news

The French offices of Elon Musk's X have been raided by the Paris prosecutor's cyber-crime unit, as part of an investigation into suspected offences including unlawful data extraction and complicity in the possession of child pornography.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/ice-deported-ireland-undocumented-tribeca-condo-b2912296.html?test_group=lighteradlayout

In Florida, the state’s attorney general has encouraged people with undocumented exes to report them to ICE. The top ICE official at the agency’s Puerto Rico field office said investigators today receive “revenge tips” they never got previously, telling NPR that people are turning in “a neighbor that they don’t get along with, or an ex-husband, ex-wife, ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend.” Last year, after a 29-year-old NYPD sergeant was spurned by a woman he met online, he allegedly threatened to have her deported by ICE.

Between January and September 2025, the U.S. deported 99 Irish citizens, a 50 percent increase compared to a year earlier, and an 1,880 percent increase over the five people deported back to Ireland in 2021.

My heart is heavy with sadness because my family and I truly need help, yet we are receiving so little. Every day feels like a struggle, and we are doing our best to hold on, hoping that someone will hear our cry and extend a helping hand. https://gofund.me/00439328

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24512

After Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez were identified Sunday as the two masked federal officers who shot and killed ICE nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, immediate calls for their arrest and prosecution went out alongside demands for the heavy-handed operations ordered by the Trump administration to come to an immediate end.

ProPublica named Ochoa and Gutierrez, both from Texas but deployed for operations in Minnesota prior to the shooting, based on government documents the nonprofit news outlet obtained.

According to ProPublica:

Both men were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent scores of armed and masked agents across the city.

CBP, which employs both men, has so far refused to release their names and has disclosed few other facts about the deadly incident, which came days after a different immigration agent shot and killed another Minneapolis protester, a 37-year-old mother of three named Renee Good.

Protests erupted in Minneapolis and nationwide following the homicides of Good and Pretti, both captured on video from various angles by bystanders for all the world to see. Sunday's reporting notes that both Ochoa and Gutierrez were seasoned officers with the Border Patrol, joining the agency in 2018 and 2014 respectively.

"The two CBP federal agents who murdered Alex Pretti have been on the job for 11 and 7 years respectively," said Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the New York Health Campaign, in response to the reporting. "It’s not a lack of training issue, it’s a culture of violence and lawlessness issue. If you’re still voting to fund this, you’re condoning it."

Many lawmakers have argued that the killings of Pretti and Good—as well as the near endless list of violence, intimidation, unconstitutional searches, and unlawful behavior of immigration enforcement officers under the direction of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—is attributable to a wave of new recruits and in adequate training. But critics have said that argument provides a smokescreen for the Trump administration which has encouraged such tactics as a matter of policy.

"ICE has much more than a training problem—it has a culture problem," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) during a news interview on Sunday. "The lack of accountability for their violence and lawless actions corrupts the entire agency, and our communities are forced to pay the consequences."

ICE has much more than a training problem – it has a culture problem.

The lack of accountability for their violence and lawless actions corrupts the entire agency, and our communities are forced to pay the consequences. pic.twitter.com/hO0eMQ04uh
— Pramila Jayapal (@PramilaJayapal) February 1, 2026

Social justice activists like Lance Cooper were among those demanding, now that the identities are known, for the arrest and prosecution of the two agents named in the reporting.

"These killers are being protected by the US government," said Lance, "and we must continue to demand their arrest and prosecution."

State and local law enforcement in Minnesota been allowed to participate in the investigation following Pretti's shooting, and both agents were quickly taken away from the scene and then out of the state.

While the Trump administration has withheld the names of the agents from public disclosure, the editors at ProPublica said in a note that the public has an overriding interest in learning more about the masked men behind the killing of Pretti.

"The policy of shielding officers’ identities, particularly after a public shooting, is a stark departure from standard law enforcement protocols, according to lawmakers, state attorneys general and former federal officials," the outlet stated. "Such secrecy, in our view, deprives the public of the most fundamental tool for accountability."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

ICE agents have the right to defend themselves

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/national-politics/witness-captures-girl-baby-treated-tear-gas-portland-ice-demonstration/283-c617cb1b-3bf9-47c8-bdb2-90b567b1d501

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7532822

Also talk about making connections for a nebulous objective to which Kazakhstan and Magnolia are the keys.

Link to ETA file

As would-be dictator Donald Trump menaces Iran with a major build-up of US military capabilities in the Middle East, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared last week that “the days of the Iranian regime are numbered” and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer asserted that his government “supports the goal” pursued by the US President. The European imperialist powers are fully complicit in preparing an imperialist war of plunder against the most populated country in the region.~~___~~

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24494

January 2026 saw some of the most significant developments in the recent history of the American class struggle. The ICE murder of Renee Good set off an explosive anti-ICE movement, culminating in a de facto political general strike. The subsequent murder of Alex Pretti threatened to spread the movement nationally, forcing Trump to back off, at least temporarily. What conclusions can we draw from this experience?

From In Defence of Marxism via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24623

Cuba stands on the precipice of a severe fuel shortage, a crisis with the potential to paralyze its economy and inflict greater and more profound suffering on its 11 million people. This is not an accident of geography or a failure of planning. It is a direct, calculated result of the United States government’s actions, most recently the fuel blockade announced by the Trump administration’s executive order that places tariffs on any country selling oil to Cuba. This follows another executive order by Trump in April 2019 that activated Title III of the Helms-Burton Act which began a policy of threatening third-country shippers and insurers with devastating secondary sanctions if they delivered any oil to Cuban ports.

To understand the gravity of this moment, one must reject the dominant narrative that frames Cuba’s current crisis as a consequence of its own intransigence or its political choices. A sober assessment reveals this fuel blockade as the latest tactic in a 65-year war of economic siege waged by the world’s foremost power against a small island that dared to claim its sovereignty. Trump’s intervention in Venezuela can only confirm that this escalation could be a dangerous precursor to a military attack against another independent country in Latin America.

The blockade was never merely a severing of ties between the United States and Cuba. As Colombian writer and Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel García Márquez wrote in 1975, it was “a ferocious attempt at genocide promoted by a power almost without limits, whose tentacles appear in any part of the world.” This logic of annihilation was articulated early on by US officials themselves. In a memorandum dated April 6, 1960, Lester Mallory, deputy assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs, coldly advised: “The majority of Cubans support Castro… The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” From its inception, the blockade was designed to crush morale and force surrender, a strategy of economic terror disguised as policy.

Yet, the prevailing conclusion in the media by experts across the political spectrum in the US often suggests that Cuba’s crisis is self-inflicted. They argue that if only Havana would enact “major reforms,” privatize its economy, and submit to what it calls “free and fair” elections on American terms, the crisis would vanish. This argument requires a willful ignorance of history and a suspension of material reality. It imagines a parallel universe in which the United States government’s strategic objective, the overthrow of the Cuban government and the re-establishment of a pliant, neo-colonial regime, simply evaporates through negotiation. The historical record offers no such fantasy.

Read more: From blockade to asphyxiation: the US war on Cuba enters its most brutal phase

Since 1959, the US has pursued a relentless campaign to break Cuba, documented in thousands of declassified pages. This includes the Bay of Pigs invasion, hundreds of documented assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders, Operation Mongoose’s campaign of sabotage and terrorism, and the introduction of deadly pathogens that decimated the island’s pig population and the biological warfare that afflicted its people with hemorrhagic dengue in 1981 killing 101 children. As Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel stated before the United Nations, “For more than six decades, we have been victims of an economic, commercial and financial blockade, the most unjust, severe and prolonged system of unilateral sanctions ever applied against any country.” The blockade, estimated by the Cuban government to have cost over USD 1.3 trillion and countless lives due to denied medicines and equipment, is not a passive policy. It is, in the words of Cuban intellectual Fernando Martínez Heredia, “a form of permanent, low-intensity warfare.”

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington escalated its assault through the Torricelli Act (1992), the Helms-Burton Law (1996), and a portfolio of measures announced by George W. Bush in 2004, each tightening the noose around Cuba’s economy. Even during periods of nominal thaw, such as under Barack Obama, the underlying objective remained unchanged. Obama’s outreach, including his 2016 visit to Havana, was seen by some as an attempt to “change” Cuba through grassroots contact. Yet, in a twist of irony, many US visitors visiting Cuba in large numbers for the first time returned home transformed, advocating not for regime change, but for an end to the blockade and closer relations.

This fleeting openness was swiftly reversed under Donald Trump, who imposed 243 new sanctions against Cuba, ruthlessly restricting remittances, travel, and exchanges. Under Joe Biden, the sanctions remained fully armed, perpetuating what García Márquez described as a state of permanent siege: “The threat of armed invasions, systematic sabotage, constant provocations were for Cubans a source of tension and a drain on human energy far more severe than the commercial blockade.”

Trump’s siege

The Trump administration’s fuel blockade represents an unprecedented escalation of this warfare. By leveraging the global reach of the US financial system to terrorize third countries and foreign companies, the US has effectively militarized the global market against a small, developing nation. The goal is explicit: to induce collapse through collective punishment. When Trump declared that Cubans would “probably come to us & want to make a deal,” he revealed the core imperial delusion that has guided failed US policy for over six decades. It is the belief that unbearable pressure will force surrender.

This policy is championed by Marco Rubio and other members of the reactionary Miami Cuban mafia, whose vision for Cuba’s future is inextricably linked to a neo-colonial past. That past is key to understanding the present confrontation. The “MAGA project,” which seeks to roll back social and civil rights within the United States, has a foreign policy corollary: the restoration of American neo-colonial dominance over Latin America. For Cuba, this means a return to the pre-1959 era when the island was an enclave of the American mafia who controlled the casino and prostitution rings, and of US corporations who plundered its natural resources under a regime of racial segregation, illiteracy, and immense inequality.

The fuel blockade is the highest expression of the US economic war against Cuba, as energy is the lifeblood of any modern economy. Without fuel, transportation halts, generators fall silent, and agricultural production and distribution cease.

As García Márquez observed during his visit to the island, “One thing was irreplaceable in that situation: oil.” He noted how back then Soviet tankers traveled 12,000 kilometers to ensure that “not a single minute of activity was halted in Cuba.” Today, that lifeline, which was heavily dependent on fuel imports from Russia, Mexico, and Venezuela, is under direct attack. On January 29, 2026, the Trump administration transformed a long-standing campaign of pressure into a blunt instrument of suffocation. With an executive order, it weaponized the US tariff system against any nation that dares to sell oil to Cuba. This is no longer about isolating or containing the Cuban people from the rest of the hemisphere; it is a deliberate strategy of total economic asphyxiation, a move unseen in its aggression since the Cold War.

Trump’s escalation is the cornerstone of his administration’s “Donroe Doctrine,” a 21st-century revival of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine that declares the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean to be US property. Following the illegal attack of January 3, 2026, on Venezuela, Trump stated plainly: “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” Under this doctrine, any nation that chooses an independent path, especially one that organizes its economy around human needs, such as Cuba’s world-renowned healthcare system, is deemed a “national emergency.”

The Cuban leadership’s refusal to capitulate is therefore not, as critics allege, motivated by dogmatism or a desire for martyrdom. It is informed by a clear understanding of the US government’s objectives and centuries of its own anti-colonial struggle. To surrender principles for temporary relief would not bring peace or prosperity; it would invite the wholesale reversal of Cuban sovereignty. This is why, despite the immense cost, Cuba has never surrendered to the blockade. It is also why Cuba has consistently expressed its willingness to negotiate on equal footing, but never to negotiate its existence.

The human implications of the fuel blockade are devastating. Hospitals ration electricity, jeopardizing medical care. Families wait for hours for sporadic public transport. Blackouts of 20 hours or more become a daily ordeal. Yet, even in this US manufactured crisis, the resilience of the Cuban people is evident.

For people in the United States, understanding this situation requires a break with their own government’s extreme violence towards Cuba. The fuel blockade is not a “policy disagreement.” It is an act of economic terrorism designed to foment hunger, suffering, and instability until a sovereign government abdicates. Cuba’s steadfastness, against all odds, remains a powerful testament to the fact that even the most powerful empire cannot extinguish the desire for dignity and self-determination.

Manolo De Los Santos is Executive Director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His writing appears regularly in Monthly Review, Peoples Dispatch, CounterPunch, La Jornada, and other progressive media. He coedited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord, 2020), Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord, 2021), and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez (LeftWord, 2023).

The post Trump’s ultimatum to Cuba: fuel or surrender! appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

From Peoples Dispatch via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7531054

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7528340

Please https://chuffed.org/project/145057-help-hazem-and-his-family-survive

Supoena on page 3 of this file

The person posting was Roberto Grijalva, a prison guard working at the prison where Epstein was jailed. His name is listed on page 88 of the above document.
See page 851 of this other pdf with proof of his employment. This apparently did not result in him being fired, as an inmate sued him in 2023 for use of excessive force.