Barackface: 13: Iran Protests

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

13: Iran Protests

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

I joined LinkedIn the month it launched and put tens of thousands of hours into my profile. They deleted it. Please help get it back. It is paramendra at Gmail. Thanks.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) January 13, 2026

Impressive.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) January 13, 2026

Trump is Venezuelifying the United States Cross him and his minions will try to destroy you — whoever you are ............. So federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair. ........... The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President. ............ This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation. ............ the attack on Powell and Good’s murder are part of the same story: Trump and his minions have zero tolerance for dissent. ............. excessively easy money can lead to inflation. That’s a lesson the United States learned after 1972, when a compliant Fed kept rates low to help Richard Nixon win reelection, setting the stage for years of stagflation. ............ Recent experience in Turkey offers an even stronger lesson. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s authoritarian, Trump-like president, forced Turkey’s central bank to keep rates down in the face of rising inflation. The result was that inflation (the solid blue line in the chart below) eventually rose above 80 percent: ................ How, then, can nations limit the temptations of easy money while preserving the flexibility to deal with crises? The answer, adopted by the United States and many other nations, is to put the central bank under the direct control of technocrats, not politicians. Such “independent” central banks are ultimately accountable to elected officials, but they’re insulated from short-run political pressure. ............... experience shows that central bank independence works much better than letting monetary policy be politicized, especially when the politicians in question are greedy and don’t understand economics — in other words, when they’re like Donald Trump. ........... This is how monetary policy is made in emerging markets with weak institutions, with highly negative consequences for inflation and the functioning of their economies more broadly. It has no place in the United States whose greatest strength is the rule of law, which is at the foundation of our economic success. ............... “emerging markets with weak institutions” means Third World nations like, for example, Venezuela — or, as Trump would say, shithole countries. ............... Over the weekend, as it happens, Trump declared himself the “acting president of Venezuela,” which he definitely is not. But he is Venezuelifying the United States. ............ May I say, by the way, that every investor and businessperson who backed Trump or tried to accommodate him once he won should be looking in the mirror and asking why they helped enable this catastrophe. For none of what Trump is doing now is a surprise to people who paid attention. ............. even if Trump understood that his attack on the Fed’s independence will backfire, he would still be going after Powell, because he is less interested in achieving policy results than he is in punishing anyone who crosses him. Powell had the temerity to insist on doing his job rather than prostrating himself at Trump’s feet. So he must suffer — personally. ............. If top Trump officials like Scott Bessent and Kevin Hassett had any integrity, they would have threatened to resign en masse as soon as the criminal investigation of Powell was revealed. But they don’t and they didn’t.

You could be next This is personal. .......... If agents of the federal government can murder a 37-year-old woman in broad daylight who, as videotapes show, was merely trying to get out of their way, they can murder you. ......... Even if Trump and his vice president and his secretary of homeland security all claim, contrary to the videotapes, that Renee Nicole Good was trying to kill an agent who acted in self-defense, they could make up the same about you. .......... Even if Trump describes her as a “professional agitator” and his goons call her a “domestic terrorist,” they could say the same about you regardless of your political views or activism. If you have left-wing political views and are an activist, you’re in greater danger. ............ How can we believe what the FBI turns up in its investigation, when the FBI is working for Trump and is headed by one of his goons, and is investigating possible connections between Renee Good and groups that have been protesting Trump’s immigration enforcement? ........... What credence can we give federal officials who are blocking local and state investigators from reviewing evidence they’re collecting? .............. You could be murdered because Trump’s attorney general has defined “domestic terrorism” to include impeding law enforcement officers. What if you’re merely standing in the way — in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or maybe you’re engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience? ............... In October, Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen in Chicago, was in her car trying to warn people about ICE when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Federal officials say she “rammed” the car. Her lawyers say she was sideswiped by it....... The agent then got out of his car and shot her five times. She survived. The Justice Department then charged her with assaulting a federal officer............ The people who are being assaulted and murdered are abiding the law. ............

The regime has also been grabbing people from their homes who are legally in the United States with permanent status — not just visas permitting them to work or study here but green cards — and whisking them away to prison because they’ve engaged in constitutionally protected speech the regime doesn’t like.

.................. This is what happened to Mahmoud Khalil — who graduated from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, who has a green card, and whose wife is an American citizen. ............. Plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents appeared at his apartment building on March 8 and then detained him without charges in a Louisiana ICE detention facility for three and a half months. (He missed his graduation and the birth of his first child.) ............... Khalil did nothing illegal. He was in the United States legally. He has never been charged with a crime. He expressed his political point of view — peacefully, nonviolently, non-threateningly. That’s supposed to be permitted — dare I say even encouraged? — in a democracy. .............. In a post on Truth Social, Trump conceded Khalil was snatched up and sent off because of his politics. “This is the first arrest of many to come,” wrote Trump. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.” ............. What’s to stop the Trump regime from arresting you for, say, advocating the replacement of Republicans in Congress in 2026 and electing a Democrat to the presidency in 2028? ............. Renee Nicole Good was murdered. Marimar Martinez was shot but survived. Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and jailed and is still fighting deportation. There are many others. The next could be you or someone you love. ....... We must commit to peacefully fighting this regime, to ending Republican control of Congress in 2026, and to sending this dangerous gang packing in 2028 — assuming we’re still free and alive by then.

Barackface

Pages

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

13: Iran Protests

No comments: