We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🇨🇴✔️🇺🇸 — 🇻🇪 The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, officially acknowledges that the United States bombed an ELN factory in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and contradicts Nicolás Maduro, who denies that this happened:
“It turns out that many boats attacked with missiles, as is happening in the seizures we carry out in Colombia or, with our help, outside Colombia, were not carrying cocaine but cannabis.
A paradoxical problem: in the U.S., in many places it is legal. And the Colombian Congress should not have allowed its illegality; it was lost by one vote. That vote has taken the lives of many humble boatmen, and not of a single U.S. consumer or consumer anywhere in the world. Trump is completely wrong. Cocaine to Europe is moving by submarine and container. Cannabis is what is being illegitimately attacked.
The ELN in Catatumbo, and the 33rd Front, must decide whether they are going to compete for cocaine or for Peace. Only about 5% of the cocaine produced in Colombia passes through there.
We know that Trump bombed a factory in Maracaibo; we fear that they mix coca paste there to make cocaine and take advantage of the location on Lake Maracaibo.
It is simply the ELN. The ELN is allowing, through its racketeering and its mental dogma, the invasion of Venezuela.
The Colombian army must immediately take a ‘Gringo edge’ in Catatumbo and replace crops. Today, due to the expansion of coca leaf cultivation in Latin America, faced with a demand that is growing only too much in Europe, the price of cocaine has collapsed. There are huge warehouses in Africa storing dozens of tons of cocaine, and the price of coca leaf in Colombia has collapsed; cannabis and illicit gold are now more profitable than cocaine.
It is time for substitution; the state must take advantage of it.
They have made Trump believe that I am a front man for Maduro, hence his recent references to me. I thought U.S. intelligence was more professional, or that, if it is, the president of the U.S. does not listen to it and surrounds himself with greedy far-right figures who are not seeking the truth.
A few days after the New Year, I will recount the particularities of my relationship with Chávez’s progressive movement and my frustrations about what remained of his government after his death.
I do not know whether Maduro has illegitimately taken wealth from Venezuela; in our country there is no evidence of drug trafficking on his part. The generals we proved were negotiating cocaine were in sedition with the support of the Colombian government, seeking a coup in Caracas.
But by now professional investigators in the U.S. should have verified that neither I nor my close relatives have assets outside the country or in Colombia, other than my home, for which I am still in debt.
Even The New York Times has already published a journalistic article saying that they have found no evidence against me to keep me on the OFAC list.
What a mess by the U.S. government. My last phone conversation with Maduro was about how to jointly strike the ELN on the border. I am a free man and always will be, and I do not care about greed.”
Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) on 𝕏 🖇
Ukrainian forces have begun training and testing exoskeletons for battlefield use. Soldiers from the 147th Separate Artillery Brigade are using them in the Pokrovsk sector for both logistics and frontline operations. The goal is to reduce physical strain, especially when loading heavy artillery shells into howitzers without automatic loaders. Artillery crews can handle up to 1200 kg of ammunition per day, and early tests show that exoskeletons help them work faster and with less fatigue Above all, by improving the conditions for those soldiers on the front lines who handle such heavy loads, plus the stress of work. Seeking to reduce overall fatigue in the troops
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🇮🇷🇮🇱 - 14 wounded in Iranian missile strike in central Israel, according to Israeli media.
🇬🇧🇮🇶 - A drone struck British Castrol oil warehouses in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, causing extensive damage.
🇮🇷🇮🇱 - Iran launched 9 missiles towards Israel this morning alone, with at least 3 of them being cluster missiles.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - Over the past 12 hours, Hezbollah launched counterattacks in Khiam and Qantara, in the Nabatieh direction, southeast Lebanon. Hezbollah recaptured northern Khiam, with fighting ongoing for the south of the town. Hezbollah units also re-entered Qantara; frontline sources reported clashes in the center of the town last night.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - 48 IDF soldiers have been wounded in clashes with Hezbollah over the last 24 hours in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli Army.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - "The Israeli army is barely catching its breath in southern Lebanon, and its resources are less than in the previous round of fighting," - Haaretz....
🇺🇸 Blue Owl Capital just disclosed that investors tried to pull 40.7% of one fund and 21.9% of another in a single quarter, and both funds gave the same answer, you can only have 5% back, and everyone else waits in line.
This is a bank run, not a normal withdrawal.
Wall Street spent the last decade selling millions of investors on something called semi-liquid private credit, higher yields, steady income and the promise you could get your money back every quarter if you needed it. What they buried in the fine print was what happens when too many people try to leave at the same time.
Analysts who have covered private credit for decades say nothing on this scale has ever been reported before at any major private credit manager.
These funds do not hold stocks you can sell on a Tuesday afternoon, they hold private loans to mid sized companies that cannot be liquidated quickly without destroying the price for every investor still trapped inside.
This product was originally designed for ...
🇺🇸 President Trump wants to switch to war economy in 2027 with massive increase in military spending and massive cuts to healthcare and other domestic agencies
Once a deficit hawk — he said in 2016 that he thought he could balance the budget in five years — Trump ended his first term with $7.8 trillion in added debt. His 2027 proposal is expected to give an update on 10-year deficit projections currently estimated at around $16 trillion.
The GOP's message for the Midterms will be focused on the "need" for a massive defense build up while the Democrats' message will be focused on affordability.
The fiscal 2027 budget will be the first time Trump puts his second-term governing agenda into one comprehensive document — with the numbers to back it up. The budget he released last year lacked detailed line-by-line spending targets and the economic assumptions necessary to project the long-term cost of his proposals.
Investors in US Treasuries will be looking to see if the debt and ...
