Aviation expert torches Trump’s threat to 'decertify' Canadian aircraft

Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum and U.S. President Donald Trump on December 5, 2025. REUTERS/Mandel Ngan

Alex Henderson

January 30, 2026  

ALTERNET

Tensions between the United States and Canada escalated during the recent 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, during a speech, lamented that the U.S. is no longer a reliable economic partner for its longtime allies. U.S. President Donald Trump responded by angrily withdrawing his invitation for Canada to join his Board of Peace.

After returning to the U.S., Trump continued to attack Canada by threatening the country with tariffs — including one on Canadian aircrafts. Canada's CTV News reported that Trump says he will be "decertifying” Bombardier Global Express and "all aircrafts made in Canada."

In a January 29 post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, "If, for any reason, this situation is not immediately corrected, I am going to charge Canada a 50 percentTariff on any and all Aircraft sold into the United States of America."

But according to Canadian aviation expert Phyl Durdey, Trump doesn't have the authority to "decertify" Canadian aircrafts in the way he is threatening.

Durdey, during a January 29 appearance on CTV News, noted that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certifies or decertifies all aircraft in the United States.

CTV News' Dorcas Marfo reports, "(Durdey) also noted that the U.S. has 'lots of operating aircraft that are supplied from Canada,' with thousands of Canadian-built jets flying south of the border, too. The U.S. military itself relies on Bombardier aircraft, using a fleet of modified Global Express jets known as the BACN aircraft or Air Force E-11A, one of which is currently being deployed to the Middle East. Durdey warned any move against Bombardier would hurt U.S. economic interests as much as it would Canada's."

Read CTV News' reporting at this link and here.

A $1.2 Trillion ‘Rip Off’: Report Spotlights Massive Scale of Medicare Advantage Fraud

“These private insurer-run plans are more expensive AND lead to worse outcomes for patients,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. “It’s time to rein in Medicare DisAdvantage and protect traditional Medicare.”


Advocates hold signs during a news conference on Medicare Advantage plans in front of the U.S. Capitol  in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jan 28, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A report released earlier this month to little fanfare estimated that federal overpayments to privately run Medicare Advantage plans could total $76 billion this year—or potentially a staggering $1.2 trillion over the next decade if current trends persist.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent congressional agency that advises lawmakers on Medicare, calculates overpayments by comparing spending on Medicare Advantage (MA) plans to what the federal government would have spent if MA enrollees were on traditional fee-for-service Medicare.

If Trump Really Cared About Fraud in Minnesota, Critics Say, He Would Go After UnitedHealth

In a report published earlier this month, MedPAC showed that overpayments to MA plans this year are projected to be around $76 billion. Roughly $22 billion of that total is due to coding practices by MA providers, which are notorious for making patients appear sicker than they are to receive larger payments from the federal government. MA plans are paid lump sums to cover expected future healthcare services for patients based on their risk scores.

Another factor driving overpayments to MA plans—which now cover 55% of eligible Medicare beneficiaries—is a phenomenon known as favorable selection. MA enrollees tend to be healthier on average than recipients of traditional Medicare, resulting in higher payments to Medicare Advantage plans than are necessary based on patients’ healthcare needs.

According to MedPAC, favorable selection will account for $57 billion of the expected overpayments to MA plans this year. The Trump administration gave Medicare Advantage plans a more than $25 billion boost in federal payments for 2026, even amid mounting bipartisan concerns about fraud in the program.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) said the MedPAC analysis “confirms that these private plans are bleeding taxpayers for billions of dollars more than traditional Medicare would cost for comparable enrollees.”

US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote in response to the MedPAC findings that “Medicare DisAdvantage will rip off American taxpayers to the tune of $76 billion in 2026.”

“These private insurer-run plans are more expensive AND lead to worse outcomes for patients,” Jayapal, a leading supporter of Medicare for All legislation in the House, wrote in a social media post. “It’s time to rein in Medicare DisAdvantage and protect traditional Medicare.”

The MedPAC analysis was released days after Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee published a report revealing how UnitedHealth Group, the largest provider of MA plans in the US, “has turned risk adjustment into a major profit-centered strategy,” reaping massive payments from the federal government through upcoding.

NCPSSM noted that “while UnitedHealth... has emerged as the worst offender, it’s abundantly clear that many MA insurers are engaged in these shady practices.”

“Look no further than insurers’ reliance on prior authorizations for procedures and treatments that normally would be automatically covered in traditional Medicare,” the group said. “This includes denying skilled nursing care that jeopardizes older patients who have nowhere else to turn.”

Abby Martin’s New Documentary Takes On ‘Earth’s Greatest Enemy’

Making the film taught Martin that “it is completely undeniable” that the US military “is the greatest threat to all living things on Earth.”


Military equipment is shown in a still from the film Earth’s Greatest Enemy.
(Image via Empire Files)

Olivia Rosane
Jan 28, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

It’s a commonly repeated statistic that the US military is the world’s largest institutional polluter, but what exactly does that mean?

The quest to find a real answer to that question led journalist and documentary filmmaker Abby Martin and her husband and co-director Mike Prysner on a five-year journey from defense contractor conferences and international climate gatherings to the Rim of the Pacific military training exercises and the fight against the construction of a military base in Okinawa that would fill in its iconic Oura Bay.

The result is Earth’s Greatest Enemy, released this year independently through Martin and Prysner’s own Empire Files, with editing by Taylor Gill and an original score by Anahedron. The film uses personal narrative, research, investigative reporting, interviews, and live footage to detail all the ways in which the Pentagon poisons the planet, including greenhouse gas emissions, the ecocide of war, and the toxins left behind long after the fighting has stopped."When you combine all of this, it is completely undeniable that this force that is upheld by extreme violence is the greatest threat to all living things on Earth,” Martin told Common Dreams.

World’s Largest Polluter?

RIMPAC training exercises are shown in a still from Earth’s Greatest Enemy. (Image via Empire Files)

Toward the beginning of the film, Martin sets out to explain how the Pentagon can count as the world’s largest institutional polluter, and why the numbers behind that fact actually undersell its impact.

It turns out, Martin told Common Dreams, that this statement is only based on the amount of oil the US military purchases on paper, which comes to 270,000 barrels per day. This puts its emissions at 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, more than 150 countries.

This itself is a staggering amount of carbon pollution.

As Martin explains in the film: “It would take the average American driver over 40 years to burn as much fuel as a single flight of a Boeing Pegasus. The US flies more than 600 of these tankers.”

“You have to look at the military as actually the institution that’s actually keeping the fossil fuel infrastructure in place through brutality and violence.”

But it’s also only the tip of the melting iceberg. Through an interview with scientist Stuart Parkinson, Martin reveals how that 55 million keeps ballooning when considering life cycle emissions from military equipment and from the equipment purchased by NATO allies, projected to reach 295 million metric tons by 2028, or more than half of all countries. And that figure excludes the use of military equipment in war, or the emissions from reconstructing cities leveled by US-made bombs.

In one particularly candid interview, a major general tells Martin that it’s great to develop alternative energy sources, “but let’s not walk away from what fuels today’s national security, which is oil. You have to have it.”

And until something is developed that can completely replace oil, “I think you need to keep the alternatives in check,” he says.

Statements like these give the lie to the idea that the US can have a “green military empire,” Martin said.

They also show how difficult it is to separate the US military’s carbon footprint from that of the fossil fuel industry itself.

“Everything has really been wrapped up into securing the fossil fuel, building the infrastructure for fossil fuel, and maintaining that infrastructure empire in order to maintain a fossil fuel economy,” she told Common Dreams. “So you have to look at the military as actually the institution that’s actually keeping the fossil fuel infrastructure in place through brutality and violence.”

'Human Detritus'

A helmet and dog tag are seen in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina in a still from the film Earth’s Greatest Enemy. (Image via Empire Files)

The film also makes clear that carbon pollution isn’t the only kind of pollution the military generates.

“Once you get into the research, you realize every stone unturned is an entire other documentary because it’s not just emissions, it’s the totality of pollution that the military is emitting on a daily basis, the dumping of toxic waste, the legacy contamination, that alone is still killing people every day,” Martin said.

The film spends much of its run time digging into the landfill of military waste, from melted down pucks of plastic dumped off Navy boats and unused munitions exploded in the desert to decades of water contamination at Camp Lejeune, the 26 million marine mammals the US Navy is permitted to harm or kill over five years of training, and the more than 250,000 bullets left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan for every person killed.

Martin said that almost every fact or anecdote she unearthed surprised her.

“We’re fighting for service members and every living person on Earth, because we are all victims of this.”

“No matter what you think you know, it’s worse. It’s actually worse because of how big it is and how every face is a story, every victim is a story,” she said.

One of the most devastating stories comes at the film’s beginning, as viewers spend time with Lavon Johnson, an Iraq War veteran who once starred in a US Army commercial and is now living on Veterans Row, a stretch of tents bearing American flags lined up outside the Veterans Affairs hospital in Brentwood, Los Angeles. “My life is so fucked!” he declares as he lifts his hands from the piano he furiously plays despite the nerve damage caused by exposure to hydraulic fluid while in the Army.

In the next scene, viewers see the camp being demolished by police, juxtaposed with images of war, pollution, and environmental destruction, such as soldiers breaking down doors or dumping trash off of boats, oil pump jacks working, and beachside homes collapsing into a rising tide.

Martin said she was inspired to open the film with Johnson because of a letter that late Iraq War veteran Tomas Young wrote to former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney before he died, referring to himself and other victims of the invasion as “human detritus your war has left behind.”

“That always stuck with me, that line, ‘the human detritus,’” Martin told Common Dreams. “And that is exactly what they do to veterans. That is exactly what they do to veterans… they’re churned up and spit out. They’re the cannon fodder of the system. And for what?”

Prysner is an Iraq veteran who spoke out against the war, and Martin is very clear that veterans are not the target of the pairs’ critique.

“This isn’t about service members,” she said. “This isn’t about hating the military. This is about accountability and justice for them. We’re fighting for service members and every living person on Earth, because we are all victims of this.”

The demolition of Johnson’s camp cut through with clips of war and weather disaster illustrates this point, and could serve as a sort of thesis for the film, showing that the US military ultimately turns everything it touches into detritus, including, if it’s not stopped, the planet itself.

“Everything on Earth is in Lavon’s tent,” Martin said.

A Movie and a Movement

People march against US militarism at COP26 in Glasgow, in a still from Earth’s Greatest Enemy. (Image via Empire Files)

This sense of connection is ultimately why Martin decided to keep Earth’s Greatest Enemy as a two-hour feature documentary rather than pivoting to a documentary series, despite the fact that, the more she dug, the more she realized “it could be 10 documentaries.”

She also ran into roadblocks when seeking Hollywood distribution. While environmentalist distributors would praise the film and compare it to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, they also said frankly, “You’re never going to be able to get anyone to buy this stuff.”

But, Martin said, “I was so committed to making a movie because movies were what radicalized me,” citing inspiration from films like The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, War Made Easy, and Michael Moore’s filmography.

Ultimately, her stubbornness paid off.

“After we educate everyone, I hope to decommission the military empire.”

“It shows that everything from ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to Gaza to the climate, that everything is connected,” she said. “Veterans, soldiers, the Indigenous people on the receiving end of this. If you care about cold water and good air, you can’t walk away from this not being impacted. And that was the goal. The goal is to lock people in and explain the totality and to bring you down to the depths of hell.”

She added: “We have to understand those depths, and you can’t get that with a 20-minute segment. You just can’t. You have to go through the pain of all the victims in this community and come out the other side empowered with the truth and the resolve that we have to change this.”

Change is a large part of Martin’s motivation for making the film, by educating people about the scope of the military’s destructive force and connecting them into a broader coalition.

Martin speaks in the film about coming to political consciousness and beginning her career as a journalist during the Iraq War, meeting Prysner through their shared opposition to war and empire, and developing “profound climate anxiety” following the birth of the pairs’ first child. She lamented that the climate and anti-imperialist movements have been largely siloed over the past two decades, though that is beginning to change.

Through local screenings, she said she wanted to “try to build the environmental movement with the anti-war movement together because… even though the consciousness is expanding, it’s not happening fast enough. And we are simply out of the luxury of time.”

The sense of urgency has only increased with President Donald Trump’s second term. While the film does not cover this period, it points to many developments that have shaped the past 12 months, including Trump’s claim that he attacked Venezuela for oil, his imperialist push to control Greenland, and his deployment of ICE to terrorize US cities.

Toward the end of the movie, Martin includes a segment on the militarization of US policing and warns that “this is our system’s big plan for the climate crisis.” She also films a panel on “Domain Awareness and Air Superiority in the Arctic” in which the generals speaking tell US companies they have an “open invitation” to experiment in Alaska.

“We know what they want the Arctic for, and it’s to pillage every last drop,” Martin said. “So if environmental organizations are not thinking this together, we have to do it for them. We have to do it for them quickly.”

So far, she has seen encouraging signs, with several Sierra Club chapters stepping up to host screenings and enthusiasm from the mainstream environmental groups, parks departments, and other city officials she has invited to attend.

But education is not her only goal.

“After we educate everyone, I hope to decommission the military empire,” Martin said.

For Martin, that doesn’t mean not having a military for self-defense, but rather decommissioning the 800 or so bases the US military maintains around the world and transforming the infrastructure into something that could help local communities in a climate-friendly way. It also means accountability for harm caused and redirecting military spending toward basic needs like housing and healthcare, and certainly not giving the Pentagon another $600 billion as Trump desires.

While that may seem like an impossible task given the current political climate, Martin maintains a sense of revolutionary optimism, encouraged by the global mobilization against the genocide in Gaza and the way that people are increasingly seeing the links between the multiple crises and struggles around the globe.

“There’s so many of us,” Martin told Common Dreams. “We care about the planet. We have a vested stake in life. And that’s our vision.”

“It’s like they have a vision of death and destruction for profit,” she continued. “Our vision is life, and we have to fight for it with every fiber of our being. And let this movie assist you however you can do that.”

To attend a screening of Earth’s Greatest Enemy, see the schedule here. To host a screening of your own, email theempirefiles@gmail.com.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Facing Imminent Death, Final Palestine Action Prisoner Ends Hunger Strike in UK

“If David Lammy wishes to see me dead, if Keir Starmer wishes to see me dead, they can come and do it themselves,” said 22-year-old activist Umer Khalid


22-year-old Umer Khalid, an activist with the group Palestine Action, shouts at a protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
(Photo from Prisoners for Palestine)

Stephen Prager
Jan 28, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

After 17 days without food and three without water, the 22-year-old British pro-Palestine activist Umer Khalid ended his hunger strike after being hospitalized on Monday.

Khalid is the last of the eight young activists with the group Palestine Action to remain on hunger strike to protest their imprisonment without trial and the criminalization of pro-Palestine speech in the UK.



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“At the hospital… I was given a choice between treatment and likely death within the next 24 hours due to kidney failure, acute liver failure, and potential cardiac arrest,” said Khalid, in a statement shared by the Prisoners for Palestine group, which is supporting the strikers. He said that he decided to end his hunger strike because, “I am too strong, too loud, too powerful… and there is so much we can do to effect change.”




The activists are being held in prison on remand, meaning they were denied bail and have not yet been given a trial for vandalizing military equipment used to support Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

Earlier this month, several of the strikers, some of whom had refused food since November, ended their strike after the UK rejected a $2.7 billion contract for a subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons maker, Elbit Systems.

Four of them were arrested after allegedly breaking into an Elbit facility and destroying equipment. Khalid is among four others accused of trespassing at a British Royal Air Force base and vandalizing airplanes.

Khalid, who suffers from Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy and suffered multiple organ failure during the strike, ended his protest after Amy Frost, the governor of the Wormwood Scrubs prison where he is being held, agreed to meet with him to discuss the conditions of his confinement. After the meeting, he received mail and clothes that the prison had withheld from him, and restrictions on outside visitors that had been in place since July were lifted.

A spokesperson for Prisoners for Palestine said Khalid “absolutely must have compassionate bail in order to heal, all the hunger strikers should.”

In addition to protesting the restrictive conditions of their confinement, the strikers were seeking to draw attention to the criminalization of Palestine Action. The UK government, currently led by Labour Party Prime Minister Keir Starmer, added the group to a list of banned “terrorist” organizations in July, meaning that even peaceful support for the group or identification as a member can result in imprisonment.

Since the ban went into effect, more than 2,700 people have been arrested across the UK over support for or involvement with Palestine Action, in many cases for actions like holding a sign or chanting a slogan in support of the group.

The British government has been repeatedly pressed to intervene on behalf of the strikers, who have alleged mistreatment and neglect while in confinement.

Khalid previously went on a 12-day hunger strike, which the Canary reported “made Khalid seriously unwell and unable to walk.” According to the outlet, “the prison mismanaged his refeeding by giving him protein shakes and biscuits, dangerously unsuitable.”

Other strikers have said recovery from weeks or months without food has been exceedingly difficult. Shahmina Alam, a healthcare worker and the sister of Kamran Ahmed, who refused food for 67 days, said the strike showed that “the prison healthcare system is not fit for purpose” and that “there are systemic failures to provide care which is dignified, timely, or even lifesaving.”

“These prisoners are not treated as patients or even humans,” she continued. “They are dehumanised, handcuffed in their sleep and in the shower, and are given no privacy, confidentiality, or respect.”

Despite calls from medical experts and members of Parliament, David Lammy, the secretary of state for justice, has refused calls to meet with the strikers to discuss their demands, which have included immediate bail, an end to the censorship of their communications, and an end to the ban on Palestine Action.

Khalid said he made his decision to end the strike in part because members of the government “have shown without a doubt that they have no concern for our lives and they do not care if we die in these cells.”

He said, “If David Lammy wishes to see me dead, if Keir Starmer wishes to see me dead, they can come and do it themselves.”

120+ Groups Call on EU to Resist Trump’s ‘Fossil-Fueled Imperialism’ and Cancel US Trade Deal

“The EU is at a fork in the road: It can follow the US down a volatile, destructive path or it can forge its own course toward stability.”


Greenpeace activists demonstrate against US fossil fuel imports to Europe on January 26, 2026 in Brussels, Belgium.
(Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Jan 29, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As the European Parliament debates the trade agreement reached last year by President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, more than 120 civil society groups from across Europe and the globe on Thursday warned that the demands Trump has made on the bloc and his “contempt for international law” have made clear that the US is currently “no longer a good-faith partner.”

In solidarity with countries that have been directly threatened with Trump’s “fossil-fueled imperialism”—Venezuela and Greenland—the EU must reduce its reliance on US fossil fuels and cancel the negotiation and implementation of the trade deal, said Oil Change International, one of the signatories of the open letter that was sent to von der Leyen and other top EU officials.

The letter notes that Trump has already shown that in a deal with the US, the EU will be pressured to “dilute its own climate commitments” and “enrich US fossil fuel companies” at the bloc’s expense.

“His administration has attacked the EU’s methane regulation and its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, seeking to weaken Europe’s ability to hold corporations accountable for climate and human rights harms,” reads the letter, which was also signed by Coal Action Network in the UK, Urgewald in Germany, and a number of US-based groups including Public Citizen.

Von der Leyen agreed to the deal last July after Trump threatened the bloc with “economically devastating tariffs,” the groups wrote, ensuring the EU would import $750 billion in US energy products including liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Those imports will “contaminate the air and water of nearby communities, increasing their risk of cancers, asthma, and other serious health harms,” warns the letter, while also being projected to raise energy costs for households across Europe.

Up to 1 in 4 homes in the EU already struggle to adequately heat, cool, or light their homes, wrote the groups.

James Hiatt, executive director of the US group For a Better Bayou, called on EU leaders to “side with communities like mine, not the fossil fuel executives bankrolling Trump, by ending its reliance on US gas.”

“There’s nothing clean about US LNG,” said Hiatt. “This industry has destroyed wetlands, damaged fishermen’s livelihoods, and condemned Gulf South communities like mine to higher rates of heart conditions, asthma, and cancer. We’re also on the frontlines of hurricanes and flooding made worse by continued fossil-fuel dependency Europe keeps importing.”

The groups wrote that “every euro spent on US non-renewable energy, and every fossil fuel investment made by European companies and banks in the United States, fuels Trump’s authoritarian agenda at home and his imperial ambitions abroad.”

“The only way Europe can reach energy independence and free itself from outside pressures is by implementing a just transition away from fossil fuels and relying on energy sufficiency/efficiency and homegrown renewable energy,” reads the letter. “Done well, this can support decent jobs and sound local economies.”

By ratifying the deal with the US, the groups added, the EU will only be “switching one dangerous dependency for another,” following its phase-out of oil imports from Russia.

The bloc will also be “giving up its sovereignty bit by bit, losing the competitiveness battle, deepening the climate crisis which will be putting its own people’s lives at even higher risk from extreme weather, and jeopardizing its ambitions to be seen as a global climate leader,” reads the letter.

Trump’s threat to seize Greenland from the Danish kingdom and his illegal strikes on Venezuela—aimed, his administration has admitted, at taking control of its oil—have shown how willing the president is to violate international law if it serves his own interests, the groups suggested.

The groups made specific demands of EU leaders, calling on them to:Stand in solidarity with Latin American nations threatened by the US, including Venezuela, and with Greenland, affirming that “it is up to its people, and only them, to decide on their future”;
Put forward a motion at the United Nations condemning the Trump administration’s “blatant violations of international law”;
Immediately cancel negotiations and implementation of the US-EU trade deal;
Engage with EU member states to renew the European Green Deal and establish a binding roadmap for the phase-out of fossil gas, in particular US LNG;
Defend the existing EU Methane Regulation and ensure it is applied to imports; and
Support the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, organized by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands.

“Under Trump, the US has become a rogue state that violates international law and bullies sovereign nations into submitting to its ‘energy dominance’ agenda,” said Myriam Douo, false solutions senior campaigner for Oil Change International. “The EU must stop wasting money on risky, expensive US fossil fuels, which threaten climate goals, put people at greater risk of climate disasters, and harm communities with toxic pollution.”

“The EU is at a fork in the road: It can follow the US down a volatile, destructive path or it can forge its own course toward stability,” said Douo. “It can save billions, build a resilient economy, and ensure its long-term energy security and independence through a just transition to renewable energy.”

Military head warns Trump may carry out 'forever-war' despite having ability to end it

"The U.S. is now 0 for 7 in its negotiations with Russia to end the war — chiefly because Ukraine stubbornly refuses to commit national suicide.

Ewan Gleadow
January 29, 2026 
RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 28, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

A top US military official has warned Donald Trump may prolong the end of the war in Ukraine.

Colonel Jonathan Sweet explained how the president could bring the conflict between Russian and Ukraine to an end, but that it would rely on military intervention and the help of NATO. He wrote in The Hill, "Trump has the cards to end the war, but those cards need to be played against Russia and not Ukraine.

"He must coerce Russia to stop attacking, give up their territorial aspirations for the Donbas, and accept a European military peace-keeping force in Ukraine.

"That will likely require military force. It begins with a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over western Ukraine, sufficiently arming Kyiv to defeat Russian forces in Ukraine, and destroying Moscow’s ability to fund and sustain the war.

"Anything less equals a Team Trump forever war in Europe." Sweet had previously referred to this prolonged decision-making as a "forever war" which Trump may have orchestrated.

Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were present for talks between the two nations, which Col. Sweet says did little to ease the tensions.

He wrote, "The talks commenced and concluded in Abu Dhabi the next day. The outcome? Russia refused to back off their maximalist demands and continued to demand Ukraine unilaterally withdraw from the Donbas.

"The U.S. is now 0 for 7 in its negotiations with Russia to end the war — chiefly because Ukraine stubbornly refuses to commit national suicide.

"Kyiv will not give Moscow in negotiations what the Russians cannot take on the battlefield. Nor should they be persuaded or coerced into doing so."

EU diplomats believe the relationship with Trump has broken down and that their dreams of working with him and the administration in the future are dead.

One EU diplomat said, "Our American Dream is dead. Donald Trump murdered it." Another senior envoy from a country described as a "key American ally" by Politico suggested the "trust is lost" with the U.S.

They added, "We are experiencing a great rupture of the world order."

‘He Is a Fascist’: Scottish Lawmaker Accuses Trump of Piracy Over US Abduction of Tanker Captain, First Mate

“Our sovereignty has been violated, our courts have been defied, and a foreign military has abducted two people from our territory,” said Ross Greer, co-leader of Scotland’s Green Party.


An oil tanker known as the Marinera is pictured alongside a US Coast Guard ship at sea in the Moray Firth, northern Scotland, on January 14, 2026.
(Photo by Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jan 29, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A Scottish lawmaker railed against US President Donald Trump on Wednesday over the American military’s seizure of an oil tanker and detention of its two top officers earlier this month in waters between Iceland and Scotland.

Ross Greer, a member of the Scottish Parliament and co-leader of Scotland’s Green Party, said that two people—tanker captain Avtandil Kalandadze and his unnamed first officer—“have been abducted from Scotland in the middle of the night by the US military, despite our highest court ordering they be kept under our jurisdiction.”

As the Scottish newspaper The National reported Thursday, Kalandadze—a Georgian national—and his first officer were taken out of UK territory by the US Coast Guard earlier this week despite a court ruling against their removal from Scotland’s jurisdiction.

“He’s not our ally. He is a fascist,” Greer said of Trump during his remarks in Parliament on Wednesday. “Our sovereignty has been violated, our courts have been defied, and a foreign military has abducted two people from our territory.”

Greer called on the Scottish government to immediately evict US troops from Prestwick Airport, which is used by American forces.

“Will the first minister show Trump that his piracy has consequences?” Greer asked.



The BBC reported Wednesday that the Trump administration “says it intends to prosecute” Kalandadze and his colleague for alleged involvement in the violation of US sanctions.

Angela Constance, Scotland’s justice secretary, has said the Trump administration’s handling of the vessel seizure and abduction of its crew has demonstrated a lack of respect for Scottish jurisdiction.

“We have a number of questions, we have a number of concerns, and deep frustrations about how this matter has evolved, because it is a matter of significant public interest and confidence,” Constance said earlier this week. “The Scottish government wants to play our part in international justice because that is appropriate and responsible. But that starts with the recognition and respect that must be afforded to Scottish jurisdiction and Scots law.”

Aamer Anwar, an attorney representing Kalandadze’s wife in a lawsuit over the incident, said earlier this week that the captain was “whisked away under the cover of darkness” by US forces, and “we have no idea what role our own governments played in that.”

“A dangerous precedent has been set, as the US should not have the power to arrest people under our control,” said Anwar. “These people have been denied their most basic human rights right under our noses, whilst the UK knowingly assisted the US ‘abduction’ of two men from Scotland to avoid the Judicial Review taking place.”

After 2 Years of Denial, IDF Confirms ​70,000+ Killed in Gaza​—But Denies Famine

“The real figure is much higher,” said one UK lawmaker. “This is a ‘ceasefire’ in name only. The slaughter goes on.”


The bodies of victims of the October 31, 2023 Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip are lined up outside the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City.
(Photo by Fadi Alwhidi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jan 29, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


After two years of denial and deception, the Israel Defense Forces acknowledged Wednesday for the first time that over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, while continuing to deny the famine Israel caused by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the obliterated strip.

Israeli media including the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and others reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accepts the accuracy of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s (GHM) death toll, which currently stands at least 71,667, with more than 171,000 others wounded and 9,500 missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed buildings.



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‘All Lies’: Gazans Say There’s No Ceasefire as Phase 2 Begins Amid Israeli Strikes

“How many years did we spend screaming, with checked and re-checked figures, lists showing names and ID numbers, being told the numbers were completely fanciful despite rigorous, transparent verification, and now the IDF quietly accepts that they were correct all along,” Beirut-based journalist Séamus Malekafzali said on X in response to the IDF admission.

Experts—including the authors of multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet—assert that the actual death toll in Gaza is much higher than reported. Last June, a study published in Nature reported 84,000 deaths in Gaza. Others say the toll could be even higher, with one Economist study estimating between 77,000-109,000 Gazans killed by Israeli forces.

“We should not care what the IDF accepts or not—they perpetrated the genocide,” said Jake Romm, the US representative for the Hind Rajab Foundation, which tracks suspected IDF war criminals and is named after a 5-year-old Palestinian girl massacred along with relatives and rescue workers by Israeli occupation forces on January 29, 2024. “Their communications are in service of that project.”

“This is, in any event, an admission that will only be used to discredit the real, much higher death toll as the scale of the atrocity becomes known,” Romm added.



Israeli academic Ori Goldberg was also skeptical of the IDF’s admission, asserting on X: “'Accepts’ means that even the vast network of lies no longer holds. If the IDF ‘accepts’ 70,000, it has killed innumerably more.”

While the IDF accepted GHM’s death toll, it argued that the famine in Gaza—which officially lasted from August-December 2025, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the standard international framework for classifying food insecurity and malnutrition—did not happen.

GHM says at least 453 Palestinians, including 150 children, have died of malnutrition in Gaza since October 2023. The IDF contends that the figure is a mix of lies and misleading reporting about people who had preexisting health conditions before they starved to death.

However, famine experts argue that Israel orchestrated a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in Gaza.

Throughout the war, Israeli leaders, their supporters abroad, and mainstream US media attempted to discredit GHM casualty figures by casting aspersions upon the “Hamas-run” ministry. This, despite Israeli military intelligence deeming the figures accurate and historical confirmations of their reliability.

“The phrase *Hamas* Health Ministry was used as a slur for years to signal unreliability, even though it was pointed out again and again that its numbers had always held up,” noted journalist Jasper Nathaniel, adding sardonically that “I’m sure the ‘Pallywood’ crowd will be rushing to apologize today.”



The International Center for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) said on social media that “every media outlet that cast doubt over these figures with dogwhistling phrases like ‘Hamas-run MoH’ is complicit in these killings.”

“In truth, the 71,000+ figure is conservative,” ICJP added. “Palestinian bodies are buried under the rubble and can’t be counted and many more have died from malnutrition due to Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians. Different tools, same outcome: Israeli genocide of Palestinians.”

In the United States—which has supported Israel’s annihilation of Gaza with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic cover including vetoes of numerous United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolutions during both the Biden and Trump administrations—the House of Representatives approved a bipartisan amendment in June 2024 that banned US officials from using State Department resources to cite GHM casualty figures.

The amendment’s lead sponsor, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.)—whose all-time top campaign contributor is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—contended that “at the end of the day, the Gaza Ministry of Health is the Hamas Ministry of Health.”



Former President Joe Biden faced genocide denial accusations for casting aspersions upon GHM reports. President Donald Trump has also said he does not believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

A senior IDF official told the Times of Israel that the military is in the process of determining how many of the Gaza dead were members of Hamas or other militant groups.

While the Israeli government has claimed a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio in Gaza, classified IDF intelligence data obtained last year during an investigation by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine and Local Call and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison revealed that 5 in 6 Palestinians—or 83%—killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the US-backed war were civilians.

Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—who led the IDF through most of the war—acknowledged after retiring last year that “over 10%” of Gaza’s population, or about 220,000 Palestinians, had been killed or wounded as of September 2025.

“This is not a gentle war,” Halevi said at the time, “we took the gloves off from the first minute.”

Following the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, the IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.

The IDF’s use of massive ordnance, including US-supplied 1,000- and 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs capable of leveling entire city blocks, and utilization of artificial intelligence to select targets has resulted in staggering numbers of civilian deaths, including numerous instances of dozens or more people being massacred in single strikes.

Through it all, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli political and military leaders claimed that the IDF, “the most moral army in the world,” went to great lengths to avoid harming civilians.

While Israeli leaders scoffed at war crimes allegations, South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The ICJ, a UN body, subsequently issued multiple provisional orders for Israel to prevent genocidal acts. Israel has been accused of ignoring these orders, and last September a panel of UN experts concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Later, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.

The killing isn’t over. Since a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect last October 10, Israeli forces have killed more than 500 Palestinians in over 1,200 violations of the truce. Palestinians—mostly children and infants—are also still dying of exposure to cold weather as Israel continues to restrict the entry of aid into Gaza.

“They said Palestinians were exaggerating. Lying. Propagandists,” Independent UK Member of Parliament Shockat Adam said on X Thursday. “Now, even the IDF accepts 70,000+ killed in Gaza. The real figure is much higher. This is a ‘ceasefire’ in name only. The slaughter goes on.”

Argentina declares emergency over Patagonia wildfires


By AFP
January 29, 2026


Argentina's government has declared an emergency over wildfires raging for weeks in four provinces in the remote southern Patagonia region - Copyright AFP/File Martín Levicoy

Argentina’s government on Thursday declared an emergency in Patagonia, where wildfires have ripped through vast tracts of forest since the start of the Southern Hemisphere summer.

The biggest blazes are in southern Chubut province, where at least 45,000 hectares of forest — an area roughly the size of San Francisco — have gone up in smoke since mid-January.

Hundreds of firefighters are trying to prevent the flames reaching populated areas.

President Javier Milei’s spokesman Manuel Adorni said a state of emergency would take effect in Chubut, Rio Negro, Neuquen and La Pampa provinces of Patagonia on Friday.

The measure is expected to facilitate cooperation between provincial and national firefighters.

Los Alerces National Park, a vast reserve of pristine forest and glacial lakes, has been among the worst-affected areas.

In the past few days, colder weather and drizzle have provided some respite for firefighters, the deputy director of the federal emergencies agency, Ignacio Cabello, told El Chubut FM radio.

“Today, the weather conditions helped,” Manuel, a volunteer firefighter in the Chubut town of Cholila, which is threatened by flames, confirmed.

“We are ensuring that the fire doesn’t continue to expand,” the man, who did not wish to give his surname, told AFP.

Another major fire near the small Andean town of Epuyen was said by provincial authorities to be “85% contained.”

The fires have been fanned by high temperatures and strong winds at the height of summer.

ICE LIES

Indication That Alex Pretti Was Known to Federal Agents Raises New Questions Over Protester ‘Database’

The Department of Homeland Security has denied it has a database of protesters or legal observers, but the agency sent a memo to agents asking them to collect data on dissenters in Minneapolis.

A MInneapolis resident films a federal agent in the city on January 24, 2026.
(Photo by Arthur Maiorella/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Jan 28, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

About a week before Alex Pretti was fatally shot by US Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, he had another encounter with federal officers who objected to him observing an immigration raid, and his name was known to them—raising new questions about the “database” that Trump administration officials and agents on the ground have threatened dissenters with recently.

CNN reported Tuesday that Pretti, the Minneapolis nurse who was fatally shot by Border Patrol agents while acting as a legal observer and trying to help a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by one officer, was known to federal officers before his killing last weekend. About a week earlier, he had been tackled by a group of agents who broke his rib when he was protesting the detention of a community member.

The outlet reported that earlier this month, the US Department of Homeland Security sent a memo to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents deployed in the Minneapolis area that provided a form called “intel collection non-arrests,” urging them to fill in personal data about protesters and people the department labeled as “agitators.”

“Capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form,” the DHS guidance read.

It was not clear whether Pretti’s information was gathered on one of the forms or if the Border Patrol agents last Saturday knew who he was when they fatally shot him after throwing him to the ground on a Minneapolis street.

But the news that he had had a previous encounter and that officers in Minneapolis knew his name came amid numerous reports of federal agents behaving aggressively toward nonviolent protesters, and as top officials in the Trump administration as well as officers on the ground have issued threats to demonstrators and legal observers that DHS would be collecting information about them.

After a video taken by a Maine resident went viral last week, showing a federal immigration agent telling her that she would be considered a “domestic terrorist” by the Trump administration and included in a “nice little database” for filming him, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin denied that such a database exists.

“There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS,” McLaughlin told CNN when asked about the video taken in Maine. “We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults, and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement. Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime.”

Her response didn’t explain why the agent in the video threatened a woman who was merely filming him, an activity that is broadly protected by the First Amendment.

Despite McLaughlin’s denial, President Donald Trump’s own border czar, Tom Homan, told Fox News earlier this month that he aimed to “create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, and assault, we’re going to make them famous.”

The White House has frequently claimed that there’s been a “more than 1,000% rise” in assaults against federal immigration agents, but an analysis of federal court records by Colorado Public Radio showed in September that the reports of attacks on officers appeared exaggerated, with the increase closer to 25% from the previous year.

In Pretti’s first encounter with federal agents, he told the source who spoke to CNN that he had stopped his car and began blowing a whistle and shouting when he saw ICE officers chasing a family on foot.

The agents then tackled him and leaned on his back, breaking his rib.

“That day, he thought he was going to die,” said the source, who spoke anonymously with CNN out of fear of retribution.

DHS told CNN it had “no record” of the initial encounter with Pretti.

Journalist Jasper Nathaniel said the revelation about Pretti’s earlier encounter showed that it is “completely urgent to identify his killers and investigate whether they had access to the database” that officials have alluded to.




Questions about how the alleged database has been used in Minneapolis and elsewhere were raised as another viral clip taken by a legal observer in the city showed an ICE agent telling him, “You raise your voice, I will erase your voice.”

In Maine, legal observers have reported that ICE agents have shown up at their homes to confront them about filming and monitoring immigration enforcement.

One observer, Liz Eisele McLellan, told the Portland Press Herald that one agent said to her: “This is a warning. We know you live right here.”