This image from video posted on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s X account, and partially redacted by the source, shows an oil tanker being seized by U.S. forces off the coast of Venezuela, December 10, 2025. Photo: U.S. Attorney General’s Office/X via AP
VENEZUELA has lodged a complaint to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) about the US seizure of an oil tanker in the Caribbean.
The Venezuelans filed the complaint on Thursday to the London-based IMO over what many observers have labelled an act of piracy by the US on Wednesday.
The country’s Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez said she had communicated with IMO executive secretary Arsenio Dominguez, with the aim of “formally and legally addressing this serious situation.”
VP Rodriguez described the incident as a blatant robbery and said the action “exposed the true interests of the US in its ongoing aggression against Venezuela.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
DENNIS BROE says media ownership is not only grossly concentrated in the US, Britain and France – new mergers are advancing the power of the rich to censor the news
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The media has always been concentrated, five major companies in the US, in England and the Commonwealth in the hands of the right-wing fanatic Rupert Murdoch and in France in the hands of the luxury barons Vincent Bellore and Bernard Arnault, two of the richest men in that country and in the world.
We’re watching a new wave of consolidation, an attempt to take over mainstream media and utterly erase what is by now only the spectre of “responsible journalism,” in a far-right and zionist attempt to control the airwaves, to turn all media into Fox News.
Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, who alternates with Elon Musk as the richest man in the world, heavily invested in the coming bubble that is AI, is footing the bill for the Paramount/CBS takeover. Oracle itself was a spin-off of the security state, its database developed for and by the CIA.
Ellison is a rabid zionist who at the drop of a hat professes his admiration for the IDF and is the largest private donor to that august body, the perpetrator of the Gazan genocide. Ellison was accused in a lawsuit, before the genocide, of promoting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel.
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If the film and television concentration weren’t enough, Larry may soon own a significant share in the new American version of TikTok, the short video network whose audience of under-40s has been watching clips of the Gaza slaughter which has partly accounted for a change in attitude towards Israel from victim to bloodthirsty aggressor which is now more widespread.
Israel banned most journalists and all Al-Jazeera journalists from Gaza as the genocide mounted, killing many journalists in the process. But with do-it-yourself reporting and filming, the Gaza atrocity continues to appear on the screens of the world’s youth and is having the same effect as Walter Cronkite’s body bags.
In the proposed deal, Ellison’s Oracle would be named the “security provider” which will grant it control over the algorithms that manage the news, allowing the company to start censoring posted content, ie the videos from Gaza. To say nothing of granting Oracle AI access to users’ data to spy on consumers and add to its version of AI.
The naked assertion of this much power, in a no-holds barred oligarchic and corporate takeover of mainstream media, is not a sign of strength, but of weakness.
That bourgeois democracy functions best, that is, in the interest of the wealthy, when it keeps its cards close to the vest instead of spewing them across the table so we can all see they aren’t holding anything in their hands.
This article is part of a podcast titled Culture & Barbarism. Listen to the podcast, like and subscribe on Substack at dennis.broe@substack.com and on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/posts/culture-8-media-145438018
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand shake hands following talks at the G7 foreign ministers meeting on November 12, 2025. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
“The UK, Canada, and other allied nations who partner with the United States on counternarcotics efforts have ample evidence that the US is unlawfully killing people at sea,” said Human Rights Watch.
A leading human rights organization on Tuesday pushed allies of the United States to more forcefully condemn and take steps to stop President Donald Trump’s deadly boat strikes in international waters, attacks that experts have characterized as extrajudicial killings.
“The UK, Canada, and other allied nations who partner with the United States on counternarcotics efforts have ample evidence that the US is unlawfully killing people at sea,” Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said in a statement. “The rules-based international order depends on countries speaking out against violations, even when they’re committed by powerful friends.”
HRW specifically urged countries at risk of complicity to closely examine their maritime cooperation and intelligence-sharing with the Trump administration, which claims—without evidence—that every vessel targeted was involved in drug smuggling operations that posed a threat to the US.
“The UK, France, and the Kingdom of the Netherlands have significant influence in the Caribbean due to their overseas territories in the region,” the group said. “All three governments are also participants in Campaign Martillo, a multinational counternarcotics detection, monitoring, and interdiction operation that includes US Navy and Coast Guard vessels, along with military and law enforcement units from a dozen other nations, including Canada.”
“Australia and New Zealand, which are part of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence sharing community with the United States, UK, and Canada where the governments share all signals and geospatial intelligence by default, may also find themselves implicated in the strikes and should take steps to evaluate their own risks,” HRW added.
While officials from the nations named by HRW have criticized and distanced themselves from the Trump administration’s strikes, their comments have largely been vague and tepid—especially when compared to the responses of some South American leaders. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, for instance, said her country “is not involved in these US actions” and that “it is for the United States to articulate the legal basis of its actions.”
HRW also pointed to Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand’s statement that “the United States has made clear that it is using its own intelligence” to target the vessels in international waters.
“It is not sufficient to accept the US government’s assurances that it is not leveraging shared intelligence for its unlawful strikes,” said HRW. “In contrast, when asked directly about the legality of the strikes, [Ahmed] declined to address the matter, saying instead that ‘it is within the purview of US authorities to make that determination.’”
Last month, the UK reportedly suspended some intelligence sharing with the US due to the boat strikes. But US Secretary of State Marco Rubiocalled the CNN reporting a “fake story,” and the UK’s foreign secretary cited Rubio’s comment when asked about the report.
HRW said major US allies “should make public any internal legal assessments as to whether the US strikes are violating international law, use their bilateral relationships to raise concerns directly with US officials, and push for individual criminal accountability for those responsible.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Tens of thousands of high school students in Germany went on strike against compulsory military service, pushing back against the government’s militarization agenda.
Around 55,000 high school students skipped school on Friday, December 5, and went on strike in 90 cities across Germany, after a broad alliance of organizations, including local student councils, called for a school strike against compulsory military service.
The strike had been organized for weeks: students founded strike committees at their schools, painted posters, wrote speeches, mobilized their friends and resisted the repression by school administrations across the country. The strike was called for December 5 to coincide with the time when the federal cabinet passed the so-called Military Service Modernization Act.
Germany’s new modern armed forces
As part of the general armament campaign Germany is currently undergoing, Boris Pistorius, Federal Minister of Defense, set ambitious goals for the German army, the Bundeswehr: to meet NATO requirements, it will need to grow to 460,000 soldiers. But lately, the armed forces have not attracted many people to join their ranks on a voluntary basis; there are currently only about 180,000 men and women in active service – and they are aging.
Apparently, Germany’s new army will be built through a carrot and stick approach. As late as Thursday, Pistorius took to Instagram to convince German high schoolers that a strike was unnecessary because no one would be forced to join the Bundeswehr. But, even if they were forced to sign up, the argument seems to go, protesting would be unpatriotic at best – and surely undemocratic.
Source: Laurențiu Dragota/DKP Berlin
As Germany’s economic prospects remain stagnant and the costs of living are rising unabated, a young voluntary soldier with no professional experience will earn a monthly salary of €2,400 from the first day of service. Minimum service will be 6 months, but an extension past one year will see an increase. For comparison, an apprentice earns a monthly salary of less than €1,000 in their first year of work, and the average income for young people between 20 to 25 years old is about €2,000 per month for a full time position. In addition to that, the Bundeswehr offers other “perks,” such as a subsidy for drivers’ licenses (which currently cost 18-year-old applicants a prohibiting €4,000 fee per person), free public transportation, and child benefits.
This would make Germany’s new soldiers the best paid in all of Europe. Will young people be poor enough to join, or, as the mainstream press puts it: is this offer attractive enough for young people to join the army in numbers the government needs?
The new law will leave nothing to chance. All children born from 2008 onwards will receive a mandatory questionnaire on their 18th birthday. For the moment, women can choose to participate. In case these invitations are not followed by enough voluntary sign-ups for Bundeswehr service, the same dataset will be used to conscript young people, first by lottery, and later by other means.
Fit for service is fit for war
The striking high school students have no illusions about the purpose of this military service. It is neither for defense purposes, nor is it improving the livelihood of the majority of the population. They identified this ruse of a mandatory temporary military service as a direct pipeline into the trenches built by a warmongering government that cannot be trusted.
“We are impressed by how many students went on strike today. This shows that students are not only speaking out against conscription in surveys, but are also willing to take action against it. They have shown courage today, because they don’t want to spend six months learning how to kill. They don’t want to die in war,” explained Hannes Kramer, press spokesman for the initiative.
Why students chose to strike rather than attend school was evident in the anger expressed in many of the speeches, interventions, and flyers. Young people in Germany haven’t felt heard for a long time: schools are decrepit, housing is not affordable, their activism for Palestine or in the defense of democracy is repressed or instrumentalized, they inherit a broken planet. To add insult to injury, they are now asked to make new sacrifices, deferring their dreams and ultimately their lives for this state.
“If the government loves us so much, why do they tell us when we will be drafted but never ask us what we want to do with our lives,” shouted 16-year-old Clemens to the 3,000 people who attended the strike rally in Berlin.
The overall number of striking students may still have room to grow, but the participants already showed their creativity in their posters and bands, their determination by resisting pressures from opposing institutions, and their clarity of thought in speeches. They see themselves in the tradition of Fridays for Future, without any illusion of appealing to this government or the state. The students are now mobilizing for another strike on March 5, 2026. They are our biggest hope for peace.
Attorney General Pam Bondi conducts a news conference at the Department of Justice on Thursday, December 4, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Millions of Americans like you and I could be the target,” warned journalist Ken Klippenstein of the new memo.
A leaked memo written by US Attorney General Pam Bondi directs the Department of Justice to compile a list of potential “domestic terrorism” organizations that espouse “extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment.”
The memo, which was obtained by journalist Ken Klippenstein, expands upon National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by President Donald Trump in late September that demanded a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
The new Bondi memo instructs law enforcement agencies to refer “suspected” domestic terrorism cases to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), which will then undertake an “exhaustive investigation contemplated by NSPM-7” that will incorporate “a focused strategy to root out all culpable participants—including organizers and funders—in all domestic terrorism activities.”
The memo identifies the “domestic terrorism threat” as organizations that use “violence or the threat of violence” to advance political goals such as “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality.”
Commenting on the significance of the memo, Klippenstein criticized mainstream media organizations for largely ignoring the implications of NSPM-7, which was drafted and signed in the wake of the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
“For months, major media outlets have largely blown off the story of NSPM-7, thinking it was all just Trump bluster and too crazy to be serious,” he wrote. “But a memo like this one shows you that the administration is absolutely taking this seriously—even if the media are not—and is actively working to operationalize NSPM-7.”
Klippenstein also warned that NSPM-7 appeared to be the start of a new “war on terrorism,” but “only this time, millions of Americans like you and I could be the target.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
This image from video posted on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s X account, and partially redacted by the source, shows an oil tanker being seized by U.S. forces off the coast of Venezuela, December 10, 2025. Photo: U.S. Attorney General’s Office/X via AP
