People I love, respect and value keep sending me podcasts, videos etc which often last more than an hour. I feel like I absolutely cannot commit that kind of time (or even half that time) to something I know nothing about, no matter the recommender. That's why I am incredibly grateful to anything that releases transcripts. I am a really fast reader, and take in information much more easily by means of text!
As is the enthusiastic support by the party which has always justified America’s gun laws by the hypothetical need to have the means to defend oneself if a tyrannical government goes after the people.
By the way, in case this wasn't clear, I meant the GOP's "enthusiastic support" of the ICE project!
The irony of Dear Leader’s criticisms of the Iranian regime’s crackdowns on protesters is pungent.
As is the enthusiastic support by the party which has always justified America's gun laws by the hypothetical need to have the means to defend oneself if a tyrannical government goes after the people.
GtNC is scaring the crap out of me.
Sorry, wonkie - I was pretty damn scared myself when I read that. I'm just hoping Carole Cadwalladr went a bit over the top about it, but we shall see by other reactions.
Oh God again....
(I have had to take out all the clips, photos etc because links.)
Peter Tiel's New Model Army
The Palantirisation of the UK military is a national security disaster
Carole Cadwalladr
Jan 11
This newsletter is going to cover three crucial subjects today:
How Britain’s national security is hopelessly compromised. We’ve sold out our military to a key Trump ally in what I believe is a catastrophically naive and dangerous deal. (If you’re American, this affects you too.)The global war on truth. And why sticking to the facts is now a radical act.How we fight back. In which I post a whole smorgasbord of inspiring videos that I grabbed off social media that you didn’t know you needed.I’ve never started with a bulleted list before but then I can’t remember a NATO country threatening to invade a NATO country before either. I figured you might need 3) after reading 1) and 2). 1) The UK’s national security is hopelessly compromisedThis morning, the BBC ran an interview with Peter Mandelson, the self-described ‘best pal’ of Jeffrey Epstein and until he was sacked, the UK ambassador to Washington.
Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel, also represents Palantir, the US surveillance defence company founded by Trump ally, Peter Thiel. When Keir Starmer visited Washington, a trip arranged by Mandelson, he had only two meetings: one with Trump and one with Palantir.
If we never heard from Peter Mandelson again, it would be too soon. And yet here he is, all over the national broadcaster refusing to apologise to Epstein’s victims and praising Trump’s “graciousness”.
But this was not all. Because also on the BBC this morning was his client, Louis Mosley, the CEO of Palantir UK and the grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
I’m not linking to either of these videos because they were both absolutely abject failures of journalism. This is the second time Mosley has been invited onto this same Sunday morning show as some sort of legitimate political pundit.
He is no such thing. His company is an integral part of the US defence and homeland security apparatus and the illegal data gathering operation carried out by Elon Musk’s DOGE to say nothing of its involvement in profiling kill targets for the IDF in Gaza. The only circumstance he should be on the BBC is to be subjected to a journalistic grilling, not asked a couple of softball questions on his views on global politics.
The UK Ministry of Defence has just signed a new £240 million contract with Palantir. Actually, it’s not a contract, it’s more than that. The UK government describes it as “a strategic partnership”. A “partnership” entered into without any sort of competitive tender that was announced during Trump’s visit to the UK and which disastrously compromises our entire national security infrastructure.
We have embedded a notorious US military surveillance company whose founder is a close ally of President Trump into the heart of our military at a moment in which the US is threatening to invade our NATO ally, Greenland.
If you’re British and reading this, please send it to your MP. The level of understanding in UK politics and media about Silicon Valley’s alliance with Trump and the geopolitical and security consequences of this appears to be non-existent.
If our national security rests on US technology, we have no national security.
It sounds like writerly hyperbole to describe the UK as a vassal state, but I mean it in its most literal sense. It’s explicitly stated in the ur-text of Trump’s White House’s foreign policy, the National Security Strategy document, that US companies will be used as instruments of state power. There is no hidden agenda here: Trump has set it all out. (For a breakdown of this document and what it all means, see this week's piece in the Nerve by former British diplomat, Arthur Snell.)
What will it mean to embed American software into the UK military? Well consider, Tesla. You don’t really buy a car when you buy a Tesla, you rent the software that remains the property of Elon Musk industries who can choose to immobilise your car or any feature of it at any time.
Palantir is the most terrifying of the US companies but it’s also just one of a whole raft of compromising, self-sabotaging deals that the UK government has entered into. The UK ‘Sovereign Cloud’ has been contracted out to Oracle, owned by another key Trump ally, Larry Ellison, the man whose son is behind the disastrous buyout of CBS and the upcoming US TikTok takeover. And then there are deals with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Amazon, BlackRock, Nvidia and Scale AI.
And this was the “win”, the brilliant triumph that Keir Starmer pulled from the jaws of defeat in the trade tariff negotiations. It is the opposite of that: it’s surrender, the cost of which won’t just be measured in pounds or dollars. I fear the cost could be much, much higher, paid in blood and pain.
It barely even registered this week that Trump announced he was increasing the US military’s budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
I wrote this in last week’s newsletter, on Saturday morning, hours after the US attacked Venezuela and before America woke up:
“This should precipitate a whole new global crisis. It’s an unprovoked military assault on a sovereign nation in breach of international law. What should worry us more is if it doesn’t…
Trump isn’t just a rogue, out-of-control president, America is a rogue state. And the longer we fail to acknowledge that, the more danger we are in.”
Trump’s actions should provoke a global crisis, I said. And it should worry us more if it doesn’t. A week later, the news is in: prepare to be more worried
2) The global war on truth..and what it means when your own PM joins itI’m posting this interview between Gary Gibbons of Channel 4 News and Keir Starmer on Monday because it feels like a crucial moment that we should footnote and mark.
Starmer, an international human rights lawyer, is unable to say the attack on Venezuela was in breach of international law. This is the leader of a G7 nation, unable to confirm that black is black and white is white.
All week, pundits in the UK media have wanged on about how Starmer couldn’t have his “Hugh Grant moment” - a reference to the scene in Love Actually in which he Prime Minister Grant stands up to President Billy Bob Thornton (after seeing him making moves on his lady crush) and missed the far bigger point.
It’s the same pundits and journalists who applauded Starmer’s actions in sucking up to Trump, laying on a state visit, a royal banquet, the full works and celebrating the “win”, a deal that didn’t land Britain with a disastrous trade tariff.
But what they failed to point out is that Starmer paid Trump’s ransom - the disastrous, self-sabotaging tech deals detailed above. It’s not that Starmer risks “offending” Trump or is “caught in a bind” or “is in a tricky position” or any of the other phrases I’ve read and heard all week, it’s that he - and we - have been captured.
These deals represent the corporate capture of the UK state including, our cloud capacity, National Health Service, and now our military establishment. And the blindness, ignorance and ongoing denial is the most dangerous thing about this moment.
Starmer’s inability to speak the truth is not diplomacy. It’s evidence.
We are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump fascist project. We’ve sold out everyone in America who’s trying to fight back against it. Worst of all, we can’t even see it yet.
I’m not using the f-word lightly or facetiously. I’ve avoided it for a year. But what is so dangerous right now is the assault on truth, on facts, on the evidence of our own eyes. What is happening right now in America is fascism. And we, the UK, are now up to our necks in it too.
3) How to fight backCongratulations! You’ve got through the depressing bit of the newsletter. This last section is a compendium of clips and images that I’ve seen this week that is the evidence you need that nothing is hopeless.
This is Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis. He’s using the f-word too.
A masked paramilitary gunman murdered a Minneapolis citizen in cold blood, and this is what the city’s mayor told ICE at his press conference. “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
It’s a painful contrast to Keir Starmer and a necessary corrective. What Trump is doing is meant to scare us. And not being scared, speaking the facts, taking the piss and recording it all on your phone are all radical acts. All week, I’ve been collecting individual responses to hard power ranging from the courageous to the creative to the comedic.
I loved this footage of an Uber driver that embodies all three of these qualities. Watch him taking on US border guards who asked to see his ID. Why, he asks them? You have an accent, one of them says. “You’re going by accents now?” he says incredulously. “You guys need psychiatric checkups,” he tells them when they ask where he was born. He satirically taunts them until they eventually give up.
This was how London greeted the news of the Venezuela strike. A “nonce” is Britspeak for “paedophile”.
I also loved and admired this woman’s response to ICE agents who stopped to threaten and intimidate her for following their vehicle. I don’t want you to make a bad decision, the ICE agent tells her. “That’s funny coming from you!” she says smiling away at him.
And this is another brilliant official, Rochelle Bilal, the sheriff of Philadelphia, pointing out all the ways that the actions of the ICE agent who shot Renee Nicole Good were in violation of both “legal law” and “moral law”. ICE, she said, was “made-up, fake, wannabe law enforcement”.
I know, I know, this is probably too much content. But consider this a public service, I’m saving you from the algorithmic scroll which threw up this for me: Canadian comedian Trent McClellan dressed up as a NICE agent to terrorise tourists in Halifax. His weapons are Canadian-levels of courtesy and free candy. It’s from two months ago but I only just clocked it and I think it’s a really useful reminder that none of this is normal. This is normal:
Finally, it’s been extraordinary to witness what’s happening on the streets of Iran. You’ll have seen the incredible rivers of protestors flooding the streets of cities all across the country. That’s what people power looks like. Is it finally the revolution that Iranians have been longing for? The world is holding its breath.
I’m not sure who this woman is but this week’s newsletter is dedicated to her and the people of Iran and, especially, the incredible, gutsy, powerful women who have simply had enough.
Thank you to everyone who’s reading this. It’s one of my own personal rays of hope. If you like it, please share it with your friends and family and tell me in the comments whether I’m right, wrong, too doomery, not doomery enough, whether you like the vids and anything else that strikes you.
What did I actually say about Trump’s negotiation strategy (that I shorthanded “Art of the Deal”)? “Not only do I not like the rhetoric and the disrespect, I think it backfires here.”
bc, you did indeed say that. But what you said immediately before was ambiguous:
I’ve been observing the results achieved, the rhetoric and the resistance. IMO, many are falling for the rhetoric. If this isn’t prodding, it’s the Art of the Deal, trying to get a better bargaining position IMO for a minerals deal.
That suggests that this (the Trump approach) is a strategy to get a better bargaining position, or deal. So it looks like you think that although it may not work, the strategy is not actually aimed at takeover.
I understand the wish to see it (and the current US approach in general) as something rational in intent. I too have had a tendency to do this in the past, perhaps because it is too uncomfortable to think that leaders are behaving in quite such a crazy or out-of-control manner. But, in the case of DJT, this is truly just sane-washing. And it is consistent with your approach to this administration in general; you do not approve of Trump's "behaviour", but you approve of (or rationalise) his intent. And people doing that about someone like him leads, for example, from "it is reasonable to take steps to deport criminal illegal immigrants" to armed groups of ICE agents swarming US cities against states' wishes, detaining mainly US citizens and illegal immigrants who overwhelmingly have committed no criminal offences, mistreating and in some cases killing them. And similarly, the Trump approach to Greenland could end in breaking up NATO, a result that no US administration of any stripe has wanted.
I wanted to be fair to your view about the Greenland issue by posting that link with the interview by Freddie Sayers of Helen Thompson, Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl, because they are well-qualified to put all this in an accurate historical context long pre-dating Trump, and ignoring his specific rhetoric and approach. And I think that this is valuable and important.
But expressing more conservative views here, much as many of us favour hearing them, while also implicitly excusing Trump's egregious and dangerous behaviour, is bound to come up against fierce opposition. The people commenting here accurately foretold what his first term would be like, and are once again in the devastating Cassandra-like position of watching while his second term proceeds to (as someone said to me at lunch today) "not only tear apart America, but also the world".
Donald Trump, J D Vance, Steven Miller, RFKJnr, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi etc etc: are these people who you are content to see representing your country and your political views?
Good to be reminded that there is an agreement in place between the US and Denmark from 1916, when Denmark sold their Virgin Islands to the US, in which the US recognises Danish sovereignty over Greenland. However, in fairness to bc, the following interviews do give an interesting (and not Trump-positive) view of the world geo-political issues:
Freddie Sayers speaks with author and Cambridge professor Helen Thompson, economist Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl about the Trump administration's escalating rhetoric and strategic moves to acquire Greenland. Covering the historical legal underpinnings of Danish sovereignty while analysing modern geopolitical drivers such as the Monroe Doctrine, Arctic militarisation, and the essential role of the region in a new space race for strategic security dominance, they explore how the Greenland situation is symptomatic of a profound breakdown in trust between Washington and Western Europe, with the administration increasingly viewing European leadership as obstructive political rivals in a shifting global order.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IuCswB2RLI&t=3s
However, where bc is concerned, I do think his Sweet Summer Child (SSC) status is utterly confirmed by any suggestion that Trump's approach to this or any other issue is anything to do with mastery of the art of the deal. Quite apart from what russell correctly says about the book of that title, one should never forget that regarding Trump as such a master of deal-making is pretty deluded given his financial history (until, that is, the advent of enthusiastically embraced presidential corruption), not to mention his absurd claims to have ended several wars which make him, understandably, an international laughing stock. The laugh may well be on the rest of the world, however; that's a risk when you elect a Caligula-type figure.
For anyone interested in what kind of poet she was in life, this is Renee Good's poem from 2020 which won "one of Old Dominion’s most prestigious accolades, the Academy of American Poets Prize":
What cleek, russell, hsh and wj said. And coincidentally I've been listening to Phil Ochs for the first time in a long time, but I'd never heard this, which seems appropriate to the times:
President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.
Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
bc: a lot of people here said "he", and I had always tried before to say s/he, so it was a move against assumptions. Thank you for confirming.
“Danish longer than the United States has existed,” that was true at the time of WWII and the geopolitical reality required its occupation militarily.
Denmark was at the time occupied by an enemy nation. There is no possible current geopolitical reality which could require its military occupation.
Why is that not enough?
It is enough for security, so why is there still talk about the US "needing" Greenland? Could it be that the real reason is more to do with, for example, rare earths, and/or Trump's desire to be a POTUS who "acquired" a territory larger than Louisiana and Alaska?
You would think Russian aggression would prompt more concern about Greenland.
If you think Trump (and much of the current GOP) is more aware of the threat from Russia than the Europeans are, it's hard to know what to say to you. And further to which, pretty much everyone I know and read agrees that the other NATO countries were far too slow to ramp up their funding, albeit they are doing so now.
If you think the belts and roads initiative is entirely benign, well, I don’t.
I don't, and I rather doubt anyone here does either. Are you by any chance falling into what I will call the "McKinney Trap" of assuming that the commentariat here are supporters of the CCP?
And maybe, just maybe, all this rhetoric is meant to get Denmark and the EU to care enough to do something about it.
I'm tempted to say "oh you sweet summer child". It's almost as if you haven't been observing the Trump administration in action, and not only in their foreign adventures. Is there any innocent explanation for their behaviour that you would consider meets the definition of "sane-washing", and how it enables normalisation of morally, legally and practically unwise and unacceptable behaviour?
Further to our earlier discussion about Fiona Hill's testimony, this is from a new piece by Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic yesterday headlined "Trump's 'American Dominance' May Leave us with Nothing". Gift link to the whole article follows.
Back in 2019, Fiona Hill, a National Security Council official in the first Trump administration, testified to a House committee that Russians pushing the creation of spheres of influence had been offering to somehow “swap” Venezuela, their closest ally in Latin America, for Ukraine. Since then, the notion that international relations should promote great-power dominance, not universal values or networks of allies, has spread from Moscow to Washington. The administration’s new National Security Strategy outlines a plan to dominate the Americas, enigmatically describing U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere as “Enlist and Expand,” and downplaying threats from China and Russia. Trump has also issued threats to Denmark, Panama, and Canada, all allies whose sovereignty we now challenge.
Oh my God, you think nothing this administration does can still shock you, and then you see this in today's NYT:
On the fifth anniversary of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, the Trump administration created a new page on the official White House website that represented the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility. The site blames Capitol Police officers, who defended lawmakers that day, for starting the assault; Democrats, who were the rioters’ main targets, for failing to prevent it; and former Vice President Mike Pence, who rejected falsehoods about the 2020 election, for allowing the results to be certified.
bc, I’m glad your reasoning has more to do with conditions in Venezuela than with your trust in the current administration.
I'm hoping bc will tell us what her reasoning is (or will be) about the menacing of Greenland (or its takeover), given her extraordinary comments about the US occupation in WW2, bearing in mind for example that Greenland has been Danish longer than the United States has existed. Not to mention that 85% of the Greenland population (which is 56,000) have rejected the suggestion that they should be part of the USA. And an opinion about the comments by Steven Miller about this issue would also be welcome.
And for anyone who wants to listen to (or read a transcript of) a conversation between David Frum and Anne Applebaum on the Venezuela story, this is a gift link from the Atlantic. It's a couple of days old - I always wait for transcript because that's how I prefer to take in my information and media if possible:
As I've said before, I'm interested in what saner and more clear-sighted rightwingers think of Trump's adventures, and as far as I know nobody has ever accused Anne Applebaum of being any kind of lefty!
Apart from that, the only thing we haven't mentioned is the much quoted opinion going round that the reason Trump did not instal María Corina Machado as president given that she won the last election is that she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, and didn't immediately say "I can't take it, it should be President Trump's". She came to her senses afterwards, but it was too late. Again, no "basis in fact".
Her testimony was not that the Trump Administration was actually considering a Ukraine/Venezuela swap
Her testimony was in 2019, and she left her job with Trump 10 days before his famous "perfect" phone conversation with Zelensky unsuccessfully seeking help against Biden. Since then, Russia has invaded Ukraine, Trump has "mystifyingly" favoured Russia over Ukraine at almost every point, and has now invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its appalling president, while claiming the US is "running" Venezuela.
Citing her testimony to say “Trump got the idea from the Russians” has no basis in fact.
Hmm. An interesting observation.
And what Ambassador Ken Fairfax actually said was "It's interesting that Russia withdrew all of its personnel from Venezuela exactly 14 days before Trump's invasion. China didn't withdraw their personnel. Cuba didn't withdraw theirs. Just Russia. It is almost as if someone called Putin to warn him what's up as part of a quid pro quo. Not almost."
To quote Monty Python, "a nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat". Or, to put it in a more pedestrian fashion "there are none so blind as those who will not see".
And comparing Venezuela to Ukraine at this point is truly balloon juice.
This ignores the testimony of Fiona Hill during the hearings for Trump's first impeachment in 2019. She is a deeply impressive person who had been at the time Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on Trump's National Security Council.
Just make a search box, and enter "Venezuela", and it goes straight there, including Ukraine. Adam Silverman is right, and so is nous. To have US patsies for Putin in position to be manipulated by him into breaching international law, and talk about taking the territory of NATO allies, is a truly extraordinary development. O brave new world, that has such American politicians in it!
Jesus. This from David Frum's piece in the Atlantic today, lands sinisterly:
Because the anti-Trump side is preoccupied with domestic politics, it sometimes overlooks how Trump is corroding American leadership in the world. The Venezuelan regime is broadly unpopular in Latin America; its socialism of plunder has sent millions of desperate people into Colombia and other states. But U.S. intervention is deeply mistrusted in the region, associated much more closely with bringing dictators to power than with toppling them. The administration could have courted greater legitimacy for its actions by cooperating with regional partners, such as Colombia and Brazil, which have both tangled with the Maduro regime in the recent past. Refusing such cooperation is not merely an incidental vice of Trump’s foreign policy. That vice is at its core. Military action in Venezuela today without allies may prefigure action tomorrow against allies—for example, to invade and annex Greenland. The big strategic idea of the second Trump administration is that major powers are entitled to dominate their neighbors: Russia to dominate Ukraine, China to dominate its neighborhood, and the U.S. to rule over Venezuela, Greenland, Panama, and ultimately Canada—Trump’s desired “51st state.”
David Frum's politics are not mine, but I am determined to keep an eye on rational rightwingers, in case they ever have any influence on the GOP (hard to see at this point). If anybody wants the full piece, just let me know.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Talarico”
People I love, respect and value keep sending me podcasts, videos etc which often last more than an hour. I feel like I absolutely cannot commit that kind of time (or even half that time) to something I know nothing about, no matter the recommender. That's why I am incredibly grateful to anything that releases transcripts. I am a really fast reader, and take in information much more easily by means of text!
On “An open thread”
Fuck that guy and his glib dismissiveness. Fuck his lack of empathy for anyone outside of his own in-group. I wish him a heavy lesson in karma.
Seconded
"
As is the enthusiastic support by the party which has always justified America’s gun laws by the hypothetical need to have the means to defend oneself if a tyrannical government goes after the people.
By the way, in case this wasn't clear, I meant the GOP's "enthusiastic support" of the ICE project!
"
The irony of Dear Leader’s criticisms of the Iranian regime’s crackdowns on protesters is pungent.
As is the enthusiastic support by the party which has always justified America's gun laws by the hypothetical need to have the means to defend oneself if a tyrannical government goes after the people.
GtNC is scaring the crap out of me.
Sorry, wonkie - I was pretty damn scared myself when I read that. I'm just hoping Carole Cadwalladr went a bit over the top about it, but we shall see by other reactions.
"
Oh God again....
(I have had to take out all the clips, photos etc because links.)
Peter Tiel's New Model Army
The Palantirisation of the UK military is a national security disaster
Carole Cadwalladr
Jan 11
This newsletter is going to cover three crucial subjects today:
How Britain’s national security is hopelessly compromised. We’ve sold out our military to a key Trump ally in what I believe is a catastrophically naive and dangerous deal. (If you’re American, this affects you too.)The global war on truth. And why sticking to the facts is now a radical act.How we fight back. In which I post a whole smorgasbord of inspiring videos that I grabbed off social media that you didn’t know you needed.I’ve never started with a bulleted list before but then I can’t remember a NATO country threatening to invade a NATO country before either. I figured you might need 3) after reading 1) and 2).
1) The UK’s national security is hopelessly compromisedThis morning, the BBC ran an interview with Peter Mandelson, the self-described ‘best pal’ of Jeffrey Epstein and until he was sacked, the UK ambassador to Washington.
Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel, also represents Palantir, the US surveillance defence company founded by Trump ally, Peter Thiel. When Keir Starmer visited Washington, a trip arranged by Mandelson, he had only two meetings: one with Trump and one with Palantir.
If we never heard from Peter Mandelson again, it would be too soon. And yet here he is, all over the national broadcaster refusing to apologise to Epstein’s victims and praising Trump’s “graciousness”.
But this was not all. Because also on the BBC this morning was his client, Louis Mosley, the CEO of Palantir UK and the grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
I’m not linking to either of these videos because they were both absolutely abject failures of journalism. This is the second time Mosley has been invited onto this same Sunday morning show as some sort of legitimate political pundit.
He is no such thing. His company is an integral part of the US defence and homeland security apparatus and the illegal data gathering operation carried out by Elon Musk’s DOGE to say nothing of its involvement in profiling kill targets for the IDF in Gaza. The only circumstance he should be on the BBC is to be subjected to a journalistic grilling, not asked a couple of softball questions on his views on global politics.
The UK Ministry of Defence has just signed a new £240 million contract with Palantir. Actually, it’s not a contract, it’s more than that. The UK government describes it as “a strategic partnership”. A “partnership” entered into without any sort of competitive tender that was announced during Trump’s visit to the UK and which disastrously compromises our entire national security infrastructure.
We have embedded a notorious US military surveillance company whose founder is a close ally of President Trump into the heart of our military at a moment in which the US is threatening to invade our NATO ally, Greenland.
If you’re British and reading this, please send it to your MP. The level of understanding in UK politics and media about Silicon Valley’s alliance with Trump and the geopolitical and security consequences of this appears to be non-existent.
If our national security rests on US technology, we have no national security.
It sounds like writerly hyperbole to describe the UK as a vassal state, but I mean it in its most literal sense. It’s explicitly stated in the ur-text of Trump’s White House’s foreign policy, the National Security Strategy document, that US companies will be used as instruments of state power. There is no hidden agenda here: Trump has set it all out. (For a breakdown of this document and what it all means, see this week's piece in the Nerve by former British diplomat, Arthur Snell.)
What will it mean to embed American software into the UK military? Well consider, Tesla. You don’t really buy a car when you buy a Tesla, you rent the software that remains the property of Elon Musk industries who can choose to immobilise your car or any feature of it at any time.
Palantir is the most terrifying of the US companies but it’s also just one of a whole raft of compromising, self-sabotaging deals that the UK government has entered into. The UK ‘Sovereign Cloud’ has been contracted out to Oracle, owned by another key Trump ally, Larry Ellison, the man whose son is behind the disastrous buyout of CBS and the upcoming US TikTok takeover. And then there are deals with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Amazon, BlackRock, Nvidia and Scale AI.
And this was the “win”, the brilliant triumph that Keir Starmer pulled from the jaws of defeat in the trade tariff negotiations. It is the opposite of that: it’s surrender, the cost of which won’t just be measured in pounds or dollars. I fear the cost could be much, much higher, paid in blood and pain.
It barely even registered this week that Trump announced he was increasing the US military’s budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
I wrote this in last week’s newsletter, on Saturday morning, hours after the US attacked Venezuela and before America woke up:
Trump’s actions should provoke a global crisis, I said. And it should worry us more if it doesn’t. A week later, the news is in: prepare to be more worried
2) The global war on truth..and what it means when your own PM joins itI’m posting this interview between Gary Gibbons of Channel 4 News and Keir Starmer on Monday because it feels like a crucial moment that we should footnote and mark.
Starmer, an international human rights lawyer, is unable to say the attack on Venezuela was in breach of international law. This is the leader of a G7 nation, unable to confirm that black is black and white is white.
All week, pundits in the UK media have wanged on about how Starmer couldn’t have his “Hugh Grant moment” - a reference to the scene in Love Actually in which he Prime Minister Grant stands up to President Billy Bob Thornton (after seeing him making moves on his lady crush) and missed the far bigger point.
It’s the same pundits and journalists who applauded Starmer’s actions in sucking up to Trump, laying on a state visit, a royal banquet, the full works and celebrating the “win”, a deal that didn’t land Britain with a disastrous trade tariff.
But what they failed to point out is that Starmer paid Trump’s ransom - the disastrous, self-sabotaging tech deals detailed above. It’s not that Starmer risks “offending” Trump or is “caught in a bind” or “is in a tricky position” or any of the other phrases I’ve read and heard all week, it’s that he - and we - have been captured.
These deals represent the corporate capture of the UK state including, our cloud capacity, National Health Service, and now our military establishment. And the blindness, ignorance and ongoing denial is the most dangerous thing about this moment.
Starmer’s inability to speak the truth is not diplomacy. It’s evidence.
We are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump fascist project. We’ve sold out everyone in America who’s trying to fight back against it. Worst of all, we can’t even see it yet.
I’m not using the f-word lightly or facetiously. I’ve avoided it for a year. But what is so dangerous right now is the assault on truth, on facts, on the evidence of our own eyes. What is happening right now in America is fascism. And we, the UK, are now up to our necks in it too.
3) How to fight backCongratulations! You’ve got through the depressing bit of the newsletter. This last section is a compendium of clips and images that I’ve seen this week that is the evidence you need that nothing is hopeless.
This is Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis. He’s using the f-word too.
A masked paramilitary gunman murdered a Minneapolis citizen in cold blood, and this is what the city’s mayor told ICE at his press conference. “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
It’s a painful contrast to Keir Starmer and a necessary corrective. What Trump is doing is meant to scare us. And not being scared, speaking the facts, taking the piss and recording it all on your phone are all radical acts. All week, I’ve been collecting individual responses to hard power ranging from the courageous to the creative to the comedic.
I loved this footage of an Uber driver that embodies all three of these qualities. Watch him taking on US border guards who asked to see his ID. Why, he asks them? You have an accent, one of them says. “You’re going by accents now?” he says incredulously. “You guys need psychiatric checkups,” he tells them when they ask where he was born. He satirically taunts them until they eventually give up.
This was how London greeted the news of the Venezuela strike. A “nonce” is Britspeak for “paedophile”.
I also loved and admired this woman’s response to ICE agents who stopped to threaten and intimidate her for following their vehicle. I don’t want you to make a bad decision, the ICE agent tells her. “That’s funny coming from you!” she says smiling away at him.
And this is another brilliant official, Rochelle Bilal, the sheriff of Philadelphia, pointing out all the ways that the actions of the ICE agent who shot Renee Nicole Good were in violation of both “legal law” and “moral law”. ICE, she said, was “made-up, fake, wannabe law enforcement”.
I know, I know, this is probably too much content. But consider this a public service, I’m saving you from the algorithmic scroll which threw up this for me: Canadian comedian Trent McClellan dressed up as a NICE agent to terrorise tourists in Halifax. His weapons are Canadian-levels of courtesy and free candy. It’s from two months ago but I only just clocked it and I think it’s a really useful reminder that none of this is normal. This is normal:
Finally, it’s been extraordinary to witness what’s happening on the streets of Iran. You’ll have seen the incredible rivers of protestors flooding the streets of cities all across the country. That’s what people power looks like. Is it finally the revolution that Iranians have been longing for? The world is holding its breath.
I’m not sure who this woman is but this week’s newsletter is dedicated to her and the people of Iran and, especially, the incredible, gutsy, powerful women who have simply had enough.
Thank you to everyone who’s reading this. It’s one of my own personal rays of hope. If you like it, please share it with your friends and family and tell me in the comments whether I’m right, wrong, too doomery, not doomery enough, whether you like the vids and anything else that strikes you.
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nous: Jesus. It's really wrapped up tight....
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
What did I actually say about Trump’s negotiation strategy (that I shorthanded “Art of the Deal”)?
“Not only do I not like the rhetoric and the disrespect, I think it backfires here.”
bc, you did indeed say that. But what you said immediately before was ambiguous:
I’ve been observing the results achieved, the rhetoric and the resistance. IMO, many are falling for the rhetoric. If this isn’t prodding, it’s the Art of the Deal, trying to get a better bargaining position IMO for a minerals deal.
That suggests that this (the Trump approach) is a strategy to get a better bargaining position, or deal. So it looks like you think that although it may not work, the strategy is not actually aimed at takeover.
I understand the wish to see it (and the current US approach in general) as something rational in intent. I too have had a tendency to do this in the past, perhaps because it is too uncomfortable to think that leaders are behaving in quite such a crazy or out-of-control manner. But, in the case of DJT, this is truly just sane-washing. And it is consistent with your approach to this administration in general; you do not approve of Trump's "behaviour", but you approve of (or rationalise) his intent. And people doing that about someone like him leads, for example, from "it is reasonable to take steps to deport criminal illegal immigrants" to armed groups of ICE agents swarming US cities against states' wishes, detaining mainly US citizens and illegal immigrants who overwhelmingly have committed no criminal offences, mistreating and in some cases killing them. And similarly, the Trump approach to Greenland could end in breaking up NATO, a result that no US administration of any stripe has wanted.
I wanted to be fair to your view about the Greenland issue by posting that link with the interview by Freddie Sayers of Helen Thompson, Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl, because they are well-qualified to put all this in an accurate historical context long pre-dating Trump, and ignoring his specific rhetoric and approach. And I think that this is valuable and important.
But expressing more conservative views here, much as many of us favour hearing them, while also implicitly excusing Trump's egregious and dangerous behaviour, is bound to come up against fierce opposition. The people commenting here accurately foretold what his first term would be like, and are once again in the devastating Cassandra-like position of watching while his second term proceeds to (as someone said to me at lunch today) "not only tear apart America, but also the world".
Donald Trump, J D Vance, Steven Miller, RFKJnr, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi etc etc: are these people who you are content to see representing your country and your political views?
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I don’t think bc actually supports the Nazi Party. Unless he voted for Donald, JD, Lindsey, et.al. Then I might have a few questions.
Tony P, I love you. You do make me laugh.
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Good to be reminded that there is an agreement in place between the US and Denmark from 1916, when Denmark sold their Virgin Islands to the US, in which the US recognises Danish sovereignty over Greenland. However, in fairness to bc, the following interviews do give an interesting (and not Trump-positive) view of the world geo-political issues:
Freddie Sayers speaks with author and Cambridge professor Helen Thompson, economist Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl about the Trump administration's escalating rhetoric and strategic moves to acquire Greenland. Covering the historical legal underpinnings of Danish sovereignty while analysing modern geopolitical drivers such as the Monroe Doctrine, Arctic militarisation, and the essential role of the region in a new space race for strategic security dominance, they explore how the Greenland situation is symptomatic of a profound breakdown in trust between Washington and Western Europe, with the administration increasingly viewing European leadership as obstructive political rivals in a shifting global order.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IuCswB2RLI&t=3s
However, where bc is concerned, I do think his Sweet Summer Child (SSC) status is utterly confirmed by any suggestion that Trump's approach to this or any other issue is anything to do with mastery of the art of the deal. Quite apart from what russell correctly says about the book of that title, one should never forget that regarding Trump as such a master of deal-making is pretty deluded given his financial history (until, that is, the advent of enthusiastically embraced presidential corruption), not to mention his absurd claims to have ended several wars which make him, understandably, an international laughing stock. The laugh may well be on the rest of the world, however; that's a risk when you elect a Caligula-type figure.
On “An open thread”
For anyone interested in what kind of poet she was in life, this is Renee Good's poem from 2020 which won "one of Old Dominion’s most prestigious accolades, the Academy of American Poets Prize":
https://poets.org/2020-on-learning-to-dissect-fetal-pigs
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What cleek, russell, hsh and wj said. And coincidentally I've been listening to Phil Ochs for the first time in a long time, but I'd never heard this, which seems appropriate to the times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgrehW44g5s
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
Gift link from today's NYT about their interview with Trump
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-interview-power-morality.html?unlocked_article_code=1.C1A.Jn36.S3vByKtmLaG4&smid=url-share
President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.
Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
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Deleted when I found out how to edit!
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bc: a lot of people here said "he", and I had always tried before to say s/he, so it was a move against assumptions. Thank you for confirming.
“Danish longer than the United States has existed,” that was true at the time of WWII and the geopolitical reality required its occupation militarily.
Denmark was at the time occupied by an enemy nation. There is no possible current geopolitical reality which could require its military occupation.
Why is that not enough?
It is enough for security, so why is there still talk about the US "needing" Greenland? Could it be that the real reason is more to do with, for example, rare earths, and/or Trump's desire to be a POTUS who "acquired" a territory larger than Louisiana and Alaska?
You would think Russian aggression would prompt more concern about Greenland.
If you think Trump (and much of the current GOP) is more aware of the threat from Russia than the Europeans are, it's hard to know what to say to you. And further to which, pretty much everyone I know and read agrees that the other NATO countries were far too slow to ramp up their funding, albeit they are doing so now.
If you think the belts and roads initiative is entirely benign, well, I don’t.
I don't, and I rather doubt anyone here does either. Are you by any chance falling into what I will call the "McKinney Trap" of assuming that the commentariat here are supporters of the CCP?
And maybe, just maybe, all this rhetoric is meant to get Denmark and the EU to care enough to do something about it.
I'm tempted to say "oh you sweet summer child". It's almost as if you haven't been observing the Trump administration in action, and not only in their foreign adventures. Is there any innocent explanation for their behaviour that you would consider meets the definition of "sane-washing", and how it enables normalisation of morally, legally and practically unwise and unacceptable behaviour?
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tarred by association with the horrific thugs Trump, Noem, and Miller have recruited and unleashed
russell upthread is right. These people are a cancer on the nation.
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Their president of course. Eyes give fake news.
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Further to our earlier discussion about Fiona Hill's testimony, this is from a new piece by Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic yesterday headlined "Trump's 'American Dominance' May Leave us with Nothing". Gift link to the whole article follows.
Back in 2019, Fiona Hill, a National Security Council official in the first Trump administration, testified to a House committee that Russians pushing the creation of spheres of influence had been offering to somehow “swap” Venezuela, their closest ally in Latin America, for Ukraine. Since then, the notion that international relations should promote great-power dominance, not universal values or networks of allies, has spread from Moscow to Washington. The administration’s new National Security Strategy outlines a plan to dominate the Americas, enigmatically describing U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere as “Enlist and Expand,” and downplaying threats from China and Russia. Trump has also issued threats to Denmark, Panama, and Canada, all allies whose sovereignty we now challenge.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/trumps-american-dominance-may-leave-us-with-nothing/685503/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCchlIvK22pg7_84-w9eIkzs&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
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Oh my God, you think nothing this administration does can still shock you, and then you see this in today's NYT:
On the fifth anniversary of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, the Trump administration created a new page on the official White House website that represented the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility.
The site blames Capitol Police officers, who defended lawmakers that day, for starting the assault; Democrats, who were the rioters’ main targets, for failing to prevent it; and former Vice President Mike Pence, who rejected falsehoods about the 2020 election, for allowing the results to be certified.
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bc, I’m glad your reasoning has more to do with conditions in Venezuela than with your trust in the current administration.
I'm hoping bc will tell us what her reasoning is (or will be) about the menacing of Greenland (or its takeover), given her extraordinary comments about the US occupation in WW2, bearing in mind for example that Greenland has been Danish longer than the United States has existed. Not to mention that 85% of the Greenland population (which is 56,000) have rejected the suggestion that they should be part of the USA. And an opinion about the comments by Steven Miller about this issue would also be welcome.
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By the way, I see people have edited their comments, but I don' t know how to. Can anyone explain?
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And for anyone who wants to listen to (or read a transcript of) a conversation between David Frum and Anne Applebaum on the Venezuela story, this is a gift link from the Atlantic. It's a couple of days old - I always wait for transcript because that's how I prefer to take in my information and media if possible:
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2026/01/david-frum-show-bonus-venezuela/685492/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCZ27BPAKdMsjTztCEaEK_K4&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
As I've said before, I'm interested in what saner and more clear-sighted rightwingers think of Trump's adventures, and as far as I know nobody has ever accused Anne Applebaum of being any kind of lefty!
Apart from that, the only thing we haven't mentioned is the much quoted opinion going round that the reason Trump did not instal María Corina Machado as president given that she won the last election is that she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, and didn't immediately say "I can't take it, it should be President Trump's". She came to her senses afterwards, but it was too late. Again, no "basis in fact".
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Her testimony was not that the Trump Administration was actually considering a Ukraine/Venezuela swap
Her testimony was in 2019, and she left her job with Trump 10 days before his famous "perfect" phone conversation with Zelensky unsuccessfully seeking help against Biden. Since then, Russia has invaded Ukraine, Trump has "mystifyingly" favoured Russia over Ukraine at almost every point, and has now invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its appalling president, while claiming the US is "running" Venezuela.
Citing her testimony to say “Trump got the idea from the Russians” has no basis in fact.
Hmm. An interesting observation.
And what Ambassador Ken Fairfax actually said was "It's interesting that Russia withdrew all of its personnel from Venezuela exactly 14 days before Trump's invasion. China didn't withdraw their personnel. Cuba didn't withdraw theirs. Just Russia. It is almost as if someone called Putin to warn him what's up as part of a quid pro quo. Not almost."
To quote Monty Python, "a nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat". Or, to put it in a more pedestrian fashion "there are none so blind as those who will not see".
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And comparing Venezuela to Ukraine at this point is truly balloon juice.
This ignores the testimony of Fiona Hill during the hearings for Trump's first impeachment in 2019. She is a deeply impressive person who had been at the time Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on Trump's National Security Council.
https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2019/11/FionaHill-compressed.pdf
Just make a search box, and enter "Venezuela", and it goes straight there, including Ukraine. Adam Silverman is right, and so is nous. To have US patsies for Putin in position to be manipulated by him into breaching international law, and talk about taking the territory of NATO allies, is a truly extraordinary development. O brave new world, that has such American politicians in it!
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nous: an excellent reminder from Adam Silverman. I should check BJ more often...
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Jesus. This from David Frum's piece in the Atlantic today, lands sinisterly:
Because the anti-Trump side is preoccupied with domestic politics, it sometimes overlooks how Trump is corroding American leadership in the world. The Venezuelan regime is broadly unpopular in Latin America; its socialism of plunder has sent millions of desperate people into Colombia and other states. But U.S. intervention is deeply mistrusted in the region, associated much more closely with bringing dictators to power than with toppling them. The administration could have courted greater legitimacy for its actions by cooperating with regional partners, such as Colombia and Brazil, which have both tangled with the Maduro regime in the recent past. Refusing such cooperation is not merely an incidental vice of Trump’s foreign policy. That vice is at its core. Military action in Venezuela today without allies may prefigure action tomorrow against allies—for example, to invade and annex Greenland. The big strategic idea of the second Trump administration is that major powers are entitled to dominate their neighbors: Russia to dominate Ukraine, China to dominate its neighborhood, and the U.S. to rule over Venezuela, Greenland, Panama, and ultimately Canada—Trump’s desired “51st state.”
David Frum's politics are not mine, but I am determined to keep an eye on rational rightwingers, in case they ever have any influence on the GOP (hard to see at this point). If anybody wants the full piece, just let me know.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.