Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

Under Keir Starmer’s Labour government, the UK has become a dystopian nightmare where criticizing the Prime Minister gets you banned from entry. Meanwhile, boatloads of illegal migrants wash across the Channel daily, rewarded with hotel stays and taxpayer-funded perks.

Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek learned this the hard way when her travel authorization was revoked just days after calling out Starmer’s hypocrisy on immigration and free speech.

This blatant act of political censorship highlights Labour’s twisted priorities: protect the establishment narrative at all costs, even as unchecked migration erodes British sovereignty and burdens citizens.

I’ve been banned from traveling to the UK. 🇬🇧

No reason given. No right to appeal. Zero due process.

Just an email saying the UK government deems me “not conducive to the public good” – exactly three days after I criticized Keir Starmer.

I guess my point that the UK is no… pic.twitter.com/JAcMMcjf1I

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) January 14, 2026

Vlaardingerbroek, a 29-year-old Dutch lawyer, political commentator, and activist, has built a reputation for her outspoken criticism of mass immigration, globalism, and threats to Western culture. Formerly affiliated with the Netherlands’ Forum for Democracy party, she advocates for “remigration” policies to preserve national identity and has amassed a large following on social media for her unfiltered takes on Europe’s migration crisis. As such, her views have made her a target for leftist regimes eager to silence dissent.

The UK government informed Eva “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good.”

Holy sh*t.

I’ve been banned from traveling to the UK. They revoked my ETA.

“Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conductive to the public good.”

3 days after posting this about Starmer. https://t.co/NqWBtaTkZe pic.twitter.com/lm5lZgL2i7

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) January 14, 2026

The post she referenced slammed Starmer directly: “Keir Starmer wants to crack down on X under the pretense of “women’s safety”, whilst he’s the one allowing the ongoing rape and killing of British girls by migrant rape gangs. Evil, despicable man.”

“I’ve become a victim of two tier justice and Keir Starmer is a TYRANT!”
World exclusive Outspoken interview with Eva Vlaardingerbroek after being banned from the UK.@EvaVlaar ❤️ pic.twitter.com/eOWH3av0HU

— Dan Wootton (@danwootton) January 14, 2026

Meanwhile Starmer recently announced that one of his top priorities was getting an anti-white Egyptian extremist to the UK and was “delighted” to “welcome”‘” him:

Despite el-Fattah’s vile history – including posts like “fucking hate white people … a blight on the earth they are” and calls for “random shooting of white males” – Starmer celebrated his return to the UK.

As we higlighted, el-Fattah has praised Osama bin Laden, denied the Holocaust, and urged violence against police and Zionists. Yet Labour bent over backward to import this hate-monger, exposing their contempt for British values.

Last month, the UK government welcomed into the country a man who told people to “burn Downing Street,” said “I don’t like white people,” and called British people “dogs and monkeys.”

Apparently, he was ‘conducive to the public good’. https://t.co/keEFFGu5bJ

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) January 14, 2026

Meanwhile @Keir_Starmer announced his “top priority” was getting this guy to the UK and was “delighted” to “welcome” him… 😩 pic.twitter.com/dnyv50mPFi

— Emily Wilding Davison🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@Wommando) January 14, 2026

As Vlaardingerbroek’s ban made headlines, recent reports confirm the UK’s borders remain a sieve. In the first week of January 2026 alone, dozens braved sub-zero temperatures to cross the Channel in small boats, adding to the over 41,000 arrivals in 2025 – the second-highest year on record. These migrants are often housed in hotels at taxpayer expense, with costs soaring to £8 million per day, while British families struggle.

You’re not a rapey illegal migrant so Keir Starmer won’t let you in

— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) January 14, 2026

The Home Office plans to evict some from hotels by spring 2026, but with crossings continuing unabated – 32 detected in the first five days of the year – the system is overwhelmed. Labour’s “one in, one out” scheme faltered when the first 2026 return flight to France was cancelled, leaving more invaders to stay.

But if u get on a dinghy, we’ll put you in a hotel, feed u, give u healthcare, internet, phones and free travel.

— Adam Brooks AKA EssexPR 🇬🇧 (@EssexPR) January 14, 2026

This ties into deeper rot. A former aide to Starmer recently blew the whistle on a “deep state” – a “political perma-class” of insiders, NGOs, and lobbyists – controlling the government and obsessing over fringe issues like el-Fattah’s case while ignoring voter concerns.

The former aide Paul Ovenden described it as a “stakeholder state” that shifts power “away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore.”

Ovenden slammed policies that “import antisemitic Islamists who wish us harm” and treat “British citizenship as a scrap of paper.” This blob forces the government to “row with muffled oars” to appease campaign groups and regulators, sidelining secure borders.

The reason for Vlaardingerbroek’s ban is clear. Her call for “remigration” of immigrants made her persona non grata. And the Labour government’s message is clear: Dissent against open borders and leftist agendas? You’re out. But if you’re an illegal crosser or hate-spewing extremist, welcome aboard – hotel room included.

The “You cannot appeal this decision” is the most Leftist sentence I have ever read.

This fascist thinking is so fundamental to their ethos that they do not even recognize it.

It is simply the air that they breathe and is of no consequence. pic.twitter.com/QsiolJGjWx

— Andy Martin (@Dollarlogic) January 14, 2026

This hypocrisy must end. Brits deserve a government that puts citizens first, secures borders, and defends free speech against the deep state’s grip. Until then, the invasion continues, and patriots like Vlaardingerbroek pay the price.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Via The Cradle

Chinese authorities instructed domestic companies to stop using certain US and Israeli cybersecurity software, citing national security concerns and the risk of sensitive data being transferred overseas, according to informed sources cited by Reuters on January 14.

Chinese officials, speaking through the sources – who spoke in anonymity – said the notice was issued in recent days and targeted software produced by roughly a dozen foreign firms. 

The move affects Chinese companies operating across multiple sectors, although Reuters said it could not determine how many received the directive.

Among the firms named were US companies Broadcom-owned VMware, Palo Alto Networks, and Fortinet, as well as Israeli firm Check Point Software Technologies, according to the sources.

Those briefed said the concern is that the software could “collect and transmit confidential information abroad,” raising fears about foreign access to sensitive Chinese data. 

Neither China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, nor the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology responded to requests for comment by the time of publication, while the companies named in the report also did not reply to Reuters’  inquiries.

The decision comes as Beijing continues efforts to reduce reliance on western technology. While much of that push has focused on semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI), analysts cited by Reuters said authorities are also moving to replace foreign computer equipment and software.

Chinese analysts added that concerns have grown that western technology could be vulnerable to hacking by foreign powers, reinforcing Beijing’s drive toward domestic alternatives.

Back in October 2014, Chinese state-linked media reported that Beijing had ordered the phased removal of Microsoft Windows from government computers, citing security risks and mandating a shift toward domestic operating systems. 

That policy, which followed an earlier ban on Windows 8, also extended to state-owned enterprises and reflected early concerns about reliance on foreign software for sensitive state systems.

The developments also reflect a wider backdrop of intensifying US–China rivalry, as Washington moves to counter Beijing’s expanding economic, energy, and technological footprint across West Asia, a region that has become central to China’s long-term strategic and infrastructure ambitions.

There may have been some back-channel dealmaking and a ‘mutual understanding’ reached between Iran and Israel far behind the scenes as protests unfolded on Iran’s streets, and as President Trump began to make threats about striking Tehran.

At a moment Trump seems to have climbed down (at least for now) from the threatened drive to intervene militarily, The Washington Post has issued a Wednesday report saying Israel and Iran have been in indirect diplomatic contact via Russia as a mediator.

“Days before protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials notified the Iranian leadership via Russia that they would not launch strikes against Iran if Israel were not attacked first,” WaPo writes. “Iran responded through the Russian channel that it would also refrain from a preemptive attack, diplomats and regional officials with knowledge of the exchange said.”

Could this be because of the Iranian missiles that rained down on Tel Aviv back in June? If so, it seems the Islamic Republic has finally established deterrence. 

The timeline of what was communicated when remains unclear. But this backchannel had already been revealed in Middle East media reports, for example in the following prior reporting:

Israel and Iran have recently exchanged secret, indirect messages through Russia in the midst of heightened regional tensions, according to a new report by Amwaj.media today. The exchanges were described as an effort to prevent further military escalation rather than to establish any form of ceasefire or diplomatic framework.

According to the report, the messages were conveyed through Russian President Vladimir Putin after Israel sought to pass along a signal that it was not interested in escalating military conflict at this stage. Iranian officials acknowledged the message but emphasized that their reply carried no commitment, no coordination, and no obligation on Iran’s part. An Iranian political source quoted in the report said bluntly that “there is no commitment, no coordination, and no ceasefire agreement.” The source emphasized that the contact should not be interpreted as a step toward broader understandings between the two countries, which remain bitter adversaries with no direct diplomatic ties.

The exchanges were reportedly limited in scope and intent. No guarantees were offered, no timelines were discussed, and no monitoring or enforcement mechanisms were established. One source described the communication as “a mutual announcement to a mutual friend on no new strikes,” meaning that the goal was simply to manage tensions at a specific moment rather than to lock in any lasting arrangement.

A senior Iranian political source confirmed that indirect communication with Israel had indeed taken place, identifying Russia, and specifically Putin, as the intermediary. The source reiterated that there was “no ceasefire agreement” and that the messages amounted only to parallel notifications of intent, rather than a shared understanding or deal.

The report says the Iranian side of the exchanges was handled not by the foreign ministry but by Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. 

It’s possible that this served as important background to Trump’s apparent decision to not strike Iran at this point. Israel is usually the country yelling loudest to hit Iran, but this time the Netanyahu government was somewhat muted.

Sorry to be a hater, but this is not “breaking news”. It was reported over two weeks ago: https://t.co/SjEJKtgAT6 https://t.co/jDExKOZVND

— Mohammad Ali Shabani (@mashabani) January 14, 2026

By all accounts, Iran’s streets have pretty much gone quiet by now, after a crescendo of violence this week left hundreds dead, including many police and security personnel. 

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The oligarchy that really controls the Empire of Chaos has hit the panic button, as the structural contours of Hegemony seriously wobble.

The petrodollar is one of the key features of this Hegemony: a recycling machine channeling non-stop buying of US Treasuries then spent on Forever Wars. Any player even thinking of diversifying from this infernal machine is met with asset freezes, sanctions – or worse.

At the same time, the Empire of Chaos cannot demonstrate raw power by bleeding itself dry in the black soil of Novorossiya. Dominance requires ever-expanding – plundered – resources, side by side with that non-stop printing of US dollars as a reserve currency to pay for astronomic bills. Additionally, borrowing from the world works as imperial financial containment of rivals.

But now a choice becomes imperative – an inescapable structural constraint. Either keep astronomical spending on military dominance (enter Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion budget for the Department of War.) Or keep ruling the international financial system.

The Empire of Chaos cannot do both.

And that’s why, when the math was done, Ukraine became expendable. At least in theory.

Against the weaponization of the US Treasury bond system – de facto monetary imperialism – BRICS incarnate the strategic choice of the Global South, coordinating a drive towards alternative payment systems.

The straw that broke the steppe camel’s back was the freezing – actually stealing – of Russian assets after the expulsion of a nuclear/hypersonic power, Russia, from SWIFT. Now it’s clear that Central Banks everywhere are going for gold, bilateral deals and considering alternative payment systems.

As the first serious structural shock to the system since the end of WWII, BRICS is not overtly trying to overturn the system – but to build a viable alternative, complete with large-scale infrastructure financing bypassing the US dollar.

Venezuela now illustrates a critical case: Can a major oil producer survive outside of the US dollar system – without being destroyed?

The Empire of Chaos has ruled, “No”. The Global South must prove it wrong. Venezuela was not that critical on the geopolitical chessboard as it represented just 4% of China’s oil imports. Iran in fact is the crucial case, as 95% of its oil is sold to China and settled in yuan, not US dollars.

Iran though is not Venezuela. The latest coordinated intel op/terror attacks/regime change attempt on Iran – complete with a pathetic mini-Shah refugee in Maryland – miserably failed. The threat of war, though, remains.

BRICS Pay, The Unit, or CIPS?

The US dollar now represents less than 40% of global currency reserves – the lowest in at least 20 years. Gold now accounts for more global foreign exchange reserves than the euro, the yen and the pound combined. Central Banks are stockpiling gold like crazy, while BRICS accelerates the test of alternative payment systems in what I previously defined as “the BRICS lab”.

One of the scenarios being directly proposed to BRICS, and designed as an alternative to cumbersome SWIFT, which does at least $1 trillion in transactions a day, features the introduction of a non-sovereign, blockchain-based trade token.

That’s The Unit.

The Unit, correctly described as “apolitical money”, is not a currency, but a unit of account used for settlement in trade and finance between participating countries. The token could be pegged to a commodity basket or a neutral index to prevent domination by any single country. In this case it would work like the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), but within a BRICS framework.

Then there’s mBridge – not part of the “BRICS lab” – which features a multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) shared among participating central banks and commercial banks. mBridge includes only five members, but that includes powerful players such as the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Other 30 countries are interested to join.

mBridge tough was the inspiration behind BRICS Bridge, still being tested, which aims to speed up a range of international payment mechanisms: money transfers, payment processing, account management.

It’s a very simple mechanism: instead of converting currencies into US dollars for international trade, BRICS countries exchange their currencies directly.

The New Development Bank (NDB), or the BRICS bank, established in Shanghai in 2015, should be the key connectivity node of BRICS Bridge.

But that, for the moment, is on hold – because all the NDB’s statutes are linked to the US dollar, and that must be reassessed. With the NDB integrated into the broader financial infrastructure of BRICS member-nations, the bank should be able to handle currency conversion, clearing, and settlement under BRICS Bridge. But we’re still very far away from that.

BRICS Pay is a different animal: a strategic infrastructure for building a self-described “decentralized, sustainable, and inclusive” financial system across BRICS+ nations and partners.

BRICS Pay is on pilot mode all the way to 2027. By then the member-nations should start discussing a deal to set up a settlement unit for intra-BRICS trade no later than 2030.

Once again, that will not be a global reserve currency; but a mechanism offering a “parallel, compatible option” to SWIFT within the BRICS ecosystem.

BRICS Pay, for the moment, is also a very simple system: for instance, tourists and business travelers may use it without opening a local bank account or exchanging currency. They simply link their Visa or Mastercard to the BRICS Pay app and use it to pay via QR code.

And that’s exactly the crucial problem: how to circumvent Visa and Mastercard, under US financial system vigilance, and incorporate BRICS members cards such as Union Pay (China) and Mir (Russia).

Overall, for bigger and more complex transactions, the problem of bypassing SWIFT persists. All these “BRICS lab” tests need to solve two key problems: messaging interoperability – via secure, standardized data formats; and processing the actual settlement, as in how funds move via Central Bank accounts bypassing the inevitable threat of sanctions.

Internalization of The Yuan, Or a New Reserve Currency?

The inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson is on the global forefront of studying solutions to minimize US dollar hegemony. He is adamant that “the line of least resistance is to follow the already-in-place Chinese system.” That means CIPS – the China International Payment System, or Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, yuan-based, and already extremely popular, used by participants in 124 nations across the Global Majority.

Prof. Hudson insists “it’s very hard to create an alternative. The Unit’s principle (his emphasis), reported to be 40% gold and the rest in member currencies is fine. But this is best done through a new Keynes-style central bank to denominate debts and claims for payment to settle imbalances among member countries – along the lines of the Bancor.”

The Bancor was proposed by Keynes in Bretton Woods in 1944 – to prevent serious discrepancies in external balances, protectionism, tariffs and the scam of nations built up as tax havens. It’s no wonder the hyper-Hegemonic US at the end of WWII vetoed it.

In a new paper on the Weaponization of Oil Trade as the Bedrock of the US World Order, first published at democracycollaborative.org, Prof. Hudson clarifies how “Russian and Venezuelan freedom to export oil has weakened the ability of US officials to use oil as a weapon to squeeze other economies by threatening them with the same withdrawal of energy that has wrecked German industry and price levels. This supply of oil not under US control thus was held to be an infringement of the US rules-based order.”

And that brings us to one of the key reasons for the BRICS drive towards alternative payment systems: “The US foreign policy of creating choke points to keep other countries dependent on oil under US control, not oil supplied by Russia, Iran or Venezuela, is one of America’s key means of making other countries insecure.”

Prof. Hudson succinctly lines up the five imperatives for the Empire of Chaos: “control of the world’s oil trade is to remain a US privilege”; “oil trade must be priced and paid for in US dollars”; the petrodollar must rule, as “international oil-export earnings are to be lent to, or invested in, the United States, preferably in the form of US Treasury securities, corporate bonds and bank deposits”; “green energy alternatives to oil are to be discouraged”; and “no laws apply to or limit US rules or policies.”

Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr, one of the co-founders of the NDB, and its vice-president during 2015-2017, advances in parallel with Prof. Hudson, designing a viable path towards a new international currency in a paper that he is currently finalizing.

Considering that the US dollar system is “inefficient, unreliable and even dangerous”, and has become “an instrument of blackmail and sanctions”, Batista Jr cuts to the chase along the same lines of Prof. Hudson, arguing that “the only scenario that may present some viability would be the large-scale internationalization of the Chinese currency (…) But there is a long way to go before it can replace the dollar in a significant way. And the Chinese are reluctant to try.”

Batista Jr then proposes a solution similar to Prof. Hudson’s: “A group of countries in the Global South, something like 15 to 20 countries, which would include most of the BRICS and other emerging middle-income nations”, could be at the forefront of creating a new currency.

Yet “a new international financial institution would therefore have to be created – an issuing bank, whose sole and exclusive function would be to issue and put into circulation the new currency.”

That sounds very much like Bancor: “This issuing bank would not replace the national central banks and its currency would circulate in parallel with the other national and regional currencies existing in the world. It would be restricted to international transactions, with no domestic role.”

Batista Jr clarifies that “the currency would be based on a weighted basket of the currencies of the participating countries and would therefore fluctuate on the basis of changes in these

currencies. Since all currencies in the basket would be floating or flexible, the new currency would also be a floating currency. The weights in the basket would be given by the share of each country’s PPP GDP in the total GDP.”

Inevitably, “the high weight of the Chinese currency, issued by a country with a solid economy, would favor confidence in the backing and in the new reserve currency.”

Batista Jr is fully aware of “the risk that the initiative will provoke negative reactions from the West, which would resort to threats and sanctions against the countries involved.”

Yet the time for action is pressing: “Will we gather economic, political and intellectual efforts to get out of this trap?

The costs of maintaining Hegemony are becoming prohibitive. BRICS, gathering forces for the annual summit later this year in India, must capitalize on the fact that we are fast approaching the structural change moment when the Empire of Chaos loses the ability to unilaterally enforce its will – except via all-out war.

Elon Musk announced early Wednesday that Tesla will eliminate the one-time purchase option for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software beginning in mid-February, transitioning the product to an exclusive monthly subscription.

“Tesla will stop selling FSD after Feb 14. FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter,” Musk wrote on X.

Tesla will stop selling FSD after Feb 14.

FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 14, 2026

The move comes as vehicle sales slow and appears to signal a strategic shift toward recurring revenue, while also aligning with Musk’s new incentive compensation structure, which is tied to scaling FSD subscriptions and hitting key performance milestones.

For Musk to unlock the full value of his massive Tesla compensation plan (valued at $1 trillion), a key milestone is reaching 10 million active FSD subscriptions over a sustained period. That target sits alongside other ambitious goals, including delivering 20 million vehicles, deploying 1 million robotaxis, delivering 1 million humanoid robots, and achieving certain profitability and market-cap thresholds.

X users were divided on FSD’s transition to an entirely subscription-based model, similar to that of Chinese automaker BYD Motors.

“The year is 2050. I pay the monthly subscription for my HBAAS (Heartbeat as a service).”

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) January 14, 2026

What about transferring to a different car

— Robin (@xdNiBoR) January 14, 2026

“You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy”

— Ethan (@0xEthan) January 14, 2026

Brilliant decision, this will increase FSD usage. Overall (my 2 cents), I think all Teslas should have FSD enabled for every new owner. No one will choose not to experience it.

— Gail Alfar (@gailalfaratx) January 14, 2026

Everything is a subscription

And then next is going to be the expiring universal income

— Shaman Ste (@shamanste8) January 14, 2026

Add FSD to the mountain of subscriptions, whether that’s TV, social media, music, food, dating, fitness, transportation, and the list goes on and on.

Authored by Christian Vezilj via American Thinker,

Hollywood has mastered the art of moral performance. Award shows have become political stages where actors speak with the confidence of prophets and the certainty of philosophers. But beneath the applause lines and emotional crescendos lies a contradiction that becomes impossible to ignore: the courage they demand from others is courage they themselves will never have to summon.

This contradiction was unmistakable at the recent Golden Globe Awards. The ceremony quickly transformed into a coordinated tribute to Renee Nicole Goode, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent. Mark Ruffalo dedicated his award by saying, “This is for Renee Nicole Goode, who was murdered,” adding, “I don’t know how I can be quiet.” Wanda Sykes echoed the sentiment on the red carpet, declaring, “Of course, this is for the mother who was murdered by an ICE agent, and it’s really sad.” She went further, urging confrontation: “We need to be out there and shut this rogue government down, because it’s just awful what they’re doing to people.”

Celebrities wore coordinated pins reading “BE GOOD” and “ICE OUT,” signaling solidarity and moral urgency. The messaging was unified, emotional, and unmistakably political. The narrative was clear: this was a moment to resist, to rise up, to confront injustice.

But what was equally clear — and far more revealing — was what they chose not to say.

While the Golden Globes stage was filled with speeches about ICE, not a single celebrity mentioned the mass slaughter, imprisonment, and torture taking place in Iran at that very moment – Hundreds of protesters have been killed by the Iranian regime. Thousands have been dragged into prisons. Torture, rape, and forced confessions have been documented by human rights groups. The government has imposed sweeping internet blackouts to hide the brutality from the world. [ZH: regardless of whether this is yet more ‘regime change paint by numbers’ – it was completely ignored].

And yet, on one of the most visible cultural platforms in America, the silence was absolute.

• No speeches.
• No pins.
• No hashtags.
• No calls to “shut down” the Iranian government.
• Nothing.

The contrast is staggering. When the villain is a U.S. agency, outrage is immediate, coordinated, and emotionally charged. When the villain is a foreign authoritarian regime slaughtering its own people, the outrage evaporates. The issue is not the moral weight of the cause. The issue is whether the cause is useful to the narrative they want to tell.

But the hypocrisy runs even deeper. It extends to the way Hollywood reacts to domestic events that do not fit its preferred storyline. When Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed inside the Capitol, there were no celebrity tributes. No emotional speeches. No coordinated pins. No calls for accountability. Instead, the officer who shot her was widely described as a hero. The shooting was framed as necessary, justified, even praiseworthy.

Whether one agrees with either shooting is not the point. The difference in reaction reveals the deeper truth: Hollywood’s activism is not driven by universal moral principles. It is driven by selective outrage, selective empathy, and selective courage.

This brings us to the heart of the matter: the asymmetry of risk. Celebrities routinely encourage ordinary people to “stand up,” “fight back,” or “put your body on the line.” Sykes’s call to “shut this rogue government down” is a perfect example. These are not metaphorical suggestions. They imply confrontation, danger, and the possibility of violence.

Yet the people delivering these messages do so from behind layers of insulation that ordinary Americans do not have. They live in gated communities. They travel with private security. Their homes are protected by surveillance systems, controlled access, and armed guards. They are not wrong for wanting safety — everyone wants safety — but they are wrong for preaching danger for others while choosing safety for themselves.

A working‑class person who confronts ICE or police in the street faces real, immediate, physical danger. A celebrity who posts a hashtag or makes a speech faces none. Their activism is symbolic, not sacrificial. It costs them nothing. And yet they speak as though they are shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the people they are urging into the streets.

This is where the phrase “We’re in it together” collapses. When celebrities use it, they rarely mean shared sacrifice. They mean shared sentiment. They mean shared optics. But they do not mean shared risk. Their version of solidarity is digital, not physical.

The deeper civic insight is this: selective outrage and selective courage are symptoms of a broader cultural problem. We have built a society where moral authority is often claimed by those who bear none of the consequences of their own prescriptions. Hollywood’s activism is not dangerous to Hollywood. It is dangerous to the people they encourage to act on their behalf.

True solidarity requires more than a speech, a pin, or a social media post. It requires standing in the same place, facing the same risks, and sharing the same consequences. Anything less is performance.

And performance, no matter how passionate, is not courage.

At the start of December, China stunned the world when it reported that its trade surplus had surpassed a record $1 trillion, with one month still left to go in calendar 2025.

Fast forward to last night when China reported that in December, its trade balance rose from $112 billion in November to a whopping – and the second highest on record – $114.14 billion, matching Bloomberg estimates…

…  exports grew 6.6% YoY in dollar terms, more than double the average forecast from a Bloomberg poll of analysts of 3.1% and greater than November’s growth rate of 5.9%, while imports rose 5.7% in dollars last month on a year earlier, also far outpacing analyst expectations of 0.9% growth and the previous month’s figure of 1.9%.

Adding across, China’s full-year trade surplus exceeded $1 trillion for the first time – $1.2 trillion to be precise – blowing away last year’s figure of $993bn despite exports to the US falling 20%, as those to the EU rose 8.4% and to south-east Asia rose 13.4%, where as we show below the bulk of transshipments to the US take place, as Chinese producers diverted shipments to other markets while ultimately still targeting US consumers. 

And since China’s record $1 trillion trade surplus hit a month earlier had already outraged its trading partners, who finally called out Beijing (long after Trump did so first) for its mercantilist, imbalanced trade policies, Beijing needed a scapegoat for the even bigger number it reported. It decided to blame the US, the one country that until recently had reportedly “alienated the world” in its pursuit of more balanced Chinese trade.

As the FT reported, “China blamed the US for growing global trade imbalances as the world’s second-biggest economy reported a record full-year trade surplus of $1.2tn for 2025 despite President Donald Trump’s trade war.”

Why? Because as we first reported last month, China’s gargantuan surplus will further inflame global trading tensions, particularly with the EU where China is indiscriminately dumping cars below cost and singlehandedly putting the entire German auto industry into an early grave; it’s not just Europe – all export-focused developing countries are also seething, as they find their exports are simply not competitive with cheap Chinese goods which are being dumped at a furious pace around the globe. 

YIKES

China just posted a record-breaking $1.2 trillion global trade surplus. The EU’s is up 18.1%. Germany’s numbers are BONKERS – a staggering 108% surge in surplus, meaning that it now accounts for nearly a third of China’s entire EU surplus.

The US has been aggressively… https://t.co/ikpiHIiADr

— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) January 14, 2026

In a sign of the growing decoupling of direct trade between China and the US, the American share of Chinese exports last year was 11.1% , down from 14.7% in 2024, some of the lowest levels since the 1990s, the FT reports. Of course, that is woefully inaccurate at worse, and at best incomplete, since China has merely redirected its US goods via intermediary countries – i.e., transshipments – such as Vietnam, which has seen imports from China soar to a record high.

And since Vietnam didn’t grow an affluent middle class overnight, all that is happening is China is sending its trinkets to Hanoi first, before they are reshipped onward to China, under the guise of Vietnamese exports.

But, as last month, the loudest complaints about China’s surplus are expected from the EU (which said nothing when Trump was complaining loudly over the past decade and now is stuck with a crippled economy which has lost all export vibrancy for ever), yet which is terrified of its own shadow, and still has to follow the US and implement broad-based tariffs. Instead, the bloc has called for Beijing to stimulate domestic demand and reduce its own barriers to manufactured imports, something Beijing – already stuffed to its gills in debt – has shown precisely zero interest in doing, or being able to create organically.

And so, China decided to… blame Trump.

Wang Jun, vice-minister of the General Administration of Customs of China, said on Wednesday that trading partners’ export controls on high-tech products were preventing China from importing more, in not so thinly veiled comments directed at the US. Successive US administrations have imposed stringent curbs on China’s access to high-end semiconductors.

“It should be pointed out that some countries politicize economic and trade issues, using various pretexts to restrict exports of high-tech products to China; otherwise, we would import more,” said Wang, adding: “There is vast room for import growth.”

Actually no, there isn’t, because as the upcoming Chinese data dump will reveal, China’s domestic economy continues to deteriorate with retail sales and fixed investment at a level that signals flat GDP at best, if not negative. 

Which only leaves a flood of exports to keep China’s economy alive. Sure enough, economists have warned that China’s economy is too reliant on manufacturing and exports for growth amid anaemic domestic consumption and a years-long property sector slowdown. 

“China’s staggering trade surplus is simultaneously a symbol of its exporting prowess and the weaknesses in its growth model,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of economics at Cornell University.

One more point: China’s staggering trade surplus is a remnant of an era in which nobody dared point out that the neoliberal, mercantilist emperor is dead, until Trump came along. And while Europe laughed at him at first (just like they laughed when he told Germany they are entirely reliant on Russian gas), Brussels has finally figured out that it can do nothing and watch its economy implode from inside while purchasing cheap Chinese trinkets, or it can join the US president in calling out China’s trade practice. At which point China’s record trade surplus will collapse, with various unpleasant consequences for its economy. As for the US, it is on the right path, but it too needs to plug the gaping loopholes such as record trans-shipments through Vietnam and other Pacific rim countries. Once it does that, only then will Beijing be forced to finally revise its export-led model which is the main reason why the world finds itself in a brutal trade war for the second year running. 

The US Senate killed a Democrat-led resolution that would constrain President Donald Trump (and the next guy’s) ability to wage continued military action against Venezuela.

The War Powers resolution, sponsored by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), was on track to make it to a final vote until Sen. James Risch (R-ID) raised a point of order challenging the premise of Kaine’s resolution. Then, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Todd Young (R-IN) voted to support said point of order after coming under intense pressure from Trump – who earlier called for their ouster from the Senate last week. 

Vice President JD Vance then stepped in with a tie-breaking vote to break the 50-50 deadlock, handing Democrats a loss. 

NOW: U.S. Senate votes 51–50 against effort to block Trump from further Venezuela military action without Congress’ authorization, Vance breaks the tie. pic.twitter.com/GAiB2xTjrN

— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 14, 2026

Democrats forced the debate after US troops captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a nighttime raid a few weeks ago.

“Here we have one of the most successful attacks ever and they find a way to be against it. It’s pretty amazing. And it’s a shame,” said Trump on Tuesday during a speech in Michigan, slamming several Republicans who advanced the legislation including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky (a ‘stone cold loser’), and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine (‘Disasters’). Those three Republicans stuck to their guns in support of the Democrat legislation. 

Trump’s latest comments followed earlier phone calls with the senators, which they described as terse. The president’s fury underscored how the war powers vote had taken on new political significance as Trump also threatens military action to accomplish his goal of possessing Greenland.

The legislation, even if it had cleared the Senate, had virtually no chance of becoming law because it would eventually need to be signed by Trump himself. But it represented both a test of GOP loyalty to the president and a marker for how much leeway the Republican-controlled Senate is willing to give Trump to use the military abroad. Republican angst over his recent foreign policy moves — especially threats of using military force to seize Greenland from a NATO ally — is still running high in Congress. -AP

Hawley – who initially helped advance the resolution last week – said Trump’s message during a phone call was that the legislation “really ties my hands,” and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised him “point blank, we’re not going to do ground troops.”

Young, meanwhile, pointed to a letter from Rubio which stated that Trump will “seek congressional authorization in advance (circumstances permitting)” if he engaged in “major military operations” in Venezuela. 

The Senators also said Rubio’s efforts were instrumental in the administration releasing a 22-page DOJ memo which laid out the legal justification for snatching Maduro – which suggested that the administration has no current plans to ramp up military action in the country.

“We were assured that there is no contingency plan to engage in any substantial and sustained operation that would amount to a constitutional war,” reads the memo signed by Assistant Attorney General Elliot Gaiser.

Submitted by The Bureau’s Sam Cooper,

In the aftershock of the Trump administration’s special-forces extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a new report from the Heritage Foundation advances a sweeping, Cold War–inflected thesis: that the real command post for much of Latin America’s authoritarian drift — and a significant driver of American street unrest since 2020 — is Havana.

Its most incendiary claim is also, arguably, the one most relevant to a Trump administration now tightening its focus on leftist heads of state from Mexico City to Bogotá: that Cuba’s communist regime, working through Venezuela and allied networks across Latin America, has sought to weaponize narcotics trafficking while also stoking social unrest inside the United States.

“Venezuela is rightly getting all the attention after the arrest of dictator Nicolas Maduro, but it is important to bear in mind that Cuba’s communist regime is the mastermind of Caracas’s plan to destabilize U.S. streets through narco-trafficking and political unrest,” Heritage senior fellow Mike Gonzalez writes, citing letters from two senior Venezuelan figures now imprisoned in the United States for their roles in “a narco-terrorism conspiracy,” who both portrayed the enterprise as part of a Cuban effort “to dismantle the moral fiber of America from within.”

In Gonzalez’s telling, the allegation is substantiated — though he is drawing heavily on witnesses whose motives, perhaps including bids for clemency, critics could question.

Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan intelligence chief, and Cliver Alcalá Cordones, a former senior Venezuelan military officer, both separately wrote to President Donald Trump, according to the Heritage report, accusing Cuba’s regime of masterminding narco and political conspiracies emanating from Venezuela.

The conspiracy, wrote Carvajal, “was suggested by the Cuban regime to Chávez in the mid-2000s,” and was “successfully executed with help from FARC, ELN [both Colombian guerilla groups cited in the DOJ’s indictment of Maduro), Cuban operatives, and Hezbollah.”

Gonzalez casts Cuba’s intelligence services as the hemisphere’s enduring “revolutionary operator”: training guerrillas, embedding security cadres inside allied states, and building political infrastructure designed to outlive the era of jungle insurgencies.

Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Maduro, he argues, became Cuba’s richest proxy — financing Havana with oil, exporting the revolution’s methods, and, serving as a staging ground for narcotics and leftist terror networks that United States officials have cast as direct threats.

Moving to an element that many readers may find as implausible as any narco-conspiracy claim — and backing his argument with intelligence records and open-source material — Gonzalez writes that, “From training Marxist terrorists in the 1960s, to the pro-Hamas mayhem at U.S. universities in 2024 and 2025, to the spread of transnational crime syndicates in U.S. cities, Cuba’s rulers have long plotted America’s demise.”

Heritage can be viewed as an ideologically driven, controversial, strongly conservative-leaning institution, but its work can also carry added signaling value in a Trump-era Washington because it often functions as a personnel and policy pipeline.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe has had ties to Heritage and helped shape Project 2025-era thinking on intelligence reform—linking the report’s framing to currents inside the administration itself.

Heritage’s new Cuban influence report is framed as a 60-year flow chart, structured around a turning point in Havana’s own revolutionary mythology: the Tricontinental Conference.

In 1966, Fidel Castro convened revolutionary movements, party cadres, and aligned delegations from Africa, Asia, and Latin America in Cuba to coordinate what the regime cast as a global campaign against “Yanki imperialism” — and what Gonzalez depicts as a blueprint for exporting upheaval through training, financing, propaganda, and the patient building of transnational networks.

Most readers will seize on the report’s most recent — and most incendiary — contention: that Black Lives Matter and other leftist social-justice groups did not merely ride the wave of outrage after George Floyd died in May 2020, during a police arrest in Minneapolis, but helped accelerate and channel it in ways that, in Heritage’s telling, served a longer-running Cuban strategy of political destabilization.

To support that framing, the report points to what it describes as coordination across the Western Hemisphere — Chile, the United States, and Colombia — from 2019 to 2021.

It contends there is “much evidence of Cuba and Venezuela attempting to destabilize the United States and its allies in the Americas,” and coordinating those efforts through the Foro de São Paulo (the São Paulo Forum), which Heritage depicts as a Marxist convening infrastructure that reactivated in 2019, including a New York gathering attended by aligned activists and representatives of leftist political parties across Latin America.

“From that point on,” Gonzalez writes, countries in the Western Hemisphere “suddenly started experiencing street riots that led to political change.”

Chile and Colombia saw major protests in 2019; protests in Colombia were “repeated and magnified” in 2021. Both, the report says, contributed to electoral outcomes — with the election of Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia.

In the United States, Gonzalez writes, the George Floyd riots in 2020 “almost came close to leading to societal overhaul.” He adds that, aside from what he describes as the long-standing relationship between BLM and Maduro — and between BLM and Bolivia’s Evo Morales — Black Lives Matter has “taken parts in Foro conferences,” including one in the Washington, D.C., area on July 17, 2017, where one of the stated goals was to create “strategic links” with groups inside the United States.

To ground that claim, Gonzalez leans heavily on a prior Heritage special report from 2024 that examined what it called an interlocking “ecosystem” of organizations behind pro-Palestinian protests and parts of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In that earlier report, Heritage highlighted the People’s Forum in New York, led by Manolo De Los Santos, portraying him as a Cuba-aligned organizer who helped build movement infrastructure and, according to Heritage, mobilized activists ahead of the April 2024 takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.

Separately from the new Heritage report, open-source monitoring of the online narrative in the hours following Maduro’s extraction pointed to the same organizing source driving a storyline of “kidnapping,” illegality, and U.S. imperial overreach — including messaging from the People’s Forum and its director, self-acknowledged Marxist Manolo De Los Santos.

Within hours, similar language appeared in statements from prominent U.S. left figures — among them New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who publicly condemned the operation and characterized it as unlawful.

The new Heritage report expands the frame: it argues that the São Paulo Forum has extended its outreach to U.S. groups invited to conferences over the years — naming, among others, Black Lives Matter, Democratic Socialists of America, Code Pink, and the ANSWER Coalition — and portrays these connections as part of a deliberate strategy to create “strategic links” inside the United States.

Some of the report’s most serious allegations rest on contested or difficult-to-verify claims drawn from opinion journalism rather than court records.

One example is a 2025 Washington Examiner column by Heritage report author Gonzalez that cites an unnamed former Venezuelan official claiming that Hugo Chávez personally provided suitcases of cash — the source estimates “at least $20 million” — to a U.S. activist before she went on to co-found Black Lives Matter, describing it as funding meant to export street protests into the United States.

“Chávez ordered his people to hand the suitcases to them — suitcases filled with dollars, at least $20 million,” the defector told him, Gonzalez’s column says, adding that the purported defector “is cooperating with and providing evidence to the U.S. government on other subjects, particularly the close connection between the Cartel de los Soles narco group and the Venezuelan state.”

According to Gonzalez’s column, the defector claimed, “The meeting took place at the Miraflores presidential palace, in a huge suite called the Japanese Suite, where private meetings are held.”

Gonzalez presents that alleged episode as emblematic: the revolution as a transnational political-financial project with paid beneficiaries and operatives in the United States, not merely an ideologically motivated movement.

But the Heritage thesis is not primarily about money.

It is about intelligence tradecraft — and the report’s central claim is that Cuban operatives embed themselves within allied regimes to “coup-proof” leaders by monitoring militaries and securing palaces, often maintaining loyalty to Havana rather than the host nation.

Gonzalez cites a 2024 essay by former Mexican foreign minister Jorge G. Castañeda arguing that thousands of Cubans have been stationed in Venezuela over the years — including security advisers and intelligence agents — to help keep Maduro in power, and that this Cuban presence may have constrained Maduro’s room to maneuver as U.S. pressure intensified.

The report’s historical flow chart then moves into Central America, leaning on Washington’s own record as evidentiary scaffolding.

Gonzalez highlights a 1978 U.S. State Department analysis written a year before the Sandinistas toppled Nicaragua’s dictator Anastasio Somoza. The document, as quoted in the Heritage report, said that “since the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) was formed in the early 1960s,” the Sandinistas “have looked to Cuba for ideological inspiration, strategic guidance, tactical training, material support, and sanctuary,” and that “throughout the FSLN’s existence, Cuba has been a training site.”

The report argues that Havana’s method then evolved — not away from revolutionary ends, but away from overt insurgency as the primary tactic.

Gonzalez leans on what he presents as the São Paulo Forum’s blueprint “formula” for leftist politicians in the Western Hemisphere: de-emphasize Marxism, run as reformers, win elections — and then, once in office, rewrite the rules. He points to Colombia’s current president, Gustavo Petro, as both a contemporary example and, in the report’s telling, an unusually candid witness to earlier Cuban involvement.

Petro, a former member of the leftist insurgent group M-19, is quoted as saying: “Fidel Castro helped M-19 in many of its Colombian actions and, we should admit it, M-19 troops trained in Cuba.”

Petro — who, in recent weeks, has also shown signs of seeking a détente with Washington, softening some of his fiercest rhetoric — had previously, in what Gonzalez calls a “loose-lipped” moment, “also revealed that Mexico’s new President Claudia Sheinbaum was also a secret M-19 asset,” quoting Petro calling her “a collaborator and militant of M-19 in Mexico.”

From there, Gonzalez lists what he presents as the cascading regional success of Castro’s influence model: “This formula worked in 1998 in Venezuela with the election of Hugo Chavez, the (São Paulo Forum’s) first triumph and a dictator who went on to use his country’s oil wealth to keep Castro’s Cuba afloat.” Lula was elected in Brazil in 2003; Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2005; Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2006; and Ollanta Humala in Peru in 2011 — “all Marxists,” the report says, who “obscured their ideology and ran as reformists,” and all São Paulo Forum participants.

Taken together, the report advances a unifying thesis: social unrest, street violence, and narco-terror cannot be understood as separate problems. They are instruments — in this view — of an intelligence-led revolutionary strategy refined over six decades, updated for the age of social media and protest politics, and funded for years by Venezuela’s oil.

That thesis also reads as a political finger to the wind — one that seems to match the rhetoric coming from the White House now: that the Trump administration’s Venezuela operation is not the end of a campaign, but the opening move in a broader rollback of Marxist-aligned regimes.

What the report does not do — and cannot do, on its own — is prove a single controlling hand behind every riot, protest, or crime wave in the United States since 2020. It assembles a narrative from history, open sources, and United States government statements, then asks readers to see continuity.

A center-left think tank is urging Democrats to abandon the “Abolish ICE” rallying cry, warning that the slogan threatens to sabotage any chance at immigration enforcement reform while playing directly into Republican hands.

Third Way released a memo on Tuesday responding to a surge of progressive demands to eliminate Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old anti-ICE activist Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis after she attempted to run the agent over with her vehicle. 

While the memo acknowledges that many Democrats see the Trump administration’s immigration policies as excessive and lawless, it also warns that frustration cannot justify scrapping enforcement altogether. 

The group argues that Democrats need to distinguish between reforming abusive practices and destroying the institution responsible for upholding immigration law.

“Moments like this can and should provoke anger and demands for dramatic action,” the memo explains. “In the wake of Good’s death and a growing number of disturbing immigration enforcement incidents, calls to abolish ICE have once again surged on the left. The impulse is emotional. The slogan is simple. But politically, it is lethal.”

The memo, authored by Sarah Pierce and Lanae Erickson, warns the Democratic Party that calls to abolish ICE “risks squandering one of the clearest opportunities in years to secure meaningful reform of immigration enforcement—while handing Republicans exactly the fight they want.”

The memo insists that “The goal is not to eliminate enforcement. It is to ensure enforcement is lawful, targeted, and worthy of public trust.”

The think tank even drew a direct parallel to the 2020 “defund the police” movement, which became toxic within the Democratic Party and likely cost them some seats in multiple cycles

Democrats have seen this movie before with calls to “defund the police” after lethal, law enforcement abuses that stoked racial tensions. We know how this movie ends.

Calls to abolish ICE follow the same script. It would be a tragedy built upon a tragedy if Democratic overreach allowed the inexcusable killing of Renee Good at the hands of ICE to be used to the advantage of Donald Trump and a Republican Party that is sympathetic to its excesses. Republicans understand this. They have deployed the “Abolish ICE” phrase to their advantage before and will use it as a political lifeline again.

It’s hard to argue that progressive slogans that sound anti-law enforcement don’t cost Democrats politically and shut down space for substantive policy change. And the think tank’s argument rests on a pragmatic political calculation based on the most recent national election. Voters responded to what they perceived as weak enforcement under President Biden. 

What Third Way misses is that Trump is following through on his campaign promise to launch the “largest deportation program in American history” if elected. They see an opening for Democrats to stake out the middle ground, focused on accountability and restraint, rather than abolishing the agency.

“The lesson is clear: when the debate sinks into polarizing slogans that read as anti-law or anti-safety, space for practical reform disappears,” the memo warns.

But what we’re seeing nationwide reflects a party with no interest in the middle ground. Blue states and cities have declared themselves sanctuaries for illegal immigrants, and local leaders are actively pushing for ICE to leave their jurisdictions, not tone down their activities. 

“Immigration laws are meaningless if they are not enforced,” Third Way argues. “And they can be enforced in ways that protect public safety, respect legal norms, and uphold civil liberties. Voters understand this.”

While voters get it, Democrats in Washington, D.C., do not.

But not everyone in the party is on board. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) recently reiterated her position that ICE should be abolished, not reformed.

 Speaking on MSNOW this week, Pressley made it clear she doesn’t believe ICE should exist.

“I will continue to demand an independent and thorough investigation, continue to call on Congress in this moment to use appropriations and the power of the purse to rein in ICE,” Pressley said. “Again, I believe it should be abolished. We need public hearings and accountability.“

ICE cannot be reformed. It must be abolished. pic.twitter.com/ouRBFD0BtD

— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) January 11, 2026

It’s doubtful Democrats will shift toward a more moderate stance on immigration enforcement. Democrats have clearly signaled that their priority is to resist Trump at every turn, not to compromise.