Michael Parenti Presente!

  The Islander

 REST IN POWER, MICHAEL PARENTI (1933–2026)

Tragic news that Michael Parenti passed away peacefully this week, surrounded by his family, at the age of 92.

One of the most influential anti-imperialist thinkers in the United States, Parenti spent decades exposing how power actually works beneath the language of democracy, development, and humanitarianism. He dismantled the myth that foreign aid is about helping people.

Parenti argued that foreign aid functions as a subsidy for empire, transferring wealth from ordinary people in the Global North to elites in the Global South who protect multinational interests. Drawing on economists like Kenneth Boulding and Thorstein Veblen, he highlighted the missing class dimension, that those who profit from imperial investments are not the ones who pay the costs of maintaining them.

He pointed to the Philippines, Cuba before the revolution, and British ruled India to show a recurring pattern. Infrastructure was built for plantations and exports while entire communities were left without roads, clinics, or schools. Aid money, he argued, props up private corporations and funds police and military forces whose real role is suppressing impoverished populations.

His message was blunt and remains urgent. Empire benefits a small elite and devastates everyone else. Without class analysis the conversation is baby talk. With it the machinery of empire becomes impossible to deny.

Rest in Power, Parenti. You taught us so much. 

the funnies

Nationwide rallies against ICE on Friday

 

Over 1,000 people in the cold in Portland, Maine (only 1.3 million live in our large state, more trees than people. More than 200 Maine businesses participated in some capacity, either by closing their doors or donating a portion of profits to groups and organizations helping immigrants. Some 206 people have been grabbed by ICE across Maine. ICE has said they have 1,400 'targets' in Maine. We have many African immigrants in Portland and Lewiston.

Thousands marched in Minneapolis, Minnesota during this day of national strike. Stores and some schools closed. Protests were held coast to coast. Polls show that 61% of US citizens now oppose ICE operations.  

Republican senators speaking out against ICE tactics

'What she's done in Minnesota should be disqualifying. She should be out of a job...it's just amateurish', says Sen. Thom Tillis a Republican serving as US senator from North Carolina.

He's referring to Kristi Noem who is Trumps Secretary of Homeland Security and a member of the Republican Party.

Noem is getting bad press for her strident arrogance in support of the aggressive ICE tactics which are causing major problems for the Republicans across the country with their constituents.

After the recent murder of Alex Pretti in Minnesota, Noem threw him under the bus and stated that he was a 'domestic terrorist'.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska (both Republicans) have also spoken out against ICE brutishness and are calling for Trump to put a tight leash on ICE and Kristi Noem. 

The situation in Minneapolis had also resurfaced discussions about the use of the Insurrection Act, which allows the deployment of active-duty troops within the US in certain situations, in Minnesota. The law, which hasn’t been invoked since 1992, works in tandem with the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits the use of the military inside the US.

Trump officials have so far been hesitant to invoke the act, not necessarily because of the legal complications, but because of the political ones. As of now it remains a last resort, according to US officials with knowledge of the discussions. 

Margaret Kimberley (Black Agenda Report) writes, 'The people of Minnesota are still showing the way, despite two deaths. They do what they can to obstruct ICE operations and whether they realize it or not, they are providing the leadership that millions of people so desperately want. They are showing that electoral politics will not save us, that popular action is the only route to change'.

Mark Carney's Watershed Davos Speech Signals Elite Schism

Simplicius

At the Davos forum recently, many waves were made by Western politicians turning away from the US and variously announcing pivots to China. One of the big MSM narrative takeaways was that Trump was ‘humiliated’ at the event by this reception from fed-up leaders.

It brings to mind a fascinating discussion regarding what exactly is happening in the West, vis-a-vis these seemingly contradictory re-orientations. Many are rightly wondering how is it that Western deep state shills like Mark Carney—a dyed-in-the-wool bankster globalist—are choosing to orient towards China, which is supposed to be the arch-nemesis of the Western globalist cabal—is there a rift, a split in the global Deep State factions?

After all, it is China that is usurping and ostensibly attempting to destroy the Western banking and finance system which is at the heart of the global cabal that controls the various arms of the Western Deep States: so how do we make sense of this seeming pivot?

First, let’s begin by contextualizing things. Mark Carney gave a ‘seminal’ speech that many are hailing as a kind of bifurcation point of the West’s geopolitical trajectory. It is a quite remarkable speech and should be listened to in full. In it he rails against the overreaching abuses of great power countries and announces the demise of the so-called Rules Based Order, and the ushering in of a new period of might-based diplomacy. But the most remarkable aspect of the speech by far, was his admission that the entireties of the Rules Based Order and system of “International Law” were in fact fictions the West used to maintain the status quo of American hegemony because it was useful to do.

Carney:

    “We knew that the story about the rules-based order was partially false... We knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused and the victim. This fiction was useful [because of the goods provided by American hegemony]... So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition... You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

The other eye-openingly salient portion of the speech was when he revolted against the dictates of his own clan by renouncing the various ‘economic weapons’ which Western nations have long wielded against the world:

The irony here, of course, is that Carney was totally willing accomplice to these very exploitations he now condemns, when it served him and his clan—which is the first clue of our discussion. 

    Mark Carney was Governor of the Bank of England when it froze the $5 billion worth of Venezuela’s gold that it holds

    It was an act of piracy worthy of Trump + part of the UK government’s wide-ranging 20-year effort to overthrow Venezuela’s government

    The gold remains frozen

Oddly, he seems to admit the West was complicit in this selective ‘fiction’ of unequally imposing its made-up ‘rules’ on the rest of the world, yet he deftly avoids personal culpability.

Most importantly, we must ask what precisely is the purpose of his speech?

We know any such lectures by major political figures are not actually coming from them—they do not sit there of their own volition and ask themselves: “What do my constituents want?” Or in this case: “What do the people of Canada want for our shared future?”

No, such speeches are written by speech writers after consultation with the teams of executives, chiefs of staff, etc., which operate as the puppeteers of each ‘administration’. These are the behind-the-scenes movers and shakers who obtain directives from the real power players, which are the money donors, oligarchs, special interest and lobby groups that represent the consolidated interests of the pyramid of finance at the top. Carney is simply the front-facing mouthpiece delivering their new dictum, a kind of glorified brand ambassador or spokesperson.

So, given his speech, what can we deduce or infer from what these controlling interests are actually trying to say, and what directions they are attempting to steer things into?

If we listen to his ‘watershed’ speech, we note a kind of subtle trickery or sleight of hand at play. On the one hand he denounces the ‘old orders’ of illusory international law and the like, but on the other hand he seems to call for the establishment of new “cooperative” orders which are essentially the same thing, or rather, follow the same “values”. It sounds almost like he’s saying, “We should ostracize the one member who went too far, while continuing the same charade as before.”

He criticizes the ‘integration’ of globalization which has led to nations becoming co-dependent—clearly a reference to the US and Trump’s coercive ‘leverage’ now being applied to various ‘allies’. His solution is then for countries to seek more “independence” from those hegemons like the US, while establishing a system of ‘a la carte’ alliances. This is a sort of vision for a decentralized ‘Rules Based Order’ run on a concept of ad hoc membership.

Again, we’re left asking: what is this signalling, precisely? Many will recall long-time conspiracy theories that the so-called London finance cabal would shift its operations to China after parasitically gutting out the American empire, and that the “New World Order” would in the future be based in the East as a kind of strategic re-orientation of the globe-ruling elites. Many will jump to the conclusion that this is exactly what Mark Carney’s speech signifies, and that China is now demonstrably within the folds of the “NWO”. In fact, Carney even ominously invoked the New World Order directly in another speech days ago which was referencing his China pivot:

We can’t deny the fact that the Western banking and finance cabal wishes it could shackle China in the way it has done to every Western nation, so Carney’s words could certainly be a hint of implied intention. But there is very little chance that China will fall for such easy wiles. It is already far too powerful to be readily manipulated with the typical economic lures and vanity tricks employed on lesser nations.

It’s more likely that Carney’s speech represents an act of desperation from these Western elites. They know that they need to consolidate power as much as possible, and that they need to stay in the game: Carney references this specifically by stating that ‘Middle Powers’ need to work together to get a seat at the table and avoid being “on the menu”. Further, he even openly admits the new vision revolves around a realpolitik kind of pragmatism dubbed “value-based realism”, as coined by Finland’s Alexander Stubb.

When you add it all together, the vision becomes more clear: the elites appear to understand that in order for them and their order to survive, they need to maintain a ‘seat at the table’—or in other words, retain some semblance of power and influence. And right now the only way to do that is to embrace “realism”—rather than dogmatic and illusory thinking—which in this case means opening up to China. In other words: temporarily embrace your enemy if it means surviving a little while longer.

The reason they are not calling the previous ‘Rules Based Order’ completely dead, but simply in the process of dying, is because they likely believe they can still wait out this “temporary” American period of chauvinistic resurgence. If only we can bide our time, they think, by letting China keep us afloat, eventually this dangerous American “phase” will pass and our two Deep States will again unite into one proper Western Imperial Order—like the good ol’ days! 

 

It’s possible they also believe that by pivoting to China they can help “starve out” the Trump administration, shortening its grip on power. In other words: the more business they re-orient to China, the fewer economic goals Trump is able to hit, weakening his standing and facilitating his unpopularity and—hopefully, in their eyes—the demise of his entire movement.

To some extents, the “rupture”—as Carney called it—proves that the “elites” are not entirely a monolithic cabal with precisely uniform marching orders. There are various emergent properties that naturally stem from their shared interests which happen to align them along convenient vectors most of the time. But in those gaps, there is room for many of these top elites to diverge in their thinking. This was recently underscored by a viral video of BlackRock’s Larry Fink explaining how countries which avoided mass-migration might actually be best-positioned for future growth and prosperity contrary to prevailing theories of yesteryear. This would seem to fly in the face of conventional theories of elite power dynamics and their assumed uniformity.

We know that Trump’s administration is likewise knee-deep in the globalist ‘swamp’ despite portraying themselves as rogue political disruptors. Yes, in many ways Trump was a schismatic because he rebelled against some of the Deep State’s motions, while keeping fully in line with others. As explained before, much of the global conspiracy is emergent in its nature, rather than being totally centrally controlled. There are various overlapping interests which flow naturally together toward mutual goals, but there are many areas where the various arms disagree. Think of the mafia: the families sit down to work things out and make agreements as much as possible on dividing up the various territories of their dominion. But there are many disagreements which lead to violent internecine conflicts where top families are forced into major episodes of bloodshed.

Similarly here, Trump and his clan have many overlapping interests with the wider global Deep State, most notably when it comes to Israel and the general prolongation of Western supremacy over the world. But he didn’t see eye-to-eye with them on certain cultural aspects. For example, it seems within the global Deep State itself there are competing factions, one of which does not agree with the mass-Kalergification of the Western world as the largest social-engineering and genetic displacement project in world history.

Trump appears to want a return to a status quo ante, where the global financial system’s terminal ails are dusted over with the ‘glitz’ of an ersatz economic boom. But he is no longer reading the room because the new generation of observers and political activists are increasingly hip to the fact that something is fundamentally wrong with the entire system on which all global commerce and civilization is based. Trump wants to return to the ‘golden days’ which can never be restored because they were artificially engineered by kicking a can down the road—but that can has reached a deadend, and people can feel it in their gut.

This is the underlying reason for the factional splits in the so-called global Deep State: no one even at the very top truly knows how to right this ship of runaway fiat and the resultant social and geopolitical unraveling taking place, and so each faction now desperately stabs out on its own with different high-risk experimental forays, causing internal friction to swell.

Granted, beneath the layer of disorder they remain faithful votaries of their financial leviathan, and will always game-theoretically side with each other when it advances the overall cause. But it is simply the case that now, perhaps for the first time ever, there are deep disagreements over how to proceed into the unknown of their own making. 

Trump's 'Board of Peace': Secret Gaza plan exposed

The so-called 'Board of Peace' is planning to establish a super-surveillance prison camp in Rafah for Palestinians, misleadingly described as a 'planned community'.  

They would be the workers for Trump/Kushner's new 'Gaza dream' world. 

The leaked plan aims to confine more than 25,000 Palestinians under 24/7 surveillance, with all aspects of their lives controlled by Israel.

Likely they will continue to be starved to death as well. Education, health care, etc non-existent too.

More zionist genocide right before the whole world's eyes.

What will the UN do? What will the EU do? What will the US Congress do?  

Trump rolls the Iran war dice once again

 

By Pepe Escobar 

The hour is getting late. Virtually all pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

Even as his “massive armada” is being deployed, neo-Caligula social posts/vociferates to Iran: “MAKE A DEAL” (originally in caps). That’s maximum pressure in effect. Not even the possibility of negotiation. It’s Capitulation or War.

Neo-Caligula’s Top Three demands:

1. Iran should ditch its – civilian – nuclear program, as in total cessation of uranium enrichment.
2. Iran must reduce its missile program to a minimum.
3. Iran must stop supporting “proxy forces” – as in Hezbollah, Yemen’s Ansarallah and Iraqi militias.

There’s absolutely no way that Ayatollah Khamenei, the IRGC and the Majlis – the Iranian Parliament – will agree to any item on this ultimatum, dictated, of course, by the Zionist axis. Hence no capitulation.

Cue to Tehran dramatically raising the stakes.

The Majlis has already approved the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The final decision is in the hands of the Iranian government/security apparatus. This is in fact binding for the government and the military, de facto authorizing the IRGC, under  full constitutional cover, to seal the Strait of Hormuz.

I’ve extensively written about that on Asia Times during the past decade. At the time, Goldman Sachs derivative experts were adamant: if Hormuz is blocked, before or during a full-scale naval war in the Gulf, oil may reach $700.00 a barrel.

And this will only be temporary – because the entire global economy will collapse.

Most of all, the blocking of Hormuz would trigger the detonation of the TWO QUADRILLION (caps mine) dollars derivative market – updating the initial, misleading calculation by the BIS (Bank for International Settlements), placed at $700 trillion. Over the years, several Gulf traders, off the record, have agreed with the “quadrillion” numbers.

Also during the past decade, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted that they do not have the military ability to keep Hormuz open. That remains the case.

Now cut to clueless little gusano Marco Rubio – bought and paid for by Zionist vulture billionaire Paul Singer, who already profited from the Venezuela operation – talking about  US “force posture” near Iran.

As 30-40k US troops are “in reach of thousands of Iranian UAVs and ballistic missiles”, it’s “prudent” to have forces to “defend against what could be (Rubio’s own definition) an Iranian threat”.

Of course, this “threat” would never come from the  Empire of Chaos, Plunder and Permanent Strikes – following a neo-con dream already sketched in the late 1990s.

So, according to Rubio logic, the US Army now reserves the right to launch a preemptive strike against Iran.

Assuming this preemptive strike happens, Tehran has already signaled, via a Supreme Leader’s advisor and the Foreign Ministry, among others, that it won’t be a limited war.

Translation: even the ghost of a Tomahawk hitting Iranian territory will be answered by an “immediate and comprehensive response” targeting Tel Aviv and US bases across the Gulf.

Quick recap: neo-Caligula – at least at face value – frames his threats as a prelude to a “deal” which would in effect amputate Iran’s nuclear program and its whole defense/dissuasion mechanisms.

Tehran’s response: you attack us, and we destroy Israel as a functioning entity – plenty of hypersonic missiles are up to the task – and you, neo-Caligula, becomes responsible for the collapse of the global economy.

 “Unconventional” weapons and “strategic surprises”

Venezuela was just a rehearsal. Iran is the Holy Grail.

Neo-Caligula is not attempting to impose a mere military blockade of Iran. He is launching hardcore economic siege warfare – aimed not only at Iran but also China and Russia, disrupting at the same time Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) integration projects (China-Iran) and the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC, uniting Russia-Iran-India).

This is the next level – way beyond Hybrid, approaching Hot – of the comprehensive imperial war on BRICS, directed against no less than four top BRICS: Iran, Russia, China and India.

We are way beyond mere “containment” of Iran. This is a systemic threat, all-round, across the geopolitical and geoeconomic spectrum, directly disturbing energy flows, connectivity corridors and strategic partnerships. And all that disguised as a mere “security” operation.

Iran’s asymmetric naval strategy, painstakingly built since the start of the millennium, has myriad ways to counter-act an imperial attack: over 6,000 naval mines; deployment of swarm tactics via small, missile-armed boats; countless anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles positioned along the Persian Gulf shoreline; scores of kamikaze drones, submarines and anti-ship missiles scattered on Gulf islands.

Iran is massing all its firepower on what it describes as the “first line of confrontation”, as in the Persian Gulf. Unlike during the 12-day war, everything will be used in the theatre: “unconventional” weapons; an array of “strategic surprises”; new hypersonic missiles; massive cyber-attacks.

Those with an IQ over room temperature at the Department of Forever Wars might do their homework, for instance, on the Khalij Fars supersonic anti-ship ballistic missile, part of Iran’s AAAD strategy: Mach 3 speed; over 300 km range; over 650 kg warhead with EO/infrared seeker. The Khalij Fars would have a ball against American sitting ducks.

Iran has already switched off its radars and is going dark, including the civilian radars at Imam Khomeini International Airport, to protect itself from US missiles and at the same time to allow the installation of Russian jamming systems Murmansk-BN (they need radar silence to be properly calibrated).

Then, on the imperial side, there’s the imminent entry in the theatre of the E-11A BACN: not a mere surveillance aircraft, but a sort of massive “flying router”: a sky-high Wi-Fi linking F-35s and F-22s using different communication systems with ground forces and ships, everything  in real-time and evading Iran’s notorious, mountainous terrain.

Are you ready to destroy the global economy?

NATO is, predictably, all over the place now, complete with strident regime change rhetoric. A sound scenario determines that neo-Caligula may have struck a bargain with the EUro-chihuahuas: I refrain from annexing Greenland (for now) but you support my war on Iran.

Enter yet another “coalition of the willing” (actually “the coerced”). It’s no wonder the IRGC is now being designated as a “terrorist organization” by Brussels – on a par with al-Qaeda and ISIS (these two, by the way, fully normalized by Washington, Brussels and even Moscow).

In parallel, several NATO bases are being set up to help the American “massive armada” with a massive air bridge.

Tehran now has fully understood that what neo-Caligula and his Zionist backers really want is regime change. This has absolutely nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program.

Still, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf continues to stress that Tehran does not oppose the principle of dialogue and diplomacy, as long as it involves mutual respect. Turkiye’s Sultan Erdogan, for his part, is proposing a high-level trilateral between Iran, the US and Turkiye, possibly via video conference.

It’s now up to diplomacy-averse neo-Caligula and his megalomaniacal narcissist mood swings. So this is how the whole drama is coming to: either neo-Caligula and his “massive armada” pauses, opening some room for talks, and he ends up saving the global economy; or we have the Gates of Hell opened in West Asia.

It’s Zero Hour time.  

Disabled Black man - one year under ICE jailing

Rodney Taylor is a double amputee who came to the US for surgery at the age of two. 

He became a pillar of his Atlanta community as a barber and father. 

For the last year, he’s been in an ICE detention center. Taken from his car in front of his family with no explanation, for the last year, his fiancée has been organizing to have him released. 

The Trump administration says its deportation campaign targets “the worst of the worst.” But, in interviews with BT, his family, neighbors, and clients say the reality is just the opposite. 

Sign the petition for Rodney's release from Stewart Detention Center: https://www.change.org/p/demand-the-r... 

Strike, strike, strike, strike

 

An Army veteran witnessed the ICE murder of Alex Pretti in Minnesota. He gave a statement to the investigators saying that Alex was not resisting.

He then goes on to say the one day strike that drew a hundred thousand people to march thru the city must be expanded if we hope to shut down the ICE raids across the nation.

He leads a chant strike, strike, strike, strike! 

Groups all over the US should now be discussing a national strike.  

We can't compete with the storm troopers guns, tanks and helicopters that the government has to repress the public. But a national strike that shuts down the nation can't be stopped by ICE nor the Pentagon or the National Guard.

Start talking about this strategy in your community.

Strike before it is too late.

Bruce 

Capture & sterilization of TikTok for zionists only

 

TikTok's new CEO, Adam Presser, told the World Jewish Congress that the platform now bans criticism of zionists. 

He said that while users can declare they are “proud Zionists,” describing someone as a zionist in a derogatory way is classified as hate speech.

Elon Musk at X is doing the same thing. Also on Fazebook and YouTube too.

It's obvious to all of us that the zionist agenda is to capture all social media and 'cleanse' it to ensure that no honest analysis or debate about genocide can be found. 

But their goal will fail as they are only ensuring that the global public sees with their own eyes the undemocratic nature of  international zionism which only exists to benefit the imperial goals of corporate domination of the planet - its people, resources, media, governments and economies.

The arrogance and sense of privilege is more than chilling - it's dark and must be resisted everywhere. 

Bruce 

Making physics & anti-nuclear activism fun

Lynda Williams is known as “The Physics Chanteuse.” She is “an American physicist, singer, writer, and activist known for blending science, music, satire, and performance art,” as her website notes.

In this Enviro Close-Up with journalist Karl Grossman, she explains how she developed a strong interest in physics after going to a talk given by Dr. Helen Caldicott and watching Carl Sagan’s TV series “Cosmos.” After studying physics, she taught it as a college professor for 20 years. 

Meanwhile, while in graduate school, she began her science-themed stage production, Cosmic Cabaret, blending physics concepts with theatre, and performing in the U.S. and internationally as “The Physics Chanteuse” at scientific conferences, in theatres, academic gatherings and events including a birthday party for Steven Hawking.

In this program, she challenges the current push for a nuclear power “renaissance,” discusses nuclear war, the “small modular reactors” now being promoted by the nuclear industry, the radioactive impacts of depleted uranium weapons, at CounterPunch: “As a physicist and concerned citizen, I find myself outraged every time I scroll through social media and encounter tweets from the Department of Energy and the Office of Nuclear Energy touting nuclear power as ‘clean, safe, and carbon-free.’ This narrative not only misrepresents the dirty reality of nuclear power but also obscures the significant environmental and health risks associated with its production and waste. It’s infuriating to see government agencies knowingly lie and promote such misleading information, while ignoring the pressing issues faced by communities affected by the toxic reality of the nuclear power industry—propaganda paid for by U.S. taxpayers!” 

This highly knowledgeable and articulate scientist provides the truth.

Karl was one of the key founders of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space in 1992 and Lynda is a long-time GN member as well. They give a nice plug about the GN in the middle of this interesting and fun video.

Boycott World Cup in the USA - Ban Israel as well

U.S. officials have chosen to operate outside the bounds of law and basic morality — from supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and illegal settlement expansion, to launching a direct military strike on Venezuela that kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, to escalating repression against migrants and racialized communities inside the U.S. that has led to murder. These are not isolated policies, but interconnected expressions of an empire that relies on illegal violence abroad and domestically to enforce dominance. Friday January 23rd was one of the largest labor mobilizations in recent U.S. history with 10s of thousands of Minnesotans taking to the street to end the tyrannical violence of ICE and its anti-immigrant operations. 

One day later, ICE agents in Minnesota have murdered another person — this time a 37-year-old man. The federal government is systematically violating the most fundamental of human rights: the right to life. While federal officials run cover for their crimes, state and local officials do nothing but stand by, make statements but take no action. We must demand that these democratically elected officials act immediately to defend their constituents and combat all attempts to clean the image of this neo-fascist state. 

This includes the World Cup, which should not be used to launder state violence or normalize genocide and international gangsterism. We must hold state and local authorities accountable and demand they use their power to defend the human rights and safety of the people they claim to represent. Organizations and people of conscience must demand that FIFA move the games out of the U.S. and take a stand for people-centered human rights rather than empire, repression, and impunity. Sign the petition demanding that FIFA and the IOC ban the U.S. and Israel from hosting or participating in international sporting events. 

Sign the petition here 

Oke Göttlich, a vice president of the German soccer federation, said in an interview with newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost that it was time to “seriously consider and discuss” a boycott. He compared the current situation to Olympic boycotts during the Cold War.

“What were the justifications for the boycotts of the Olympic Games in the 1980s?” Göttlich said. “By my reckoning, the potential threat is greater now than it was then. We need to have this discussion.”