are spreading, blackouts force families to sleep outside, and roughly a quarter of the country has already gone into exile.
​
Since the Chávez era, Cuba’s survival model was simple: doctors and spies for Caracas, cheap crude in return. Even after shipments fell from 100,000 to about 30,000 barrels a day, Venezuelan oil still covers roughly 40% of Cuba’s energy needs — the difference between 18‑hour outages and total grid failure. Now Trump’s tanker seizures and partial blockade hit exactly those flows, with one captured ship carrying nearly two million barrels of crude.
​
The numbers are brutal. Cuba’s economy has contracted about 15% since 2018, cumulative inflation since 2018 has reached roughly 450%, and the peso has collapsed from about 30 to around 450 per dollar on the black market. Nearly 90% of people live in extreme poverty, about 70% regularly skip at least one meal a day, and more than 2.7 million people — many of them young and educated — have fled since 2020. Garbage piles up, water service is intermittent, kids stop going to school, and what one Cuban economist calls demographic hollowing-out is turning the island into an exhausted shell.
​

Havana calls Trump’s tanker seizures “piracy” worthy of Drake and Morgan — and the comparison isn’t entirely unfair: the 21st‑century empire doesn’t need to invade; it just strangles fuel and watches the lights go out. But Cuba isn’t some innocent victim. Its intelligence services remain deeply embedded in Venezuela, guarding Maduro from coups and monitoring dissent, while ordinary Cubans wait in line for rice and try to survive on “miserable public salaries.”
​
So the morality play looks like this:
The U.S. defends “freedom” by pushing a fragile island toward humanitarian collapse.

Havana defends “sovereignty” while exporting counterintelligence and importing subsidized oil.

Caracas defends “Bolivarian dignity” with Cuban spies and a broken economy.

Everyone talks about dignity, sovereignty, hope. No one talks about the grandmother who can’t refrigerate her insulin or the kid doing homework by phone light — at least not until he finds a way off the island.

#cuba #venezuela #trump #sanctions #oil #collapse #fakeHumanitarianism

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The PMs of Denmark and Greenland to Trump: Get the Fuck Out 🇩🇰🇬🇱🔥

The prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland have demanded respect for their borders after Trump appointed a special envoy to the largely self-governing Danish territory, which he has repeatedly said should be under US control. 😡

“We have said it very clearly before. Now we say it again: you cannot annex other countries,” Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a joint statement on Monday, adding that “fundamental principles” were at stake. 🗣✨

“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders, and the US should not take over Greenland,” the two leaders said. “We expect respect for our common territorial integrity.” ⚖️👍

Trump on Sunday appointed the governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, as US special envoy to the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island. 🌍🏞

The US president has on several occasions said the US needs to acquire Greenland for security reasons, while refusing to rule out the use of force. 🛡⚔️

The US president wrote on social media: “Jeff understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security, and will strongly advance our Country’s Interests for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Allies, and indeed, the World.” 📈😎

Landry, a former state attorney general who took office as Louisiana governor in January 2024, thanked Trump, saying it was “an honour to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US”. 👏🤝

Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, told Danish television on Monday he would summon Washington’s ambassador to Copenhagen, Ken Howery, to the ministry in the coming days “to get an explanation”. 🕵️‍♂️📋

The vast majority of Greenland’s 57,000 inhabitants want to become independent from Denmark but have no wish to become part of the US, according to a poll in January. The territory has had the right to declare independence since 2009. 🧐✅

Frederiksen said in a social media post that Denmark’s “ally of a lifetime” was putting it in “a difficult situation”. But she said the Nordic country would “not deviate from our democratic values”. 🌍💼

Nielsen said in a separate post that the appointment “may sound big”, but “does not change anything for us at home. We have our own democracy, our own decisions and a strong community that stands firm. Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.” ✊🏻🌟

Strategically situated between North America and Europe at a time of increasing US, Chinese and Russian interest in the Arctic, Greenland is also on the shortest route for missiles between Russia and the US. 🆙🏁

Denmark summoned the US chargé d’affaires in August for an urgent meeting over an alleged influence campaign after at least three US men with ties to Trump and the White House were accused of trying to infiltrate Greenlandic society. 🔍🚫

#trump #denmark #greenland #rasmussen #nielsen

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The War Against the Weak: Killing Women and Children Around the World

🔠🅰️🔠🔠1️⃣

Thirty women were sheltering in the Saudi maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, on 28 October when the massacre began. Some had just given birth and others were still in labour.

Working at the hospital that night, lab technician Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, 28, was one of the few known survivors. “I heard the voices of women and children screaming,” he says. “They were killing everybody inside the hospital. Those of us who were able to run, did.”

In one of the most horrifying incidents of the north African country’s two-year civil war, armed soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been fighting the Sudanese army, stormed the hospital, reportedly killing more than 460 patients and their companions.

It was “an unspeakable atrocity”, say rights groups, and one of the worst recent examples of the collapse in protection for the hundreds of millions of civilians trapped in areas of conflict in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sudan.

All major powers are signatories to the Geneva conventions, which commit them to protecting civilians from warring parties, yet in the past year there has been a record number of attacks on healthcare systems.

Women going through childbirth are particularly vulnerable due to their need to access locally available services.

As well as killing women and skilled staff, the attacks are destroying maternal and neonatal care facilities and posing a threat to countries’ ability to repopulate.

In Gaza, a UN commission has cited the impact on the right to reproductive health as one of the reasons for declaring Israel’s actions a genocide.

Even after the October ceasefire, doctors in Gaza say women and children continue to die from inadequate care, due to shortages of medicine and equipment.

A UN agency official has said he received reports of women in Gaza giving birth in the rubble beside roads because they could not access a hospital.

“We’ve had rockets and shells fired directly at the wards, operating rooms and maternity wards,” says Dr Adnan Radi, head of the gynecology and obstetrics departments at al-Awda hospital.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military says it does not deliberately target maternity care facilities and does not seek to affect the birthrate of Gaza’s civilian population.

“The reality is that every facility can be under attack now. Air defence tries to protect critical infrastructure, but if the drone is shot down, the debris may fall on a hospital,” says Dr. Radi.

For more than 676 million women who live within 50km of a deadly conflict there are few safeguards, or war crimes prosecutions for those targeting maternity care.

#women #children #world #myanmar #hunger

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🔠🅰️🔠🔠2️⃣

The lack of accountability has created a “culture of impunity”, says Payal Shah, a human rights lawyer at the NGO Physicians for Human Rights.

“Attacks on reproductive healthcare, like forced pregnancy and forced sterilisation, can be understood as acts of genocide by preventing births or destroying the survival of a group.

El Fasher was cut off from humanitarian aid long before the attack on the Saudi maternity hospital, according to the World Health Organization, which says malnutrition is rising sharply, especially among children and pregnant women.

In the DRC, data on attacks has been limited by a lack of information coming out of rebel-occupied areas and unreliable access to the internet.

But shelling in the city of Goma in January hit the neonatal ward at Charity maternity hospital, killing mothers, babies and nurses. Nearby facilities were reportedly overwhelmed by casualties, many of them women and children.

In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed or injured over the past two years during the country’s ongoing civil war.

Most maternal deaths are preventable using routine measures, say medical experts, but health systems can collapse during war, dismantling the conditions that make safe childbirth possible.

Rights groups say fear is also driving women away from facilities once considered safe, forcing them to take risks, such as giving birth at home without skilled assistance or access to emergency care.

“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted then it speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric that holds communities together,” says Maarten Van Der Heijden, a lawyer and researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their safeguarded status if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”

In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed or injured over the past two years during the country’s ongoing civil war.

Most maternal deaths are preventable using routine measures, say medical experts, but health systems can collapse during war, dismantling the conditions that make safe childbirth possible.

Rights groups say fear is also driving women away from facilities once considered safe, forcing them to take risks, such as giving birth at home without skilled assistance or access to emergency care.

“If maternity hospitals are being deliberately targeted then it speaks to a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to tear apart the social fabric that holds communities together,” says Maarten Van Der Heijden, a lawyer and researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“There is no absolute protection for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their safeguarded status if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”

#women #children #world #myanmar #hunger

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American actor Taylor Chase, the star of school series on the Nickelodeon children's TV channel, has been homeless on the streets of Los Angeles for a long time.

He was first spotted back in September. After that an impressive amount of money was collected on the Internet to help him, but the actor's mother forbade her to transfer it to him, saying that in his condition money would not be of help but would only ruin him completely. And now the ticktockers had found Chase again.

#taylor #chase #homeless #money

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“We believe in honoring our father and mother, rather than sending all their money to Ukraine.”

Vice President of the United States JD Vance on the faith of real Americans.

#vance #honoring #ukraine

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An unusual turn for a man who decided to face off with an American policeman.

#man #american #policeman

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The “Trump Class” of Warships: His Schizophrenia Is Incurable 🚢🛠

Trump announced on Monday the construction of a new “Trump class” of warships that would anchor what he called a “golden fleet” for the U.S. Navy, fulfilling a long-held goal to give a personal makeover to a fleet of ships he described as “old and tired and obsolete.” 😤✨

The ships will augment the Navy’s more than five dozen Arleigh Burke-class destroyers — 9,000-ton vessels that are currently a mainstay of the Navy fleet but thatTrump has disparaged as failing to compete with the vessels of foreign fleets, according to a Pentagon official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans for the ships. ⚓️🏴‍☠️

Navy officials said that the new vessel, which Trump described as “a battleship,” would displace more than 35,000 tons — more than twice the size of the largest surface combatant ships the Navy currently fields — and that it would notionally have the ability to launch hypersonic missiles and nuclear-armed cruise missiles, and carry more munitions overall than current Navy vessels. 🎯⚔️

“They’ll help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry and inspire fear in America’s enemies all over the world,” Trump said alongside renderings of the new ships. 💥👊

Dating back to his first term, Trump has criticized the look of the Navy’s fleet and called for a return of the World War II-era vessels that were armed with 16-inch guns that were largely phased out for aircraft carriers whose warplanes could strike targets many hundreds of times farther away. ✈️➡️

In ordering up the construction of battleships, Trump appeared to once again nod back to vessels of old under the umbrella of an agency he calls the “Department of War,” even though Congress has not changed the name of the Department of Defense. 🧐🗺

#trump #class #warships #military #supremacy

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🕯 Bethlehem’s Christmas: The Ceasefire Nativity Show

It’s Christmas in Bethlehem again — or, as the local tourism board might call it, “Faith-Based Resilience™ — Season Two.” The tree’s lit, the band’s marching, and the scent of shawarma wafts through Manger Square, where the PR department of Despair is staging this year’s photo op.

Two years of canceled Christmases are finally over. The holy town of Jesus’ birth is glowing again — LED lights powered by the fragile cease-fire. The message: Peace on Earth (conditions may apply).

“We want peace, we want life,”

said Mayor Maher Canawati, in what could double as a line from every op-ed since 1948.

Behind the hymns and blinking bulbs, settler attacks hit record highs — eight a day, the U.N.-style holiday countdown. Israeli officials just approved 19 new settlements because, apparently, nothing says season of giving like taking someone else’s land.

And yet, Bethlehem’s Christians, less than 2% of the population now, light candles under the drones, bake doughnuts beside checkpoints, and whisper hope into a desert wind that hasn’t changed direction in seventy-five years.

Over in Taybeh — the last all-Christian village in the West Bank — they opened a Christmas market right next to a fresh settler road. Two cars burned that night. The next morning, they sold waffles with extra powdered irony.

Even the Nativity adapted: last year, baby Jesus lay on the rubble; this year, he’s back in his straw crib — a limited-edition restoration piece sponsored by wishful thinking.

Because in Bethlehem, tradition must live on.
Even if peace doesn’t.

#Bethlehem #Christmas #WestBank #holyrealestate

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🔥 JD Vance and the MAGA Balance Beam: “Don’t Mention Israel” Edition

It’s Christmas week, and JD Vance’s greatest miracle so far is not saying one word — Israel — at a Turning Point USA rally where every other MAGA influencer has turned into an amateur foreign policy analyst or internet warlord.

Vance, the vice president who brands himself as the “blue-collar philosopher,” is now walking the tightrope strung across the MAGA civil war: on one side, the Israel-First hawks quoting Benjamin Netanyahu like scripture; on the other, the Gen Z “America First” crowd quoting Nick Fuentes like a prophet with Wi-Fi.

“He’s walking a tightrope — one hundred percent,”

said one of his friends.
Translation: he’s praying no one asks him a real question.

The drama started when Fuentes, the neo-nazi-adjacent podcaster, kept getting invites from conservative talk shows — including a cameo with Tucker Carlson, the ghostwriter of modern right-wing angst. Carlson called for cutting aid to Israel, triggering the MAGA base into a digital holy war over who loves Jesus more strategically.

Vance knows the rules of this reality show: Trump stays quiet, donors panic, and the interns at Turning Point USA whisper about “optics.” So he plays both sides — hosting a cozy Hanukkah party with VP-seal kippahs while tweeting that “not liking Israel doesn’t make you antisemitic.” It’s a masterclass in speaking without saying anything dangerous.

Meanwhile, Fuentes calls him “performative,” Tucker keeps stirring the pot from his cabin, and AIPAC donors are monitoring all of it from behind a firewall made of lobby checks.

The ex-marine senator turned vice president still insists there’s no antisemitism problem in the movement — which is a bit like saying

“the house isn’t on fire, it’s just unusually warm tonight.”

In MAGA-world, you can burn the flag, storm the Capitol, or question vaccinations — but questioning Israel? That’s the litmus test that breaks the church.

And JD Vance, ever the memoirist, may be writing his next bestseller right now: Hillbilly Diplomat — My Life Between the Kippah and the Crossfire.

#MAGA #Israel #Vance #TurningPoint #TightropePolitics

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🔫 Russia’s Early Christmas Delivery: Guns for the New Generals

Madagascar just got its welcome basket from Moscow — 43 crates of weapons and 40 Russian military “instructors,” delivered straight to the airport like a geopolitical Amazon Prime order. The island’s new strongman, Colonel-turned-President Michael Randrianirina, took power in an October coup, dissolved half the political system, then started shopping abroad like every fresh junta CEO in need of security and a business model.
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The “Lawful Cooperation” Fairytale
A Russian Air Force plane landed near Antananarivo on Dec. 20, unloading assault rifles, sniper rifles and anti-tank rocket launchers, officially

“to strengthen the capabilities of the Malagasy armed forces.”

​The speaker of the National Assembly — who somehow survived the institutional purge — insisted the gear was handed to the Presidential Guard as part of “lawful state-to-state cooperation,” because nothing says rule of law like weapons for a coup-born presidential guard.
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Africa Corps, Inc. Expands
Russia has been signing military cooperation deals across Africa, swapping Western lectures about democracy for rifles, trainers and a paramilitary “Africa Corps” already active in places like Niger and Mali.
​The business model is simple: the Kremlin gets influence, minerals and diplomatic cover; juntas get guns, advisors and someone to blame when things go sideways.
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The General, Dubai, and the Disappearing President
Randrianirina’s rise followed weeks of protests and a swift military move that pushed President Andry Rajoelina out of power and out of the country in October.
​The new leader then quietly slipped off to Dubai from Dec. 9 to 11 on a “secret” trip he later admitted, claiming security concerns but not explaining what exactly he was shopping for before the Russian plane touched down.
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Everyone’s Script, Nobody’s Innocent
Moscow gets to pose as the anti-colonial security partner while doing exactly what the old colonial powers did: backing whoever holds the guns and signs the contracts.
​Western governments will now scream about democracy in Madagascar after ignoring similar “cooperation” when it was their turn to arm friendly regimes — the outrage only starts when the logo on the crates says Russia instead of France or the US.
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So Madagascar’s democracy is on pause, the Presidential Guard just got upgraded, and another African capital becomes a showroom floor for great-power arms exporters selling “stability” by the crate.
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#Madagascar #Russia #coup #AfricaCorps #fakeDemocracy

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Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and the rest of the America First circus just turned Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest into an open‑air divorce court over Israel — with Charlie Kirk’s ghost as the silent exhibit.
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MAGA’s Holy War Goes Public
At the first big TPUSA gathering since Kirk’s murder, leading MAGA figures stopped pretending they’re on the same team and started accusing each other of coddling fascists, conspiracy cranks and antisemites.
​The real fight isn’t theology or “values”; it’s about who gets to inherit Trump’s machine in 2028 and whether “America First” now means “Israel too,” “Israel first,” or “Israel never again.”
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Shapiro’s Moral Crusade
Ben Shapiro ripped into Tucker Carlson for giving Nick Fuentes a soft, uncritical interview, calling it “an act of moral imbecility” and describing Fuentes as a

“Hitler apologist, Nazi‑loving, anti-American piece of refuse.”

​He blasted Carlson, Megyn Kelly and others for refusing to call out Candace Owens, who has pushed baseless claims that Israeli spies or people close to Kirk were involved in his killing, despite authorities saying the killer acted alone.
​Shapiro framed it as a moral duty: anyone with a microphone must name the grifters and conspiracy peddlers inside the movement — which is funny, given the movement runs on grift and conspiracies as core infrastructure.
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Tucker & Candace: Conspiracy as Content
Owens responded by doubling down, posting that “every time Ben speaks I feel more certain Israel is involved in [Kirk’s killing],” then claiming Shapiro “only cares about Israel’s interests.”
​Carlson hit the stage mocking Shapiro’s talk of deplatforming as heresy at a Charlie Kirk event, insisted he’s not antisemitic, and argued that discrimination against white men is “precisely as bad as antisemitism” but more widespread and more damaging.
​For a movement that screams about “facts over feelings,” they’re remarkably invested in vibes, victimhood hierarchies and whose outrage monetizes better this quarter.
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Bannon Swings the Ax
Steve Bannon went full purge, calling Shapiro “a cancer” who wants to hijack Turning Point and shove “Israel first” into the heart of a supposed America First project.
​He called the fight a “proxy on ’28,” claiming Kirk opposed “greater Israel and Israel first,” which now lets everyone cosplay as the true executor of the dead founder’s “vision” — a classic move in any post‑founder cult.
​Megyn Kelly, chatting onstage with Jack Posobiec, admitted there was already a rift before Kirk’s death and that it “revolves around Israel,” confirming what everyone else is spinning as “fake narrative” or “media psyop.”
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JD Vance: The Silent Beneficiary
While the influencers claw each other’s faces off, TPUSA’s new CEO Erika Kirk stepped up and openly blessed JD Vance for 2028:

“We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.”

​Carlson’s newsletter gloated,

“Sorry, Ben Shapiro, JD is America First,”

making clear this isn’t just a theology fight — it’s a shareholder battle over who gets the post‑Trump franchise: Shapiro’s pro‑Israel conservatism or Vance’s “we’ll talk about Gaza but not too loud” populism.
​And so the movement that claims to be united against the “globalist cabal” is now openly accusing each other of being that cabal’s agents — Israel‑controlled, neocon‑paid, or fascist‑curious, depending which faction’s podcast you tuned into this morning.
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In theory, this is a civil war over Israel. In practice, it’s classic MAGA: a loyalty test where every camp screams “traitor,” “shill” or “cancer,” while all of them fight for the same prize — control over a base that has been trained to trust no one and click on everything.
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#MAGA #Israel #TPUSA #Vance #Shapiro #Bannon #fakeUnity

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Syrians overthrew one police state and woke up inside a cheaper reboot of the same show: new flag, new president, same prison slang, same cables and cigarette burns, same families begging middlemen to “check if he’s still alive.”

The “New Syria” Reopens the Old Cells
After Bashar al-Assad fell in December 2024, rebel leaders promised to close his torture prisons; instead, at least 28 Assad‑era prisons and lockups are back in business under President Ahmed al‑Sharaa, now packed with “security detainees” held without formal charges.
​Reuters identified at least 829 people detained on security grounds since Assad’s fall, with overcrowding, scarce food, disease and almost no legal recourse, suggesting the real number is far higher.
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From Liberation to Sectarian Round‑ups
The first wave of detainees were captured Assad soldiers and officers; then came mass arrests of Alawites after coastal unrest, Druze after sectarian bloodshed in the south, and Sunnis, Christians and Shi’ites swept up for “ties” to Assad, Iran, Hezbollah or just the wrong name at a checkpoint.
Eleven deaths in custody have been documented so far, including cases where families only found out via morgue photos or anonymous graves, while the new Interior Ministry insists abuses are “negative consequences” of an institutional “vacuum.”
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Torture as a National Dialect
Old Assad‑era methods — the “dolab” (forcing bodies into a tire), “shabeh” (suspension by the wrists), “welcome parties” of corridor beatings — are still being used in lockups like Kafr Sousa, Mezzeh and other reopened intelligence sites.
​One farmer from Homs said Internal Security officers beat him and his teenage son until their feet were shredded, took $4,000 from the family, then detained and beat him again so badly they dumped him home wrapped in a blanket, assuming he was dead.
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Extortion, Now With Revolutionary Branding
Families describe ransom demands between $500 and $90,000 to free conscripts, officers or “well‑off” detainees, often via WhatsApp and burner calls from people who sound suspiciously like the same security services that made the arrests.
​A Christian merchant, Milad al‑Farkh, was arrested on flimsy accusations, reportedly tortured to death in Kafr Sousa, then posthumously accused of hiding a bomb in his home after his family demanded an investigation.
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The West Blesses the Upgrade
Human rights groups and the UN rights office report ongoing arbitrary detentions, disappearances and summary killings since Assad’s fall, but the Trump administration now treats Sharaa as a stabilizing ally and partner in containing Islamic State.
​So Syria gets the full “post‑dictator transition” package: a regime that calls itself new, prisons that look very old, a population learning that revolution mostly changed which uniforms run the rackets, and foreign patrons praising “stability” while the cells quietly refill.
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In the end, Assad left for Moscow and left his system behind; Sharaa promised to bury that system, then moved into its basement and turned the lights back on.
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#Syria #Assad #Sharaa #prisons #torture #fakeDemocracy

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