The Harm in Mamdani’s Politics of Compromise

Yussra holding 'Shame on US' sign

By Yussra

The Typical Liberal Charmer

I have yet to write about New York City’s hottest new Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

I’m not a fan.

Bear with me on this one. I’ve held back on sharing my opinion until now to keep observing him from the sidelines before rushing to judgment. I know many of the other mayoral candidates were so much worse, and I know how much hope he has given to the people struggling and caring in NYC. I know he means a lot to many activists fighting for a free Palestine, including people I really respect. I know his wife makes illustrations calling out Israel’s war crimes and his father is a respected anti-colonial academic. I know how cool it is for the Big Apple, which has long been run by Zionists, to have a Muslim mayor who is critical of Israel, especially given how much discrimination we’ve faced as Muslims in the US after 9/11. I also recognize that the man is absurdly charismatic and eloquent… like Obama.

I live by Islam and I spend a lot of my time fighting for Palestinian liberation, so I’ve encountered people who assume I’m happy about Mamdani’s victory. Well, I’m happy Zionists are troubled. But I don’t trust him, I don’t think they’re troubled enough, and my frustration finally outweighs my hesitation, so I’m going to be the jerk who writes an essay criticizing one of the only politicians in the US who has a significant track record of advocating for Palestinian liberation and against Israeli impunity. One could take my critique as a compliment to Mamdani, since the corruption of the vast majority of US politicians is so plain to see that no scrutiny is required. Of course, I could always be wrong, and in this case I’d love to be wrong, so if I’ve misread Mamdani so far or I later turn out to be way off, then I owe him a public apology (not that the public should care about my opinion, but just for the sake of my own integrity). And maybe he will prove me wrong, maybe he can change, maybe his conscience

Even now, I’m expressing more charitable hesitation to call out Mamdani than he afforded the Palestinian resistance, who he was so ready to throw under the bus when prompted by the American political elite, condemning genocide survivors for resisting decades of illegal Israeli occupation sustained by US taxes.

I have to be honest: it only took me a few minutes to clock Mamdani as a sweet-talking opportunist who is willing to compromise on what matters most in order to build power. A true politician. He’s very good at what he does. Tragically, what he does, it turns out, is play diplomat with Zionists. I was disappointed, but I wasn’t shocked, when I heard of his many immediate betrayals of Palestine after running as the “pro-Palestine” candidate (visit the links at the end of this essay for detailed descriptions and evidence of these betrayals). If we’re being honest with ourselves, how could we be that surprised, when he was willing to run as a Democrat in the first place, aligning himself with a party synonymous with genocide? If your instinct is to defend him by saying he’s hoping to change the party from within, then please keep reading to the end.

I don’t know if this essay would upset people, fans of his. That’s not my intention, especially since I’m likely to agree with his supporters on many issues. I know people form emotional attachments to politicians. It’s only human, and the system counts on it. I know people can point to the good Mamdani has done and will do for Palestine and in general, which they might argue goes far beyond the scope of what any of his critics could ever achieve, given Mamdani’s influence, and I get it, I want to like him so badly too, this should have been our moment, and how dare I rain on it?

But let me take you back a second. I remember the moment I first became aware of Mamdani’s existence. I stumbled across a video of his on YouTube, and I watched a minute of a speech from his campaign to become the mayor of New York, in which his energy was undeniable and his ideas simultaneously felt fresh and long overdue. Impressed and excited, I subscribed to his channel, looked up his name, watched him in an interview with Stephen Colbert, and rushed back to his channel to unsubscribe in a whirlwind, trying to shake what I had just witnessed out of my head. It’s amazing how rapidly my first impression of Mamdani shifted from inspiring to unsettling. I was hoping for Mamdani to put the Zionist New York Times in an incredibly awkward position through his rise in popularity, but I quickly realized he wasn’t going to be the one to hold their feet to the fire. On the contrary, he could inadvertently become the answer to their problems, a way for unethical journalists to win back the conscientious public and m

By working with Zionists, Mamdani unwittingly saves their reputations from the brink of oblivion in the eyes of onlookers, doing more to sanitize their image as an anti-Zionist politician than a liberal Zionist ever could.

My excitement deflated as suddenly as it had overtaken me, because when Colbert asked Mamdani a remarkably racist and Islamophobic question about how he’d make Jews in New York feel safe despite his “controversial” comments against Israel’s genocide in Palestine, rather than pointing out the offensive nature of the question, rather than turning it back on Colbert and asking him why he didn’t make Zionist candidates prove themselves to the Palestinian diaspora in New York during an active Zionist genocide against the people of Palestine, the quick-witted Mamdani did not waste the opportunity to pander to Zionists, going on a tangent about October Seven to repeat debunked propaganda from the occupier’s narrative, instead of standing his ground on his right and our collective imperative to condemn close to eight decades of Israeli terrorism from the apartheid settler colony, instead of pointing out that Jewish supremacists feeling safe should not take priority over Palestinians actually being safe.

It might seem harsh, but that single moment of pandering was enough for me to lose interest in what Mamdani has to offer the liberation struggle. Many others within the movement have yet to run out of chances to give him, which is understandable considering his history, but his credibility is precisely why I feel all the more driven to call him out. It’s too easy to reason that maybe he’s playing the long game somehow, that he’s under unique pressures and he has to build political power before he can use it, that he needs to form strategic alliances and lull his enemies before he can act, that this is a rare opportunity for our sidelined cause to gain mainstream popularity. You get it, we’ve heard it all before, and it’s everything I hate about politics, which can have us justifying the most reprehensible transgressions against our own standards in the pursuit of morsels of recognition. But if you’re an activist for Palestine and you’ve ever felt skeptical or suspicious of Mamdani as he’s continued to work w

Of course, I can’t speak to Mamdani’s true intentions. Allah alone knows the inside of his heart. Mamdani probably believes he’s doing the right thing and helping the cause by working with Zionists. But so does Netanyahu, you know? I’m not comparing the two of course, I’m just saying every politician has their rationalizations. I’ve been burned by politicians too many times before, and especially disillusioned by the unforgivable Zionism of figures I once admired like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, so I’ve been thoroughly reminded since Israel’s genocide in Palestine to be wary of US politicians, who are essentially professional liars on behalf of the colonizer, selling the suffering public on the promise of better days to stave off revolution. 

~ See the rest of her story here

Israel ‘dictating terms’ to US – Turkish professor

RT

Israel is effectively dictating US foreign policy, particularly on Iran and the wider Middle East, in a way that is historically unprecedented for a global superpower, a Turkish international relations professor has told RT.

Hasan Unal, who teaches at Baskent University in Ankara, spoke to RT’s Rick Sanchez this week about what he described as a highly unusual power imbalance between Israel and the US.

”We are living in a world now where a small country like Israel is dictating terms to a superpower like the United States on anything and everything, particularly anything pertaining to Israel and to the Middle East,” he said, calling the situation “totally unacceptable.”

Unal added that some analysts have even described it as an “occupation” of US policymaking by Israel, a characterization he said was “almost true.”

He went on to say that pro-Israel lobby influence and the personal involvement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were shaping American positions, recalling episodes when Netanyahu “gets on his plane immediately” and flies to Washington “to simply dictate what [US President Donald] Trump should say and should negotiate in the negotiations with the Iranians.”

Unal claimed such a pattern has left Washington “dogging behind the Israeli demands all the time” and cautioned that it risks further destabilizing the Middle East.

Netanyahu has made multiple high profile visits to Washington to engage directly with senior US officials on regional policy. In the past year alone, he has met Trump at the White House at least six times to discuss issues ranging from Gaza and Iran’s nuclear program to military cooperation. His latest trip took place last week, ahead of the second round of indirect US Iran talks in Geneva. Netanyahu later said he had pressed Trump to ensure that Tehran is barred from enriching uranium. The renewed diplomatic push followed joint Israeli-US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year, officially justified as an attempt to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – an ambition the Islamic Republic denies.

Trump has since sent an ‘armada’ to the Middle East and threatened further attacks unless Iran agrees to a deal on both its nuclear and missile programs. Last week, he raised the prospect of regime change and announced a second carrier strike group deployment, with media reports claiming the US military was ordered to prepare for a sustained multi-week operation if talks fail.

Asked whether Iran poses a direct threat to the US, Unal replied that Tehran does not seek to attack American assets as such and that many of the tensions are tied to Israel’s security calculations.

Unal also suggested what he called the gradual collapse of a “big empire,” referring to the Western-led order, and the emergence of a more multipolar system in which countries such as Russia, China, and Türkiye have greater room to maneuver. 

Closing in on war with Iran

 

We're two to three days from the US and Israeli onslaught on Iran. 

What will Russia and China do? 

This war is for Israel. Again. 

And civil conflict looms in US.  

WW3.... 

 

Lassoing the kids while they are young

Teens in Ukraine filmed performing Nazi salute

 

The Islander 

‘Peaceful activists’ were spotted in Kharkov in front of a local mall.  

This is what Russia has been fighting since the US orchestrated coup d'etat in 2014 that unleashed a US-NATO backed, trained, armed and directed Ukrainian military to head east toward the Russian border to attack the Russian-ethnic populations in the Donbass. 

After years of trying to work out a peace with the west Moscow finally moved into the Donbass to defend the beleaguered people in 2022. 

Since then the west has poured billions of dollars and Euros into keeping the war going in hopes of creating a 'regime change' in Russia.

Didn't work out for the western imperialists. Many have died as a result.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis blames Boris Johnson for derailing a 2022 Kiev-Moscow peace deal. Says sides were close to agreement before the UK ex-PM’s visit to Ukraine. (Many others feel the same way.)

The Soros Foundation (masters at funding regime change) distributed identical instructions to protesters both during the Maidan uprising in Kyiv in 2014 and during the riots in Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2011. The only difference was that one was in Ukrainian, and the other was in Arabic. 

Pivot back to Russia was 'inevitable...Europe needs Russia to survive' — special presidential envoy Dmitriev. Price of US LNG gas 4-5 times higher than Russian gas. EU economies in trouble. So much for that war. Europe, what do you say now?

Is this the future we want?

The future that globalist elites plan for us.

They don't need us nor want us anymore. We are the superfluous populations. Robotics, mechanization, AI, etc make us expendable. 

Cheaper to kill us or let us die early than have to feed us 'useless eaters' as they call us. 

Palestine, Sudan, Congo and soon other places are being used to normalize mass death. 

Oppose neo-feudalism!

Bruce 

Graham is a mobster

 

Senator Lindsay Graham (#! zionist from South Carolina): ‘WARS of the future are being planned here in Israel’.

Greater Israel now attempting to expand to include much of the globe. Iran is next on their list along with several African nations and Thailand in Southeast Asia.

What could go wrong with this aggressive plan? 

Both parties are war mongers

• US invasion of Panama (1989) - Manuel Noriega's government was toppled. Noriega imprisoned in US.
• US invasion of Yugoslavia (1999) - Slobodan Milosevic's government toppled. Milosevic died in his prison cell before his trial finished. 
• US invasion of Iraq (2003) - Saddam Hussein's government was toppled; the country's oil sector was opened to the American companies. Saddam killed..
• US invasion in Libya (2011) - Muammar Gaddafi's government was toppled, Libya's oil sector was opened to American companies. Gaddafi killed.
• US invasion of Venezuela (2026) - Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped, and the oil sector is getting unlocked. 

How Trump’s oily dreams may collapse in a Venezuelan dark pit

By Pepe Escobar 

So the Big Oil Picture in Venezuela is way more complex than the Trump 2.0 gang suspects.

Let’s start with neo-Caligula’s new edicts on the imperial satrapy he says he now owns; not exactly edicts but outright threats directed to interim President Delcy Rodriguez:

Crack down on “drug trafficking flows”. Well, this should actually be directed to Colombian and Mexican smugglers in cahoots with big American buyers.

Expel Iranian, Cuban, and other “operatives hostile to Washington” – before Caracas is allowed to increase oil production. Not happening.

Halt oil sales to “US adversaries”. Not happening.

Hence it becomes a near certainty that neo-Caligula may bomb Venezuela again.

Neo-Caligula, in a separate motormouth offensive, also clarified that he wants to somewhat overhaul the oil business in Venezuela via subsidies. It “could take less than 18 months”; then it morphed to “we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money”; and finally morphed to “a tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it.”

No, they won’t, as several proverbial “industry insiders” have advanced. US energy majors balk at the sight of investing fortunes in a nation that may be engulfed by total chaos if neo-Caligula forces a traitorous government over 28 million people.

According to Rystad Energy Analysis, it would take no less than 16 years and at least $183 billion for Venezuela to produce a mere 3 million barrels of oil a day.

Neo-Caligula’s ultimate dream is to reduce global oil prices to a maximum $50 a barrel. For this purpose, the Trump 2.0 imperial gig will, in thesis, totally control PDVSA, including acquisition and sale of virtually all of its oil production.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, at a Goldman Sachs energy conference, let the oily cat out of the bag:

“We are going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela, first this backed up stored oil [up to 50 million barrels], and then infinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace.”

So essentially the neo-Caligula gig will capture, actually steal the sale of crude from PDVSA, with the money theoretically deposited in US-controlled offshore accounts to “benefit the Venezuelan people”.

There’s no way Delcy Rodriguez’s interim government will accept what amounts to de facto theft. Even as Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller is bragging that the US is using “military threat” to maintain control of Venezuela. If you are really in control, you don’t need to issue threats.

So what about China?

China was importing roughly 746,000 barrels of oil a day from Venezuela. That’s not much. Beijing is already working on replacing it with imports from Iran. China essentially is not dependent on Venezuelan oil. Apart from Iran, it may also source from Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Beijing clearly sees that the imperial overdrive in the Western Hemisphere and in West Asia is not just about oil, but also to force China to buy energy with petrodollars. Nonsense: with Russia, the Persian Gulf and beyond, the name of the game is already petroyuan.

China is 80% energy independent. Venezuela de facto was accounting for a mere 2% of the 20% China imports – and this according to the US government’s own numbers.

China’s energy relationship with Venezuela goes way beyond cheap American formulas. Here is essentially outlined how “Chinese oil agreements with Venezuela are de facto binding financial contracts, with repayment mechanisms, collateral structures, penalty clauses, and derivative linkages embedded deep into global finance (…) They are connected – directly and indirectly – to Western financial institutions, commodity traders, insurers, and clearing systems, including entities tied to Wall Street. If these contracts are broken, the consequence is not China ‘taking a loss’. It is a cascade event: defaults triggering counterparty exposure, derivatives being repriced, legal disputes crossing jurisdictions, and confidence shock spreading outward. At a certain point, this ceases to be a Venezuelan problem and becomes a systemic global one.”

Moreover, “over the past twenty years, China has become the operational core of Venezuela’s oil industry. Not merely as a buyer, but as a builder. China provided refinery technology, heavy crude upgrading systems, infrastructure design, control software, spare parts logistics (…) Remove the Chinese engineers. Remove the technicians who understand the control logic. Remove the maintenance supply chains. Remove the software support. What remains is not a functioning oil industry waiting to be ‘liberated’, but an inert shell.”

Conclusion: “Converting Venezuela’s Chinese-built oil sector into an American one would take three to five years, minimum.”

Financial analyst Lucas Ekwame hits the major points. Venezuela produces superheavy oil as thick as tar. It doesn’t just flow; it needs to be melted to reach the surface, and after extraction, it hardens again, requiring diluent: no less than 0.3 barrels of diluent need to be imported for each exported barrel.

Compound it with Venezuela’s energy infrastructure shaped by China and at the same time suffering years of American sanctions, even worse than over Iraq in the early 2000s, and neo-Caligula’s faulty oil “strategy” becomes obvious.

That of course does not alter the short-term feast of imperial hedge fund vultures over Venezuela’s carcass, starting with ghastly Paul Singer, the billionaire Zionist hedge fund manager and MAGA super PAC donor ($42 million in 2024) whose Elliott Management acquired the Houston-based subsidiary of CITGO for $5.9 billion in November, less than a third of its $18 billion market value, thanks to the embargo on Venezuelan oil imports.

The speculative money crowd is bound to cash in on up to $170 billion in the debt market; defaulted PDVSA bonds alone are worth over $60 billion.

So the Big Oil Picture in Venezuela is way more complex than the Trump 2.0 gang suspects. Of course on the road ahead we may come to a situation where the Viceroy of Venezuela, the gusano Marco Rubio, cuts off the oil flow from Caracas to Shanghai. Well, considering Rubio’s strategic “expertise”, better start regimenting battalions of lawyers right away.

~ Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian journalist. He writes a column – The Roving Eye – for Asia Times Online, and works as an analyst for RT, Sputnik News, and Press TV as well as formerly for Al Jazeera. Escobar has focused on Central Asia and the Middle East, and has covered Iran on a continuous basis since the late 1990s. Escobar has reported extensively from Afghanistan. 

Palantir was hacked & exposed

Palantir's Peter Thiel (L) and Alex Karp (R) meets Israeli President Isaac Herzog (C) in Israel

 Kim Dotcom
@KimDotcom

Breaking

Palantir was allegedly hacked. An AI agent was used to gain super-user access and here”s what the hackers allegedly found:

Peter Thiel and Alex Karp commit mass surveillance of world leaders and titans of industry on a massive scale.

They have thousands of hours of transcribed and searchable conversations of Donald Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk.

They have back-doored the devices, cars and jets of world leaders and accumulated the biggest archive of blackmail material.

Palantir is creating nuclear and bio weapon capabilities for Ukraine and is working closely with the CIA to defeat Russia. They believe they are one year away. They plan to achieve this by keeping Russia busy with meaningless peace negotiations.

Palantir is responsible of the majority of Palestinian deaths in Gaza. They have developed the AI targeting for Israel.

Palantir is an arm of the CIA and all data from international clients is copied into a CIA spy cloud.

Palantir has become the most dangerous company in the world. If you work there you have the right to know that this is what Palantir AI is used for, without your knowledge.

The Palantir data the hackers allegedly gathered will be given to Russia and/or China. I was chosen as a trusted partner for this publication. I’m not involved in the Palantir hack and I don’t know the hackers. But I do know that the hack happened.

https://x.com/kimdotcom/status/2023165849721536672

Arsenal of Hypocrisy

 

Long ago

I used a bank

in Orlando, Florida

that changed 

its name to

'Freedom Bank'.

 

I asked myself

'whose freedom,

what kind of freedom

are they talking about'?

 

I closed my account

and moved to another bank.

 

This freedom they talk about

is easy to understand.

 

It is the freedom

to smash and grab.

To steal like pirates. 

To lie and distort.

To attempt to control

everything

and everyone.

The freedom to create

mind numbing intimidation 

and paralyzing fear. 

 

The freedom to protect

big oil, big pharma,

Wall Street banksters,

their pedophile partners,

their sleazy media outlets

that report the CIA scripts

that are handed daily

to well paid editors.

 

The freedom to make

the war mongers 

pockets bulge with

greasy blood money. 

 

The freedom to genocide Palestine,

Sudan, Congo, Cuba, 

and the unwanted poor

all around the globe.

 

Freedom to make war

anytime and any place

that Mr. Big desires.

The freedom to kill

indiscriminately.

 

The freedom

to control

and dominate space. 

 

The freedom to destroy

our own nation

by imperiling 

public trust

and hope for

a democratic order.

 

The freedom to ignite

hate and violence

amongst our own people,

to destroy and bury

national unity

and a sense of

common purpose.

 

This is fascism,

plain and simple.

We know the story,

we've seen it before.

 

Our task

is to let the air

out of this

so-called 

'freedom balloon'.

 

Reveal the hollow

'freedom' word 

for what it

truly is.

A manipulative lie.

 

The public is ready

to hear this truth.

 

Will they dare

to share it,

to speak it?

 

Will they struggle

to save our true freedoms

to speak, assemble,

have free media,

and the right to vote

in fair and honest 

elections? 

 

No matter which

political party

is in power? 

 

Will they fight

for a socialist economy,

good jobs and education,

health care, a clean environment,

social security, 

rather than

allow the 1%

to bleed us

to death? 

 

Bruce 

Pepe Escobar on western imperial collapse

From 9/11 to the Gaza genocide and the exposure of elite impunity, Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar describes a system entering its slow yet visible decline.