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I met with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez just days after he was kidnapped. I’ll tell you about that, and the current President Nicolas Maduro’s visit to my New York office. But first, you must know three things about Venezuela to understand why Donald Trump has ordered a covert operation to overthrow their government.

Look it up: According to OPEC’s own site, Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels in proven reserves are four times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

(By the way, Donald, when you announce a “covert” operation, it’s no longer covert. But never mind.)

For years, I was BBC Television’s correspondent covering Venezuela and US attempts to overthrow their elected government. Trump invented nothing. This is at least the fourth US-backed attempt at overthrow and assassination of a Venezuelan president.

Israel is the only place in the world where you can steal human organs of another person without being punished or considered a criminal. The act of stealing from enemy's dead or wounded combatants is considered a war crime under both customary international law and international treaties. The Fourth Hague Convention specifically bans the looting of the corpse of an enemy soldier or the wounded left on the battlefield. The law also applies to non-combatant populations.

It has been documented in the last 20 years in both Palestinian and Israeli media and in court proceedings that Israeli Occupation Forces are operating a human butcher shop, at Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv. Israeli forces routinely kidnap Palestinians at checkpoints, raids, hospital wards, or exhume them from cemeteries in order to harvest their organs for profit inside and outside of Israel, all without the family’s knowledge.

We are nine months into the Donald Trump presidency and the road ahead seems pretty clear. There is an unsustainable one trillion dollar Pentagon budget supporting a newly renamed Department of War and Washington is engaged in conflicts that could escalate in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. If it were possible to stage a bellicose incident near or in Antarctica that would also no doubt become a target, just as the Arctic region is currently playing into fantasies involving Greenland and Canada. Trump has even stopped talking to friendly neighbor Canada about trade relations over an ad that he did not like and no doubt will be discussing invasion soon.

The Orange King, Donald Trump, has given people literally thousands of reasons to hate him. A few current issues: $172 million so Kristi Noem can have two private jets, $200 million to build Trump a ballroom, $40 billion to bail out Argentina—for a MAGA billionaire. But no bailout for soybean farmers crushed by tariffs, No support for families drowning in grocery prices, No help for anyone who can’t find a job in this economy and no mercy for immigrants.

I will explain my hatred of Trump by considering 3 categories: Character, Domestic policy, Foreign policy.

Character: The entire world knows that Trump is a narcissist, a racist, a misogynist, and a pedophile. We also know that he lacks empathy, and is cruel beyond imagination. He is a stupid man, not well educated, not well read, not a student of history. He may be the only person in America who has never visited a National Park, with the exception of photo ops at Arlington Cemetery. He is simply a clueless, bumbling idiot.

Free Press readers are likely aware of the efforts of John Brakey and AUDIT USA. The thrust of their work is that “Elections must be transparent, trackable, and publicly verified”. All the efforts of AUDIT USA revolve around this concept, including the fight for hand-marked paper ballots; opposition to ballot-marking devices (BMDs) for all voters; and the ongoing effort in multiple states to require the retention of ballot images and make those images a public record.

AUDIT USA’s successful litigation in 2016 forced Arizona counties to preserve ballot images and the organization’s current litigation in Arizona will make ballot images a public record. AUDIT USA’s current litigation in Florida will require Florida counties to retain ballot images in accordance with state and federal laws. AUDIT USA has been the primary driving force in the U.S. behind the increasing recognition of ballot images as vitally important, redundant election records that must be retained and must be available to the public.

The Washington Post quoted Trump on Tuesday, Oct. 21, that “the federal
government owes him ‘a lot of money’ for prior Justice Department investigations
into his actions and insisted he would have the ultimate say on any payout because
any decision will ‘have to go across my desk’”. The implication
is that Trump thinks he can use the power of his office and his control over the
Justice Department to ensure that he will be given this money. And it is a
substantial amount of money.
The Post story further explains the issue in question.
“Trump’s comments to reporters at the White House came in response to questions
about a New York Times story that said he had filed administrative claims before
being reelected seeking roughly $230 million in damages related to the FBI's 2022
search of his Mar-a-Lago property for classified documents….”
The flaw in Trump’s views of the case is that he did break federal law when, after
the end of his first presidency, he took boxes of public documents to his Florida

President Trump and two of his former officials (AT Jeff Session and senior advisor Jared Kushner) all lied under oath and get off scot-free. Meanwhile, it is public knowledge that many convicts in the US —and I'm not exaggerating—are innocent or receive unjust and harsh sentences. That makes a mockery of the US justice system. Having lived in the good old' USA for nearly half a century, I can tell you without a doubt that justice in America is not colorblind.

Let me explain why: 

* On October 19, 2022, a federal judge said that Trump lied under oath about voter fraud claims in the 2020 election. Add to that his involvement on Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol was "a terror attack” that resulted in five people dead.

Lying under oath, know as perjury, can result in serious penalties, including fines and imprisonment for up to five years.

* On August 23, 2022, the FBI raided former president Trump's Florida home and discover more than 700 pages of stolen top-secret U.S. documents that were illegally stored.

President Donald Trump has announced that a massive new homeless shelter and soup kitchen will replace the East Wing of the White House, which he has demolished.

“This 90,000 square foot structure which I am building without any process or approval from the American people or Congress will stand as human history’s greatest single monument to kindness and charity. 

“This kingly project will certainly win me the Nobel Prize, whose proceeds I will donate toward the expense of housing and feeding hundreds of humans suffering under the weight of the billionaire bonanza that is my regime.”

Trump explains that “throughout history, great men like myself have devoted ourselves to empathy, compassion, kindness and charity.  

“Thus the re-made White House will cement my status as the best American Dictator ever.”

Trump says he and his fellow oligarchs promise (without putting up any actual collateral) to fund the structure, now projected to cost about one-third of a billion dollars, roughly what he’s suing the federal government for as compensation for his having been investigated for his 2021 attempt to seize the federal government.

For the last two years, my social media algorithm has been relentlessly dominated by Gaza, particularly by the voices of ordinary Gazans, displaying a blend of emotions that centers on two core principles: grief and defiance.

Shouts and honking horns . . . and a country being born?

Hey, hey, ho, ho . . . I don’t know. it’s been four days ago, as I write, that the second No Kings rally was held across the country – across the world. I can still hear the blaring horns; they sounded like music. Something fused and bubbled in the blare, a sense of connection and shared values, that isn’t going away. That was the uniqueness of this rally, or so I hope and feel at some deep place in my heart.

I attended the rally, with my sister and two friends, in Appleton, Wisconsin, where I now live – one of about 2,700 such rallies across the country. The several thousand people packing the streets of downtown Appleton were part of the 7 million people throughout the country who felt called upon to – shall we say? – join the future. This is my takeaway. This is why I’m writing about the rally today. Yeah, it’s over. But it’s not “done.”

No faux king way!