Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its head of state have overshadowed his less brazen but possibly more effective regime-change operation in Honduras. No one can be sure if the National Party’s Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura really won the presidential election on 30 November, but he was Trump’s endorsed candidate and will almost certainly assume office on 27 January.
To try to make sense of the recent US military operation to capture the president and first lady of Venezuela, Chinese netizens have been looking for parallels in Chinese history. Seeing Nicolás Maduro arrive in the New York winter (the temperature in Caracas is twenty degrees warmer), some people were reminded of the war that ended the Northern Song dynasty.
This piece was written before Iran imposed an internet blackout on 8 January.
Six months ago I thought about buying a car, for reasons not of convenience but of necessity. My income as a freelance university lecturer in Iran barely pays for my daily commute. I thought I could drive at night for the ride‑hailing service Snapp! to cover my living expenses. I had enough savings to buy a hatchback Saipa Quik – but then its price went up 66 per cent.
Kidnapping, murdering or deposing the president of a sovereign country is one thing; military occupation and administration is quite another, as the US found in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the occupation did not, as Donald Rumsfeld had promised it would, pay for itself. Some people got rich, though, as untold billions went missing and unaccounted for.
A still from ‘Black Atlas’ by Edward George, from the ‘Image of the Black’ archive, Warburg Institute
Edward George’s exhibition Black Atlas, at the Warburg Institute until the end of January 2026, operates in the tradition of Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas.
One of the early meanings of ‘original’ was something which serves as a model, or something from which copies can be made: at the heart of originality is the potential for duplication. Rousseau says he was cast from a mould, like a pot on a production line, but the mould has been broken so there can’t be any more copies.
The conflict in West Papua may be the world’s most unequal war: raids on military bases have improved the West Papua National Liberation Army’s fighting capacity, but they still often face Indonesian jets and missiles armed only with bows and arrows. The activist Tom Beanal, who died in 2023, once asked if West Papua was colonised by Indonesia or by the entire world. Munitions recovered in Kiwirok include Serbian mortars, Chinese drones and bombs manufactured by the French arms company Thales.