A Mashup

Don't Be A Sucker is one of my all time faves.

Dave takes clips from it and puts them together with examples of the shit that Trump and his goons are doing right now.

Bill Jubran

Lucas Bean

When DumFux News fans watch "regular news" instead.

Heather Cox Richardson

Believe it or not, once upon a time, the GOP wasn't filled with gutless, callous, soulless, self-dealing plutocratic freaks.

Ah, the good old days.

Never try to base an economy on an ideology, and never try to create a government from an economic system.

Business is business, government is government, religion is religion, and even though they each have some legit influence on the others, for the most part, they all have to stay in their own goddamned lanes.

That Global Cabal Thing

As MAGA and QAnon and Wingnut Media spent all those years squawking about The Global Cabal Of Elites, and The Bilderbergs, and The Rothschilds, and and and - clear-headed observers had to have noticed they were building up to something nefarious.

And while I was kinda right, I was too willing to dismiss too much of it as simple demagoguery, so of course, I was not as clear-headed as I thought I was.

Well guess what. They weren't fantasizing about it, and they weren't trying to point us away from it - they were telling us what we would eventually be expected to accept, and even embrace.

Trump’s Board of Peace plans to grant itself sweeping immunity, documents show

Draft resolution seeks to shield board members and security forces from potential prosecution for work in Gaza

The UN-sanctioned Board of Peace announced by Donald Trump earlier this year to rule Gaza is planning a sweeping grant of legal immunity for itself, according to a draft of the resolution obtained by the Guardian. The draft language would also let the organization obtain public property in Gaza “free of charge”.

The four-page resolution, labeled “sensitive but unclassified”, extends broad protections to every member of the Board of Peace and its administrative affiliate, the office of the high representative (OHR), as well as to the Palestinian technocrats, international military forces and nonresident contractors lined up to perform work in Gaza. It defines legal processes from which they would have immunity as “any arrest, detention or legal proceedings in the courts or other entities in Gaza”.

It is unclear if the document is attempting to relieve the Board of Peace and its affiliates from prosecution in international courts, in addition to potential claims in Gaza.

The Board of Peace’s chair, Donald Trump, would have the right to waive someone’s legal immunity, pending majority support from his peace board, the June 2026 draft resolution states.

The seven-member “executive board” that leads the Board of Peace includes Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; special envoy Steve Witkoff; the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles; and his national security adviser, Marco Rubio. Though countries have pledged billions, most have not yet transferred funds to support its work in Gaza and no major contracts have been issued.

US President Donald Trump holds a signing founding charter at the "Board of Peace" meeting during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 22, 2026.
What is Trump’s Board of Peace and who is involved?

The Board of Peace did not answer specific questions about the draft resolution, but an official said in a statement: “There is no operative resolution or immunity framework of the kind described in your questions … Any suggestion that this process is designed to create lawlessness or impunity is wrong, misleading and gets the issue entirely backwards.”

The official added that “the suggestion that the President will have a role in establishing or waiving immunity in Gaza [is] categorically false”, and that “the Board will ensure all personnel, contractors, and participating entities follow applicable law and operate under clear rules, oversight, and accountability mechanisms”. The official did not explain what the oversight and accountability would be.

Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat serving as the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, has been meeting in Cairo this week with Palestinian administrators selected by the Board of Peace to govern Gaza. The discussions have focused on refining the framework for the group’s work in the territory, according to one person familiar with the agenda. The prospective immunity resolution titled “RESOLUTION NO 2026/3” has not been shared with the Palestinian cohort, the person said.

‘No external oversight’

Six lawyers specializing in US contracting law and international armed conflict reviewed the draft resolution for the Guardian.

If the resolution goes into force, they said, it is unclear how Board of Peace officials, soldiers, and contractors would be held accountable if there are shootings or accidents that affect Gaza residents, or even how the group might resolve routine disputes over business or land use there.

US-led reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan were often plagued by controversies of corruption or cases of civilian deaths or abuse at the hands of American contractors, including those working for Blackwater and KBR, who have since faced litigation in US courts. Any reconstruction effort in Gaza could face similar challenges.

“It looks like an attempt to exempt the board, and all of its personnel, from accountability for potential legal violations,” said Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, an expert in litigating international humanitarian law in Israeli, American and foreign courts.

Several lawyers, including Omer-Man, pointed to the specific risks associated with section 7 of the draft resolution, entitled “Third Party Liability/Claims”, which lays out a system for the Board of Peace to consider and adjudicate any claims for “property loss or damage and for personal injury, illness or death” arising from its work in Gaza.

“They are basically saying there’s no external oversight, including applicable international law regarding occupation,” said Noura Erakat, an international law professor at Rutgers University. “It’s creating a legal system unto itself.”

Contractors have also pressed for clarity about the legal protections afforded for potential work in Gaza, where the Trump-backed peace board has solicited bids for rubble removal, security work and a vast reconstruction effort envisaged there. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has described transforming the coastal territory into a site of luxury resorts, hi-tech cities and regional business hubs.

Laws governing international contractors and military forces are usually outlined in “status of forces agreements” between countries, but there is no such document for Gaza. American contractors can be subject to US law for certain crimes even if they operate overseas.

“I would think any company would want a very clear legal framework,” said Doug Brooks, president emeritus of the International Stability Operations Association. “There are liability issues any serious American company would want to be clear about.”

Israeli officials don’t want to negotiate a status of forces agreement in Gaza because Israel doesn’t want to recognize Gaza as a state, one American security contractor said.

“It’s pretty important for political and legal cover and insurance,” the contractor said. “It gives the people of Gaza clarity and comfort around how they’ll be treated and dealt with by contractors they may engage with.”

Free facilities for the Board of Peace

The final section of the Board of Peace’s draft resolution, entitled “Premises of the Board of Peace, OHR, and ISF”, says that the group “shall be provided, free of charge, public premises and facilities needed for the accomplishment of the missions in Gaza”.

Legal experts said that this singular phrase could open the door to illegal confiscation of Palestinian property. It’s not clear which group – Israel, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority – would be responsible for “providing” the Board of Peace with facilities, and under what terms.

The Board of Peace plans to build a base for an international military force, as well as logistics hubs to power its operations there, according to contractors involved in the process. The international force is intended to assist with disarming Hamas, which is a crucial step in Trump’s peace plan. Israel has refused to proceed with steps outlined by a November 2025 ceasefire agreement if Hamas continues to bear arms.

“By unilaterally declaring the power to seize Palestinian land, property and buildings for their own use without consent, compensation or readdress, the Board of Peace is taking a page out of Israel’s repressive playbook,” said Omar Shakir, executive director at Dawn, a non-profit dedicated to investigating the impacts of US foreign policy in the Middle East. “Far from signaling an end to genocide, apartheid and occupation, this document suggests entrenching some of its ugliest signature characteristics. This risks not only complicity, but direct perpetration of grave abuses.”

Several attorneys raised questions about the Board of Peace’s legal authority to assume control of public facilities and premises.

“If they don’t have a status of forces agreement with Israel, then it’s not clear what the board’s legal authority would be,” said Brad Parker, associate director of policy at the Center for Constitutional Rights. CCR attorneys have represented victims in US litigation against Blackwater and other American security contractors for alleged abuses in Iraq.

The UN security council authorized the Board of Peace to oversee the administration of Gaza until 31 December 2027. The UN charter affords its diplomats and organizations specific legal protections for work conducted on behalf of UN missions abroad. Language in the Board of Peace’s draft resolution appears to draw on those existing frameworks, which include protections against the arrest or detention of UN diplomats during official work, as well as the seizure of UN property. It’s unclear if the Board of Peace could draw on the UN immunities for its own protection.

The draft says that the resolution will go into force upon Mladenov’s signature. The Board of Peace did not respond to questions about what additional parties, if any, would sign its sweeping resolution.

“How valuable is this document if they are the only ones signing it?” Shakir said.

A.I. Psychosis

The business model always reigns supreme. And the business model is weighted heavily towards keeping you engaged.

IMO, the point seems not to be getting machines to think like humans, but to condition humans to think like machines.

The Three Chatbot Behaviors That Can Drive Humans to Delusional Thinking

How AI’s sycophantic responses, language mirroring and hyperpersonalized content work together to send some people into a spiral

We’ve all experienced the tendency of AI chatbots to tell us what we want to hear, but there are two other, more nuanced factors that help chatbots worm their way into human hearts.

In addition to being overly agreeable, chatbots mirror the way people speak and generate highly personalized responses based on prior conversations. Psychiatric researchers are referring to the confluence of these three characteristics—sycophancy, linguistic alignment and hyperpersonalization—as the “amplification spiral,” suggesting it’s the mechanism by which delusional thinking can fester.

“The mirroring and personalization draw you in and give the experience of talking not to a system, but to someone,” said Marc Augustin, a psychiatrist and professor at Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany, and co-author of a newly published review of the literature on AI-related delusions.

Matching another person’s syntax and verbal expressions is a common way for humans to build rapport. Recent research has found that artificial-intelligence models adapt significantly to the conversational style of the humans using them. Another study suggested that the highly personalized content generated by chatbots, which builds over the course of lengthy conversations, can amplify human-confirmation bias.

Augustin cited research that documented a pattern in which chatbots rephrased and extrapolated what people shared, and told them they’re unique and that their thoughts have great implications. “This can be viewed as an element of hyperpersonalization that sycophancy alone cannot account for,” he wrote.

Some AI companies have tried to tone down the sycophantic nature of their chatbots. OpenAI discontinued its popular but problematic 4o model, which had been widely criticized for being overly agreeable. It was the subject of several lawsuits involving user delusions, suicides and a homicide. In GPT-5, the company said, sycophantic replies dropped from 14.5% to less than 6%.

Google in April said it had trained Gemini not to reinforce false beliefs, and to “gently distinguish subjective experience from objective fact.”

Still, chatbot-related dependency remains pervasive, according to clinicians.

Some 68% of psychologists surveyed in April by the American Psychological Association said their patients felt validated by chatbots. While many of the more than 1,200 respondents reported that patients had positive communication with chatbots and used them to reinforce healthy coping skills, 36% said patients had forged a dependency on a chatbot and 15% reported that patients had developed distorted thinking or delusions.

“From what I hear from my own patients, there has been an uptick in using AI for emotional support,” said Allison LoPilato, who treats adolescents and is an associate professor in the psychiatry and behavioral-sciences department at Emory University School of Medicine.

“Chatbots still tend to be warm and reassuring,” said LoPilato, who helped craft a new guide on safe AI use for the American Psychological Association. Because they gather information about you, “it can feel like the chatbot understands you, and it can trick you into a sense of alliance and trust.”

Chatbots can even pose harm when a person isn’t vulnerable to delusional thinking, said researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University. They measured the prevalence of sycophancy across 11 models—including GPT-5—and determined their responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than human responses. They did this by copying real scenarios people had posted in a popular Reddit forum, putting them into the AI models and then comparing the chatbot replies with the replies on Reddit.

Anthropic sampled one million conversations of its own Claude chatbot in March and April and found that it displayed sycophantic behavior most often in conversations in which people sought relationship advice.

“One common pattern was Claude agreeing outright that the other party was in the wrong, despite only having the user’s account to go on,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Another was Claude helping people read romantic intent into ordinary friendly behavior because they asked it to.”

Anthropic used its findings to improve the training of its latest models. It said Opus 4.7 had shown half the sycophancy rate of Opus 4.6 when it came to relationship guidance. Sycophancy has been reduced further in Opus 4.8, its most recent model, the company said.

Completely eliminating sycophancy is hard, said Myra Cheng, lead author of the Stanford study and a Stanford Ph.D. candidate in computer science. “When someone prompts a model, it has no idea which parts of a prompt are wrong,” she said. “It has to take a user’s framing of a situation at face value.”

Addressing other factors that make chatbots so compelling, such as using first-person pronouns and asking follow-up questions, runs counter to the business model, said Vaile Wright, senior director of healthcare innovation at the American Psychological Association.

"It’s not the agreeableness alone, it’s all these subtle engineering choices that make chatbots feel human,” Wright said. “As long as engagement remains the business model, AI companies will engineer these chatbots to keep you on the platform.”

Ukraine & Russia v Putin

First it was the Wagner Group, now it's a less concentrated, but more widespread threat to mutiny.

The Bulwark Comes To Colorado

Kyle Clark is a really good analyst, and that may be what makes him a really good old-school-type journalist.

"...because Jared Polis is the smartest guy Jared Polis has ever met."

Critters v Humans

Sadly, I have to admit that I behaved almost as stupidly as some of the idiots in these videos on one occasion - that I remember (the elk in Estes Park).

Luckily, I stayed far enough away so as not to provoke an attack or feel truly threatened. I'll give myself that small bit of credit.

I'm not sure what it is that makes us act like this. Could be our constant itch to post something amazing on social media. Along those lines, it could be that we need to feel special - gutsy and fearless, or whatever. I suppose it's possible we're feeling the tug of wanting to be part of a fictionalized romantic past when humans were a more integrated part of nature.

What we always seem to ignore is that back then, we were as much on the menu as any other critter.

The First Casualty Of War

What we've spent on the operations being conducted against Iran is separate from the damage Iran has rained down on "the best, most unbeatable gosh darned military ever."

And that cost is estimated to be anywhere between $200B to well over a trillion if we factor in the broader economic damage.

Oh yeah - almost forgot - Trump has told us again that it's over and we've won - which makes it somewhere between 12 and 40 times now.

And also too: US Casualties are minimum 16 dead and 543 wounded.

How Iran Devastated an American Naval Base—and Caused a U.S. Recalculation

Satellite imagery reveals for the first time the extent of what Iran destroyed at Naval Support Activity Bahrain

When the Iranian missiles and drones came for the nerve center of America’s naval operations in the Middle East, some of them hit their mark.

The U.S. Navy base in Bahrain was repeatedly targeted between late February and June. Strikes that got through caused extensive damage, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite imagery, social-media footage and interviews with current and former servicemembers—damage that the Pentagon hasn’t publicly acknowledged. Hit hard were the command headquarters and at least a dozen other buildings, along with two satellite communications terminals.

The military said no one was killed at the base, known as Naval Support Activity Bahrain, and that the strikes didn’t significantly impact operations. The U.S. evacuated most personnel but has kept a small staff on the ground.

Over the course of the war, “Centcom rightfully prioritized the protection of people over buildings, and our strategy of protecting people worked. Iran shot more than 8,000 missiles and drones and only two hits resulted in U.S. fatalities,” said Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East. Hawkins also said the U.S. military inflicted far more damage to Iran than it received, with the U.S. striking more than 13,500 targets.

The extensive damage done to America’s sole naval base in the Middle East—along with hits to at least 20 U.S. sites across the region, including military installations and diplomatic facilities—has the U.S. re-evaluating its entire footprint in the region, according to U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.

Damaged sites include warehouses, a water tank, two satellite communications terminals and a communications management facility, and the headquarters building for the U.S. Navy in the Middle East.

The military is now considering revamping the base in Bahrain, reducing the U.S. presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and moving some bases or base functions west, farther from the reach of Iranian missiles and drones, according to the officials familiar with the deliberations.

Structures that were attacked may not be rebuilt. Command and control nodes could be moved underground. And military capabilities could become more spread out across the region, the officials said, though they cautioned that no decisions had been made.

Israel is one of the locations being considered for basing, according to two of the officials. The country hosted dozens of U.S. aircraft, including jet fighters and refueling planes, during the war.

The U.S. government pressed commercial satellite imagery providers in April to restrict access to images showing destruction at American bases as well as the broader conflict zone, making it difficult to see the full scope of the damage. Officials said the move would help protect U.S. forces.

Pentagon officials have frustrated lawmakers by declining to discuss the cost of the U.S. damage with Congress. In response to a request for comment, the Pentagon pointed to remarks made by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Capitol Hill.

Pressed for an estimate at a May congressional hearing, Hegseth replied: “What is the cost of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon?”

Pentagon comptroller Jay Hurst told Congress last month that the department’s estimated cost of the war, then at $29 billion, didn’t include damage to U.S. bases.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in a report published Tuesday that the total cost of the war was about $40 billion. That estimate included their calculus of $2.2 billion to $5.1 billion in damage to U.S. bases, based on structures that CSIS identified as damaged.

The Journal used satellite images and social-media footage to identify which buildings on the Bahrain base were damaged. To estimate what it would cost to construct buildings of the same types today, the Journal reviewed a publicly available Defense Department cost model as well as procurement reports. The estimates only cover construction, and don’t include other costs that ​could factor into the total if the buildings were to be rebuilt, such as debris removal and reinforcement. ​

The estimated construction costs at NSA Bahrain totaled about $400 million.

What Iran hit at NSA Bahrain

Less than 150 miles from Iran’s southern coast, NSA Bahrain has been the anchor of American naval power in the Middle East for more than three decades. The base can host every type of ship in the U.S. fleet, and has played a critical role in countering Iranian weapon smuggling, minelaying and tanker attacks.

The base is divided into three sections: a waterfront area focused on ship operations; next to it, the main base, home to administrative and command buildings; and a Navy-leased warehouse and annex complex. Iran hit all three.

Iran damaged part of the headquarters for the Navy's Fifth Fleet, which covers the Middle East. The building is no longer usable, according to a U.S. official.

About 300 feet northwest, the Naval Security Forces training building was destroyed. The NSF provides security for the base and routinely conducts emergency preparedness drills.

Less than a quarter-mile east, the base’s emergency management warehouse, which houses ambulances, sustained damage.

In the waterfront area, a potable water tank and adjacent warehouse were damaged.

Less than 300 feet southeast, the main dining hall and a barracks that can house roughly 450 personnel sustained damage.

On the far side of the base lies an annex the Navy leases from a Bahraini company called the Banz Group. Three sections of a warehouse group in that area took some of the heaviest damage.

Task Force 59, the Navy’s first drone and artificial intelligence unit, historically housed drones in one bay of the complex. Established in 2021, Task Force 59 has been charged with using unmanned drones and AI systems to monitor key Middle East waterways.

In the full accounting of damages, building construction may be the smaller part of the cost, depending on what was inside, said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at CSIS who co-wrote the think tank’s costs report.

Two AN/GSC-52B satellite communications terminals were destroyed in the opening hours of Iran’s retaliatory strikes, along with a communications management facility. The terminals, which enable near real-time military communication, cost about $20 million each, according to CSIS.

Throughout the base, the damages “exposed weakness and vulnerabilities across the board,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, co-chair of the National Commission on the Future of the Navy, a bipartisan panel created by Congress, and co-author of an April analysis by the American Enterprise Institute on damage to U.S. bases.

NSA Bahrain was built long before Iran possessed the arsenal of precision missiles and drones it has today, and the war revealed its vulnerabilities.

“We’ve been there for more than 50 years, and the base grew up the way the base grew up,” said retired Vice Adm. John “Fozzie” Miller, who commanded U.S. naval forces in the Middle East. “I think there are some things we would do differently.”

As the only U.S. posting in the Middle East where families could live, the base functioned like a small American city, with a softball field, restaurants, a naval exchange and a school. Sailors who spent weeks at sea would pull into Bahrain and head to the base to decompress.

“When I was there last time, they were having a dance party,” said Cancian, who was based at NSA Bahrain twice.

Now, retired Navy Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, who commanded U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, said he expects the U.S. to keep a presence in Bahrain, which is considered a strong ally. “We keep a Fifth Fleet headquarters there, and the question is probably not does that go away, but what does it look like when this is over?” he said.

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with the King of Bahrain and other leaders in the Middle East to reaffirm the U.S.’s commitment to their security.

“We stand united on regional stability, a free and open Strait of Hormuz, and preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” Rubio said on social media. “Iran’s attacks on Bahrain were unacceptable, and the United States stands with the people and government of Bahrain.”

Rubio also stopped in the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait but skipped Saudi Arabia, which restricted U.S. base and airspace access during the war, deepening a rift that has accelerated Washington’s reassessment of its posture there. Gulf partners have welcomed the ceasefire but remain anxious about Iran’s long-term threat and the durability of American commitments.

Before the war, some military officials warned that bases in the Gulf were exposed. A proposal to move installations farther west was floated in Trump’s first term but never acted on.

“We defended our installations admirably, but the munitions that got through hit infrastructure required for us to conduct operations,” said Dr. Ravi Chaudhary, a former assistant secretary of the Air Force. “This is the byproduct of 10 years of Iran adapting its strike technologies for greater range and accuracy.”

The decisions the U.S. makes now—what to reconstruct, what to abandon, how far to pull back—will define its presence in the Middle East for a generation.