Caracas has denounced President Donald Trump’s oil blockade on the country, saying his “interventionist and colonialist” rhetoric proves Washington’s long-standing plan to seize Venezuelan natural resources.
US forces seized the Skipper oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela and were reported to have brought the vessel to the US state of Texas to unload its oil cargo.
In an official statement released late Tuesday, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said Trump’s remarks revealed the “true intention” of the United States: “to take over the oil, land, and minerals of Venezuela.”
The government rejected Trump’s claim that Venezuela had “stolen” assets from Washington and denounced his rhetoric as “interventionist and colonialist.”
The statement accused the US president of violating international law, free trade, and freedom of navigation by ordering US naval forces in the Caribbean to prevent “sanctioned tankers” from entering or leaving Venezuelan waters.
“Through his social media statements, the president of the United States assumes that Venezuela’s oil, land, and mineral wealth belong to him,” the statement said. “On that basis, he seeks to impose a naval military blockade with the objective of robbing the riches that belong to our homeland.”
Empire of Lies!: “I will not allow a Hostile Regime to take our Oil, Land, or any other Assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump added to his 1 billion lies..
The Constituent Assembly of Venezuela… Direct Democracy
Here we share optimistic predictions of unlimited green energy from the earth. But the development is controlled by the worst evil corporations and billionaires now destroying the climate and biosphere and sponsoring mass poverty and genocide to boost private profit.
On October 28 Mazama Energy, a venture capital-backed U.S. company announced a technologically significant leap for clean energy: the creation of the world’s hottest Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) at its pilot site in Newberry, Oregon at an unprecedented 629 °F (331 °C) bottomhole temperature. This breakthrough sets a new global benchmark for geothermal technology and marks a critical step towards delivering low-cost, carbon-free baseload power at terawatt-scale.
Harnessing super-hot rock resources will allow Mazama to extract 10x more power density, use 75% less water and drill 80% fewer wells than current approaches, according to the company.
“With geothermal, you get global, round-the-clock energy that is carbon-free, cost-stable, and grid-independent,” Sriram Vasantharajan, CEO of Mazama Energy, said in a statement. The Newberry pilot provides a blueprint for unlocking baseload, utility-scale, carbon-free energy from the Earth’s crust worldwide, which is what the next generation of AI and cloud infrastructure requires.”
Although it uses the same technology as the oil and gas industry, geothermal is different from fracking in key ways. To extract oil and gas, a company drills into the ground and injects water and chemicals into the earth to create new fractures that pull fossil fuels to the surface. In conventional geothermal, the drills are used to locate natural water flows underground, which transfer the heat back up. For enhanced geothermal systems like Super Hot Rocks, only water is injected to create pathways in the hot rocks to transfer heat back up to the surface.
A blue cylinder billows steam indicating success for Mazama Energy’s pilot project on Super Hot Rocks on Sept. 9, 2025.Monica Samayoa / OPB
Under Trump’s new law, Oregon could lose big on solar and wind energy projects.. President Donald Trump, however, has advanced policies that are often counter to Oregon’s renewable goals. The administration’s attacks on wind and solar production are making it harder to add these renewable energy resources to the grid. But the development of geothermal as a renewable energy source is something his administration does support, and it has provided millions in funding.
Demonstrators across some 90 cities have denounced the legal change, which lays the groundwork for full conscription being reinstated
Thousands of demonstrators have marched in cities across Germany to protest Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s plan to overhaul the country’s military service system, accusing the government of laying the groundwork for forced mobilization.
On Friday, the German parliament approved changes to the military-service law expanding recruitment and giving Berlin tools to reactivate conscription if volunteer numbers fall short.
Rallies took place in around 90 cities – including Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne – both before and after the vote.
Footage showed protesters chanting anti-war slogans and carrying banners reading “No to conscription,”“We will not be cannon fodder” and “Your war – without us.” Protesters slammed the reform as “recruitment of death” and urged investment in education and welfare instead of weapons.
One protester told Ruptly she feared her teenage sons would soon be drafted, while another said: “Merz should go to the front himself and risk his own life.” Some linked the reform to Germany’s broader military buildup, warning that Berlin is preparing for a war against Russia.
Several speakers argued the law – and the rearmament push overall – serves the interests of major arms companies rather than the public.
Germany abolished compulsory military service in 2011 and moved to an all-volunteer force. But amid a NATO-driven military, Berlin now seeks to expand the Bundeswehr, citing a worsening security environment.
Germany currently has 182,000 active soldiers and just under 50,000 reservists.
Last month, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius claimed Russia could attack a NATO member “as early as 2028,” using the warning to press for sweeping rearmament.
According to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office, since the war began in 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have witnessed more than 250,000 desertions.
Merz approval rating hits record low of only 22% Since entering office, Merz has pushed for increased militarization and has vowed to transform the German Armed Forces into “the strongest conventional army in Europe.” His government’s proposal to reinstate mandatory military service, has been met with opposition and calls for protests. Merz has justified the measures by citing the supposed ‘Russian threat’.
Under the new Military Service Modernization Act, all 18-year-old men must register for potential service by completing a questionnaire and undergoing medical screening starting in 2026.
The reform stops short of reinstating full conscription but creates the legal basis for draft call-ups via lottery if voluntary recruitment falls short.
Critics say Berlin is relying on fear-based scenarios to force through unpopular measures and justify massive military spending.
Younger Germans are especially opposed: a recent Forsa survey for Stern found that 63% of adults aged 18 to 29 reject compulsory service.
Russia has dismissed claims that it plans to attack NATO as “nonsense,” calling them an excuse for inflated military budgets and a way to distract the public from domestic problems.
Жители Одессы пришли спасать тех, кого пытались мобилизовать
Люди толпой накинулись на машину военкомов, ломом били окна и вытаскивали людей. В ответ на возмущение сотрудника ТЦК стали говорить, чтобы он сам шёл на фронт. pic.twitter.com/LPKissP3eU
TRANSLATION OF TWEET.. The residents of Odessa arrived to help those being mobilized. A crowd attacked the military commissar’s car, smashing windows with crowbars and dragging people out. When the TCC employee protested, they began telling him to go to the front himself.Ukrainians mob vehicle to free men captured by draft officers (VIDEO on X)
.—There have also been reports of injuries, torture, and deaths among those subject to forced mobilization, fueling public outrage and sparking protests. In October, the Ukrainian authorities urged people not to film or share videos of press gangs forcibly detaining men. The exodus from Kiev’s armed forces is mounting. More than 21,000 soldiers deserted without leave in September alone – the highest monthly total since the start of the Ukraine conflict. According to a report by BBC…
Sometimes it doesn’t seem like two things are connected. But deep down you know they are. You try to grasp the correlation, but it’s elusive. …I think I’ve found the answer.
Why can’t we, the United States, regularly blow up fishermen off the coast of Venezuela — without a judge, jury, or relevant jurisdiction — without 49% of American children languishing in or near poverty??
Why can’t we manufacture the murder of hundreds of thousands in a proxy-war in Ukraine while still being able to afford going out to eat twice a week at a not-nice but not-fast-food restaurant like Olive Garden or TGI Friday’s or Cheesecake Factory? Instead, a recent analysis finds that an American household earning less than $136,000 a year is essentially under the poverty line. If true, that means only about one-quarter of households aren’t in poverty.
Why can’t we spend over $1 trillion a year on our Department of War & Death without 27% of American adults reporting they’ve gone without medical care this year because they can’t afford it? (We all at some point wonder if we should get a professional to fix that broken leg or see if our neighborhood auto mechanic can pull it off.)
Why can’t we kill 4.5 to 6 million people with the Global War on Terror without the American job market rotting in the gutter? A new report shows you have a better chance of getting into Harvard than you have of finding a good job — a 0.4% chance of getting the average job versus an acceptance rate of 3.6% at Harvard.
Why can’t we have our cake and destroy the world too??
Well, here’s the answer — or at least part of it. The reason the US has a bloodthirsty, tirelessly belligerent global empire that is able and willing to do far more harm to the world than any other country is because we have the most unfettered socioeconomic system. That system uniquely rewards the behavior of sociopaths — those with little to no empathy. If you care at all about your fellow humans, you never become a billionaire or a member of the US elite ruling class. It’s a self-selecting cycle. Those who give a fuck about others are weeded out — with most of them never even wanting to rule over their fellow humans.
All told, this means the capitalist system puts the sociopaths at the top. They are the richest and the most powerful. With the sociopaths running things, all decisions are filtered through a sociopathic lens, rather than a humanity-first lens or something similar. The ruling elite who decide to commit war crimes / genocide / mass murder / unfathomable destruction are also the ones who decide how to set up American society — how best to extract both money and life-force from average citizens. They are the ones crafting our dumpster-fire healthcare system, and our corporate-friendly taxation system, and our fuck-over-the-poor food systems, and our debt-peonage-loving education system. They are also the ones blocking alternative ideas that would help create a sustainable, peaceful, just world.
It’s the same parasitic, soulless people running all the systems.
And that’s at least one of the main reasons we can’t commit loads of war crimes and generally destroy the planet while still having an affordable, easy life. (Not that we should be comfortable while we relentlessly masticate, digest and defecate our future.)
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Two children, 8 and 11 years old—Jum’a and Fadi Abu Assi—were executed near Khan Yunis today, shot in the head and face by an Israeli drone.
According to the IDF, the „suspects“ crossed the imaginary „Yellow Line” while carrying out “suspicious activity in the ground.”
The supposed crime was crossing a line that two young boys would never understand, simply trying to gather firewood for their injured father.
Israel executed them because it considers a child with firewood a “terrorist” and a threat to its forces. The state repeats this predictable lie daily after murdering Palestinians who are only trying to survive the harsh winter cold or reclaim the life they were stolen from.
They were killed, and no one will move for their sake. The world has grown so accustomed to the killing of Palestinian children, it acts as if they were created for that very purpose.
The West Papua National Liberation Army has resisted counterinsurgency in the Star Mountains for decades. Drop Site spoke with guerilla leader Lamek Taplo a week before he was killed.
The videos in this story are well worth watching: exclusive interviews with the guerilla group fighting off the drones and airplanes with bows and arrows.
This dispatch from Kristo Langker is from the mountains of West Papua, a part of the world we don’t typically cover, and it’s different in another way, too: we usually report on, and from, parts of the world where the U.S. war machine operates. In this story, the weaponry in question is made by a multinational French weapons manufacturer and Chinese manufacturer, but you’ll see the structure is the same: the Indonesian government using drones and helicopters to terrorize and displace the people of West Papua, while the historical reason imperial interests loom over the region stems from a U.S. mining project in the 1960s.
Guerilla Fighters in West Papua Are Facing Extermination by Indonesia’s High-Tech Forces
KIWIROK, West Papua—On September 25, 2025, Lamek Taplo, the guerilla leader of a wing of the West Papua National Liberation Army (Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat, or TPNPB), left the jungle with his command to launch a series of raids on Indonesian military posts.
Still from a video of Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano bombing and strafing the mountains of Kiwirok on October 6, 2025 (Video by Lamek Taplo and Ngalum Kupel, TPNPB).
Indonesia had established three new military posts in the Star Mountains region in the past year, according to NGO Human Rights Monitor, with sources on the ground telling Drop Site News that nearby civilian houses and facilities—including a church, schools, and a health clinic—had been forcibly occupied in support of the military build-up.
Despite being severely outgunned, the command shot five Indonesian soldiers, killing one, while suffering no casualties themselves, according to Taplo and other members of his group. The raids continued for three more days. The command shot the fuselage of a helicopter and burned five buildings that Taplo’s group claimed were occupied by Indonesian security forces.
Taplo was killed less than three weeks later by an apparent drone strike. During an October 13 interview a week before his death, Taplo, a former teacher himself, told Drop Site why TPNPB targeted a school: “It’s because they (Indonesian military) used it as their base. There’s no teacher—only Indonesians. I know, because I was the teacher there, too… Indonesia sent “teachers.” However, they’re actually military intelligence.”
School building set on fire by the TPNPB. September 27, 2025 (Photo by Ngalum Kupel, TPNPB).
Indonesia has laid claim to the western half of New Guinea since the 1960s with the backing of the U.S. For the past year, the Indonesian military has ramped up its indiscriminate attacks on subsistence farming villages, especially those that deny Indonesian rule.
The military presence has been growing exponentially after the October 2024 inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto, who is implicated in historic massacres in Papua from his time as commander of Indonesia’s special forces—called Komando Pasukan Khusus or “Kopassus.” According to witnesses interviewed in Kiwirok and its surrounding hamlets, and documented in videos, there are now snipers stationed along walking tracks, and civilians have been shot and killed attempting to retrieve their pigs.
Indonesia immediately retaliated against TPNPB’s September attacks by sending two consumer-grade DJI Mavic drones, rigged with servo motors, to drop Pindad-manufactured hand grenades. One drone targeted a hut that Taplo claimed did not house TPNPB but belonged to civilians. No one was killed as the grenade bounced off the sheet metal roof and exploded a few meters away. The other drone flew over a group of TPNPBraising the Morning Star flag of West Papua but was taken down by the guerrillas before a grenade could be dropped.
Ngalum Kupel TPNPB celebrating the capture of a drone. September 28, 2025 (Video by Ngalum Kupel, TPNPB).
Holding the downed drone and grenade, Taplo likened the ordeal to Moses parting the Red Sea for the escaping Israelites: “It’s like Firaun and Moses… It was a miracle.” Then joking, “The bomb (grenade) was caught since it’s like the cucumber we eat.”
Over the next few weeks, a series of heavier aerial bombardments followed. Videos taken by Taplo show two Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano turboprop aircraft darting through the air, followed by the thunderous sound of ordnance hitting the mountains.
Despite the fact that thousands of West Papuans have been killed in bombings like these since the 1970s, Taplo’s videos are the first to ever capture an aerial bombardment from the ground in West Papua, owing to the extreme isolation of the interior. In fact, many highland West Papuans’ first contact with the outside world was with Indonesian military campaigns.
Ostensibly a counter-insurgency operation against a guerrilla independence movement, these bombings are primarily hitting civilians—tribal communities of subsistence farmers. The few fighters Indonesia is targeting are poorly armed—lacking bullets, let alone bombs—and live on ancestral land with their families. The most ubiquitous weapon among these groups remains the bow and arrow.
Taplo told Drop Site the bombings began on Monday, October 6. “Firstly they (Indonesia) did an unorganized attack: they dropped the bomb randomly… they just dropped it everywhere. You can see where the smoke was coming from. Even though it was an Indonesian military house, they just dropped it on there anyway. That was the first one; then they came back. The first place bombed after was a civilian house; the second was our base.”
Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano bombing and strafing the mountains. October 6, 2025 (Videos by Lamek Taplo and Ngalum Kupel, TPNPB).
“I live with the people, because there’s no military to protect my people”
West Papua was a Dutch colony until 1962, when Indonesia, after a bitter dispute with the Netherlands, secured Washington’s backing to take over the territory.
Just three years after Washington tipped the scales in favor of Indonesia in their dispute with the Netherlands, the nationalist Indonesian President Sukarno was ousted in a U.S.-backed military coup in 1965. Hundreds of thousands of Indonesian leftists (or suspected leftists) were killed in just a few months by the new regime led by General Suharto.
Indonesia’s acquisition of West Papua is often treated as an event peripheral to this coup, yet both events held a symbiotic relationship that would become the impetus for many of the mass killings perpetrated by Indonesia in West Papua.
A full version of the alleged 28-point US drafted peace plan to bring an end to the war in Ukraine appeared on line courtesy of Ivan Katchanovski @I_Katchanovski (you can read the original post on X here).
According to my friend, Pepe Escobar, this document was leaked to the Russian press by Kiril Dimitriev. This proposal is worse than I imagined. During an interview with Maria Zakharova that I hosted on Wednesday, along with Alexander Kazakov and Pepe Escobar, she stated that the Russian Foreign Ministry had not yet received an official copy of the proposal.
Once the proposed document is submitted to the Russian Foreign Ministry, I believe that Sergei Lavrov will use careful diplomatic language welcoming it as a starting point for negotiations, but there is no way in hell that Russia will agree to this in its current form.
Russia is winning on the battlefield and is confident that it will prevail, not only over Ukraine, but over NATO. The proposed document assumes that Russia is looking for a way out… It is not.
The biggest problem with this document is that it assumes that Russia and Ukraine are negotiating from a position of equal strength. However, given the current collapse of the Ukrainian military, it will be Russia who will dictate the terms.
I have highlighted in BOLD some of the more problematic portions of this document:
1. Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.
2. A full and comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine, and Europe. All ambiguities of the past 30 years will be considered resolved.
3. It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and that NATO will not expand further.
The word, expected, is a major stumbling block… Russia will insist on an iron-clad guarantee that NATO will end expansion and remove weapon systems from Romania and Poland that are capable of launching nuclear missiles.
4. A dialogue will be conducted between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation, thereby ensuring global security and increasing opportunities for cooperation and future economic development.
5. Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees.
6. The size of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be limited to 600,000 personnel.
In February 2022, at the start of Russia’s special military operation, the total size of the Ukrainian military was about 260,000–280,000 active-duty personnel, including all branches (ground forces, air force, navy, airborne, marines, and special operations). There is no way that Russia will agree to a 600,000 number. During the negotiations with Ukraine in Istanbul in March 2022, Russia demanded a peacetime cap of 85,000 active personnel for Ukraine’s armed forces, a figure far below Ukraine’s pre-war standing army of approximately 200,000–250,000 troops. This was part of broader Russian demands for demilitarization, including restrictions on tanks (e.g., fewer than 400), aircraft (e.g., 60–80 combat aircraft), missiles (range limited to 40 km), and artillery systems.
7. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that it will not accept Ukraine in the future.
8. NATO agrees not to deploy troops in Ukraine.
9. European fighter aircraft will be stationed in Poland.
I believe that Russia will demand specific limitations on the type of NATO aircraft that will be allowed in Poland.
10. U.S. Guarantees: The United States will receive compensation for the guarantee. If Ukraine invades Russia, it will lose the guarantee. If Russia invades Ukraine, in addition to a decisive coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated, recognition of new territories and all other benefits of this deal will be revoked. If Ukraine without cause launches a missile at Moscow or Saint Petersburg, the security guarantee will be considered invalid.
As currently presented, this is a problem for Moscow, especially given the history of NATO working with Ukrainian intelligence services to launch false flag attacks.
The Free 