The Trump Presidency Timeline
Documenting the chaos since day one. 265 entries and counting.
Category: imperialism
imperialism
trump speed-runs another middle east disaster
Trump explains that you either give him a nuclear deal in 10 days or he reenacts the Iraq War with extra sequels and worse writing.
Donald Trump has decided that the best way to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program is to recreate the vibes of 2003, but dumber. He’s given Tehran “10 to 15 days” to cut a deal while parking the biggest US military buildup in the region since the Iraq invasion right on their doorstep. Aides are reportedly workshopping everything from a “limited strike” on government and military sites to a series of escalating attacks that could end Iran’s nuclear work or, you know, collapse the entire government. Just normal, totally responsible stuff to say out loud while sitting on two aircraft carriers.
While threatening to start another forever war, Trump is also demanding agencies dump their UFO files because Barack Obama made a joke about aliens and got more attention than him. At the same time, Virginia Giuffre’s brother is on TV saying Trump may be “potentially implicated” by the Epstein files (which Trump claims actually exonerate him, because of course they do), and far-right mascot Tommy Robinson is wandering around Washington meeting people close to the president like this is some kind of white nationalist Bring Your Friend to Work Day.
The supporting cast is doing their part. FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly hopped on the bureau’s jet to watch Olympic men’s hockey in Italy, generously sending taxpayers a bill up to $75,000 so he could catch some ice time. Over at the Labor Department, the husband of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has been barred from headquarters after multiple women accused him of sexual assault, which is apparently still not disqualifying for proximity to this administration. And Trump, fresh off threatening a war, told Georgia supporters that the media isn’t talking about the cost-of-living crisis anymore because he’s "won affordability"—a bold claim from a guy who just turned the Persian Gulf into his personal campaign backdrop.
Source: theguardian.com
#imperialism#lawlessness#national-security
imperialism
board of peace proposes: hotels, troops, and a casual military occupation
Fifa boss Gianni Infantino puts on a USA cap, symbolically merging corrupt global football, American empire, and Trump cosplay into one glorious branding exercise.
Trump’s gloriously self-appointed “Board of Peace” met in Washington and immediately set about proving that words no longer mean anything. The US is pitching itself to command a 20,000-strong "international stabilisation force" in postwar Gaza, carving the strip into five sectors and starting with Rafah, while also planning a 5,000-person US military base over 350+ acres. Nothing says "peace" like dropping a giant permanent garrison in the middle of a devastated territory whose political future no one has bothered to solve.
While aid workers complain that the Board’s own Gaza administration office is an empty shell with no direction, Trump and his friends are already doing what they actually care about: money and branding. Trump boasts of a $10bn US pledge to "rebuild" Gaza, paired with billions more from Gulf monarchies and a cameo $75m from Fifa, whose president Gianni Infantino literally puts on a red USA cap like he’s signing a stadium naming-rights deal. A Cypriot-Israeli billionaire, Yakir Gabay, unveils plans to clear 70m tonnes of rubble and turn Gaza’s coastline into a "new Mediterranean Riviera" with 200 hotels and potential islands — because why rebuild a shattered society when you can build a resort?
European allies and even the Vatican are giving this shadow UN a hard pass, but the usual strongman fan club shows up: Kazakhstan’s president floats a Trump peace prize, and Trump uses his opening remarks to brag about "resolving eight wars" and then casually endorse Viktor Orbán. The actual rules of engagement for this giant foreign force in Gaza? Unclear. Any serious political solution for Palestinians? Also unclear. But a militarised protectorate run by autocrats, billionaires, and Fifa, dressed up as humanitarianism and stamped with Trump’s gavel? That part is coming through loud and clear.
Source: theguardian.com
#imperialism#forever-grifting
imperialism
kushner, a hotel guy, and 2 aircraft carriers walk into iran
Iran’s flag flutters over Tehran while Washington debates whether to bomb the country for the crime of making Donald Trump look "weak" on television.
Donald Trump is apparently deciding whether to start a war with Iran the same way he decides whether to fire a Cabinet secretary: surround himself with sycophants, ignore experts, and hope Fox News calls it “strong.” The U.S. has a carrier strike group in the region, another on the way, and enough air power parked nearby to level a small continent. Arab governments, once allegedly "reluctant," are now just begging to not get vaporized in the inevitable missile retaliation. Totally normal, stable way to run foreign policy.
Instead of, say, the State Department’s Iran experts, Trump sent Jared Kushner and his longtime real estate pal Steve Witkoff to lead U.S. “diplomacy” against Iran’s veteran foreign minister. So on one side: a seasoned negotiator representing a regional power. On the other: the guy who couldn’t solve Middle East peace with a PowerPoint and a hotel developer who probably thinks “uranium enrichment” is a loyalty program. Shockingly, three hours of indirect talks in Geneva produced “a little progress” and zero actual agreement on anything that matters.
While Iran’s Supreme Leader flatly rejects any missile concessions, the White House is drawing “red lines” like a bored toddler with a Sharpie: end most uranium enrichment, gut the missile program, and stop backing proxies across the region. Vice President JD Vance dutifully goes on Fox to explain that Iran just doesn’t yet appreciate how serious Trump is, as if the dozens of U.S. warplanes and two carriers are a customer service complaint rather than a war threat.
Hovering over all this is Lindsey Graham, the Senate’s most enthusiastic armchair general, touring Munich, Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia to sell this as a “once-in-a-generation chance” for regime change—because what’s American foreign policy if not rerunning Iraq with worse staff work and more influencers? A diplomatic source close to the White House helpfully sums up the logic: Iran is weak, Trump has already moved the hardware, and if he doesn’t use it he’ll “appear weak.” So the fate of thousands of U.S. troops, millions of civilians, global oil markets, and maybe the entire region now hinges on the one thing this presidency has never tolerated: the risk that Donald Trump might look like anything less than an action hero on cable news.
Source: nbcnews.com
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#imperialism#national-security
imperialism
trump personally seizes the venezuelan oil piggy bank
Trump, Maduro and Rodríguez in one montage, neatly summarizing the genre: failed autocrat, captive petrostate, and the guy in Washington who now thinks he owns the oil field.
Venezuela’s new acting president Delcy Rodríguez is discovering the joys of being a client ruler: she gets to rail against US "imperialist expansion" on TV, then go right back to taking meetings with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and posing in a hard hat with Trump’s Energy Secretary at oil facilities. Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, meanwhile, have been whisked out of Caracas in a US "lightning operation" and are now sitting in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, because nothing says sovereign nation like Washington airlifting your president straight into pre-trial detention.
Trump, never one to miss a chance at performance imperialism, has "implied" Venezuela is now a US protectorate and announced that Caracas has agreed to deliver up to 50 million barrels of oil — with him personally managing the money. Experts note that Rodríguez’s "legitimacy" now rests on US military power and the unspoken threat that DEA files on her can be opened like a piñata if she stops being useful. So she denounces Yankee voracity in the morning and signs over the country’s oil in the afternoon, while Trump plays viceroy of Caracas from the White House and calls it foreign policy.
Source: bbc.com
#imperialism#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
imperialism
trump threatens iran with b‑2 diplomacy
Iran’s negotiator meets the IAEA chief while somewhere offstage Trump’s B‑2s wait to offer their own unique contribution to diplomacy.
U.S. and Iranian negotiators in Geneva say they’ve agreed on some "guiding principles" for a nuclear deal, which is diplomatic code for: we’ve written the table of contents and everyone’s already threatening to flip the table. Iran’s Abbas Araghchi cautiously talks of progress and draft texts, while Washington’s official position is complete silence because the guy in charge of the U.S. delegation is casino developer / Trump pal Steve Witkoff, assisted by son‑in‑law emeritus Jared Kushner. So yes, the fate of nuclear nonproliferation is now being workshopped by the Mar‑a‑Lago extended universe.
While Iran’s foreign ministry keeps repeating there’s "no trust" between the two sides, Trump is helpfully reinforcing that by boasting from Air Force One that the U.S. already joined Israel in bombing Iranian nuclear facilities and has B‑2 bombers ready to "knock out their nuclear potential." He frames the talks as Iran’s last chance before more airstrikes, casually describing weeks of possible operations like he’s ordering the deluxe package at a golf resort. Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei warns that even the "world’s strongest" army can be slapped down, the Revolutionary Guards run drills in the Strait of Hormuz, and the global oil market stares into the abyss.
All of this is layered on top of Iran’s deadly crackdown on protests that have already cost thousands of lives, a crisis helpfully intensified by the same sanctions Trump is using as a bargaining chip. Washington wants to expand talks to missiles and regional power; Tehran says it will only bargain over nukes for sanctions relief and isn’t touching its missile program. So the Trump White House is essentially running a high‑stakes, nuclear‑adjacent hostage negotiation with a regime under massive internal pressure, using military escalation and regime‑change rhetoric as tools of statecraft. What could possibly go wrong when you replace arms control experts with real estate guys and bombers?
Source: nbcnews.com
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
imperialism
trump liberates venezuela’s oil from venezuelans
Local mural of an oil pumpjack, soon to be replaced by a tasteful portrait of whichever US company wins the "liberation" contract.
Trump personally oversees the seizure of Nicolás Maduro, topples the Venezuelan government, and then immediately pitches the country’s oil reserves like a foreclosure auction on a golf course he happens to own. Now that a "more friendly" government is in place and the legislature has helpfully passed a bill opening the doors to foreign investment, he’s telling US oil companies they’ll be "extracting numbers in terms of oil like few people have seen" — which is a poetic way of saying we invaded your sovereignty, now hand over the hydrocarbons.
There’s just one snag in this little freedom-branded smash-and-grab: Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA has been gutted, its infrastructure is rotting, its engineers fled, and its much-hyped reserves may be more PowerPoint than petroleum. Trump wants US firms to dump at least $100 billion into rebuilding the place, because nothing screams "sound investment" like betting tens of billions on decayed heavy crude fields in a country whose last president was literally just seized in a raid.
Economists politely point out that Venezuela’s oil is low-quality, hard to refine, corrosive, and not obviously profitable at current prices. Also, PDVSA is a core symbol of national sovereignty, so the locals might not be thrilled about turning it into a Delaware LLC with a flag stapled on. But sure, after years of sanctions, economic collapse, and mass exodus, what Venezuela really needed was Washington kicking the door in and treating its subsoil like a MAGA-branded vending machine. Empire, but make it "energy policy".
Source: bbc.com
#imperialism#forever-grifting
imperialism
denmark lets the us play cop, wonders if that was a bad idea
Danish sovereignty, seen here being checked through U.S. military customs and declared a "donation".
Denmark helpfully signed a 2023 defense deal giving the U.S. “unhindered access” to Danish airbases and letting American soldiers and military police exercise powers over Danish civilians on Danish soil, then acted surprised when lawyers read the constitution and said: absolutely not. Independent MP Theresa Scavenius is now preparing to sue the Danish state, arguing that outsourcing sovereignty to the Pentagon without the 5/6 parliamentary majority required for transferring power to "international authorities" is, technically speaking, illegal.
While Copenhagen insists this is all totally fine and not at all a surrender of sovereignty, the agreement keeps U.S. troops under U.S. jurisdiction and lets them crack down on civilians at and even outside the bases in Karup, Skrydstrup and Aalborg. The Danish Institute for Human Rights has helpfully pointed out that this could mean U.S. soldiers can break up protests and use excessive force against Danes while remaining beyond the reach of Danish courts. So, a small-scale legal black hole, but with better design and pastries nearby.
Complicating the vibe, Donald Trump is out here threatening to invade Greenland again, turning his failed "buy Greenland" bit into a live-fire sequel. That has triggered a mini-European troop deployment to Greenland and raised the awkward question of whether maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t give a country whose ex-president is fantasizing about invading your territory the legal right to police your civilians. The Danish government, however, insists that with U.S.-Danish tensions this high, the smart play is to cling tighter to Washington. Because when the arsonist keeps waving matches at your house, the only logical response is to hand him the keys and power of attorney.
Source: theguardian.com
#imperialism#killing-democracy
imperialism
trump threatens ‘massive armada,’ discovers that’s not actually a policy
Tehran protesters block a street while somewhere off-camera Trump is explaining how aircraft carriers are just really big negotiation tools.
Trump is once again playing gunboat diplomat, telling Axios that a “massive armada” of U.S. ships is ready to make Iran see reason, and hey, maybe he’ll toss in a second carrier just to really underline how bad he is at subtlety. The USS Abraham Lincoln is already in the neighborhood, because nothing says serious negotiations like parking floating airbases off someone’s coast and calling it a “no-brainer.”
Tehran, facing protests with a death toll somewhere between 3,117 and nearly 7,000 people depending on whose numbers you believe, is under enormous internal pressure while Trump helpfully adds external pressure of the “do a deal or we do something very tough” variety. Iran’s foreign minister says there’s “no other option but to negotiate,” while other officials make clear that their missile program isn’t up for discussion, which is a minor problem since Trump is now insisting that any deal must cover both nukes and missiles, because the one Obama actually got is still banned in his personal religion.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu has hustled his trip to Washington forward to whisper into Trump’s ear about making sure Iran’s ballistic missiles and regional proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah are on the chopping block too. So we’ve got a repressive regime killing protesters, a U.S. president waving aircraft carriers around like Tinder pics, and an Israeli prime minister pushing for a harder, broader deal. What could possibly go wrong when a man who thinks “armada” is a personality trait is steering U.S. policy in the most volatile region on earth?
Source: nbcnews.com
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
imperialism
project vault: trump discovers humanitarian bombing, but for minerals
Trump announcing that the Congo begged him to take its minerals, surrounded by men who definitely think 'due diligence' is a gender studies course.
Donald Trump has decided the best way to honor the hundreds of miners recently crushed to death in a collapsed coltan pit in eastern DRC is to…announce that African leaders are begging him to "come and take our minerals" and then launch a $12bn critical minerals hoarding scheme called Project Vault. Because when you’ve allegedly "stopped" a conflict that is very much still ongoing, the logical next step is to freeze Congo’s tax and regulatory regime for a decade so American corporations can strip the place cleaner than Jared Kushner’s conscience.
While JD Vance holds a minerals summit like a cosplay version of the Berlin Conference, the administration is busy selling its raid on the Congo as a peace-and-prosperity plan that somehow forgets to include processing capacity, local value-add, or anything remotely resembling a path out of poverty for a country where four-fifths of the population lives below the poverty line. Meanwhile, the EU performs its usual impression of the "ethical" colonizer by quietly gutting corporate due diligence rules so nobody has to ask too many awkward questions about child labor, mine collapses, or rebels funding their insurgency with the same coltan that ends up in Western missiles and smartphones.
Global Witness notes that Trump’s sudden passion for critical minerals has less to do with solar panels and more to do with stuffing tantalum into jet engines and weapons systems, conveniently turning climate-transition materials into one more excuse for militarization. As M23 rebels rake in an estimated $800,000 a month from seized mines and Rwanda allegedly exports more coltan than it can possibly produce, Washington, Brussels, Beijing and Moscow all posture about stability while treating Congolese lives as just another input cost. The sales pitch is "strategic security" and "green tech"; the reality is the same old imperial resource grab with a fresh coat of ESG PowerPoint slides and a president bragging on TV that the victims asked him to take their stuff.
While JD Vance holds a minerals summit like a cosplay version of the Berlin Conference, the administration is busy selling its raid on the Congo as a peace-and-prosperity plan that somehow forgets to include processing capacity, local value-add, or anything remotely resembling a path out of poverty for a country where four-fifths of the population lives below the poverty line. Meanwhile, the EU performs its usual impression of the "ethical" colonizer by quietly gutting corporate due diligence rules so nobody has to ask too many awkward questions about child labor, mine collapses, or rebels funding their insurgency with the same coltan that ends up in Western missiles and smartphones.
Global Witness notes that Trump’s sudden passion for critical minerals has less to do with solar panels and more to do with stuffing tantalum into jet engines and weapons systems, conveniently turning climate-transition materials into one more excuse for militarization. As M23 rebels rake in an estimated $800,000 a month from seized mines and Rwanda allegedly exports more coltan than it can possibly produce, Washington, Brussels, Beijing and Moscow all posture about stability while treating Congolese lives as just another input cost. The sales pitch is "strategic security" and "green tech"; the reality is the same old imperial resource grab with a fresh coat of ESG PowerPoint slides and a president bragging on TV that the victims asked him to take their stuff.
Source: theguardian.com
#imperialism#forever-grifting
imperialism
trump discovers new foreign conflicts, voters discover they’re still hostages
Stock photo of Trump looking serious at a map he definitely has not read, while poll numbers cower in the corner.
NPR does its polite public-radio best to summarize the week where Donald Trump kept collecting foreign conflicts like they’re NFT drops, while voters quietly told pollsters they’re exhausted, broke, and somehow still being asked whether immigrants are the real problem. The Trump administration’s idea of “engagement” abroad appears to be a mix of impulsive saber-rattling and vibes-based geopolitics, with the rest of the world playing the role of unpaid extra in his never-ending reality show.
The poll, meanwhile, reveals the usual fun-house mirror of American priorities: people are worried about the economy hollowed out by oligarchs, but get handed another round of fearmongering about the border; they want stability, but are offered a president who treats foreign policy like live-tweeting a bar fight. So yes, democracy is technically still here, but it’s mostly being used as a focus group for whichever foreign dust-up Trump wants to wander into next.
Source: npr.org
#imperialism#anti-immigration
imperialism
trump tries to buy greenland again, accidentally creates a nato pop-up mall
Nuuk, Greenland: a colorful Arctic town currently resisting offers from a man who thinks foreign policy is Zillow but with aircraft carriers.
Trump announces the US needs to “own” Greenland for national security, because nothing says strategic genius like colonial cosplay with nukes. After threatening to "take control" of the territory, he now claims he’s just "exploring a deal" with Denmark, European allies, and Canada — which is what you say when everyone tells you to stop trying to put a price tag on other people’s homelands.
Canada and France respond by opening consulates in Nuuk on the same day, like a coordinated "absolutely not" from NATO with diplomatic stationery. Governor General Mary Simon — an Inuk leader who actually understands the Arctic, unlike the guy who thinks it’s a golf course with ice hazards — flies in with a Canadian Coast Guard ship to underscore that Greenlanders get to decide their own future, not some reality TV landlord in Washington.
Inuit leaders are blunt: Trump’s Greenland fantasy sounds a lot like the old colonial project with better branding and worse hair. They’re openly worried the US might revive its "Canada as the 51st state" daydreams, especially since Inuit homelands are central to Arctic militarisation. So while Trump plays Monopoly with the map, actual Arctic communities are scrambling to build alliances to protect themselves from the world’s richest country behaving like it just discovered conquest on a podcast.
The result: what was supposed to be Trump’s big strongman real-estate moment has turned into a NATO group project on how to quietly contain the guy who thinks the Arctic is just beachfront property that hasn’t thawed yet.
Source: bbc.com
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
imperialism
pentagon plays whack-a-drone with iran
U.S. forces demonstrate their enduring mastery of turning the Middle East into a live-fire notification setting.
The U.S. military reportedly shot down an Iranian drone, because nothing says "stable world order" like perpetual, barely-explained confrontations in the Middle East. Details are thin, but the basic plot is familiar: a drone gets too close to U.S. forces, the Pentagon flexes, and everyone pretends this is just another routine Tuesday instead of one more step in an endless cycle of tit-for-tat brinkmanship.
Instead of Congress debating war powers or anyone asking whether this low-key air war has an endgame, we get a 1:22 highlight reel and move on to the next crisis. The message from Washington remains clear: the Forever War may be background noise now, but it’s still very much on autoplay.
Instead of Congress debating war powers or anyone asking whether this low-key air war has an endgame, we get a 1:22 highlight reel and move on to the next crisis. The message from Washington remains clear: the Forever War may be background noise now, but it’s still very much on autoplay.
Source: nbcnews.com
#imperialism#national-security
imperialism
trump liberates venezuelan oil from the cruel shackles of not being drilled by u.s. companies
Venezuelan oil fields, now auditioning for the role of 'America’s Next Top Extraction Colony.'
The Trump White House is "working around the clock" — their words — to do the one thing they always manage to execute flawlessly: help oil companies. This time, they’re preparing a general license so more U.S. firms can drill in Venezuela without tripping over those pesky U.S. sanctions that supposedly exist for reasons. Chevron is currently the only American company allowed to pump Venezuelan crude, but Trump’s team is racing to make sure that exclusive club looks more like a donor list.
The administration already handed out a license last week so U.S. firms can trade oil produced in Venezuela, and now they’re going full "open bar" with drilling rights. Industry response so far? Tepid. Even oil executives, a group not famous for their ethical queasiness, are apparently looking at Trump’s Venezuela plan and thinking, "Ehh, this seems a little dicey." So naturally, the White House is doubling down, turning sanctions policy into a loyalty rewards program for companies willing to play in an authoritarian petrostate if it props up Trump’s narrative of "energy dominance" and maybe a few balance sheets back home.
While Congress is busy fighting over DHS enforcement and shutdowns, the administration is quietly converting U.S. foreign policy toward Venezuela into a fossil-fuel side quest: sanctions for show, licenses for friends. Human rights, democracy, climate concerns, regional stability — all neatly filed under "unserious" next to the recycling bin, so long as American drillers get a shot at another heavy-crude playground.
Source: thehill.com
#imperialism#forever-grifting
imperialism
trump sends an armada, discovers you can’t bomb a country into being fine
US Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet launches off the USS Abraham Lincoln, bravely defending America from the grave threat of not starting another Middle East war.
Donald Trump has parked an "armada" off Iran’s doorstep, because nothing says responsible governance like handing a man who rage-tweets at TV segments control of carrier strike groups. The USS Abraham Lincoln, guided-missile destroyers, bombers, and missile defenses are now the backdrop for a choose-your-own-disaster adventure in which Tehran’s options are: 1) accept a US-imposed deal that bails out its own corrupt regime, 2) get hit with "controlled" US strikes that somehow won’t spiral into region-wide chaos (sure), or 3) implode into Libya/Syria-style collapse while the White House pretends it’s all part of a freedom plan.
Internally, Iran is a wreck: years of corruption, economic collapse, and the brutal crushing of the 2022 "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising have left a regime that’s still killing thousands but no longer scaring people into staying home. Externally, Israel has turned the long-running shadow war into a very loud, very kinetic one, systematically dismantling Iran’s regional network and nudging Tehran straight into Uncle Don’s crosshairs. The same US president who blew up the 2015 nuclear deal and had Qassem Suleimani killed is now back for a sequel, this time selling the fantasy that a bit more pressure, a few more bombs, and some sanctions magic will produce "regime transformation" instead of the usual endless rubble and refugees.
For the Iranian people, every path is terrible; for Trump, every path is a campaign ad. A coerced deal lets him pose as the great dealmaker saving the world from nukes while propping up a weakened theocracy. A "limited" war lets him cosplay wartime leader without ever explaining to Congress what the strategy is or what happens if it all goes sideways. And a chaotic collapse? That’s just another chance to scream about refugees on Fox and demand more emergency powers at home. The only thing actually being stabilized here is the American imperial ego, and it’s getting more dangerous every time a president learns he can freelance foreign wars with nothing more than a press conference and some flag-draped B-roll.
Source: theguardian.com
#imperialism#killing-democracy
imperialism
trump discovers colombia exists, immediately wants to bomb it
Gustavo Petro, seen here shortly before flying to Washington to discuss how many US bombs it takes to qualify as a ‘strategic partnership’.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro is heading to the White House to meet Donald Trump, the man who recently said a military operation in Colombia "sounds good" like he’s ordering the sampler platter at Applebee’s. This follows months of Trump-approved US strikes on "alleged" drug boats, ICE behaving so brutally Petro compared them to "Nazi brigades", and Washington treating half the hemisphere as its personal backyard empire.
Now that the US has seized Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and cleared the way for American oil firms, suddenly there’s a very serious conversation about "stabilising" the Venezuelan-Colombian border — which, shockingly, turns out to mean protecting corporate assets from ELN guerrillas. Petro has already deployed 30,000 Colombian troops to the border, while Trump threatens to expand US strikes to land targets across the region, because nothing says "partnership" like your "ally" reserving the right to bomb your territory.
Enter Rand Paul, who apparently moonlights as the Empire’s marriage counselor, brokering a "cordial" phone call that did a supposed 180 for both sides. Washington calls it diplomacy; everyone else calls it what it is: the US dangling security cooperation and intelligence sharing while Trump keeps the option of regional airstrikes on the table to safeguard oil flows and reenact the Monroe Doctrine in 4K. But sure, we’re told this will be a "constructive conversation" — just ignore the drones, the navy, and the part where Colombia’s sovereignty is treated as a negotiable line item on an ExxonMobil spreadsheet.
Now that the US has seized Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and cleared the way for American oil firms, suddenly there’s a very serious conversation about "stabilising" the Venezuelan-Colombian border — which, shockingly, turns out to mean protecting corporate assets from ELN guerrillas. Petro has already deployed 30,000 Colombian troops to the border, while Trump threatens to expand US strikes to land targets across the region, because nothing says "partnership" like your "ally" reserving the right to bomb your territory.
Enter Rand Paul, who apparently moonlights as the Empire’s marriage counselor, brokering a "cordial" phone call that did a supposed 180 for both sides. Washington calls it diplomacy; everyone else calls it what it is: the US dangling security cooperation and intelligence sharing while Trump keeps the option of regional airstrikes on the table to safeguard oil flows and reenact the Monroe Doctrine in 4K. But sure, we’re told this will be a "constructive conversation" — just ignore the drones, the navy, and the part where Colombia’s sovereignty is treated as a negotiable line item on an ExxonMobil spreadsheet.
Source: bbc.com
#imperialism#national-security
imperialism
kushner launches genocide chic real estate startup: ‘new gaza’
Jared Kushner, freshly promoted from failed peace envoy to genocide-era real estate pitchman, explains to Davos billionaires how you, too, can turn a flattened enclave into a waterfront investment opportunity.
Jared Kushner has emerged from whatever hedge-fund-scented cave he lives in to unveil “New Gaza”, a Trump administration blueprint that turns a devastated, densely packed strip of land into a glossy brochure for lofts, offshore rigs, and “advanced industrial zones.” Two years of war, a UN commission finding that Israel committed genocide, $18 billion in destroyed infrastructure, and 2.2 million displaced Palestinians are recast as a ground-floor investment opportunity. Kushner assures Davos that they’ve already started “removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition,” which is a poetic way of saying: the bombs were phase one of the development plan.
This miracle vision of peace-through-property-flipping rests entirely on Trump’s ceasefire deal: Hamas must fully disarm, Israel withdraws in phases, and reconstruction only happens in areas where Palestinians are either disarmed into submission or already cleared out and under Israeli military control. The plan is almost impressively vague on who actually gets housing, how land deeds work, or what happens to families currently living in the buildings Kushner wants to bulldoze in central and western Gaza City. But it’s crystal clear on one thing: Israeli real estate investor Yakir Gabay helped craft the scheme and sits with Kushner on the White House–appointed Gaza Executive Board, which will report to Trump’s Orwellian Board of Peace. So Palestinians may not get property rights, but at least the investor class gets a board seat.
Critics, including people NPR spoke to in Gaza, say the plan effectively erases Gaza and replaces it with a privatized “destination” layered over the ruins of a massacred population. The administration’s answer to a genocide finding isn’t accountability or self-determination; it’s park-lined neighborhoods, floor-to-ceiling windows, and an offshore oil and gas rig slapped on top of a mass grave. Call it the Trump Doctrine: turn every catastrophe into a branding opportunity, outsource justice to developers, and let the people whose lives were destroyed fight over whatever’s left in the footnotes—assuming they were ever consulted at all.
Source: npr.org
#imperialism#forever-grifting
imperialism
fifa hands trump a peace prize for not bombing the stadium (yet)
Gianni Infantino and Arsène Wenger, calmly workshopping new ways to redefine 'peace' until it covers kidnapping presidents and threatening to seize Greenland.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino has finally found a line even Fifa’s corruption-hardened audience thinks is a bit much: he handed Donald Trump the inaugural Fifa peace prize, then went on TV to explain that, no really, the guy who had the Venezuelan president snatched and floated using military force to grab Greenland is actually a great humanitarian. According to Infantino, Trump was "instrumental" in saving "thousands of lives" in an Israel–Hamas ceasefire, so obviously the next step is a trophy from the organization that once made Qatar a feel‑good branding exercise.
After tossing out a lazy crack about British fans and arrests, Infantino mumbled an apology, then moved briskly back to the serious work of reputational laundering for a US administration facing unrest in cities like Minneapolis over its immigration crackdowns and openly musing about annexing chunks of the Arctic. Awarding a peace prize to the guy escalating global tensions is a bold choice; next up, Fifa’s ethics award to a hedge fund.
Because the farce needed a sequel, Infantino also floated that Fifa and Uefa "have to" look at letting Russia back into international football, explaining that banning the country after its invasion of Ukraine "has not achieved anything" except frustration. But don’t worry, he insists there’s no reason for anyone to boycott Trump’s World Cup, since businesses don’t boycott countries over human rights and democracy, so why should football? When your moral compass is pegged to corporate sponsorships and autocrats’ whims, Trump’s America looks like just another lucrative venue, not a warning sign.
Source: theguardian.com
#imperialism#killing-democracy
imperialism
trump celebrates freedom 250 by trying out a real blockade
Drivers in Havana wait in a fuel line so long it might qualify as a new form of US foreign policy: slow-motion regime change by empty gas tank.
Trump signed a shiny new executive order slapping extra tariffs on any country that dares sell oil to Cuba, because nothing says “protecting American citizens” like deliberately collapsing another country’s electricity, hospitals, food supply and transportation system. The White House tossed in some boilerplate about Cuba being a “safe haven” for Hezbollah and Hamas, and then, in a bold move, forgot to provide literally any proof. In other words: we’re doing regime change sanctions again, but this time with even less subtlety.
On the ground, Cubans are queuing for hours at gas stations that only take dollars most people don’t have, watching the clock tick down to the moment the island just runs out of fuel in a few weeks. Mexico backed off a planned oil shipment after US pressure, Venezuela’s oil is gone now that Washington helped boot Maduro, and other allies have gone quiet. Meanwhile, at the US embassy’s Freedom 250 party, chargé d’affaires Mike Hammer helpfully clarified the policy: Cubans have complained about “the blockade” for decades, but now there is going to be a real blockade. Because nothing says “land of the free” like bragging about economically strangling 11 million people.
Washington officials are reportedly shopping around for Cuban insiders “who would cut a deal,” just like they did before toppling Maduro, while floating the idea of a full naval blockade to Politico. A European diplomat points out they don’t even need warships—fear of US punishment is enough to stop tankers on its own. Cuba calls it a “brutal assault against a nation that doesn’t threaten the US,” releases videos of soldiers training for invasion, and prepares for more blackouts. Trump, for his part, says “Cuba will be failing pretty soon,” treating the slow-motion humanitarian disaster as a campaign talking point. But sure, tell us again how this is all about democracy and not 1960s-style imperial cosplay.
Source: theguardian.com
#imperialism#killing-democracy
imperialism
armadas, deadlines, and vibes-based foreign policy
Trump in the Oval Office, confidently explaining that the Navy is basically just really expensive driftwood that he’s decided to park next to Iran.
Donald Trump announced that Iran "wants to make a deal" while simultaneously floating a large US naval "Armada" off its coast, because nothing says good faith diplomacy like parking a war fleet in someone's front yard and then refusing to say when you'll leave. Asked if there was a deadline for Tehran, Trump replied that "only they know for sure" — a strong statement from a man whose entire Iran strategy appears to be vibes, bluster, and whatever Fox was running in the chyron that morning.
In between threatening a sovereign state with war, Trump laid out his two conditions to avoid military action: "no nuclear" and "stop killing protesters" — which would sound less cynical if he weren't simultaneously cozying up to other regimes with body counts and zero democracy. Human rights groups estimate more than 6,300 people have already been killed in Iran's crackdown, with the final toll potentially above 25,000, while Trump treats the whole thing like a reality show cliffhanger: "If we do make a deal, that's good. If we don't make a deal, we'll see what happens."
Meanwhile, Iran repeats that its nuclear program is peaceful and says its missile defense systems will "never" be up for negotiation, Russia is quietly meeting with Iran's security chief, and Trump is out here explaining that the warships "have to float someplace, so they might as well float near Iran." In other words, US foreign policy is now officially "we pointed a gun at your head because we needed somewhere to put it" — a totally normal way to run a nuclear-adjacent standoff in a volatile region.
Source: bbc.com
#imperialism#national-security
imperialism
world's dumbest embargo expansion speedruns a trade war
A container ship bravely attempting to deliver oil without triggering the latest episode of Trump’s Sanctions & Tariffs Extended Universe.
Donald Trump has discovered a bold new use for tariffs: punishing any country that dares sell oil to a nation he doesn’t like. In a fresh executive order—because why involve Congress when you have a Sharpie—Trump threatened new levies on countries that supply fuel to Cuba, offering zero details on rates, targets, or how this isn’t just 1962 cosplay with extra brain damage.
Fresh off literally having US forces snatch Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in a January raid on Caracas—because nothing says "rules-based international order" like abducting foreign leaders—Trump is now tightening the screws on Havana, boasting that Cuba will be "falling pretty soon" as Venezuelan oil dries up. In other words, Washington is openly using the global trading system as a hostage situation: sell fuel to Cuba and we tank your economy too.
Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez had the audacity to point out that the country has "the absolute right to import fuel" from willing exporters "without interference" from the US. Adorable. Meanwhile, the administration is busy rewriting the definition of "free trade" to mean "free to do whatever Washington wants or enjoy your new tariffs." But sure, tell us more about how this isn’t imperialism, just "maximum pressure" with a side of collective punishment.
Fresh off literally having US forces snatch Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in a January raid on Caracas—because nothing says "rules-based international order" like abducting foreign leaders—Trump is now tightening the screws on Havana, boasting that Cuba will be "falling pretty soon" as Venezuelan oil dries up. In other words, Washington is openly using the global trading system as a hostage situation: sell fuel to Cuba and we tank your economy too.
Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez had the audacity to point out that the country has "the absolute right to import fuel" from willing exporters "without interference" from the US. Adorable. Meanwhile, the administration is busy rewriting the definition of "free trade" to mean "free to do whatever Washington wants or enjoy your new tariffs." But sure, tell us more about how this isn’t imperialism, just "maximum pressure" with a side of collective punishment.
Source: bbc.com
#imperialism#trade-war#killing-democracy