Global

Anne Frank wrote about people stolen in the night and their homes left gutted, and that warning feels painfully current in a country that insists it learned its lessons. Today’s immigration raids leave a disturbingly similar wake, with homes abandoned mid-life, belongings scattered where they fell, and pets staring at the door as if their owners might still walk in and rescue them from the silence.

ICE does not simply take people; it leaves behind the wreckage of entire worlds. Toys stay where children last played, food spoils unfinished, cars idle in driveways, and phones, wallets, and IDs vanish into agency custody and often never return. ICE policy even requires officers to hold a person’s original identification documents, adding another blow to families already torn apart.

This investigation lays bare what happens to everything left behind when someone is taken. Cars are dragged to impound lots and auctioned before families can react, homes slide toward foreclosure or are snapped up by landlords, and pets are dropped at packed shelters with no one left to claim them.

Almost two years ago, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik made a fool of herself while questioning the presidents of three Ivy League universities, MIT, Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania. She demanded a yes or no answer, in an immature and juvenile way, while trying to paint these institutions and their presidents as supporters of antisemitism for “allowing” the constitutionally protected speech by students supporting the Palestinian plight and condemning the genocide happening in realtime in Gaza.

Stefanik, a Trump loyalist, a MAGA warrior, a supporter of overturning 2020 presidential elections, a promoter of “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, and whose top contributor is AIPAC, all of the above was not enough. Still, President Trump dumped her.

Three dominant narratives contend for the future of Gaza and occupied Palestine, yet only one is being translated into consequential action: the Israeli narrative of domination and genocide. This singular, violent vision is the only one backed by the brute force of policy and fact.

 The first narrative belongs to the Trump administration, largely embraced by the US Western allies. It rests on the self-serving claim that US President Donald Trump personally solved the Middle East crisis, ushering in a peace that has supposedly eluded the region for thousands of years. Figures like Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and US-Israel Ambassador Mike Huckabee are presented as architects of a new regional order.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S.-trained Royal Thai Navy is gearing up to stop all Thai ships in the Gulf of Thailand transporting fuel and military supplies to Cambodia, the first major use of the artillery-firing navy in the five-month-long border war.

The U.S. Seventh Fleet uses the Gulf of Thailand when its aircraft carriers and other vessels dock near Bangkok at Sattahip port where Thailand's First Naval Area Command is based to secure the gulf, which is peppered with inhabited Thai and Cambodian islands, navy facilities, and oil rigs.

In addition to intercepting Thai ships, including fishing and commercial vessels, the navy said it would stop Thai-owned ships sailing under foreign flags and registrations, if they are suspected of transporting fuel, weapons, ammunition, or other military equipment across the gulf to reach Cambodia's south coast.

Thai shipping companies facilitating their travel, vessels' owners, suppliers, chandlers and others linked to Thai ships violating the ban would also be held responsible, officials said.

President Donald Trump’s end of year speech to the American public that took place on December 17th was full of conceits over how the United States under the new regime in power is moving ahead on all fronts to benefit the American people. The reality is somewhat different with a struggling economy, inflation and growing unemployment as well as wars and rumors of wars. The only economic sector that appears to be doing just fine is the “military industrial complex” (MIC), or should one call it the warfare conglomerate, fattening on the one trillion dollar plus budgeted for military and related spending. For sure, the warfare bill is helping to expand the nation’s debt while providing little in the way of national security due to profound ignorance combined with serial blundering by those in power in and around the White House.

We begin GREEP #251 by commemorating the passing of Rob & Michelle Reiner.

Our own PAUL NEWMAN remembers him as a “really nice guy” & a true environmental activist, who will be deeply deeply missed..

The wonderful JOHN STEINER asks us to find a new term for “president of United States.”

Our engineer STEVE CARUSO suggest such an alternative, as does HEIDI VERTHALLER.

Our Laureate MIMI GERMAN gives us a poem and then introduces Waldport, Oregon’s MAYOR HEIDI…

...along with AMY ANDERSON of Indivisible and local petitioner TONY THIMAKIS, who’re fighting for democracy in this classic American small town.

We’re then joined by legendary election protection expert RAY LUTZ with a deep dive into how we can emerge from 2026 with our democracy in tact.

Among the key pillars of vote derangement are suppression of the popular vote, gerrymandering, ballot counting and audits, all of which demand massive grassroots activism.

In the spirit of our own John Brakey, we discuss the alternative of digital imaging to allow a meaningful count of millions of hand-marked paper ballots.