Trial Begins for the Prairieland 19
Trial began last week in Texas for the defendants known as the Prairieland 19. On July 4, 2025, a noise demonstration took place outside of an ICE detention center in Alvarado, Texas.
The Prairieland 19 are a group of defendants charged in a case where the Department of Justice is alleging an Alvarado police officer was shot in the neck outside the Prairieland ICE Detention center on July 4, 2025. The 19 total defendants are made up of some noise demonstration protestors, along with family and friends who were arrested under claims that they were assisting “domestic terrorists”. Included in this group is a school teacher who was arrested for allegedly removing one of the defendants from a signal group chat.
Unsurprisingly, the details of this case that the prosecution is alleging don’t completely line up. For one, there are no medical records available regarding the police officer who was shot in the neck; apparently the officer was released not long after being brought to the hospital.
Those who were arrested the day of the demonstration are not only being portrayed as “domestic terrorists,” but also as a “criminal enterprise,” much like the Stop Cop City defendants who were facing RICO charges—originally created to go after the mafia.
Wearing all black, carrying political zines, and using signal are the factors being used as evidence to link the 19 defendants to each other. The use of shared ideology, as opposed to concrete connections, is being used by the prosecution to connect them to “Antifa.”
The way this trial plays out may be indicative of how political repression will evolve further on into Trump’s second term.
Sources:
https://www.texasobserver.org/antifa-scare-prairieland-19-trial-ice-detention/
https://jacobin.com/2026/02/prairieland-trump-domestic-terrorism-ice
22 People Killed in Pakistan, Clashes Near Green Zone in Baghdad in Protests Over US-Israeli War on Iran
On Sunday March 1st, hundreds of people marched on the US consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. The crowd forced their way into the consulate and lit a small fire, after which security forces opened fire and killed 10 people. 30 more were injured. In other parts of the country, protests in Gilgit-Baltistan resulted in 10 killed, and two more were killed in protesting in the capital, Islamabad.
In Baghdad, Iraq, security forces fired teargas at protestors attempting to storm the US embassy in the heavily-fortified Green Zone.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/01/people-dead-after-pro-iran-protests-pakistan-iraq
Trump threatens “friendly takeover” of Cuba after Speedboat Incident
After nearly 2 months of strangling Cuba with an oil blockade and manufacturing the nation’s worst energy and food crisis in decades, Trump declared on Friday: “They have no money, they have no anything right now. But they’re talking with us and maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba.”
Trump’s threats follow an attempted landing and infiltration by a US-registered speedboat on the island’s north coast last Thursday. The speedboat departed from Florida and was manned by 10 heavily armed Cuban exiles who fired on the Cuban border agents, who then killed four and injured six in self-defense. While the US Coast Guard let a boat full of armed men approach Cuba, they diverted a Russian oil tanker carrying 200,000 barrels of oil destined for Cuba.
Amidst this renewed escalation of gunboat diplomacy, the Trump administration has ostensibly “eased” their oil embargo, allowing US companies to send fuel to private businesses in Cuba and apply for licenses to sell Venezuelan oil to non-government entities, such as the transportation industry and food markets. Secretary of State and Chief Gusano Marco Rubio grandstands about saving the island from economic ruin as cover for an insidious campaign to bypass, erode, and ultimately topple the Cuban government. While the US fortifies the nation’s small private sector, the Cuban masses continue to starve.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/world/americas/trump-cuba-oil-sales.html
https://shippingmatters.ca/russian-oil-tanker-diverts-from-cuba-amid-tightening-us-pressure/
https://www.democracynow.org/2026/2/26/medea_benjamin_cuba_blockade_speedboat_shootout
Full of It: Imperial Overstretch, Sewage Edition
The US Navy’s newest and most expensive aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is struggling to keep its toilets flushing. The $13 billion warship built to project unstoppable power has been at sea since June 2025, first rerouted from a planned Mediterranean deployment to the Caribbean during US escalation against Venezuela, then sent back across the Atlantic as Washington assembled carrier forces to threaten Iran and deploy airstrikes over the weekend. Nearly eleven months into what was supposed to be a routine rotation, the Ford now sits at the center of American military intimidation and hostility while life aboard has narrowed to clogged vacuum lines, overflowing toilets, and daily maintenance calls to keep sewage from backing up. Sailors have missed weddings, births, and funerals only to stand in line for a working toilet as crews aboard the battleship routinely don rubber gloves to pull debris from fouled pipes.
Sources:
Behind Enemy Lines 