Social media giants face landmark trial over addiction claims


By AFP
January 26, 2026


Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify in a landmark trial from a lawsuit alleging that social media firms designed their platforms to be addictive to children - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File CHIP SOMODEVILLA
Glenn CHAPMAN

A landmark trial beginning this week in Los Angeles could establish a legal precedent on whether social media companies deliberately designed their platforms to addict children.

Jury selection is set to start in California state court on Tuesday in what is being called a “bellwether” proceeding because its outcome could set the tone for a tidal wave of similar litigation across the United States.

Defendants in the suit are Alphabet, ByteDance and Meta, the tech titans behind YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is slated to be called as a witness during the trial.

Social media firms are accused in the hundreds of lawsuits of addicting young users to content that has led to depression, eating disorders, psychiatric hospitalization and even suicide.

Meta AI will offer breaking news, entertainment and lifestyle stories when users ask news-related questions, drawing from partnerships with CNN, Fox News, Le Monde, People and USA Today. — © AFP/File Joseph Prezioso

Lawyers for the plaintiffs are explicitly borrowing strategies used against the tobacco industry in the 1990s and 2000s that faced a similar onslaught of lawsuits arguing that companies sold a defective product.

The trial before Judge Carolyn Kuhl in state court is expected to start the first week of February, after a jury is selected.

It focuses on allegations that a 19-year-old woman identified by the initials K.G.M. suffered severe mental harm because she was addicted to social media.

“This is the first time that a social media company has ever had to face a jury for harming kids,” said Social Media Victims Law Center founder Matthew Bergman, whose team is involved in more than 1,000 such cases.

Starting December 10, some of the world’s largest social media platforms will be forced to remove all users under the age of 16 in Australia. © AFP/File David GRAY

The center is a legal organization dedicated to holding social media companies accountable for harms caused to young people online.

“The fact that now K.G.M. and her family get to stand in a courtroom equal to the largest, most powerful and wealthy companies in the world is, in and of itself, a very significant victory,” Bergman said.

“We understand that these cases are hard fought and that it is our burden to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that K.G.M. was harmed by the design decisions of these companies — that’s a burden that we happily undertake.”

— Design not content —

A decisive outcome of the trial could provide a “data point” for settling similar cases en masse, according to Bergman.

Snapchat last week confirmed that it made a deal to avoid the civil trial accusing it, along with Meta, TikTok and YouTube, of addicting young people to social media.

The terms of that deal were not disclosed.

Social media giants have described an Australian ban on under-16s assessing their platforms as “vague” and “problematic.” — © AFP/File Kiran RIDLEY, Kiran RIDLEY

Internet titans have argued that they are shielded by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which frees them of responsibility for what social media users post.

However, this case argues those firms are culpable for business models designed to hold people’s attention and promote content that winds up harming their mental health.

“We are not faulting the social media companies for failure to remove malign content from their platforms,” Bergman told AFP.

“We are faulting them for designing their platforms to addict kids and for developing algorithms that show kids not what they want to see but what they cannot look away from.”

Lawsuits accusing social media platforms of practices endangering young users are also making their way through federal court in Northern California and state courts across the country.

None of the companies responded to requests for comment.

Opinion: Gen Alpha vs AI and uncharted territory


By Paul Wallis
EDITOR AT LARGE

DIGITAL JOURNAL

January 24, 2026


Parents have accused OpenAI's chatbot of encouraging their son's suicide - Copyright POOL/AFP Alexander KAZAKOV

Consider a whole generation of seriously underfunded kids confronted with something that’s never happened before. There are no road maps, no career paths.

It’s not The Twilight Zone; it’s the Backlit Zone. The relics and ruins of the past still mutter past, making noises. References to a world long gone still infest the media and other zoos.

Most of the “light” comes from shills and mindless sales-things. Big Tech simply babbles on like some deranged soundtrack. You’re investing in a future without a solid fact to show for itself. You’re also about to live in it.

They’re talking about a script for AI that doesn’t yet exist, and a future that can only be totally different. Generation Alpha, the oldest of whom are about 15, are confronted with this timeless wisdom as though it can possibly mean something to them.

The current state of play is:

Jobs: We have no idea.

Professions: May or may not exist in 10 years.

Careers: Forget it, if you mean careers in the old sense.

Incomes: Equally clueless.

Business: What is this ancient word that you so hesitantly speak, quaint one?

Anything to do with mortgages, health, education, having kids, lives, etc: Not even the ghost of a theory.

Society: What’s a society? This isn’t. Doesn’t actually exist and hasn’t for years, but let’s pretend.

Culture: Porn, more porn, crime, more crime, celebrities, more celebrities, disasters, more disasters, and chat shows.

Inspiring, isn’t it? It’s a recipe for a species-wide coma. Talk about meaningful. Now try to find some meaning. History will, but you probably won’t.

Generations of people who grew up relatively secure are now going to preach to born-rootless Gen Alphas? Skibidi, indeed. There’s really no other word.

This tech will last maybe seconds, if it’s lucky. To give an example – This is music making on ChatGPT. To be fair, it’s a lot better than I thought it would be, but it’s hardly the last word. Take a little time to check out that link and see how straightforward it is.

Now – Do you think that will evolve, fast? It has to, simply because a lot of users are engaged. They’re the real drivers, not the tech, and definitely not the hype. Most of the Big Tech of the past didn’t survive even 10 years on the same basis when digital tech went mainstream.

If you think Advanced Algorithmic Apathy, or whatever you’re supposed to call this absurd, stagnant, incestuous Cloud/internet/sewer, is an issue, what about millions of duly bored out of their minds kids banging away on AI interfaces?

Even the idea of AI slop is a positive. I’ve watched as many godawful YouTube documentaries as anyone, and the howls of outrage are fully justified.

That’s one thing that has to happen with AI.

Check out the news for AI for business any day of the week. This is what happens when you superimpose a whole new class of technology on a deeply flawed commerce sector, and it truly stinks.

Recruiting has been totally inefficient for decades, and it’s getting worse. Skills may or may not exist. Marketing is laughable, and data-driven in all the wrong ways. Advertising is simply mismanaged to the point of total failure.

I have to ask – Don’t you guys know anything about sales? Anything else?

Misreading whole generations is now apparently compulsory. Gen Z are also definitely not the earlier model of Gen Alpha. This generation gap makes the Grand Canyon look like a minor grouting problem.

Gen Z are hanging in there, abused and unenthusiastic, because they’re stuck with it. Their major issue is survival, and nobody’s helping them.

Gen Alpha is even worse off, with no guidelines and no assets.

Who will save Gen Alpha, you cry, from your luxurious favela?

Gen Alpha, because nobody else can.

______________________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

‘Trusted’ bottled water is probably the riskiest


By Dr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR

DIGITAL JOURNAL
January 24, 2026


Well water. Image by Tim Sandle

Unsafe drinking water continues to be a serious global health issue. More than four billion people around the world lack access to safely managed water, and faecal contamination contributes to millions of cases of diarrheal illness each year, especially among children.

An example of this has recently been detected in Guatemala’s Western Highlands, where researchers from Washington State University have found that a source of drinking water that people trust most may actually be the riskiest.

Here, bottled water from refillable jugs—seen as the safest choice—was frequently contaminated with harmful bacteria; instead, protected municipal wells were found to be the cleanest

.

Looking down a well (in Italy). Image by Tim Sandle.

Bottled water is not necessarily best

The study focused on Guatemala’s Western Highlands, where scientists compared what people think about their drinking water with what laboratory testing actually revealed.

To gather the data, the research team surveyed 60 households, split evenly between urban and rural areas, and collected water samples from several sources, including bottled, piped, well, spring and filtered water. The samples were analysed for coliform bacteria, Escherichia coli, and antibiotic-resistant organisms such as extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing (ESBL) and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE).

These bacteria can survive many commonly used antibiotics and cause infections that are difficult to treat. Although ESBL- and CRE-producing bacteria often live harmlessly in the human gut, they can cause severe illness if they enter the urinary tract or bloodstream.

Many residents viewed bottled water sold in large refillable jugs as the safest choice. However, testing showed that among the 11 water sources examined, bottled water was the most likely to contain coliform bacteria, which signal faecal contamination. In addition, some of these microbes are antimicrobial resistant.

Barman pouring bottled water. Image by Tim Sandle.

As lead scientist, Brooke Ramay, says: “We found there is a clear disconnect between what people believe about water safety and what’s actually happening in their homes, and that can have major public health implications.”
Promoting public health

“Understanding how people view water safety is key to improving public health,” Ramay adds. “When people believe their water is safe, they don’t take extra precautions, but when they see a risk, they change their behaviour.”

Environmental Impact: The production, transportation, and disposal of plastic bottles from bottled water contribute to pollution and resource depletion. In contrast, well water systems eliminate the need for plastic bottles, reducing waste and carbon footprint
Risk of drinking bottled water

Despite being widely trusted, bottled water was found to be six times more likely to test positive for coliform bacteria than other water sources. Indeed, only 17% of bottled water samples met World Health Organisation standards for safe drinking water.

This is a national problem since bottled water serves as the primary drinking water source for many households in Guatemala. Large jugs are commonly filled at local purification facilities or neighbourhood refill stations, where the water is treated, sealed and delivered to homes and businesses.

In contrast, water drawn directly from protected municipal wells had the lowest contamination levels, even though residents ranked these sources lower in perceived safety. These sealed, chlorinated community wells showed no coliform contamination and no detectable E. coli, ESBL or CRE bacteria. This presents a cogent case for ‘free’ water as opposed to expensive bottled water.

Storage problems

The problem is not usually with how the water is bottled, rather it is what happens to the water afterwards. The jugs can be stored improperly, and dispensers aren’t cleaned regularly, and we think this can create ideal conditions for bacteria to grow.

Across all samples tested, coliform bacteria were detected in 90% of water sources, E. coli in 55%, and ESBL in 30%. CRE bacteria were less common but were found in some household piped water samples. The presence of these organisms in drinking water is particularly concerning because they can spread antibiotic resistance even when they do not cause immediate illness.

The research appears in the Journal of Water and Health, the research paper is titled “Comparing cultural perceptions of drinking water safety with water quality in urban and rural Guatemalan communities.”

Living like sultans: Istanbul’s pampered street cats


By AFP

January 25, 2026


'Here people and cats live side by side, as equals,' according to Istanbul residents - Copyright Philippine Coast Guard (PCG)/AFP Handout

Rémi BANET

Kanyon is getting fat: since someone stole his basket, this white cat with grey markings who lives at an Istanbul shopping centre has been showered with snacks, love and affection.

News of his plight brought out countless well-wishers, who have handed him endless supplies of food, toys, a comfortable cat house — and his very own Instagram page run by a fan.

He’s not alone: according to City Hall, Istanbul has more than 160,000 cats living on its streets who are regularly fed and fussed over by the city’s 16 million residents.

These street cats are looked after with an almost religious devotion.

Whether on the Asian or European side of Istanbul — or the ferries connecting them — cats can be seen everywhere, snoozing on restaurant chairs, wandering through supermarkets or curled up in shop windows.

And they are rarely, if ever, disturbed.

“Istanbulites love animals. Here, cats can walk into shops and curl up on the most expensive of fabrics. That’s why they call it ‘the city of cats’,” explains Gaye Koselerden, 57, looking at Kanyon’s toy-filled corner which looks like a child’s bedroom.



– From pre-Ottoman times –



Like Kanyon, many strays have turned into much-loved neighbourhood mascots.

In Kadikoy, locals set up a bronze statue in 2016 to immortalise Tombili (Turkish for “chubby”), a pot-bellied feline whose characteristic pose — lounging on benches with one paw draped over the edge — spawned countless internet memes.

When Gli, the tabby mascot of Istanbul’s sixth-century Hagia Sofia basilica-turned-mosque, died, an obituary in the Turkish press recalled how she was stroked by US president Barack Obama when he visited in 2009.

At the neighbouring Topkapi Palace, for years the opulent residence of the Ottoman sultans, they have just restored a centuries-old cat flap.

“Cats have always been here, no doubt because they are clean and close to humans,” the site’s director Ilhan Kocaman told AFP.

The presence of so many cats in the city has often been explained with reference to “the deep affection the Prophet Muhammad had for them”, explained Altan Armutak, an expert at Istanbul University’s veterinary history department.

When Ottomans seized Constantinople in 1453, “they found cats waiting to be fed outside fish stalls and butchers’ shops,” he said.

“Giving the cats food was seen as an offering in the name of God.”



– ‘Living side by side’ –



Six centuries later, cats have retained their historic presence in Istanbul, although these days City Hall is trying to manage their numbers, sterilising more than 43,000 cats last year, 12 times more than in 2015.

And the authorities are concerned about residents’ often over-generous offerings of food, which they fear is encouraging the spread of rodents.

“Normally, cats chase rats. But in Istanbul, you can see the rats eating the food alongside the cats. We must tackle this,” the region’s governor Davut Gul recently warned.

Although several such clips did the rounds on social media, they seem to have had a limited impact.

“I’ve lived here for four months and I’ve never seen a single rat,” said Fatime Ozarslan, a 22-year-old student originally from Germany as she put out a sachet of wet food in Macka Park, which is home to at least 100 cats.

“In Germany, we have many rats, but here, with so many cats, they must be afraid,” she smiled.

Without its cats, Istanbul just would not be the same, she said.

“Here people and cats live side by side, as equals.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for STRAYS 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for STRAY 

‘So little we know’: in submersibles revealing the deep sea


By AFP
January 25, 2026


The vessel's powerful light beams can be used to elicit the display of light called bioluminescence that many deep-sea animals produce - Copyright AFP ANTHONY WALLACE

Sara HUSSEIN

A dome-fronted submersible sinks beneath the waves off Indonesia, heading down nearly 1,000 metres in search of new species, plastic-eating microbes and compounds that could one day make medicines.

This month, AFP boarded one of two submersibles belonging to OceanX, a non-profit backed by billionaire Ray Dalio and his son that brings scientists onto its OceanXplorer ship to study the marine world.

The ship boasts labs for genetic sequencing, a helicopter for aerial surveys and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) capable of descending up to 6,000 metres (19,700 feet) under the ocean surface.

Its two submersibles have everything from hydraulic collection arms and suction tubes to high-definition cameras, allowing them to uncover the improbable life found in some of the harshest conditions on Earth.

The ship’s latest mission focuses on a seamount chain off Indonesia’s Sulawesi island that scientists on board mapped last year.

A new team of Indonesian scientists is now surveying its biodiversity, including with submersible dives that put the researchers right into the environment they are studying.

As the sub dropped below 200 metres, the last traces of light disappeared, and indigo faded into total darkness.

Husna Nugrahapraja, an Indonesian scientist on the mission, admitted feeling “a little bit nervous and anxious” as he descended on his first submersible trip.

It is a “very lonely” environment at first, the assistant professor at Institut Teknologi Bandung told AFP.

The craft’s lights offered the only illumination, revealing drifts of “marine snow” — a shower of debris, including decomposing animals, that falls continuously into the depths and creates the impression of an old television stuck between stations.

Marine life that most people never see floated into view, including delicate comb jellies with pulsing fairy-light illuminations along their sides.

Siphonophores — largely translucent creatures in fanciful shapes resembling toddlers’ drawings — glowed as they drifted by, and silver, fingernail-sized fish skittered out of the sub’s wake.

Finally, Husna said, “we arrive on the sea bed… (where) we can see many unique organisms”, from delicate sea stars to fronded soft corals.

– ‘Quite different’ –

OceanXplorer’s Neptune submersible is designed for scientific collection and observation, while its Nadir vessel has high-end cameras and lights for media content.

That reflects OceanX’s view that compelling images make research more accessible and impactful.

The subs do not go as deep as an ROV, but offer a unique view, explained Dave Pollock, who heads OceanX’s submersible team.

“We get a lot of scientists come on who are very sceptical about subs,” he told AFP.

“Pretty much without fail every sceptical scientist that comes on board who gets to go on a dive changes their opinion.”

The nearly 360-degree view gives them “a totally different perspective” to the flat video fed up to the ship by the ROV.

“It’s quite different when you see it yourself,” Husna said.

The submersibles also offer unique experiences, including the flashes of light called bioluminescence that many deep-sea animals produce to communicate, for defence, or to attract mates.

The vessel’s powerful light beams can be used to elicit the display.

First, all the lights are switched off. Even the internal control board is covered, plunging the craft’s occupants into total darkness.

Then the sub flashes its lights several times while those on board close their eyes.

When they open them, a seascape galaxy of stars appears — the bluish-white flashes of creatures from plankton and jellyfish to shrimp and fish responding to the sub lights.

Pollock, who has spent hundreds of hours diving in submersibles, counts some of the more spectacular “flashback bioluminescence” events as among the most memorable moments in his career.

Submersibles are used in many fields, but many now associate them with the 2023 underwater implosion of the Titan, which killed five people on a trip to explore the Titanic wreck.

Pollock stressed that, unlike Titan, OceanXplorer’s vehicles are designed, manufactured and inspected regularly in accordance with industry body DNV.

“The subs are designed safe” and equipped with back-up systems including four days of emergency life support, he said.

– ‘So little we know’ –

For deeper exploration, the scientists rely on OceanX’s ROV, operated from a futuristic-looking “mission control” where two crew members sit in gamer-style armchairs.

A bank of screens shows the largely barren seabed, as an operator uses a multi-jointed joystick to operate the robot’s hydraulic arm from thousands of metres above.

It resembles a space mission, with an intrepid rover traversing desolate distant terrain. But here there are aliens.

At least that is how some of the species encountered appear to the untrained eye.

There’s a bone-white lobster, suctioned up for examination at the surface, and a horned sea cucumber whose mast-like spikes collapse into black spaghetti when it arrives on the ship.

And there’s a deep-sea hermit crab, living not inside a shell, but a sea star the team can’t immediately identify. The crab has laid lurid orange eggs inside its long-dead host.

Not every collection is a success: a delicate red-orange shrimp daintily eludes the suction tube, swirling its long antenna as it swims almost triumphantly beyond reach.

When the ROV returns, there is an excited dash for the samples including seawater, sediment and a forearm-length sea lily coated with dripping orange goo.

Crustacean specialist Pipit Pitriana from Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency is fascinated by the captured lobster, as well as some pearl-sized barnacles she thinks may be new to science.

Large parts of the ocean, particularly the deep sea floor, are not even mapped, let alone explored.

And while a new treaty to protect international waters entered into force this month, the ocean faces threats from plastic pollution and rising temperatures to acidification.

“Our Earth, our sea, is mostly deep sea,” Pipit said.

“But… there is so little we know about the biodiversity of the deep sea.”

WHO chief says reasons US gave for withdrawing ‘untrue’


By AFP
January 24, 2026


World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (C) visits a children's hospital in Port Sudan. — © AFP/File

Nina LARSON

The head of the UN’s health agency on Saturday pushed back against Washington’s stated reasons for withdrawing from the World Health Organization, dismissing US criticism of the WHO as “untrue”.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that US announcement this week that it had formally withdrawn from the WHO “makes both the US and the world less safe”.

And in a post on X, he added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue.”

He insisted: “WHO has always engaged with the US, and all Member States, with full respect for their sovereignty.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO.

They accused the agency, of numerous “failures during the Covid-19 pandemic” and of acting “repeatedly against the interests of the United States”.

The WHO has not yet confirmed that the US withdrawal has taken effect.

– ‘Trashed and tarnished’ –

The two US officials said the WHO had “trashed and tarnished” the United States, and had compromised its independence.

“The reverse is true,” the WHO said in a statement.

“As we do with every Member State, WHO has always sought to engage with the United States in good faith.”

The agency strenuously rejected the accusation from Rubio and Kennedy that its Covid response had “obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures”.

Kennedy also suggested in a video posted to X Friday that the WHO was responsible for “the Americans who died alone in nursing homes (and) the small businesses that were destroyed by reckless mandates” to wear masks and get vaccinated.

The US withdrawal, he insisted, was about “protecting American sovereignty, and putting US public health back in the hands of the American people”.

Tedros warned on X that the statement “contains inaccurate information”.

“Throughout the pandemic, WHO acted quickly, shared all information it had rapidly and transparently with the world, and advised Member States on the basis of the best available evidence,” the agency said.

“WHO recommended the use of masks, vaccines and physical distancing, but at no stage recommended mask mandates, vaccine mandates or lockdowns,” it added.

“We supported sovereign governments to make decisions they believed were in the best interests of their people, but the decisions were theirs.”

– Withdrawal ‘raises issues’ –

The row came as Washington struggled to dislodge itself from the WHO, a year after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to that effect.

The one-year withdrawal process reached completion on Thursday, but Kennedy and Rubio regretted in their statement that the UN health agency had “not approved our withdrawal and, in fact, claims that we owe it compensation”.

WHO has highlighted that when Washington joined the organisation in 1948, it reserved the right to withdraw, as long as it gave one year’s notice and had met “its financial obligations to the organisation in full for the current fiscal year”.

But Washington has not paid its 2024 or 2025 dues, and is behind around $260 million.

“The notification of withdrawal raises issues,” WHO said Saturday, adding that the topic would be examined during WHO’s Executive Board meeting next month and by the annual World Health Assembly meeting in May.

“We hope the US will return to active participation in WHO in the future,” Tedros said Saturday.

“Meanwhile, WHO remains steadfastly committed to working with all countries in pursuit of its core mission and constitutional mandate: the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right for all people.”

Let's send a message to Apple: Stop union-busting NOW! Electronics workers in Malaysia, who build critical hardware for the global digital economy, are facing systematic union busting by major multinational suppliers.  Workers at Lumileds, an LED screen manufacturer for Apple, voted overwhelmingly to unionize in November.  Rather than recognizing the union and beginning to bargain in good faith, the company has systematically targeted workers, deporting migrant workers, many of whom have been there almost 10 years, firing one key union leader, Sukhairul Bin Khalid, and threatening another with discipline. These attacks are blatant violations of international human rights standards and in direct violation of Apple's Code of Conduct.  Join us in demanding that Lumileds and Apple reinstate all fired workers, renew contracts of migrant workers targeted for their union support, and immediately bargain in good faith with the union.   Click here to learn more and to support the campaign.   Eric Lee LabourStart

QUACK DECLARES MORE YEARS OF WAGE SLAVERY

   

Dr. Oz: Goal of Trump Healthcare Plan Is to Get Americans to ‘Work One More Year’ in Their Lifetime

“I’m sure everyone would be happy to work another year if work meant getting paid millions of dollars to spout utter nonsense,” responded one critic.

Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz speaks during a news conference to discuss fraud prevention on January 9, 2026, in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Jan 21, 2026
COMMOON DREAMS

Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz on Wednesday said that one of the ultimate goals of President Donald Trump’s healthcare plan is to get Americans healthy enough so that they’re able to work for at least one more year during their lives.

During an interview on Fox Business to tout Trump’s recently unveiled and widely derided healthcare plan, Oz explained why it was important for Americans to be healthy so that they could be productive workers and contribute to US gross domestic product (GDP).

“A lot of people watching this segment are thinking we’re talking about healthcare expenses,” he said. “This is about the value to the US economy if we can get this right. If we can get the average person watching... to work one more year in their whole lifetime, just stay in your workplace for one more year, that is worth about $3 trillion to the US GDP.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo.

“That’s the productivity we would unleash of people feeling they have agency over their future, like they’ve got stuff they want to accomplish with their lives,” Oz continued. “If you’re sick, you can’t work. So keep people healthy, they’ll want to work, they’ll want to produce, not just for one year but for many more... It’s worth the investment to get that return.”

“I love it,” replied Bartiromo.

Oz’s statement about getting Americans to work longer to improve national GDP was met with immediate criticism.

Journalist Brian Goldstone, who last year published a book focusing on Americans who are homeless despite having jobs, argued that Oz was simply clueless about the realities of working-class Americans.

“I recently met a widowed 71-year-old woman still working two jobs and living at an extended-stay hotel because even two jobs don’t pay her enough to afford rent,” he wrote in a post on Bluesky. “This is what ‘one more year of work’ looks like in America.”




Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that Oz doesn’t seem to understand that most Americans don’t have the kinds of cushy gigs he’s enjoyed for decades.

“I’m sure everyone would be happy to work another year if work meant getting paid millions of dollars to spout utter nonsense on Fox, CBS, and other right-wing outlets,” Baker remarked on X.

Baker also questioned the arithmetic behind Oz’s claim about the vast benefits to the US economy of having everyone work for an extra year.

“I’m also curious where the hell he got the $3 trillion (10% of GDP),” he wrote. “I gather it is a Trump number, came straight out of his rear end.”

Democratic political strategist Dan Kanninen said that Oz came off as utterly tone deaf about Americans’ lives, and sarcastically encouraged the Trump administration to “put Dr. Oz and his ‘Matrix’ vision of the future where we all batteries for capital on the airwaves as much as possible.”

Dell Cameron, a senior writer at Wired, argued that Oz’s remarks were a damning indictment of former talkshow host Oprah Winfrey, who regularly featured purported experts of dubious credibility, including Oz, Phil McGraw, and João Teixeira de Faria, a Brazilian “faith healer” and convicted rapist currently serving a lifetime prison sentence.

“Hard to pin down which of the medical hacks platformed by Oprah’s network has gone on to do the most harm, which is saying a lot since one is a cult leader who raped hundreds of women,” he mused. “Then again, [Oz] is one of the most influential quacks of all time.”

UN Warns ‘Era of Global Water Bankruptcy’ Is Here—But It’s Not Too Late to Act

“We cannot rebuild vanished glaciers or reinflate acutely compacted aquifers,” the report’s lead author said. “But we can prevent further loss of our remaining natural capital.”

People collect water near Gode, Ethiopia, on January 10, 2023.
(Photo by Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jan 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Overuse and pollution is causing “irreversible damage” to Earth’s water, prompting a United Nations body to declare this week that the world has entered an “era of global water bankruptcy”—and to underscore that it’s not too late to minimize the damage.

The report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health (UNU-INWEH) notes that “across regions and levels of development, water systems are under unprecedented pressure,” as “rivers, lakes, and wetlands are degrading, groundwater resources are being depleted beyond sustainable limits, and glaciers are retreating at accelerating rates.”

“These trends signal not only growing stress, but in many contexts a structural imbalance between water demand and available resources,” the publication continues. “This report refers to this condition as ‘water bankruptcy’ and calls for effective action to protect water-related natural capital before damages become fully irreversible.”

UNU-INWEH defines water bankruptcy as “persistent over-withdrawal from surface and groundwater relative to renewable inflows and safe levels of depletion” and “the resulting irreversible or prohibitively costly loss of water-related natural capital.”

Water bankruptcy differs from water stress, which “describes conditions where demand and withdrawals are high relative to available renewable supply” and “may be managed through efficiency, recycling and reuse, demand management, and careful allocation so long as the underlying natural capital and hydrological carrying capacity are preserved.”

The report explains that “many societies have not only overspent their annual renewable water ‘income’ from rivers, soils, and snowpack, they have depleted long-term ‘savings’ in aquifers, glaciers, wetlands, and other natural reservoirs.”

The results range from compacted aquifers and subsided land in deltas and coastal cities, to vanished lakes and wetlands and irretrievably lost biodiversity.

The report’s release precedes next week’s high-level preparatory meeting in Dakar, Senegal ahead of the 2026 UN Water Conference, which is set to be co-hosted by the United Arab Emirates and Senegal in the UAE this December.

“This report tells an uncomfortable truth: Many regions are living beyond their hydrological means, and many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” lead author and UNU-INWEH director Kaveh Madani said in a statement Tuesday.

The news isn’t all bad—the report notes that “the world has an important and still largely untapped strategic opportunity to act.”

The authors recommend a “new global water agenda” that:Formally recognizes the state of water bankruptcy;
Recognizes water as both a constraint and an opportunity for meeting climate, biodiversity, and land commitments;
Elevates water issues in climate, biodiversity, and desertification negotiations; development finance; and peace-building processes;
Embeds water bankruptcy monitoring in global frameworks, using Earth observation, artificial intelligence, and integrated modeling; and
Uses water as a catalyst to accelerate cooperation between the UN member states.
The report also recommends practical steps to mitigate water bankruptcy, including:Preventing further irreversible damage such as wetland loss, destructive groundwater depletion, and uncontrolled pollution;
Rebalancing rights, claims, and expectations to match degraded carrying capacity;
Supporting just transitions for communities whose livelihoods must change;
Transforming water-intensive sectors—including agriculture and industry—through crop shifts, irrigation reforms, and more efficient urban systems; and
Building institutions for continuous adaptation, with monitoring systems linked to threshold-based management.

“Bankruptcy management requires honesty, courage, and political will,” said Madani. “We cannot rebuild vanished glaciers or reinflate acutely compacted aquifers. But we can prevent further loss of our remaining natural capital, and redesign institutions to live within new hydrological limits.”

Nothing Good Will Come of Trump’s Quest to Make Regime Change Great Again

The one thing that should be clear by now is that pursuing such global regime-change campaigns would sow chaos and instability, while harming untold numbers of innocent civilians, all in pursuit of a futile quest for renewed US global supremacy.


Nicolás Maduro is seen in handcuffs after landing at a Manhattan helipad, escorted by heavily armed Federal agents, as they make their way into an armored car en route to a Federal courthouse in Manhattan on January 5, 2026 in New York City.
(Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images)

William Hartung
Jan 25, 2026

TomDispatch


The Trump administration’s exercise in armed regime change in Venezuela should have come as no surprise. The US naval buildup in the Caribbean and the attacks on defenseless boats off the Venezuelan coast—based on unproven allegations that they contained drug traffickers—had been underway for more than three months. By the end of December 2025, in fact, such strikes on boats near Venezuela (and in the Eastern Pacific) had already killed 115 people.

And those attacks were just the beginning. The US has since intercepted oil tankers as far away as the North Atlantic Ocean; run a covert operation inside Venezuela; and earlier this month, launched multiple air strikes that killed at least 40 Venezuelans while capturing that country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.


58% of Americans—Across Political Spectrum—Say 2025 Was a ‘Failure’ Under Trump


Both of them are now imprisoned in New York City and poised to face a criminal trial for narco-terrorism and cocaine importing conspiracies, plus assorted weapons charges. Even more strikingly, President Donald Trump recently told the New York Times that the US could run Venezuela “for years.” On how that would be done, he (of course!) didn’t offer a clue. Naturally, a Venezuelan government forged in the face of a possible US occupation would comply with the whims of the Trump administration—assuming that such a government, capable of stabilizing the country and earning the loyalty of the majority of its people, can even be pulled together.

Trump’s rush to war in Latin America is a phenomenon that, until recently, seemed long over. Its revival should raise multiple red flags, given the history of Washington’s failed efforts to install allied governments through regime change. (Can you spell Iraq?) In fact, given this country’s lack of success with such attempts since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it’s a good bet that regime change in Venezuela will not end well for any of the parties concerned, whether the Trump administration, the new leaders of Venezuela, or the people of our two countries.

Trump’s fixation on actually grabbing territory and his hyper-militarized interpretation of the 200-year-old Monroe (now, Donroe) Doctrine suggest that perhaps he wants to take America back to the 1850s.

In the meantime, Trump has already suggested that he might entertain the idea of launching military strikes on neighboring Colombia. After a White House phone call between that country’s president Gustavo Petro and him, however, Time Magazine speculated that, when it comes to “who’s next?,” it might not be Colombia but Cuba, Mexico, Greenland, or even Iran. What’s not yet clear is whether Trump and crew will use the US military, CIA-style covert action, economic warfare, or some combination of all of them in pursuit of their goals (whatever they might prove to be).

The one thing that should be clear by now is that pursuing such global regime-change campaigns would be sheer madness. Going that route would sow chaos and instability, while harming untold numbers of innocent civilians, all in pursuit of a futile quest for renewed US global supremacy.

When, long ago, President Trump first started using the term “Make America Great Again,” I assumed he was thinking of the 1950s, when a surge of post-World War II economic growth and government investment lifted the prospects of a select group of Americans (while pointedly excluding others). That period, of course, was when the efforts that produced the modern civil rights, women’s rights, and gay and trans rights movements were in their early stages. Prejudice was the norm then in most places where Americans lived, worked, or got an education, while McCarthyism cost untold numbers of people their jobs and livelihoods and had a chilling effect on the discussion or pursuit of progressive goals.

Such a return to the 1950s would have been bad enough. However, Trump’s fixation on actually grabbing territory and his hyper-militarized interpretation of the 200-year-old Monroe (now, Donroe) Doctrine suggest that perhaps he wants to take America back to the 1850s. If so, count on one thing: We’ll pay a high price for any such exercise in imperial nostalgia.
Intervention as the Norm: The History of US Aggression in Latin America

The Trump administration’s attempt to control Latin America and intimidate its leaders and citizens is, of course, nothing new. At the start of the 20th century, President Teddy Roosevelt announced his own “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, which went well beyond the original pronouncement’s warning to European powers to avoid challenging Washington’s dominance of the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt then stated that “chronic wrongdoing… may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”

The Office of the Historian at the US State Department points out that, “[o]ver the long term, the [Roosevelt] corollary had little to do with relations between the Western Hemisphere and Europe, but it did serve as justification for US intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.”

In fact, there were dozens of US interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean in the wake of Roosevelt’s statement of his doctrine. Later in the century, there were US-aided coups in Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964) and Chile (1973); invasions of Cuba (1961), the Dominican Republic (1983), and Grenada (1983); armed regime change in Panama (1989); the arming of the Contras in Nicaragua (1981) and death squads in El Salvador (1980 to 1992); and support for dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay in the 1970s and 1980s.

In all, according to historian John Coatsworth, the United States intervened in the Western Hemisphere to change governments 41 times from 1898 to 1994. Seventeen of those cases involved direct US military intervention.

In short, the Trump administration is now reprising the worst of past US policies toward Latin America, but as with all things Trumpian, he and his cohorts are moving at warp speed, and on several fronts simultaneously.
The Perils of Regime Change

Although Trump officials are no doubt celebrating their removal of Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela, the battle there is far from over. When the US drove Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in a six-week military campaign in 1991, there was a great deal of celebratory rhetoric about how “America is back” or even that the United States was the single most impressively dominant nation in the history of humanity. But as historian Andrew Bacevich has pointed out, the 1991 Gulf War was just the start of what became a long war in Iraq and the greater Middle East. In Iraq, the ejection of Hussein was followed by relentless bombing, devastating sanctions, and a 20-year war of occupation that ended disastrously.

Wishful thinking was rampant in the run-up to the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, with administration officials bragging that the war would be a “cake walk” and would cost “only” $50 to $100 billion. When all was said and done, however, that war would last 20 years at a cost of well over $1 trillion; hundreds of thousands of civilians would die; and hundreds of thousands of US military personnel would be killed, maimed, or left with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI).

The Venezuelan debacle—which is surely what it will be considered once all is said and done—is but another sign that the Trump administration’s tough-guy rhetoric and bullying foreign and economic policies are, in fact, accelerating the decline of American global power.

The opportunity costs of America’s post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have indeed been enormous. The Costs of War Project at Brown University estimates that the taxpayer obligations flowing from those conflicts exceeded $8 trillion. As the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies has noted, that $8 trillion would have been enough to decarbonize the entire US electrical grid, forgive all US student-loan debt, and triple the investment in green energy and related items initiated by the Biden administration under the Inflation Reduction Act (investments that have since been rolled back by the Trump administration).

Of course, that money is gone, but given the experience, you might think that this country’s leadership (such as it is) would go all in to avoid repeating such costly mistakes, this time in Latin America, by attempting to dominate and control the region through force or the threat of it. Consider it a guarantee that such a policy will never end well for the residents of the targeted nations. And count on this as well: It will also exact a high price on Americans in need of food, housing, education, a robust public health system, and a serious plan to address the ravages of climate change.
Why Venezuela? Oil, Ego, and the Quest for Dominance

The Trump administration’s original rationale for pursuing regime change in Venezuela was to stop the flow of drugs into the United States, a position that didn’t stand up to even the most casual scrutiny. After all, Venezuela isn’t faintly one of the more significant sources of drugs heading into this country and, in particular, it isn’t a supplier of fentanyl, the deadliest substance being imported.

Donald Trump has since stated repeatedly (as in a January 3 press conference), that the intervention he ordered was, in fact, about seizing Venezuela’s oil resources and developing them to the benefit of the US through the activities of American oil companies. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world,” he said, “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

Writing in The Nation, Michael Klare pointed out that upping Venezuela’s oil output would, in fact, be no simple matter. Trump’s comments, he suggested, were “imbued with nostalgia and fantasy” and “all this flies in the face of economic and geological reality, which stands in the way of any rapid increase in Venezuelan output and oil profits.” That country’s oil supplies are, in fact, mostly in the form of heavy crude, which is particularly difficult to extract, and its infrastructure for accessing such oil is decrepit, thanks to years of sanctions and neglect. As Klare points out, the London-based consultancy firm Energy Aspects has suggested that it would take “tens of billions of dollars over multiple years” to restore Venezuela’s oil production to the higher levels of years past.

Realism, however, has never been Donald Trump’s strong suit, and his dream that seizing Venezuela’s oil resources will be a piece of cake only reinforces that point. The same can be said for his assertion that the United States could rule Venezuela, perhaps for years, and that everything is bound to go smoothly. The disastrous consequences of the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places, suggest otherwise.

Beyond oil, the intervention in Venezuela satisfies Trump’s personal will to power, advances Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s goal of weakening and perhaps overthrowing the government of Cuba (by denying it Venezuelan oil), and puts progressive governments in Latin America on notice that if they don’t bend the knee to US economic and political demands, they may be next.
Interventionism on Steroids: A Recipe for American Decline

Since the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and his wife in Venezuela, administration rhetoric about possible attacks on Colombia and the seizing of Greenland has only accelerated. At another moment in history, perhaps such claims could have been dismissed as the idle bluster of an aging oligarch. But the Trump administration has already acted on too many of its most outlandish policy proposals—with its attempt to seize and control Venezuela high on the list—for us to treat the president’s aggressive statements as idle threats.

The Venezuelan debacle—which is surely what it will be considered once all is said and done—is but another sign that the Trump administration’s tough-guy rhetoric and bullying foreign and economic policies are, in fact, accelerating the decline of American global power. The question is, given the administration’s costly and dangerous military-first foreign policy, how much damage will this country do to people here and abroad on the way down?

Were Washington to put down its sword and invest in the real foundations of national strength—a healthy, well-educated, unified population—it could play a constructive role in the world, while delivering a better quality of life and a more responsive government to the American public.

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. There could be a shift from this country’s current addiction to war as a central feature of its interactions with other nations to a policy of restraint that would recognize that the days when the United States could presume to run the world are over. In truth, US dominance was always overrated, given fiascos like the interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, where the US could not impose its will on much smaller nations with far fewer resources and far less sophisticated weaponry. Those experiences should have taught policymakers of both parties to proceed with caution, but the learning curve has, at best, been slow, painful, and erratic—and in the era of Donald Trump, seemingly nonexistent.

Warmed-over appeals to restore American greatness through the barrel of a gun are, of course, dangerously misguided, as our recent history has so amply demonstrated. It is long past time for us to demand better stewardship from our elected and appointed leaders.

Were Washington to put down its sword and invest in the real foundations of national strength—a healthy, well-educated, unified population—it could play a constructive role in the world, while delivering a better quality of life and a more responsive government to the American public. This would not mean eliminating the ability to defend the country by force if need be, but it would mean acknowledging that the need to do so should be rare, and that a more cooperative approach to overseas engagement, grounded in smart diplomacy, is the best defense of all. That, in turn, would mean a smaller military (and a far more modest military budget) that could free up resources to address urgent needs, from dealing with climate change and preventing new pandemics to reducing poverty and inequality.

At this moment in our history, the vision of a less militarized America may seem like a distant dream, but striving for it is the only way out of our current predicament.


© 2023 TomDispatch.com


William Hartung
William D. Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the author most recently of "Pathways to Pentagon Spending Reductions: Removing the Obstacles."
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