Welcome to a Hump Day (“Uroe bonggol” in Acehnese): Wednesday, January 7,2026. and National Bobblehead Day. I put below a photo of my very rare Hitchens Bobblehead, sent by a kindly reader. It is mine and belongs to me; you can’t have it. Notice that he has both a ciggie and a glass of Mr. Walker’s amber restorative:
It’s also Orthodox Christmas Day (it’s celebrated today by the Eastern Orthodox Church), National Pass Gas Day, and National Tempura Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 7 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*On Tuesday deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro appeared in a Manhattan court and was defiant, claiming that he is still President of Venezuela and was “kidnapped” by the U.S. Meanwhile, Trump suggested that the U.S. will be involved in Venezuela for “some time,” and has named a team, including Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, to oversee the next steps.
For Maduro and Flores, Monday’s hearing was the first step in what is likely to be a drawn-out legal process, one that Maduro’s attorney expects will be “voluminous and complicated.”
An indictment unsealed after their capture alleged that Maduro “sits atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking.” The indictment said Maduro has “remained in power despite losses in recent elections,” and accused him, his wife and others in their inner circle of amassing wealth and power while carrying out “a relentless campaign of cocaine trafficking.”
Maduro faces four counts, including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and gun charges. His wife is charged with cocaine importation conspiracy and related weapons charges. Both entered pleas of not guilty.
Maduro used the hearing to protest his presence in an American courtroom.
“My name is President Nicolás Maduro Moros,” he said, according to interpreters who translated his remarks from Spanish to English in court. “I am president of the Republic of Venezuela. I am here kidnapped since January 3rd, Saturday. I was captured at my home in Caracas, Venezuela.”
The many people who object to the U.S. apprehending Maduro, who was indicted (apparently with voluminious evidence), must also then object to Israel apprehending Adolf Eichmann, a war criminal, in Argentina in 1960, taking him back to Israel for a trial. (He was then executed, and while I think Israel’s apprehension was okay, I do not approve of state-sponsored killing.) This doesn’t mean that the U.S. always has the green light to go into other countries to apprehend people suspected of violating U.S. law, a tactic that must be used sparingly. But Maduro is a special case, and had already been indicted. He gets a fair trial with a good lawyer, but no, he is no longer President of Venezuela.
UPDATE: After reading the news about the crackdown in Venezuela, it looks as if the Maduro regime will linger, which would be a disaster. If that proves to be the case, expect mass emigration from the country. From the NYT:
A 90-day emergency order from the Venezuelan government appears to order the police to “immediately search and capture” anyone who supports “the armed attack by the United States,” among other directives that would further crack down on civil liberties in a country already under authoritarian rule.
The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, appears to be the emergency decree that was first mentioned by Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s interim leader, during her public address to the country on Saturday, shortly after the capture of Nicolás Maduro. During her speech, she specified that the decree was being sent to the Venezuelan Supreme Court and would be in effect “from this point on.”
*On his website “Beyond the Noise, pediatrician and immunologist Paul Offit describes an odious plan called “RFK Jr.s Tuskeegee experiment” (h/t Bat). You may recall the infamous Tuskeegee Experiment, in which for 40 years before 1972 the US Public Health System studied the effects of untreated syphilis in black men, comparing an untreated “control group” with one treated with the appropriate cure: antibiotics like penicillin. The men were not told what was going on, and about 100 men died from the withheld treatment.
JFK Jr. plans something along those lines, but in African children, and delaying immunization with the hepatitis B vaccine in one group, and giving it at birth (the World Health Organization recommends a birth inoculation to prevent infection of young children, which can kill them later on. The plan, as described by Offit:
RFK Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, will soon conduct his own Tuskegee experiment. He has chosen the resource-poor nation of Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, to do it. Guinea-Bissau is currently overwhelmed by hepatitis B virus. About 18 percent of the population is infected. The World Health Organization (WHO) strongly recommends that all children in all countries receive a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine to prevent mother-to-child transmission. The United States implemented the birth dose in 1991, eventually eliminating tens of thousands of cases of hepatitis B virus in children less than 10 years of age. Guinea-Bissau, on the other hand, has struggled to implement the WHO recommendation, deferring the first dose to 6 weeks of age. Consequently, about 11 percent of children less than 18 months of age in Guinea-Bissau are infected with hepatitis B virus. These children have a 90 percent chance of developing cirrhosis (chronic liver disease) or liver cancer later in life. Realizing the problem, Guinea-Bissau has decided to launch a universal birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine for all infants in 2027.
RFK Jr. sees this one-year delay in implementation of the much-needed hepatitis B birth dose as a “window of opportunity” to test his theory that the vaccine causes long-term neurological problems even though more than 30 years of experience in the United States has disproved his claims.
Kennedy recently funded a $1.6 million, 14,000-person study in Guinea-Bissau set to begin in early 2026. Investigators will divide 14,000 newborns into two groups. One group will receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, as recommended by the WHO. The other group won’t receive the vaccine until 6 weeks of age, a continuation of the woefully substandard care that has put so many children in Guinea-Bissau at risk. Because it is unethical and cruel, this study could never be performed in the United States.
In addition to exposing children needlessly to a potentially fatal infection, RFK Jr. has manipulated the study to support his unsupportable, science-resistant beliefs about harms caused by the hepatitis B vaccine:
• The study will not be examining the efficacy of early or late vaccination, as it is clear that there is no value in delaying a hepatitis B vaccine, especially in a child whose mother is infected. RFK Jr. would prefer not to know that he is exposing children to unnecessary risk.
• The study will be conducted over 5 years. Children who are infected with hepatitis B virus at birth don’t develop chronic liver disease for decades. Therefore, RFK Jr. is unlikely to know about how much harm his “study” has done during the 5-year period.
Offit also adds that he thinks it’s unlikely that parents will be asked to sign a consent form outlining the risks of delaying vaccination. Why is he doing this? Although the vaccine is not being withheld from children, which you’d need to do to see what long-term health effects (like autism) could result from the vaccination, delaying vaccination is still unethical. As the Guardian notes, 18% of adults in Guinea-Bissau already have hepatitis B, so the risk is not small, and the injection-delayed group will be known to have higher risks of infection. You can’t do that when the intervention (delay) is already known to cause harm. From the Guardian:
“It is not clear what the research question is. It seems to be about the safety of the vaccine rather than its effectiveness, but both are already well-established, and to undertake such a study in a population where almost one in five of the adult population has a marker of infection seems extremely risky,” McKee said.
*More mishigass over Greenland. The NYT reports that Trump flunky aide Stephen Miller says the U.S. has the “right to take Greenland,”
Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, asserted on Monday that Greenland rightfully belonged to the United States and that the Trump administration could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory if it wanted.
“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper, the CNN host, after being asked repeatedly whether he would rule out using military force.
The remarks were part of a vocal push by Mr. Miller, long a powerful behind-the-scenes player in Trump administration policy, to justify American imperialism and a vision for a new world order in which the United States could freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it was in the national interest.
“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Mr. Miller made his comments after his wife posted an image on social media over the weekend suggesting that the United States would soon take control of Greenland, and as Mr. Trump has renewed his own push for the island. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark urged Mr. Trump on Sunday to “stop the threats” to annex Greenland, in effect attacking a NATO ally.
The United States’ taking Greenland by force would rip apart the central agreement that underpins the NATO military alliance, of which Denmark and the United States are both founding members. Under that treaty, an attack on any member is treated as an attack on all members. Mr. Trump has previously said he would not rule out using the military to take Greenland.
No, the world is also governed by laws, and Greenland is a sovereign state, an autonomous part of Denmark, which belongs to both the EU and NATO. It is inconceivable to me that Trump would be so stupid as to attack a NATO ally, which would alienate all of Europe and serve no important military purpose. We already have a U.S. base in Greenland with 150 soldiers, its main purpose being the early warning of attacks from countries like Russia. No other country has a military base in Greenland, so it is not, as Trump said, swarming with Chinese and Russian military. There may be foreign ships and submarines around Greenland, but their presence is legal and does not justify our taking over part of Denmark.
*Over at the Free Press, Will Rahn interviews David Petraeus, ex Army bigwig general and former head of the CIA, about our nabbing of Maduro and his wife in Venezuela. It turns out Petraeus thinks the U.S. did about as well it could.
Will Rahn:So Nicolás Maduro has been arrested by the United States. President Trump seems keen, at the moment, on keeping Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, in charge of Venezuela. This is despite the fact that she is a militant socialist and a very close Maduro ally. We’re not sure how keen she is on working with the U.S., but she is releasing statements signaling that she might be.
Is there a way to do this, working with the current government of Venezuela—to the extent that it exists—so that we can avoid American boots on the ground?
David Petraeus:Well, we’ll have to see. Frankly, first of all, I’m pleased to see Nicolás Maduro brought to justice. He was obviously a brutal, murderous dictator who did enormous damage to his country—and to the world, really—through his narcotrafficante activities and so forth. It’s just also an extraordinary demonstration of U.S. military capabilities.
Our forces demolished the supposedly sophisticated Chinese and Russian air and ballistic missile defense systems of which Maduro was so proud. We had 150 aircraft launched from 20 different locations—the coordination, the synchronization, the rehearsals for this and, of course, conducting all this with law enforcement, with the DEA, FBI, Justice Department, and so forth. It was very similar to the operation that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, as well as other al-Qaeda and Islamic State leaders over the years.
But going forward, I think one can certainly hope that Delcy Rodríguez proves true to the conciliatory tone that she has taken recently—noting that her initial responses were quite defiant—and to see whether or not there can be what President Trump referred to, of course, which is a democratic transition.
Obviously, Maduro lost the election in 2024 to the opposition elements at that time—María Corina Machado’s surrogate, Edmundo González—by almost a two-to-one margin. So this is not close. This was very conclusive. The various evidence that they have from the different polling stations, again, was really without question.
Can there be a period during which there is accommodation by Rodríguez to U.S. desires, and can there then be a way forward, presumably involving some form of amnesty for her in particular, and for the ministers of interior and defense, both of whom have a price on their head as well?
Petraeus seems to think it’s okay to keep the current regime in power for a while, while I think a more rational response is to immediately set up a path for democratic elections.
WR:Is that something the Venezuelan people will tolerate, keeping this unpopular and defeated government in charge while letting the Americans come in to seize the oil? Could that inspire an anti-American backlash?
DP:First, I don’t see this as seizing their oil. I see this as resuming traditional energy extraction and export. It should be sold at the world price, whatever the benchmark for that heavy crude is at the time. I would think that they would welcome a revival of all kinds of economic activity, not just that in the energy arena, although that should be reassuring.
But in the longer term, the bigger issue is: What is their reaction to the U.S. allowing the regime to stay in power? And I think that will depend on what their perceptions are of the long-term outcome here. I think Secretary of State Marco Rubio has already alluded to this, that at some point there will be elections, and that there would be then a free and fair determination of who should lead the country, and then a transition to that new leadership.
At least Petraeus agrees that Venezuela needs elections, and those will not be won by the current President. However, if someone like Gonzalez or Machado gets elected, they face a potentially hostile military, and if there’s a coup then the whole business starts over again.
*Despite Mayor Mamdani’s promises, subway and bus fares in New York City rose a dime: from $2.90 to $3.00: a small increase but they’re supposed to be free under Mamdani’s plan.
On Sunday, the cost of taking the subway or bus in New York City will rise to $3 from $2.90 for most riders, the first increase in more than two years.
The 10-cent increase is modest — less than 4 percent of the current fare — at a time when other public transit systems in the United States are adopting double-digit percentage increases.
Other fares and fees will also increase:
A trip using Access-A-Ride, the paratransit service, will also cost $3 starting next year.
Tolls at the authority’s bridges and tunnels will increase about 7.5 percent. Most vehicles using the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, for example, will climb to $7.46 from $6.94.
The M.T.A. expects the changes to raise $350 million a year in additional revenue. The authority relies on a roughly $21 billion annual operating budget that it uses primarily to pay worker salaries and benefits, utility costs and borrowing expenses. More than a quarter of the budget comes from fares.
. . . . The fare increase arrives just as Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on a promise to make the city’s buses “fast and free,” is considering ways to fully subsidize bus fares for all riders.
Any plan would require cooperation with Ms. Hochul, who controls the transit system and would most likely have to raise taxes to finance such subsidies.
Mr. Mamdani’s free bus proposal comes at an inopportune time for the M.T.A., which has been focused on reducing fare evasion and increasing fare revenue, as ridership inches closer to its prepandemic levels. After a steep decline at the height of the pandemic, subway ridership in 2025 rose to about 85 percent of those levels, the authority said.
The M.T.A. projects that annual bus fare revenue, including paratransit, could exceed $1 billion by 2028, a sum that could be difficult to raise from elsewhere in the state budget.
Well, we have to give Mamdani time to get those fares down to zero, and that requires cooperation of Governor Hochul and likely a substantial increase in city taxes. But the taxes will disproportionately fall on the rich, so I presume that’s okay with Mamdani.I still don’t trust the guy, but he might do what he promised, and that would be fine. But so long as he’s an antizionist (read: antisemite), I can neither like nor admire him.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej and Hili are having another arcane exchange, and Malgozata is not here for me to ask about it. (Note how proud and fluffy Hili looks below.
Hili: Sometimes a part seems bigger than the whole.
Andrzej: That depends on the kind of measures you’re using.
In Polish:
Hili: Czasami część wydaje się być większa od całości.
Ja: To zależy od tego jakich używasz miar.
*******************
From Terrible Maps (if you don’t get this, you’re not cool):
From Seth, and it’s true!
From Things With Faces; a dog in bird poop.
From Masih: the protests continue in Iran. Sound up.
Tear gas attack on civilians in Tehran’s Bazaar.
Today, Tuesday, on the tenth day of nationwide protests, security forces attacked protesters in Tehran using tear gas.#Iran pic.twitter.com/ptZbOUQzjR
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 6, 2026
Fr9m Malcolm: why we sometimes see two different images of a distant celestial object: “gravitational lensing”. Proof that, as predicted by Einstein, mass bends space-time. You can see actual photographs of this lensing in the Wikipedia article.
Gravitational lensing, illustrated
[🎞️ thebrainmaze]pic.twitter.com/ghYCLeGA4I
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 2, 2026
From Luana: Mamdani is pronouncing on World Cup tickets. He can’t do squat, though, as the “added context” says this: “Apart from the fact that the mayor has no influence over FIFA pricing policy, there are no games in NY City. The New York New Jersey Stadium is in East Rutherford, New Jersey: fifa.com/en/tournaments…”
BREAKING: NY Mayor Mamdani says he is working to ensure World Cup tickets are “available to all” pic.twitter.com/joSgRgemgg
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 5, 2026
From Emma, a scientific analysis of the m0vie “Home Alone”:
After rewatching Home Alone, I couldn’t stop wondering:
how plausible is the oversleep that leaves Kevin behind?
So I wrote a tiny paper and ran the numbers.Merry Christmas! 🎄 pic.twitter.com/jhtrVe1AuT
— Luis Batalha (@luismbat) December 24, 2025
From my feed; why don’t we have these in America?
Must be genius who made this pic.twitter.com/jJLvTmjEBz
— vutuuuu 😂😂😂😂 (@vutuuuu4) January 6, 2026
One I reposted from the Auschwitz memorial:
This French Jewish boy was gassed to death soon after his train pulled into Auschwitz. He was 5 years old and would be 87 today had he lived. https://t.co/dcVpc4xeND
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 7, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, DUCKs!
Talk about pale blue dots! Can you spot Earth?
Open up this picture fully.Then look at the surface of Mars.Then look up to the top right.Spot Mars' moon Phobos high in the sky.Then notice the bright spot beside Phobos.That's Earth.
— Paul Byrne (@theplanetaryguy.bsky.social) 2025-12-30T21:30:13.447Z
And furthermore there are feelers being sent about about doing something about Columbia.
Hey, notice how no one is talking about the Epstein files any more?
You are just wrong. Trump went after Maduro so people would stop talking about Walzgate.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that you have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is not only vital for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself — a point that seems to escape many people. -Gerald Durrell, naturalist and author (7 Jan 1925-1995)
On the Coke-can illusion. The joke is that nobody sees red in the picture? I’m slow, sorry.
When I look straight at the “red” part it is black and white, but when I look at the edges of the picture I am beginning to see a red glow in the centre.
I saw red.
OK, so the appearance of red varies from one person to another, an interesting fact in itself. Is there an explanation for that? I can’t see any red at all. My brain just doesn’t “do the rest.” I’m not color blind.
I could have sworn it was red. But when I expanded a section of the “red” part I saw that it was actually white.
Does a bat see red?
😉
D.A.
NYC
I saw red until I blotted out Coca.
Try stepping back a few feet from your monitor. The illusion doesn’t work at all for me sitting at my desk, but starts to become noticeable about 5 ft away. I’m sure the effect varies with monitor size and your own eyes.
Yes, and if I cover the “Coca” then it does fade away after a while. But as soon as I uncover it, the red is back on. What a great illusion!
I used to sell screen printed TShirts for about fifteen years. I used to use series of half tones (Those little dots you see in colored comics if you look closely, to obtain a color which really wasn’t there. For example, I would use a series of yellow and red half tones, and the result would look orange. But there was no orange ink on the shirt. And the sweet part was, you would see three different colors, in this case, yellow, orange , and red, but you would only have to pay for two colors of ink. And also only two screens. Back in the day, it cost $15 to burn a screen. So you would save that amount, plus however much it cost to print an additional color (I don’t remember what this cost) x the number of shirts printed.
This is a well-known type of illusion based on the brain’s color constancy system – essentially what the white balance function of a digital camera does. In this case red vs. green opponent neurons signal that the image is dominated by medium wavelengths (which we see as green) to the higher order color constancy network in V4 of visual cortex, which then makes the colorless coke can appear red (the opponent color). Thus IRL a red coke can will still look green even when illuminated by greenish light, preserving our ability to recognize objects by their color under different wavelengths of illumination – an adaptive mechanism that can be exploited to cause illusions. There are lots of color illusions much stronger than this one based on that mechanism.
I think that that is the most incredible Mars photo yet! The landscape is remarkable enough, but add to that an astronomy session as we might here on Earth observe a near-conjunction of our moon and Mars, but it is a Mars moon and Earth. As I said: incredible engineering and technology to bring us this view. Thank you NASA, university scientists and engineers, and American taxpayers.
I saw a piece yesterday where someone pointed out that no fares for public transport means that it would become mobile homeless shelters. On reflection I think that that is probably right. Let’s not forget that for Communists, wrecking a functioning system is also a victory, increasing discontent with Capitalism.
Good point!
This was mentioned by many as a potential problem from the beginning. And I recall that people claiming to be “real New Yorkers” said that this wouldn’t happen…because unlike subways, there are no real places to stretch out on the bus. A homeless person would find it uncomfortable to remain in a seated position for very long, so they said.
And, as someone who works in NYC and had ridden the buses many times…this is mostly bollocks. A homeless person may simply commandeer the handicapped seating areas to spread out a bit. And they would still find it better to sit for a few hours on a warm (or AC bus, depending on the weather) to get out of the bitter cold/oppressive heat.
So the buses may not quite be “mobile homeless shelters”, but they will be something close and will almost surely degrade the experience of riding buses. And the poor bus drivers…I’m sorry but homeless people are often fetid, and even a couple on a bus for hours will make it smell like a mobile bed pan.
Also, the cynic in me suspects that it is actually anticipated that the homeless will use the buses for sheltering, which will make them less visible on the streets. Then Mamdani can point to that and take credit for reducing the presence of homeless on the sidewalks!
You are 100% correct Jeff. Been a long time since I was on an MTA bus (I don’t go far from my home now and the subway or taxi if I’m feeling wealthy are much faster), but the disfunction would be huge and ridership would decline.
Actually cracking down on turnstyle jumpers (so many now the subway is basically free if you are dishonest and can… bend) would help more. Or privatize.
Like a lot of our new mayor’s promises he can’t make them free (thank goodness) and it’d be horrible as you describe if he did. Nearly all people don’t mind paying for a safe, efficient service.
D.A.
NYC
Last June, I decided to take the bus from my condo, to my mechanic. This distance is about three miles. So what happened during that three mile trip? A “gentleman” boarded the bus with his lunch. He began to eat and drink his lunch. The bus driver told him to stop. He didn’t stop. Then the bus driver stopped the bus, and told him to get off. He did, but not before he slapped the female bus driver, and me and two other passengers, chased him off the bus, and some distance from the bus stop. But he was faster than all of us, and escaped.
And this bus trip cost 1.25. Imagine how much fun I would have had on the bus ride if there was no fare ???
Just so we recognize there are larger issues than just homeless drug addicts,
https://www.changinglanesnewsletter.com/p/public-transit-should-not-be-free
covers the arguments pro and con, and comes down against free transit.
There is no probable future for fair elections in Venezuela. One bad actor is gone, but an authoritarian kleptocracy set up over decades in still in place, with all its bad actors, including the military. Blockading oil shipments may lead to some bending to Trump’s wishes, but it wont lead to democracy.
I think the idea Charles is that nothing else has worked so far and Venezuela’s decline continues…. so this pretty cool maneuver will “shake things up”, force some kind of change. I’m no Trump fan but I think it is a good idea. Which is risky but short of civil war it can hardly get a lot worse there. As my city, New Caracas City, attests.
The drugs, even the oil, are mere justifications. It is getting rid of the commie puke dictatorship which is the real goal … I think.
D.A.
NYC/New Caracas.
A key observation from Paul Offit’s article:
Yes. It appears that this “study” is designed to get the results RFK wants. In addition, in some ten years or so, a bunch of children are going to die. That part we know will happen. We’ll see if RFKs’ Mengele-inspired experiment produces the results he wants; it’s designed to, so I think we already know what it’ll say. “O brave new world, that has such people in’t”
Yes, RFK should be cornered on this.
“Sir, surely an increased number of unvaccinated kids will result in more deaths from these diseases.”
If he says “no”, then the follow up should be whether he thinks vaccinations are effective at all.
If he admits, grudgingly, that vaccinations actually work, but claims that increased deaths from unvaccinated children will be offset by some gain in health in the population, then he has to explain what that would be.
RFK minor has already meddled ( he went to Samoa and lectured them, albeit that he was invited by the “anti” lobby) in a vaccination programme for the measles outbreak in Samoa 2019. IIRC 83 individuals died, 78 were children.
What does he care about?, not lives, but ideology and personal wealth.
This latest myopic stupidity is genuinely evil (a word I usually avoid due to its chronic misuse). And yes, let’s call a Mengele a Mengele. Another cultural-rot red-line tipping point, IMO. Does anyone expect a return to the old “normal” after this administration?
At some future date, the people of Guinea may demand reparations for the thousands of deaths this “study” will cause. The man is a maniac.
Im seeing in WaPo that RFK Jr/HHS has single-handedly and by fiat changed the recommended vaccine schedule for infants and young toddlers in the US, making a number of vaccines, such as Hep B and rotavirus, recommended for high risk groups only. And totally eliminated recommendations for Covid and influenza shots.
Thanks for pointing this out!
The schedule drops, IIRC, from 17 recommended vaccines to 11. The CDC highlights that this aligns the US with Denmark (which doesn’t have a similar demography to the US), but doesn’t mention that many other European countries retain the exact schedule that that the US enjoyed until this week – 17 vaccines.
Snatching (kidnapping, arresting — your choice) Mr. Maduro from Venezuela will probably not affect his criminal case. The criminal courts virtually never concern themselves with how a defendant has come before them. (See, e.g., Noriega, Manuel.) The operation that obtained custody of Mr. Maduro could possibly form the basis for some legal action, either by or on behalf of Mr. Maduro or against the United States, but that’s a different matter. The law seems clear about this, but I hedge (“probably,” “virtually”) because I learned long ago that expecting certainty when predicting what courts will do is a mug’s game.
“The criminal courts virtually never concern themselves with how a defendant has come before them.”
What is Miranda, then?
Miranda has to do with whether some types of evidence are admissible in a court case. It applies if and only if there has already been an arrest. Similarly, a criminal defendant is not for that reason entitled to have the case dismissed if s/he was illegally arrested (e.g., without probable cause). Instead, s/he may be entitled to “suppress” any evidence obtained as a result of the illegality. S/he remains arrested, and charged, and may still be tried and convicted notwithstanding the illegal arrest if there is sufficient evidence that is “untainted” by the illegality. (If there isn’t, s/he may get the case dismissed, but for insufficient evidence and not because of the illegal arrest, at least not directly.) In addition s/he may be able to bring a “false arrest” case against the government, but that would be a different, non-criminal proceeding.
(I think you’re an attorney Jeff.)
(Pretend) “Judge” David Anderson here concurs.
all the best councilor,
D.A.
NYC
(Used to be. Retired from that for quite while at this point.)
“Mamdani is pronouncing on World Cup tickets. He can’t do squat, though, as the “added context” says this: “Apart from the fact that the mayor has no influence over FIFA pricing policy, there are no games in NY City. The New York New Jersey Stadium is in East Rutherford, New Jersey: fifa.com/en/tournaments…”
Exactly. How will he deliver on something he has no control over?
Add this to the growing list of things that Mamdani has promised but almost surely cannot/will not deliver on.
He must know this, but also must love making grand pronouncements in that nice baritone voice of his so that he can hear applause and cheers. He also calculates (probably correctly) that his constituents will not hold him to these promises, and may not even remember exactly what he failed to deliver on. A favorable leftist media will probably memory hole most of it anyway. And if he is held to account by somebody, he will have ready made excuses…blame FIFA, blame rich people, blame Albany, blame the rain…for when his pie-in-the sky ideas fail.
I no longer think he is callow and naïve. I think that he is a savvy salesman, mixed with substantial Islamic and socialist ideological underpinnings.
In a sense, he has taken a page from the Trump playbook. Trump lies for short term gain, like many politicians do. But the Trump lies are so voluminous and outrageous, so fast and furious, that by the time you’ve debunked one there are six more fly balls for you to catch. See also “Gish Gallop”. Mamdani seems to do something similar with his grand promises to fix things…by the end of his term they may number in the hundreds. One long form article in Quillette will not even be able to scratch the level of failure, but his supporters will focus on the 2 or 3 that sort of worked and trumpet those to the skies.
To his supporters, it doesn’t matter if he delivers. He can’t and he knows it, but the useful idiots under his sway are jacked to hear him say stuff like that. It’s politics, Jake, same as it ever was.
Surely the smooth-talking Islamosociopath Mamdani will blame all of his upcoming and highly predictable failures on “the Zionist lobby” – i.e., the Jews.
I’m used to a much higher standard of Marxist blather. I really would like to hear Hizzonner be pressed to answer a simple question about supply and demand.
Yes Jeff, good take IMHO.
He is the liberal version of Trump, veeery female coded (80% actually).
He just lies all the time, and is charismatic: his supporters don’t care.
8-13 M. NYers – the greatest city on earth (your milage may differ..) and the best we could come up with was him or Cuomo.
Embarrassing.
D.A.
NYC
Right…amazing that was the choice. Even Sliwa, who I always thought of more as a strange kind of gadfly, looked like a better option!
You nailed it, David. That’s why yesterday I described Mamdani and Trump as 2 sides of the same coin.
Not having a Free Press subscription, I didn’t get to read the part where Petraeus wistfully regretted the killing of civilian Venezuelans in this U.S. special military “law enforcement” operation.
I wonder if he would find a Venezuelan Pinochet acceptable.
Per AI:
“General David Petraeus, a former CIA director and retired Army general, has commented on both Allende and Pinochet.
Comments on Allende: In 2011, during a visit to Chile as CIA Director, Petraeus presented official declassified U.S. documents related to the 1973 coup to Chilean President Sebastián Piñera [2]. Petraeus acknowledged that U.S. actions in the period leading up to the coup were “not a bright moment in our history,” implicitly referencing the U.S. role in destabilizing Allende’s government.
Comments on Pinochet: Petraeus has made less direct comments specifically about Pinochet as a person, but his acknowledgment of the U.S. role during that period encompasses the support given to the Pinochet regime. When in Chile, Petraeus spoke about the “very difficult period” in U.S.-Chilean relations and highlighted the shared values the two countries now hold, implicitly contrasting the current democratic relationship with the past era of the dictatorship.”
I speculate that Petraeus welcomes the incoming right-wing Kast government of Chile effective 3/26.
(As he is sporting a wedding ring, it is good that Petraeus apparently remains in his dear wife’s good graces.)
The Atlantic has a feature article about RFK, Jr. in the January issue. It seems not to be archived yet, unfortunately. The piece outlines RFK’s entire life history, briefly, including his drug use, as well as his improbable rise to power in the Trump administration.
A fair amount of the piece is about RFK Jr.’s approach to data. In a few words: He is dismissive of what he doesn’t like and he’s viciously combative about it. The author of the piece, Michael Scherer, persists during interviews to try to engage Kennedy on the substance of some of his controversial claims, but Kennedy seemingly resists serious engagement, calling his critics biased and tainted by their ties with industry. Scherer, near the end of the article, reminds the reader that Kennedy himself is tainted by his own ties—including financial ties—to the environmentalist movement. RFK Jr., seems to be one strange dude.
Yes Norman. I saw it on the newsstand the other day with the cover tagline: “the most powerful man in science”. He’s powerful alright – in politics and science policy…but I refuse to spend my hard-earned retirement dollars on anything that purports that little shit to be any part of the science enterprise. You kids get off my lawn!
I’m a subscriber, so I couldn’t stop it from appearing in my mailbox. 🙂
It’s a very interesting article. At least for now, he’s part of the enterprise of science whether we like it or not. (I don’t.) The article is quite balanced. Balanced against the facts, the downside of Mr. Kennedy weighs more heavily than the upside.
RFK is bought by the environmentalist movement?? I thought the Kennedy family was too expensive for eco hippies.
“The many people who object to the U.S. apprehending Maduro, who was indicted (apparently with voluminious evidence), must also then object to Israel apprehending Adolf Eichmann, a war criminal, in Argentina in 1960, taking him back to Israel for a trial.”
I don’t think these are comparable. There was a ton of evidence about Eichmann, but I don’t think there is a vast amount of evidence against Maduro. If 80+ people had been killed by the hunters of Eichmann in the process of his capture, this would probably make most of us uncomfortable. If we had to overthrow a whole country in order to capture Eichmann, this too would make many people uncomfortable. And what if the capture of Eichmann had just been a cover for the Nazi hunters to take control of something else? That would have made us uncomfortable. Trump has been very clear that his main purpose was to get control of Venezuela’s oil.
Now that the US has done this, what is to stop China and Russia from kidnapping leaders of their enemy countries? Many world leaders, including many of our presidents, have been considered war criminals by some other country. This kind of activity could lead to world chaos. It especially gives cover to China in Taiwan and Russia in the Ukraine.
Maduro is a terrible leader, and he and Chavez have destroyed that country and impoverished its people. I don’t know what else could have been done to save Venezuela. But it has quickly become clear that Trump’s primary goal is not to liberate Venezuela but to subjugate it.
There is a whole lot of evidence against Maduro: regime records, co-conspirator testimonies, financial records, communication records. He wasn’t just running narcotics, he was involved in narco-terrorism – protecting and abetting narco-agents and monies being channeled to terrorists and terrorist regimes, including Iran. The IRGC and Hezbollah have significant presence in Venezuela.
And the US charges are completely separate from UN and ICC records documenting Crimes Against Humanity including murder, torture, arrests of political opponents.
This is a very evil man, but only he has been removed. I find it difficult to characterize that as “regime change”.
I can’t defend Maduro. But Maduro is a minor player in the cocaine business. The charges may be true, but they seem like window-dressing. The reason for his capture was oil, as Trump has repeatedly said in the last few days.
Our own leaders have done much worse illegal things (Iran-Contra terrorism in Nicaragua, secret war in Cambodia, special rendition sites, etc).
I also don’t think that they are comparable on somewhat different grounds. The Eichmann case is tied to universal jurisdiction for crimes like genocide and crimes against humanity. A precursor to cases like Pinochet, the Rwandan genocide prosecutions, and Germany’s Koblenz case. Maduro’s seizure is based on U.S. domestic criminal jurisdiction, not universal jurisdiction.
Now, Eichmann’s case itself was legally complex and contested, but it occurred at a time when universal jurisdiction was still developing and helped shape its later, much narrower form. Treating a U.S. indictment as equivalent risks collapsing that distinction entirely. If this logic stands, then China and Russia can indict foreign leaders they dislike and claim the same right. A principle the U.S. would never accept if applied to itself. That doesn’t strengthen the rule of law; it undermines it.
And that asymmetry matters. What feels like an exceptional act when done by a superpower becomes an existential vulnerability for people and leaders in smaller states, who would have no realistic protection if indictments and force replace reciprocity and law.
As a final note it could be argued that just as Eichmann helped create the framework for universal jurisdiction, this could help create the framework for getting justice for criminal authoritarian thugs like Maduro in the future. And I might be willing to work with that if there appeared to be any evidence that Trump cared about the crimes that Maduro has committed. Instead every second word out of his mouth has been about Venezuela’s oil.
Had we and the Brits not muscled him Maduro was deadly serious about annexing about half of neighboring Guyana after they discovered a LOT of offshore oil. About 2 years ago.
He even had a referendum, which “passed” approving such a move, maps printed, military aligned near the border. Lots of shouting and chest thumping.
An Iraq-Kuwait scenario absolutely would have happened if we, UK and the oil companies hadn’t said: Ooooh no you don’t.
He is the worst Latin American leader in a generation.
D.A.
NYC
It’s true Maduro escalated tensions with Guyana over the Essequibo region, including a referendum and assertive claims tied to oil wealth, but there’s no credible reporting of an imminent “Iraq-Kuwait” style invasion; the dispute remained in the realm of rhetoric, legal maneuvering, and diplomatic pressure rather than actual military invasion.
However, I don’t consider the argument that they were disputing an area that has oil, therefore we took all their oil to be a particularly convincing one – especially coming from a country that has been threatening many countries and areas for the last year: Greenland, Columbia, Mexico, Cuba, Iran, Canada.
(Also there is no evidence that the Brits participated in the military operation that captured Maduro – and they have explicitly said they were not involved)
You can add Panama to the list of countries Trump has threatened.
That’s an interesting reply, Wayward Son, thank you for that. 🙂 So, I looked into it a bit.
Eichmann was captured by the Moussad in the sovereign territory of another country, and tried under Israeli criminal law (not International law) for crimes that occurred before the Israeli law was enacted or Israel was a nation, in countries outside of Israel’s sovereignty.
Yes, the ICC did not exist at the time. Nevertheless, he was tried under Israeli criminal law, and a winning reference was made to the idea that a conducted policy of Jewish genocide affected the “the protective principle”, which permits states to prosecute offenses injuring essential interests regardless of location. So, 65 years ago, it seems the world thought this was just and proper.
No idea if the the protective principle still exists or applies to the Maduro case, but it makes me wonder why Massoud Abbas, or the Iranian Ayatollahs are not whisked away and tried.
Thanks for looking into it, Roger. I agree with you on several factual points, but I think the legal distinction still matters. I’ll also note that, in the interest of staying within the guidelines here, this will be short (I hope…) and my last post on the topic.
While Eichmann was tried under Israeli criminal law, the court did not treat this as an ordinary exercise of domestic jurisdiction. Its primary justification, and it made this clear, was universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity. The reference to the protective principle was secondary and supplementary.
This is also part of why Israel has not “whisked away” Abbas or the Ayatollahs. Eichmann rested on universal jurisdiction, and in response to fears of abuse the international community deliberately narrowed and constrained that doctrine. The protective principle, as a supplementary one, could not support such actions on its own.
That is also why Eichmann should not be used as a precedent for something like Maduro. But could be considered as a stepping stone to cases like Pinochet.
Now, that is not to say that I don’t wish to live in a world where every dangerous authoritarian thug faces justice for their actions. I do wish that could be the case. I despise Maduro (as well as the other authoritarian thugs who many world leaders, such as Trump, as often very chummy with). However: 1) I don’t think Trump gives a damn about Maduro’s crimes against his own people, or that he will push for a Venezuela where people are protected in any way from their government, and 2) this risks creating a world order in which a small number of powerful states arbitrarily rule over smaller states in their own orbit.
Eichmann (and the development of universal jurisdiction) was about putting constraints in place against the worst abuses by the powerful. I feel what is being advocated by the Trump administration moves in the opposite direction.
I am not sufficiently sophisticated in my knowledge base of any of this to argue the equivalence, legality, etc but I don’t care for others characterizing my opinions. This is the second day in a row that a similar comment was made that essentially told me what I can and cannot or do or do not approve of. I find it insulting. I’ll repeat for the 3rd time: I didn’t/don’t support Maduro *and” I am disgusted with the actions of the US in Venezuela last weekend. What I think about this recent event has nothing to do with Eichmann. I’m glad you highlighted this, Lou.
This is intended as a reply to comment #13
I stopped and laughed out loud at the photo of the dog in bird poop. I needed a good laugh!
I follow Dr. Offit and that article made me furious. I think his analogy with Tuskegee is hardly overblown. This is outrageous. But then this administration considers the African nation a “shithole country” so why not pointlessly risk their babies’ health
The bird-poo dog face might not be AI™, but in the same sense that I might be dealt a royal flush¹. It’s is just too perfect: precisely vertical orientation, highlight on the tip of the nose, and intense “WTF?” facial expression. Also, it’s suspicious that the face is well-lit from our side of the window without any reflections. I’d appreciate some informed opinion on this.
. . . . .
¹ Honestly, that was no way intended a pun. Sometimes one does just get lucky.
You are probably right, the highlight on the nose seems a tell, but my laughter remains! It is so silly I am smiling again looking at it. I do wish AI-concocted content was always labeled.
My guess is that the capture of Maduro will not bring regime change in Venezuela. Action against tankers might bring an end to the regime in Venezuela. Of course, it might not.
Paul Offit dramatically compares the proposed Guinea-Bissau hepatitis B vaccine study to the Tuskegee experiment. In the hepatitis B randomized trial, half of the newborns will receive a birth dose (better than current care) and the other half their first dose at six weeks (the existing national standard care). So, 7,000 children will get better care than they otherwise would; the other 7,000 would get the same. That is a far cry from what happened with Tuskegee, where researchers withheld for decades and without consent proven treatment that was widely available.
Offit knows this, so he strains reality by suggesting that the researchers will be “delaying a hepatitis B vaccine” and that children will “be denied a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine.” An AP-syndicated piece he links to explicitly—and incorrectly—says what Offit only suggests: “it will withhold vaccines that work from newborns at significant risk of infection.” No, it will withhold nothing; the control arm will get the existing standard of care with a vaccination at six weeks. Offit then tries to strengthen the Tuskegee connection by invoking consent: “It is unlikely that parents will be asked to sign a consent form outlining the real risks of being in the 6-week vaccine group.” Note: there are no real ADDITIONAL risks in being in the 6-week group because that is exactly what the national standard of care currently is.
Birth dosing is, indeed, the WHO-recommendation for a country with endemic hepatitis B, and, as Offit notes, Guinea-Bissau has, like other poor countries, struggled to implement this recommendation and will attempt to do so in 2027. If Offit believes that universal birth dosing in countries with endemic hepatitis B is a moral imperative, then he and others can fund and support faster rollout in Guinea-Bissau so that all children have earlier protection and not simply those in the study’s intervention arm. So, to his question “Who will step forward to protect these children whom RFK Jr. considers expendable?” we can say, “Why not you, Paul? You don’t even bother making the funding and logistical case.”
Overstatement, strained arguments, moralizing, and obfuscation are not useful in countering similar abuses from the other side. Make the case that if the US is willing to fund the study, then the US could instead divert those resources to help a handful more children than the proposed study will already help. But if the argument is “we didn’t help everybody, everywhere” then it is no practical argument at all. And one could wonder how many of us would be aware of Guinea-Bissau’s difficulties and whether any argument for support would have been made had this study not been funded.
Below is a press release from the research team with contact information for the principal investigator: https://www.bandim.org/hepatitis-b-vaccine-at-birth/
Please keep your comments shorter than this. As I said earlier, we want comments, not essays. Thank you.
Sorry, Doug, it seems I echoed many of your points quite independently. I was struggling off-line to get under the 600 word limit and I didn’t see your post till now.
Edit: I made a few brief comments on Offit’s Substack. The commenters there are unhinged!
I read once that everyone who writes a letter to the editor of a daily newspaper is insane. I’m starting to wonder if that was right.
The arguement for Venezuelian oil being the motivation for kidnapping Maduro.
I saw a chart of opec countries against US /Canada non opec countries.
Venezuela (opec) has the biggest reserves by far outstripping all of them and commandeering that supply would give the latter, that is to say, the US once they have invaded Canada) control of half the global supply, well worth it for the security of supply and revenues for moi and his cronies 😏
This senario would have also pissed putin no end, anything to add to his woes is a good thing unfortunately maybe not for Ukraine.
Not quite sure about China if they keep pushing EV’s, renewable technologies it could well set up a ‘war’ for petro vs electric, renewables dominance… I can guess but who knows what that would mean.
I have thought about/worried for Ukraine a lot in light of the US in Venezuela. It will definitely piss off Putin and who is the US to tell Putin where he can and can’t go now?
Re it being inconceivable that Trump would be so stupid as to attack a NATO ally — that’s old-school inconceivable. The Overton window has been stretched to the breaking point. IMO Trump and Miller’s version of reality is largely indistinguishable from Neoconservatism, Manifest Destiny, and po-mo word magic. “Quod licet iovi, non licet bovi.” Does anyone expect a return to the old “normal” after this administration?
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Islamification of Europe, NATO is no longer relevant to the United States. The United States was always more existentially afraid of Russian Communism than Europe and Canada were. Once Russia became just another thug, there was no reason to protect Europe from him. In 2017 Donald Trump just started saying the quiet part out loud.
The United States is today not afraid of attacking a NATO signatory because it knows no NATO country will come to the armed assistance of the attacked country. The Russian cavalry would be more likely to rattle their sabres over an American move against Greenland (or Canada) than anything NATO would do.
Islamification of Europe? You’re talking 6% of the population, so, no. NATO is relevant to the US when the US wants it to be, like it was under Biden and other normal Presidents who adhered to the status quo since the end of WW2. As leader of the free world and the most powerful NATO signatory, we are the glue that keeps NATO a legitimate force for peace and democracy (not to say US foreign policy is some kind of paradigm in that department). The US was never “afraid” of attacking a NATO signatory, we just didn’t do it for the sake of world order, the respect for allies and the belief in a nation’s sovereignty: simply put, we exercised humility and restraint. Once you have the rule of the jungle mentality that the US currently employs under Trump, then yes, we might attack a NATO signatory because we’ve lost our way. NOT because NATO is irrelevant- Trump just decided it was.
Loved the cool “merry-go-round”!
I have to question Paul Offit’s objectivity in referring to this Danish vaccination study as a re-do of the Tuskegee syphilis study. They are not remotely similar. It is reprehensible for him to make that comparison, knowing the raw wound that any mention of it opens in America.
All the subject children are going to get Hep B vaccine, half at birth and half with a delay of six weeks, the latter being the current standard of care in Guinea-Bissau. The country plans to go to universal vaccination at birth in 2027 but it’s not logistically able to do that yet. Under the trial, half of the infants enrolled will get a vaccine at birth that they would otherwise, were it not for the trial, not get until age 6 weeks. The trial is not resourced to give vaccine at birth to every child in the country, only to the 7000 newborns in the early vax group. No child is being denied an effective treatment by participating in the trial. If the trial were canceled, none of those 7000 children would get vaccinated at birth; they’d all wait till 6 weeks. The trial therefore seems ethical to me, provided it can test its hypothesis competently. And in any event, the study is being run by Danes and sponsored by Denmark. It’s up to the Danish institutional ethical review folks, not Paul Offit, to decide if they can permit the study.
The single-blind design is a scientific (not ethical) weakness but it could be a reasonable compromise. Preparing coded placebo injections to blind the health workers giving them, with the careful central record-keeping that requires, is a major expense in a randomized trial, and usually needs Pharma sponsorship. You would never be able to vaccinate 7000 infants for $1.6 million with double-blinding. If the vaccination status of each child can be hidden from the later outcome assessors (and from the parents), blinding could be preserved. Hold the vaccination information centrally, not in each child’s medical record so no one can peek before they score the child. You do have to watch for special pleading later by the principal investigators, yes.
Is this study worth doing, assuming it is done correctly? Don’t we already know that neonatal Hep B vaccination is safe? How do we know that? The randomized trials that showed it prevents hepatitis were powered, efficiently, to detect efficacy given a plausible a priori hypothesis that it would work. Rare, unexpected, or subtle side effects are not normally picked up in RCTs. You find these only with extensive post-marketing surveillance. But by then you don’t have a control group: if everyone is receiving Hep B vaccine at birth, as I (and the government of Guinea-Bissau) agree they should, how do you compare the risk of autism (or whatever) that might be attributable to the vaccine? Those who refuse vaccine are different from those who accept it, and that difference could drive different rates of autism. Etc. It is not straightforward to say that 30 years of experience with universal Hep B vaccination shows it to be safe, or “no evidence” of harm.
This trial offers a “clean” opportunity to see if early vaccination causes harm compared to an ethical control population whose government can’t afford (yet) to vaccinate them until later. The babies vaccinated at birth will obtain benefit even if the study doesn’t prove its hypothesis that vaccine causes neurological problems (which It probably won’t.) This seems like a lose-lose proposition for RFK Jr if he is the Dr Mengele some of you are making him out to be.
I’ve asked you to shorten your comments and not give essays. I am asking again.
In his position as an Auschwitz doctor, not everything Mengele did was evil. But his overarching attitude was. We don’t know RFK’s soul (presuming, even as a jumped-up personal-injury lawyer, he has one), but it seems clear that his overarching attitude is antithetical to actual Health and Human Services. And time will tell what his effects are.
The Maduro capture as seen thru a lens in Eastern Europe, specifically Ukraine: the Russians promised everything but did nothing.
That seems to speak to how much we should worry about an attack on Greenland. As to the US taking it over, Tr*mp supporter Sen Thom Tillis (NC) is pretty upset. “I’m sick of stupid.”
I don’t see the slightest comparison between the capture of Adolph Eichmann and Maduro. Eichmann was guilty of crimes against humanity and was a significant figure in the industrialised murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others. To compare that to a petty dictator who isn’t abiding by an election result and may be guilty of crimes designed and proscribed by the US specifically to get him, to get to oil, is not a valid comparison in my view.
Many experts are saying without hesitation that the kidnapping of Maduro is a crime against international law. I haven’t seen the same balance of experts, non US people, equally state that it was entirely legal. Even the British are dancing around the issue, trying not to upset the US but knowing full well it was illegal and without significant justification. Eichmann’s capture, a person effectively on the run and hiding from justice, had significant justification, in the extreme. And the people that did it, the Jews, also had that significant justification.