Fifty-five percent. One hundred years. A bank account you
cannot touch and a monthly allowance you have to apply for. Next: Iran’s
saffron, Canada’s maple syrup, Cuba’s rum, Greenland’s minerals. Every
fact below is sourced. Only the geese are invented, and I am no longer
confident about the geese.
I want to be first with the congratulations. As of Friday, the
Venezuelan people have been liberated from their oil.
They were liberated from their president back in January, when
American aircraft came in low over Caracas at two in the morning and
Nicolás Maduro and his wife were flown to a courthouse in Manhattan. But
that was ordinary regime change. Amateur work. Empires have been doing
that since Nineveh.
This is the good part. This is liberation from the oil itself.
The terms, and I invent none of them: the United States takes an
effective fifty-five percent of output from a new private company. It
gets the right to buy the oil at cost. The concession runs one
hundred years. The private operator has not been named. It was
negotiated by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and an
interim president we installed after removing the last one.
One hundred years. The men who signed it will be dust. Their
grandchildren will be dust. The contract will still be running.
The President called it “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY,” in
capital letters, on a platform he owns. For once I will not argue with
him.
Your money is
perfectly safe. It is in Qatar.
A reasonable person asks where the money goes.
The machinery was built months ago and it is more elegant than
satire.
Since January the proceeds have not gone to Venezuela. They have gone
into a restricted account in Qatar — the same Qatar that gave the
President a four-hundred-million-dollar airplane, and which shortly
afterward received a NATO-style American security guarantee. The
Secretary of State explained the arrangement to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in words no satirist could improve: Venezuela
submits a monthly budget request. Washington approves what the money may
be spent on. Teachers. Police. Nurses. Basic humanitarian goods.
Infrastructure was banned. Reconstruction was banned. When an
earthquake hit in June, the rules had to be loosened by special license
so the country sitting on the largest proven oil reserves on Earth could
be permitted to spend a little of its own oil money rebuilding its own
buildings.
A senator asked what happened to the rest of the first five hundred
million. Three hundred went to Caracas. And the other two hundred?
It’s still sitting in the account, is my understanding.
The account in Qatar?
Yes.
A former Treasury sanctions official, writing for the Council on
Foreign Relations, counted roughly a hundred million barrels worth an
estimated eight billion dollars moving through the system in its first
four months — through “a process marked by no transparency and minimal
oversight.” Her words. She used to run programs like this. By April a
State Department witness told Congress about three billion had been
authorized for release, and could not say how much remained.
The first big sale went to Vitol, a firm whose senior trader gave six
million dollars to the 2024 campaign.
Everything is in order. Everything is being handled.
This is not
improvisation. It is a franchise.
Since 2003, Iraq’s oil revenues — about ninety percent of its
national budget — have flowed into an account at the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York. The Coalition Provisional Authority set it up under an
executive order signed by George W. Bush and quietly renewed by every
president since, war hawk and peace candidate alike. In 2020, when
Iraq’s parliament voted to ask American troops to leave, Washington let
it be known that access to those accounts might be reconsidered. Baghdad
reconsidered instead.
Twenty-three years. Iraq holds well over a hundred billion dollars
and cannot move it without clearing New York. This April, when
Iran-aligned militias hit American facilities, the Treasury simply
grounded a cargo plane carrying half a billion dollars of Iraqi
banknotes. Not sanctions. Not a vote. A plane that did not take off.
I will be fair, because fairness is what separates criticism from a
rant. The Atlantic Council argues the halted shipments had little real
economic effect and that the story of Iraqis unable to draw salaries is
a misconception. Accept it. The economics are not the point. The point
is that the leash exists, that it has been in someone’s hand for
twenty-three years, and that no administration of either party has ever
proposed letting go.
Venezuela is version two. It shipped in eight months instead of eight
years. We are getting better at this.
And now the lights are off
in Havana
Here is what liberating Venezuela’s oil actually did, and it happened
ninety miles from Key West.
Cuba ran on Venezuelan fuel. In January, when we took the oil,
President Trump imposed an oil blockade on the island. Cuban oil imports
fell to effectively zero that month — the first time since 2015. Only
two small oil-carrying vessels reached Cuba in the entire first quarter.
Russia has sent what it can; the shipments cover seven to ten days of
national consumption. One Russian tanker left the Baltic port of Vysotsk
in January and sat motionless in the Atlantic for weeks.
Cuba produces barely forty percent of the fuel it needs. On the
evening of April 5 the national grid was generating about 1,278
megawatts against a demand of roughly 3,000. That is not a shortfall.
That is a country running at a third of itself.
The grid has now collapsed completely six times this year. Twice in
March alone — the March 16 blackout lasted twenty-nine hours and
twenty-nine minutes. Three nationwide blackouts in July. Another on
August 2, and when crews tried to bring the system back up,
thunderstorms knocked the generating units offline again. Ten million
people. Rolling outages of eighteen hours a day. No refrigeration, no
water pumps, no communications.
Two days before the March collapse, a crowd in Cuba ransacked a local
Communist Party headquarters and tried to set it on fire.
That is what the policy is for. Not the cigars. The dark.
Iran: the oil,
the saffron, the pistachios, the rugs
Iran is next on the schedule, and we are being thorough. We are
liberating them not only from their oil but from their saffron, their
pistachios and their carpets.
This is not a joke I made up. In March 2000, Madeleine Albright
announced the United States would lift its import ban on Iranian
pistachios, caviar and carpets as a gesture of goodwill. Congress
reimposed it in 2010, deliberately reversing the gesture. Obama lifted
it again in 2016. Trump reinstated it in 2018. Iran’s carpet industry —
once a two-billion-dollar export business, a craft older than most
countries — has seen exports collapse by roughly ninety-five
percent.
And who benefits when Iranian pistachios cannot enter the United
States? American pistachio farmers, who once petitioned the
International Trade Commission and won a special duty of over 214
percent on unshelled Iranian nuts. Iran and the United States are the
world’s two largest pistachio producers. We sanction our competitor and
call it non-proliferation.
The war itself began on February 28, when the United States and
Israel struck Iran and assassinated its Supreme Leader. Iran closed the
Strait of Hormuz — a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and gas — and it
has stayed effectively closed ever since. We answered with an aerial
campaign and then a naval blockade of Iranian ports. It is month
six.
As for the strait: the President has already floated renaming it
after himself. At an investment forum in Miami he said, “Iran has to
open up the Strait of Trump, I mean, Hormuz,” then apologized to the
room. On Fox Business he told Maria Bartiromo: “You can call it the
Strait of Hormuz or the Hormuz Strait, I said which is better? They said
either is OK, but you can call it either one. The only thing you can’t
call it is the Trump Strait. They don’t like that idea.”
He also very nearly renamed the Persian Gulf the Gulf of Arabia in
2025, before Tehran’s reaction persuaded him to drop it. Iran’s foreign
minister called it a politically motivated attack on a
two-thousand-year-old name.
And the encirclement is real infrastructure, not a metaphor. Along
Iran’s northern border runs a twenty-seven-mile strip of southern
Armenia through the town of Meghri, beside the Arax River, formally
named — at the President’s insistence — the Trump Route for
International Peace and Prosperity. An American-majority
company gets development rights for forty-nine years, extendable by
another fifty. Iran has said the American presence on its doorstep is
worrying. Look at a map before you decide that is paranoid.
The Strait of Trump to the south. The Trump Route to the north. A
blockade on the ports in between. Whatever else this is, it is not
subtle.
Canada, this is your
liberation notice
On Thursday the President signed an executive order renaming Lake
Ontario. It is now Lake America. The Interior Secretary and the Board on
Geographic Names have thirty days to strip the words “Lake Ontario” out
of every federal map, contract and database.
The name is Wendat — Ontari’io, the lake is beautiful, the
lake is big. Four hundred years old. It predates Canadian Confederation.
It predates the Declaration of Independence. It is scheduled for
deletion by the end of September.
Asked what message he was sending, the President said “No message,”
then said Canada has been ripping us off. Then, thinking aloud on
camera: “We have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an
ocean. So, maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or
the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.”
Both oceans. He wants both oceans.
Governor Carney — the President’s title for him, alongside his
“Flunky,” the Premier of Ontario — replied with the driest sentence any
head of government produced this year: “We know that America is
changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their
national monuments, their hydronyms.” The Premier of Nova Scotia skipped
the diplomacy entirely: “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake
Ontario, buddy.”
The liberation of Canada proceeds on the usual terms. We free them
from their oil, their lumber and their maple syrup. On the lumber we
have been at it for forty years — the Commerce Department has ratcheted
anti-dumping and countervailing duties up and down for decades while
trade tribunals keep ruling for Canada and we keep collecting anyway.
Governor Carney will receive a daily operating budget. The proceeds will
be held in our Federal Reserve, where they will help fund the tax
provisions our billionaires lobbied so hard to earn. The Congressional
Budget Office has already scored that arrangement: under the Big
Beautiful Bill the poorest tenth of American households lose about
sixteen hundred dollars a year, and the richest tenth gain roughly
twelve thousand.
The Secretary of Defense is said to be waiting only for the Iran war
to wrap before deploying the Fifth Fleet to Lake America to take the
rest of the continent.
I am obliged to flag a small technical obstacle. The Fifth Fleet is
headquartered at Naval Support Activity Bahrain and its area of
responsibility is the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and
part of the Indian Ocean. It would have a long sail.
More seriously: under the Rush–Bagot Treaty of 1817, signed after the
War of 1812 and ratified by the Senate in 1818, the United States may
maintain on Lake Ontario exactly one military vessel of
no more than a hundred tons burden, carrying exactly
one cannon of no more than eighteen pounds. Canada gets
the same. The treaty is still in force, updated by exchanges of notes as
recently as 1946.
Note the wording. The treaty says Lake Ontario. If the Board
on Geographic Names deletes all federal references to Lake Ontario
within thirty days as instructed, it will be deleting the name of the
lake from the only document that tells us how many boats we are allowed
to put on it.
One boat. One cannon. Good luck with the continent.
Concerning the geese
The goose situation is under review.
For thousands of years, Canada geese have crossed our border without
documentation, consumed our grass, occupied our parks and defecated on
our ball fields. And whose fault is that? Genocidal Sleepy Joe. Every
migration since the last ice age happened on his watch. The geese were
coming down here when the glaciers were still sitting on top of Lake
America and Joe Biden was personally waving them through. This is
settled. Do not ask for a timeline.
Enforcement is arriving. On Thursday — the same Thursday as the lake
— ICE posted a procurement notice for up to two million dollars of
Boston Dynamics Spot robots. Four legs. Three-hundred-sixty-degree
cameras. Chemical, gas and radiation sensors. They open doors and climb
stairs. At roughly seventy-five thousand each, that is potentially two
dozen of them.
A senior Homeland Security official was careful to clarify that the
robot dogs will not be used to make arrests. I want to be clear that
this denial is real, and that a human being in a government building had
to say it out loud.
The dogs follow a separate contract signed this month: sixteen point
seven million dollars for six thousand pairs of electric shock gloves,
officially classified as a “Conductive Distraction and De-escalation
Device.” A glove that shocks people is a de-escalation device. Someone
wrote that phrase, someone approved it, and nobody in the chain
laughed.
The captured geese will be held in one of the private facilities
where we already keep the humans — CoreCivic is standing by — and
released only upon swearing allegiance and performing the national
anthem. And YMCA. Both. No exceptions. Henceforth they will be known as
American Geese.
They will sing so beautifully that the Kennedy Center will book them
as a residency.
I concede the geese cannot actually be taught the Star-Spangled
Banner. It is a difficult vocal line and they have no diaphragm control.
But the venue is ready. The Kennedy Center was renamed the Trump Kennedy
Center by a hand-picked board in December, un-renamed in May by a
federal judge who wrote that Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name
and only Congress can change it, physically stripped of its lettering by
workmen on scaffolding in June — and is scheduled to have the
President’s name go back up in early September. Not on the sign. Beneath
it. An inscription reading “Restored and Renovated by President Donald
J. Trump,” with a second one promised if a fund raises a hundred million
dollars.
Up. Court-ordered down. Chiseled back on in the small print. If the
geese ever do learn to sing, that is exactly the right building for
them.
As soon as the paint dries
The fleet needs a flagship for all this, and one is under
construction.
CVN-81, the fourth Ford-class carrier, has been the future
USS Doris Miller since January 2020, when the Navy
named it for a mess attendant from Waco, Texas, who at Pearl Harbor
helped his wounded commanding officer, then took hold of an
anti-aircraft gun he had never been trained on and opened fire. He
became the first Black American to receive the Navy Cross. It would have
been the first carrier named for a Black sailor and the first named for
an enlisted man. The acting Navy Secretary who chose the name said a
group of retired Black admirals recommended it.
The Navy is now internally discussing renaming it after the sitting
President. That would be unprecedented; carriers are not named for
presidents in office. The decision sits with the Defense Secretary and
the acting Navy Secretary. Miller is simultaneously under consideration
for the Medal of Honor.
His family learned about the possible removal from the press.
So: as soon as the paint dries on the new name, we sail her
north.
Greenland:
the blockade, the bunkers, and the city we already left there
The plan for Greenland is the plan we have used before.
Impose a naval blockade of the kind we run against Cuba and Iran. Cut
the island off from fuel and food until it comes to its senses and
welcomes American servicemen. They will not even be able to fish —
precisely as we have arranged for the people of Gaza.
That last comparison is not rhetoric, so let me put the numbers where
you can check them.
Under the Oslo Accords, Palestinian fishermen were entitled to twenty
nautical miles. Israel has never honored it. The limit has been squeezed
to fifteen, to twelve, to six, to three, to zero, adjusted at will as a
tool of pressure. The fishermen’s union counts at least 235 members
killed since the war began, another forty shot while working at sea —
some less than five hundred meters from shore, some at two hundred. The
UN Food and Agriculture Organization puts Gaza’s fishing industry at 7.3
percent of pre-war capacity. Men now dive with rudimentary gear because
a boat draws fire.
In September 2025 a UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel
has committed genocide in Gaza. And since November 2024 Benjamin
Netanyahu has been under an International Criminal Court arrest warrant
for the war crime of using starvation as a method of
warfare, alongside the crimes against humanity of murder,
persecution and other inhumane acts. The Court found reasonable grounds
to believe he intentionally deprived civilians of food, water, medicine,
fuel and electricity, and found no military justification for it.
A man is not permitted to fish two hundred meters from the beach his
grandfather fished. That is the contribution of Silicon Valley
technology. Everything else is branding.
Then, once Greenland is starved into agreement, we extract the
minerals, hold the proceeds in our accounts, send the locals a monthly
stipend out of their own money, and ask only one favor: that they permit
our technology billionaires to build shelters on their permafrost for
the day the rest of us become inconvenient.
Reid Hoffman calls it “apocalypse insurance” and reckons more than
half of Silicon Valley’s billionaires carry some. Peter Thiel has New
Zealand. Mark Zuckerberg has five thousand square feet under a ranch on
Kauai that he insists is a basement. Everyone has an exit. The exits are
not evenly distributed. That is this century in one sentence.
Except Greenland does not need to build us anything. We already did
it.
In 1959 the US Army Corps of Engineers cut Camp
Century into the Greenland ice sheet: two miles of tunnels,
quarters for two hundred men, a theater, a library, a chapel, all
powered by the world’s first mobile nuclear reactor. We told Denmark it
was Arctic construction research. It was Project Iceworm — a plan for
2,500 miles of tunnels holding six hundred nuclear missiles aimed at
Moscow, concealed from the country that owned the island. The ice moved
faster than the engineers predicted. It was abandoned in 1967.
We took the reactor. We left roughly 200,000 liters of diesel,
240,000 liters of sewage, PCBs and an unknown quantity of radioactive
coolant, on the assumption the ice would hold it forever.
The ice is melting. It is coming back. Denmark and Greenland are
still arguing over whose job it is to clean up.
We built the bunker, hid it from our ally, left the waste, left the
bill — and now we would like the mineral rights. Almost a third of the
population of Nuuk marched against annexation in January, the largest
demonstration in Greenland’s history. Their Prime Minister: “Our country
is not something that can be annexed or taken over simply because
someone feels like it.”
Finally, we
celebrate: the rum and the cigars
We finish where all this winning deserves to be toasted. We liberate
Cuba from its cigars and its rum.
The Secretary of State has a personal interest in the file. Within
two weeks of the administration taking office, Marco Rubio announced he
was restoring a tough Cuba policy. In June came an executive order
tightening it further. He has led the pressure campaign against Cuba
solidarity organizations. He is now simultaneously Secretary of State
and National Security Advisor. He negotiated the Venezuela deal that
turned off Havana’s lights.
So: Havana Club and a box of Cohibas for the man himself.
Except he cannot have them. Since September 24, 2020, OFAC
regulations bar authorized travelers from importing Cuban-origin alcohol
or tobacco into the United States at all. Not from Cuba. Not from a
third country. Not as a gift. Not in accompanied baggage. Civil
penalties run into the tens of thousands per violation.
The Secretary of State would have to commit a federal offense to
toast his own foreign policy.
That is the whole thing in one image. A blockade so complete that the
men who administer it cannot enjoy the spoils.
But we are a generous nation, so the offer stands on the other side
of the ledger. Any political or military leader who signs his country’s
resources over to us will receive, once a year at Christmas, a handful
of cigars and a bottle of rum. A modest thank-you for selling out his
own countrymen. He may even qualify for a tourist visa to come and hear
the geese sing at the Kennedy Center.
He should enjoy it. His grandchildren will still be filing monthly
budget requests.
Everything above is sourced. The fifty-five percent is real. The
hundred years is real. The Qatari account, the monthly allowance, the
twenty-three-year Iraqi leash, the six Cuban blackouts, the 95 percent
collapse of the Persian carpet trade, the 214 percent pistachio duty,
the Trump Strait, the Trump Route, the renamed lake, the one boat and
one cannon, the robot dogs, the shock gloves, the inscription on the
marble, the carrier, the three-nautical-mile line off Gaza, the
starvation warrant, the nuclear waste under the Greenland ice, the rum
you cannot legally carry home — all real, all footnoted below.
The geese are the only invention. Every week that gets harder to say
with confidence.
That is not a joke about the news cycle. It is a measurement. Satire
works by exaggerating reality until its shape becomes visible. When the
exaggeration cannot outrun the signing ceremony, satire has stopped
being a technique and become stenography.
Strip the branding off all of it and the same machine sits
underneath, running since 1960 in Havana, since 2003 in Baghdad, since
2007 off the coast of Gaza, since January in Caracas: take the resource,
hold the money somewhere the owner cannot reach it, pay him an allowance
out of his own account, decide what he is permitted to buy with it, and
call the arrangement a rescue.
The geese, at least, have the excuse of not knowing what is happening
to them.
Live in peace. ForeverPeaceNow.
Vahid Razavi is the author of “The Age of Nepotism”, “No Ethics
in Big Tech” and “Ethics in Tech and Lack Thereof”, and the director of
the documentary “Forever Peace Now”. His work is self-funded — no
corporate sponsors, no government grants, no advertising. Learn more at
NoEthicsInBigTech.com,
ForeverPeaceNow.com,
ParentsPlea.com, and MyAWSStory.com, AgeofNepotism.com
Sources
Venezuela
-
AP/NPR — 55% output share, 100-year concession, 65 billion
barrels, 17 fields: https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5948229/trump-says-u-s-has-entered-deal-with-venezuela-to-take-control-of-65-billion-barrels-of-oil-reserves -
CNN — deal terms, Rubio statement, Maduro capture: https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/28/politics/trump-venezuela-oil-deal
-
Al Jazeera — monthly budget requests, restricted Qatari account,
$170bn debt shielding: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/2/6/oil-and-us-oversight-how-is-venezuelas-interim-government-surviving -
MS NOW / Maddow Blog — Rubio–Shaheen exchange, the missing $200
million, the Qatari jet: https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/venezuela-oil-sales-qatar-bank-account-marco-rubio -
Council on Foreign Relations (Roxanna Vigil, former OFAC) — ~100m
barrels / ~$8bn in four months; ~$3bn authorized by April: https://www.cfr.org/articles/the-u-s-took-over-venezuelas-oil-industry-where-has-all-the-money-gone -
Casten–Van Hollen letter — Executive Order 14373, IEEPA, Treasury
custodial capacity: https://casten.house.gov/imo/media/doc/casten-van_hollen_letter_on_venezuelan_oil_account.pdf -
Rep. Doggett — $250m to Vitol; John Addison’s $6m donation; Paul
Singer’s Venezuelan assets: https://doggett.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-doggett-demands-answers-trumps-corrupt-venezuelan-oil-bargain
Iraq 8. TRT World — Development Fund for Iraq, Bush
executive order renewed by every president, 2020 threat: https://www.trtworld.com/article/ac038f921c57
9. Al Jazeera — $500m banknote shipment blocked, April 2026: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/22/us-halts-iraq-dollar-shipments-in-pressure-campaign-over-iran-linked-groups
10. Atlantic Council — the counter-argument on economic impact: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/us-dollar-shipments-to-iraq-are-a-molehill-not-a-mountain/
Cuba: the blockade and the blackouts 11. NBC News —
grid collapse August 2026, three nationwide blackouts in July, US oil
blockade: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/cuba/cuba-plunges-darkness-electric-grid-collapses-rcna590542
12. Al Jazeera — repeated collapses, ageing plants, blockade imposed
after the January 3 Venezuela operation: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/3/grid-failure-plunges-cuba-into-nationwide-blackout
13. CNN — sixth nationwide blackout of the year; thunderstorms disrupt
restoration: https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/americas/cuba-blackout-electrical-grid-collapse-intl-hnk
14. ElectricChoice energy analysis — oil imports to zero in January 2026
(first time since 2015); two vessels in Q1; 1,278 MW against 3,000 MW
demand; March 16 blackout of 29h29m: https://www.electricchoice.com/blog/cuba-electricity-crisis/
15. NPR — Cuba produces barely 40% of the fuel it needs; stalled Russian
tanker: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/14/nx-s1-5822583/cuba-blackout
16. Fox News — total grid collapse March 16; protesters ransack
Communist Party headquarters: https://www.foxnews.com/world/cubas-entire-electrical-grid-collapses-leaving-whole-island-without-power.amp
17. UN Meetings Coverage — 33rd consecutive UNGA resolution, $8bn
damage, infant mortality 8.5 per 1,000: https://press.un.org/en/2026/ga12769.doc.htm
18. Democracy Now — 165–7 vote; Rodríguez on collective punishment: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/30/headlines/un_general_assembly_condemns_us_embargo_on_cuba_for_33rd_consecutive_year
19. Geopolitical Economy Report — Rubio “restoring a tough U.S.-Cuba
policy,” June executive order: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/11/03/embargo-blockade-cuba-un-vote/
20. US Treasury OFAC FAQ 720 — no importation of Cuban alcohol or
tobacco, effective September 24, 2020: https://ofac.treasury.gov/faqs/720
21. US Treasury OFAC FAQ 837 — the CACR amendment eliminating
accompanied-baggage authorizations: https://ofac.treasury.gov/faqs/837
Iran: oil, saffron, pistachios, carpets, the strait, the
road 22. The National Interest — Albright’s 2000 lifting of the
pistachio, caviar and carpet ban: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/pistachio-perplexity-8123
23. PBS Frontline / Tehran Bureau — Congress reinstates the rug and
pistachio ban in 2010, reversing the goodwill gesture: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2010/10/sanctions-pull-rug-from-under-iran.html
24. Iran International — Persian carpet exports collapse 95 percent from
a $2bn industry: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202509257480
25. The Counter — 214 percent antidumping duty on unshelled Iranian
pistachios; kernel imports imperiled: https://thecounter.org/pistachio-iran-america-sanctions-united-nations-general-assembly/
26. Yahoo/Fox Business — “The only thing you can’t call it is the Trump
Strait”: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/donald-trump-renaming-strait-hormuz-074925317.html
27. The Bridge Chronicle — “Iran has to open up the Strait of Trump, I
mean, Hormuz,” Miami investment forum: https://www.thebridgechronicle.com/news/world/trump-strait-of-hormuz-rename-jokemp99
28. Independent/Yahoo — the aborted plan to rename the Persian Gulf the
Gulf of Arabia; Araghchi’s response: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-set-rename-persian-gulf-084554451.html
29. Carnegie Endowment — TRIPP: 43 km through Meghri along the Arax
River and the Armenia–Iran border: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/03/rewiring-the-south-caucasus-tripp-and-the-new-geopolitics-of-connectivity
30. New Eastern Europe — US-majority company, 49-year rights extendable
by 50; Iran’s objections: https://neweasterneurope.eu/2026/02/13/what-the-trump-route-for-international-peace-and-prosperity-means-for-the-south-caucasus-and-for-the-people-living-there/
31. Congressional Research Service — Hormuz timeline, closure, US naval
blockade, ceasefire, MOU: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45281
32. Wikipedia — 2026 Iran war: February 28 strikes, assassination of
Khamenei, closure of the strait: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_campaign
Canada 33. CNN — Lake America executive order,
30-day deadline, “all we need is an ocean”: https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/27/politics/trump-canada-lake-ontario-america
34. NBC News — Carney’s “hydronyms” response; Wendat etymology; order
text: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-orders-lake-ontario-renamed-lake-america-canada-trade-war-rcna594750
35. Deseret News — “Governor Carney, and his Flunky, Ford”; collapse of
trade talks: https://www.deseret.com/politics/2026/08/24/president-trump-and-canada-prime-minister-mark-carney-leave-negotiations-over-tariffs-and-trade-economic-war-tensions/
36. Wikipedia — Rush–Bagot Treaty 1817: one vessel of 100 tons and one
18-pound cannon on Lake Ontario; still in force: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush%E2%80%93Bagot_Treaty
37. US State Department Office of the Historian — Rush-Bagot Pact
background: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1801-1829/rush-bagot
38. Wikipedia — US Fifth Fleet: headquartered at Naval Support Activity
Bahrain; AOR is the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Fifth_Fleet
39. Government of Canada — softwood lumber duties, decades of disputes,
tribunals ruling for Canada: https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2023/09/canada-challenges-us-softwood-lumber-duties.html
40. Senate Budget Committee — CBO distributional analysis: bottom decile
−$1,600/yr, top decile +$12,000: https://www.budget.senate.gov/ranking-member/newsroom/press/merkley-cbo-confirms-big-beautiful-bill-benefits-the-wealthy-working-families-pay-the-price
ICE and the Kennedy Center 41. NBC News — robot dog
procurement, up to $2 million, not for arrests: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/ice-buy-robot-dogs-immigration-enforcement-rcna594897
42. The Hill — Boston Dynamics ethics statement; Spot capabilities;
~$75,000 per unit: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6058739-ice-robot-dogs-2-million-plans/
43. 404 Media — $16.7m for 6,000 pairs of electric shock gloves: https://www.404media.co/ice-plans-to-spends-millions-on-boston-dynamics-dog-robots/
44. CNN — Kennedy Center name returning in September; Judge Cooper’s May
ruling: https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/politics/kennedy-center-trump-name-september
45. Forbes — the inscription, the $100m endowment plaque, Beatty’s
motion: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/08/21/judge-asked-to-block-kennedy-center-from-inscribing-trumps-name/
The carrier 46. CNN — Navy weighs renaming CVN-81;
unprecedented for a sitting president; family not informed: https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/20/politics/navy-weighs-renaming-carrier-black-war-hero-to-trump
47. NBC News — Doris Miller’s record; decision rests with Hegseth and
acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao; Medal of Honor consideration: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/navy-discusses-renaming-aircraft-carrier-trump-black-uss-doris-miller-rcna593667
Gaza 48. International Criminal Court — arrest
warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant: starvation as a method of warfare;
murder, persecution, other inhumane acts: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-rejects-state-israels-challenges
49. UN Commission of Inquiry finding of genocide, September 2025 (via
South African government statement): https://allafrica.com/stories/202509180469.html
50. Asharq Al-Awsat — 235 fishermen killed, 40 shot at sea at 200–500
metres, diving with rudimentary gear: https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5250588-how-israel-crippled-gazas-fishing
51. CNN — FAO: fisheries at 7.3% of pre-war capacity; history of fishing
limits: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/27/middleeast/gaza-sea-fish-ban-israel-intl
52. B’Tselem — fishing zone restrictions as collective punishment;
collapse of the industry: https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20200909_fishrmen_families_gaza_strip
53. Gisha — the fishing zone as a tool of pressure: https://gisha.org/en/the-war-on-food-production-fishing/
Greenland 54. NPR — Camp Century, Project Iceworm,
abandoned 1967, pollutants resurfacing: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/05/488872411/melting-ice-in-greenland-could-expose-serious-pollutants-from-buried-army-base
55. Atlas Obscura — 2,500 miles of planned tunnels, 600 missiles, hidden
from Denmark, world’s first mobile nuclear reactor: https://atlasobscura.com/places/camp-century
56. AP via PressReader — 200,000 litres of diesel and sewage left
behind; Denmark–Greenland cleanup dispute: https://www.pressreader.com/malaysia/the-star-malaysia/20161128/281990377129230
57. E&E News/Politico — “two dog sleds”; Prime Minister Nielsen’s
response: https://www.eenews.net/articles/what-to-know-about-greenland-minerals-and-trump/
58. Wikipedia — Hands off Greenland protests, 17 January 2026, largest
in Greenland’s history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_off_Greenland_protests
Bunkers 59. Fox News — Reid Hoffman on “apocalypse
insurance”; Thiel’s New Zealand: https://www.foxnews.com/us/tech-billionaires-reportedly-stock-up-on-apocalypse-insurance.amp
60. Fortune — Zuckerberg’s 5,000 sq ft Kauai shelter: https://fortune.com/2024/12/27/mark-zuckerberg-hawaii-underground-doomsday-bunker
