Manufacturing Consent for Venezuela

Who should appear on a nation’s currency? Its greatest historical figures, or whoever best reflects today’s diversity targets? That’s a ridiculous question, right? Not really. The UK Cabinet recently urged the Bank of England to rethink who appears on British banknotes. And their proposal wasn’t about security features or artistic design. It was about identity. According to correspondence sent to the Bank, Cabinet Office officials argued that Britain’s current historical figures reflect “limited dimensions of British identity.” They called for “greater representation of women, disabled people, ethnic minority communities and LGBT+ individuals.” The Bank of England appears to have its own agenda, moving away from historical figures on banknotes altogether in favor of British wildlife. That means Churchill, Jane Austen, J.M.W. Turner, and Alan Turing would eventually make way for animals such as the hedgehog, badger, fox, and puffin. It seems that one institution wants more diversity and the

Longtime Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who served South Carolina in the U.S. Senate since 2003, passed away Saturday evening after suffering an aortic dissection. He was 71. Many have publicly mourned the passing of Senator Graham. One tribute that stood out came from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said: “Israel has lost one of the great champions of the American-Israeli alliance, and frankly, I’ve lost a beloved friend. He was an incredible patriot for America.” If Graham was indeed a true “patriot of America” and put the United States first, would Netanyahu have such kind words for him? And then there’s Adam Schiff, who wrote, “What I’ll remember most about Senator Graham was his sense of humor and how he deployed it to move his policy positions forward.” Most would agree that there was nothing humorous when it came to Graham’s policy positions, and one man’s direct response to Schiff’s post brings this to

We’re being conditioned to accept constant monitoring as normal, and this latest move only confirms it. As of July 7, every new passenger car and van sold in the European Union must include a driver-monitoring camera under the bloc’s General Safety Regulation. Known as the Advanced Driver Distraction Warning system, it uses an infrared camera to track your eyes and head movements, warning you if it determines you’ve looked away from the road for longer than the permitted time. Brussels says it’s about saving lives as part of its Vision Zero initiative to eliminate traffic deaths. Maybe it will. But it’s also another example of governments normalizing constant surveillance in the name of public safety. Officials insist the system won’t include facial recognition or biometric identification and is designed as a “closed loop,” meaning the camera data is supposed to remain inside the vehicle and not be transmitted

Just one day after President Trump publicly floated the idea of bombing Iran’s bridges and critical infrastructure, Iranian officials say that’s exactly what happened. In Trump’s own words: “We’re not attacking at the highest level. The highest level is the bridges, which we can knock down. I would say in one day we could knock down every bridge in Iran, there’s not a thing they can do about it.” Iran’s Foreign Ministry is now accusing the United States of committing a “blatant war crime” after airstrikes damaged two railway bridges, including one connecting Iran with Turkmenistan and China. Iranian media also says another strike disrupted passenger rail service between Tehran and Mashhad, where millions of mourners gathered ​​​​​for the funeral procession of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The timing isn’t going unnoticed. Targeting transportation routes during one of the country’s largest public gatherings raises obvious questions about whether the strikes were directed solely at military objectives.

Cuba has suffered yet another nationwide blackout, with Union Electrica (UNE), the state electricity company, announcing a “total disconnection” across the entire island on Monday, leaving the country’s 9.6 million inhabitants without power. For many Cubans, this isn’t an occasional inconvenience like a California rolling blackout. It’s a way of life. Some have electricity for only a few hours a day, while others go days without power, and this was all before the latest nationwide outage. No electricity means no refrigeration, no lights, no internet, no running businesses, and often no reliable access to food or clean water on a regular basis. Officials blame the blackouts on a lack of fuel, and it’s not hard to see why when the U.S. has imposed the longest-running trade embargo in history on Cuba. Since January, the U.S. has tightened its oil restrictions, allowing just one Russian oil tanker to dock on the

A CNN report released Tuesday suggests the deadly strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed 168 children was not the unavoidable mistake the government portrayed it to be. Nor did President Trump’s claim hold up when he said, “Based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” According to multiple sources familiar with the investigation, senior U.S. military commanders were warned that the information used to identify targets inside Iran was based on intelligence that was years old. Those warnings were embedded directly inside the Pentagon’s targeting databases, flagging that the information needed to be re-vetted before strikes were approved. Instead of re-vetting the intelligence before unleashing a deadly missile strike, commanders reportedly signed off anyway because it was faster and they were on a timeline. This information was never disclosed to those demanding accountability, even when military officials reportedly determined within days that outdated intelligence