Still from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

One of the world’s richest jerks is gutting the once-storied newspaper he bought as a vanity project, used to promote his own narcissistic and predatory brand, eventually grew bored with and shredded like yesterday’s news…

My first experience with just how petty and mean-spirited Jeff Bezos could be was in the early 2000s. Cockburn and I were giving a book talk (Imperial Crusades, I think) at one of the country’s best bookstores, Elliott Bay Book Company, when it was located in the beautiful brick Globe building on First and Main Street near Pioneer Square in old town Seattle. As we were walking in, we noticed a semi-trailer truck driving slowly down First Avenue. The trailer featured the Amazon logo and, in large letters: “Buy Your Books From Amazon at 20 to 30% Off.” When we were walking out with the very kind and efficient events staffer a couple of hours later, we saw the same truck coming down Main Street, turning on First Avenue and driving slowly past the storefront. I asked the Elliott Bay staffer, What the hell’s going on? She said, “This goes on all day. The truck just drives in circles around the store, trying to drive us out of business, I guess.”

Here was this insatiable international behemoth targeting an independent bookstore for extinction. It didn’t seem possible at the time, because as bookstore experiences go, Elliott Bay’s was one of the best ecosystems imaginable for bibliophiles. But Bezos (and Seattle real estate prices) eventually drove them out of downtown and up to a nice store in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. But it’s not the same. The culture as a whole, not just Seattle, has been cheapened, short-changed and made cruder, lazier and more socially isolated by this self-obsessed maniac and his ravenous cohort of like-minded billionaires.

Lenin sent this text from the Bardo about Bezos and the Ellisons: “All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake ‘public opinion’ for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.”

The world’s biggest book seller just axed one of the last book review sections in a major newspaper, his own.

Firing correspondents in a war zone really says it all about the moral character of Bezos and the crew he hired to demolish The Washington Post…

Trump’s new tax law decreased Amazon’s taxes 87%, while the corporate behemoth’s profits grew. The company’s U.S. taxes fell from $9 billion to $1.2 billion. Meanwhile, Bezos gutted the Washington Post and Amazon is slashing at least 30,000 jobs.

Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

ICE and CBP ran out of “legit” targets about 2 months into the purge and then just started going after random people who fit their racial profile: “Email obtained by NBC shows Bovino grew frustrated this fall when he was asked to do “targeted operations” in Chicago. (Despite Noem insisting all operations are targeted).”

Trump’s immigration Storm Troopers killed at least 9 people in January. Here are their names…

Alex Pretti
Renee Good
Keith Porter
Parady La
Heber Sanchaz Domínguez
Victor Manuel Diaz
Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
Geraldo Lunas Campos.

Hakeem Jeffries: “ICE agents should conduct themselves like every other law enforcement agency in the country.” Police killed 1314 people in 2025. Is Jeffries arguing that ICE should be killing even more?

On January 31, 3000 people joined the union-led march on the ICE family in South Portland. They were met by a vicious crackdown by ICE’s militarized agents, who fired rubber bullets, flash bang grenades and tear gas at the protesters. ICE agents even lobbed tear gas canisters into low-income housing units across the street from the detention “center” here in Portland….

Witnesses:

Brenda Worthington, a resident at the Gray’s Landing apartment complex, which was hit by ICE tear gas canisters: “Saturday was a nightmare. We watched people crying. Children, old people like me, everyone. It was awful…We have suffered. We are collateral damage, everyone. We don’t deserve this…Let’s all stick together and get these people to move. They need to move.”

Nick Caleb, the vice president of a communication workers union: “One of the biggest shows of union solidarity that I think I’ve ever seen in Oregon history…We just have to now update our risk profiles. Now we know that if you have a peaceful march in the middle of the day, the federal government might shoot you with chemical agents and pepper balls and things like that.”

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, who could hardly be called a radical or even a progressive: “To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave. Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame.”

The Eugene Lunatics, as Trump called the heroic band of protesters down south on the I-5 corridor, would be a great name for a minor league baseball team.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek: “We know the Trump administration’s aggressive ICE tactics are creating fear, they are tearing families apart and, as we have seen, taking lives. It’s wrong. It’s un-American, it’s immoral and we as Oregon will stand together to say no to that.”

You just knew a pre-mature ejac– I mean– capitulation was inevitable. But even I thought they might hold out longer than this…They’ll end up adopting a position that’s somewhere to the right of Homan and Noem. Plus, ICE agents have almost absolute impunity. What do they care? If they shoot a kid next time, Fox News will lionize them and they can cash in, ala Rittenhouse. How much has the Jonathan Ross GoFundMe site raised? Nearly a million by now, I think, and the “F-in’ bitch” line was probably worth at least $250K in donations…

Memo to Schumer: All protesters are considered “domestic terrorists” by ICE, CBP, DHS, Trump and Vance and even the Democratic Party itself, according Trump’s Rasputin, Stephen Miller.

There’s a lot of talk about how Trump is planning to use ICE and the Insurrection Act in an attempt to rig the mid-term elections. It’s certainly possible, even probable. But I’m not convinced the Democrats would take the House in a “clean” election, though every historical trend suggests they would by force of political gravity alone. The GOP probably doesn’t have to rig the elections through gerrymandering or voter roll purges. The Democrats are quite capable of blowing it themselves. Their leadership has never been weaker. For all her faults, Pelosi was a fighter and a shrewd politician. So was Harry Reid. Schumer and Jeffries are embarrassments, both of them timid, docile and out of touch with their own base. But, yes, the prospect of ICE policing poll stations in the name of snatching “illegal voters” is pretty ominous and must be resisted, even if you enter the polling places planning to vote for Greens, libertarians, the Rent’s Too Damn High Party or none of the above….

Steve Bannon on his War Room show last Tuesday: “You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November.” Why mail-in ballots are essential to the preservation of, not democracy, that’s long gone, but at least what’s left of the right to vote…

Sen. Tammy Duckworth: “ICE investigators were supposed to investigate the killing of Alex Pretti. Instead, they investigated Alex. Not his killers. With the FBI now leading this probe, I’m calling on Kristi Noem and Kash Patel: Remove all ICE agents from this investigation completely.” (Duckworth’s benign views of the FBI must have been reformed from repeated viewings of Mississippi Burning.)

The New York Times reported that federal prosecutors in Minnesota had gotten a warrant to collect evidence from Renee Good’s Jeep, but the Trump White House ordered them to drop the inquiry into her killing.

Wired reported that two agents involved in the shooting deaths of US citizens in Minneapolis are part of highly militarized DHS units whose “extreme tactics are generally reserved for war zones.” In other words, the agents involved in the executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti were very well trained…in the techniques of terror and killing.

ICE agents have been leaving behind customized Ace of Spades playing cards after raids in Colorado. The cards, which read: “ICE Denver Field Office,” resemble the infamous Death Cards left behind by U.S. soldiers after raids on peasant villages during the Vietnam War.

Photo: Voces Unidas.

Marta Escalante Perez, the 29-year-old single mother of a 5-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, who has survived years of extreme spousal abuse, was arrested on her way to work picking berries in Oregon’s Willamette Valley by ICE agents and quickly transported out of state to a detention center in Tacoma, Washington. She was detained at the border, but later released after an immigration judge terminated a deportation order against her.

A member of the........

© CounterPunch