A plentiful stock of herbs at your disposal is ideal for the at-home chef, amateur herbalist, or skincare ... Read More
The post The Best Soil for Herbs—Grow a Fruitful Herb Garden appeared first on Garden Therapy.
Limited to low-THC oil for now, state lawmakers are under pressure to expand the Georgia medical cannabis program.
Georgia under pressure to expand low-THC medical cannabis in 2026 is a post from: MJBizDaily: Financial, Legal & Cannabusiness news for cannabis entrepreneurs
DEEP DIVE – As audacious and complex as it was for the U.S. to extract Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela – and to do so without a single U.S. casualty – the challenges ahead may be even harder. “We’re gonna run it,” President Donald Trump said Saturday, referring to a post-Maduro Venezuela. The president gave few details and no specific time frame, saying only that the U.S. would “run the country” until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be arranged. U.S. oil companies would return to Venezuela, investing “billions and billions” of dollars to reboot the oil sector and the country’s economy. American “boots on the ground” might be deployed in the interim.
It was a remarkable series of statements from a president who has criticized past American nation-building projects, and it raised questions about how exactly the Trump Administration would “run” a country beset by profound challenges. Venezuela, a country twice the size of Iraq, has endured decades of authoritarian rule, corruption, drug-related violence, and economic pain. And for the moment at least, the country’s leader still pledges allegiance to Maduro.
Miguel Tinker Salas, a Venezuelan historian, Professor Emeritus at Pomona College and Fellow at the Quincy Institute, said that when Trump spoke those words – “we’re gonna run it” – he was stunned.
“Initially, my jaw dropped,” Salas told The Cipher Brief. “Even at the height of U.S. influence in Venezuela, in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, they never said they wanted to run the country. And I don't think the Trump administration comprehends the complexity that they're dealing with for a country as diverse and as big as Venezuela.”
Even those who cheered the U.S. military operation warned of the difficulties that lie ahead. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who pronounced himself “delighted” by Maduro’s ouster, told NewsNation the mission was “maybe step one of a much longer process. Maduro is gone but the regime is still in place.”
“Maduro’s fall is good for Venezuela and the United States,” Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security, posted on X. “It was a brilliant military operation and the world should be better off because of it. Whether it WILL in fact be better off depends on what happens next. One of the lessons of other regime-change operations is not to topple a government without a plan for what comes next. What comes next in Venezuela seems as vague as the plan for running postwar Gaza under a ‘Board of Peace’.”
The Venezuelans who might lead
At a news conference following Maduro’s capture, Trump said that Delcy Rodriguez, the regime’s vice president, would lead Venezuela as long as she “does what we want.” And he suggested the U.S. would enforce that arrangement at the barrel of a gun.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Trump said, adding that the U.S. might deploy “a second wave” of forces if Venezuelan officials or troops don’t go along with Washington’s wishes. The U.S. naval presence near Venezuela remains in place – the largest such deployment in the region since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
A day later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio painted a slightly different picture of the U.S. role. “It’s not running — it’s running policy, the policy with regards to this,” he said.
But Rubio and Trump were clear about the overall approach: in essence, Do what we say, and things will be fine.
“We’re going to make decisions based on their actions and their deeds in the days and weeks to come,” Rubio told The New York Times. “We think they’re going to have some unique and historic opportunities to do a great service for the country, and we hope that they’ll accept that opportunity.”
It’s not clear that Rodriguez, the former Vice President, will be a pliant ally. She was sworn in Monday as interim president, after almost immediately accusing the U.S. of invading her country on Saturday. She called the operation “a barbarity,” and in an address to the nation said that Maduro was still Venezuela’s head of state.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros,” Rodriguez said, with other senior officials at her side. Venezuela, she said, would never agree to being a U.S. "colony."
A day later she struck a less defiant note, calling on the U.S. to work with her government on an “agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development.” She added that “we prioritize moving towards balanced and respectful international relations between the United States and Venezuela."
It’s not at all clear that’s what Trump has in mind; he insisted that Rodriguez would comply with his wishes – one way or another. "She had a long conversation with Marco [Rubio], and she said, 'We'll do whatever you need,'” Trump said. “I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn't have a choice.” On Sunday he upped the ante, telling The Atlantic that if Rodriguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Experts said Rodriguez will have to navigate an almost impossible political tightrope.
“She claims to represent a socialist party opposed to U.S. intervention and to U.S. meddling in her internal affairs – so how does she rationalize this to her base?” Salas said. “This is a very difficult, challenging position for her to be in – to on the one hand promise social change reforms, a continuation of Maduro, and at the same time, now become compliant in providing oil to the United States.”
Need a daily dose of reality on national and global security issues? Subscriber to The Cipher Brief’s Nightcap newsletter, delivering expert insights on today’s events – right to your inbox. Sign up for free today.
Beyond Rodriguez, who serves as both Vice President and minister for oil, other Maduro regime leaders remain in place, including the military chief General Vladimir Padrino Lopez and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. They have denounced Maduro’s abduction as well – Padrino vowed to resist “the most criminal military aggression” and ordered a mobilization of Venezuelan forces on land, sea, and air.
Experts have warned of splits within the army – between hardliners who may refuse to support anyone who bows to Trump’s demands, and others who will stand with Rodriguez no matter what. Such divides could lead to violence and – if Trump is true to his word – a deployment of U.S. “boots on the ground.”
Michael Shifter, a former president of the Inter-American Dialogue, said that while Rodriguez might be able to deliver on Trump’s demands to open up the oil sector, other critical tasks will prove more challenging.
“It will be exceedingly difficult if not impossible for her to tame the entrenched corruption and widespread criminality in the country while leaving the machinery of Chavista governance intact,” Shifter told The Cipher Brief, using a term for policies begun by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez. “The risks that chaos, violence and instability will ensue are high, and under that scenario the U.S. would have no choice but to send in troops to stabilize the situation.”
“Control of the military is essential for control of Venezuela, particularly in this unstable moment,” Salas said. “And so far, the commanding general of the military, Padrino, has shown no disposition to break with the PSUV [Maduro’s party].”
Absent in the Trump plans for now is any role for the Venezuelan opposition. The main opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month, issued a statement urging that her political ally, Edmundo Gonzalez, be recognized as Venezuela’s president. Gonzalez was widely seen as the rightful winner of the 2024 presidential vote. “Today we are prepared to enforce our mandate and take power,” Machado said.
But in his news conference after Maduro’s capture, Trump never mentioned Gonzalez, and threw cold water on the prospects of a role for Machado.
"I think it'd be very tough for her to be the leader," Trump said. "She doesn't have the support or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect."
Those remarks left Machado in the odd position of having won her goal of Maduro’s exit, while failing to win the backing of Washington. Salas said Venezuelans he had spoken with “were disillusioned about the fact that Trump essentially threw her under the bus.”
Asked Saturday which American officials would “run” Venezuela, Trump nodded to Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who flanked the president during his news conference. “The people that are standing right behind me, we’re going to be running it,” Trump said.
That drew a rebuke from Elliott Abrams, a Senior Fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations and longtime hawk in terms of U.S. policy in Latin America.
“Venezuelans wanted Maduro out and voted against him,” Abrams wrote on the organization’s website. “They did not vote for U.S. rule, and pursuing that path will create instability—exactly what Trump does not want.”
The oil factor
In the months-long runup to Maduro’s capture, as the U.S. deployed naval forces to the Caribbean and attacked alleged drug traffickers from the air, the Trump administration justified its actions by invoking the drug trade and the illegitimacy of Maduro’s rule. Oil was rarely mentioned.
Now, as U.S. officials explain their post-Maduro plans, oil is front and center.
Over the weekend, Trump accused Venezuela of seizing U.S. oil assets in the country, and said U.S. companies would return to operate Venezuela’s state-controlled oil reserves, “spend billions of dollars” and “start making money for the country.”
U.S. oil companies have a long history in Venezuela, dating to the early 20th century, when they came at the government’s invitation to explore and develop oil reserves. Gulf, Shell, and Standard Oil were among the early arrivals, in what proved to be a symbiotic relationship: the companies earned billions of dollars, and Venezuela grew rich; by the mid-1970s, oil revenues had helped make it the wealthiest nation, per capita, in Latin America.
In 1976, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry, creating a state-owned company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), that continued to partner with foreign companies. More than two decades later, President Hugo Chavez renegotiated contracts with foreign oil companies to boost Venezuela’s share of the profits, a move that prompted ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to leave the country.
Ultimately, Venezuela’s oil sector and its broader economy suffered the consequences – a deteriorating oil infrastructure, and U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and the PDVSA. Today, Venezuela produces fewer than one million barrels of oil a day, down from roughly 3.5 million in 1997, and more than 90 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty.
“Venezuela has been a problem both for the United States and for the Venezuelan people for over 20 years,” Paul Kolbe, a former Director of The Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, told The Cipher Brief. “For the Chavez years and then the Maduro years, they've driven a country that was once one of the wealthiest in the world, and certainly the wealthiest in South America…into the ground through corruption, poor leadership, poor decisions, and oppression of the people.”
Only one U.S. oil company – Chevron – has remained in Venezuela, operating under joint ventures with the PDVSA. Rubio’s and Trump’s remarks suggest that the U.S. intends to force Rodriguez, the interim leader, to offer favorable conditions to other American companies.
But experts aren’t sure the others will return.
Ali Moshiri, who oversaw Chevron’s operations in Venezuela until 2017, said the big oil firms won’t go back until they clear signs of change.
“Not many companies are going to rush to go into an environment where there’s not stability,” Moshiri told The New York Times. He also said that while Chevron and smaller operators could boost the country’s oil output slightly in the short term, a more robust expansion would take years, given the political situation, the state of the country’s oil infrastructure, and the time needed to reestablish operations in the country.
Salas echoed the point. “Exporting oil from Venezuela is a challenge,” he told The Cipher Brief. “The infrastructure has collapsed. The oil itself that has to be pumped out of the ground is heavy crude, which requires a lot of technology, and billions of dollars of investment. So I'm not convinced that American companies are going to be running in.”
Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There is no better place to get clear perspectives from deeply experienced national security experts.
A long history of regime change
The Maduro mission came exactly 36 years after the surrender of another Latin American dictator – Panama’s Manuel Noriega – to face drug charges in the U.S. That operation had its detractors, but in the history of U.S. regime-change missions, it probably counts as a relative success story. The list of other cases is long – and while each episode had its own specific history, there have been few good outcomes.
To take three very different examples: The 2003 decapitation of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq – which involved a huge force of “boots on the ground” – was celebrated initially by President George W. Bush in a “Mission Accomplished” speech, only to unravel in a fierce domestic insurgency that lasted for years, cost more than 4,000 American lives, and led – indirectly – to the rise of the Islamic State. The Kennedy administration backed a coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963; Diem was later murdered, unrest followed, and in his memoirs, President Lyndon Johnson blamed the coup for the escalation of the Vietnam War. In Iran, the nationalization of the oil industry was at the heart of a coup orchestrated by the U.S. and Britain in 1953 to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. That led to the return to power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – and ultimately to the revolution that brought an Islamic theocracy to power in Tehran in 1979.
“I immediately am reminded of Iraq, where the military operation was well done and we removed Saddam Hussein pretty quickly in 2003, but then what came after was not great,” Glenn Corn, a former CIA Senior Executive, told The Cipher Brief. “So I hope we've learned that lesson and we're not going to repeat the mistakes we made there.”
Salas noted that one lesson of the Iraq War involved the perils of driving out the remnants of an ousted regime. “The lesson learned in Iraq was when they attempted to expunge the Ba’ath Party, they realized that they had utter chaos because there was no one there to run the government, no one with experience,” he said. “You had the nation fracture into particular sections, regions, strongmen, military individuals, and others. If that happened in Venezuela, it would be chaotic. The country's very big, very diverse. It has oil regions, it has urban areas, it has an industrial base. So you could imagine that happening on a national scale.”
To some, the Maduro operation was reminiscent of an earlier era of American “gunboat diplomacy,” when the U.S. military was deployed regularly to seize territory and resources. The New York Times’ David Sanger noted that Trump installed a portrait of William McKinley in the White House – and it was President McKinley who presided over the U.S. seizures of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.
“The U.S. operation, in seeking to assert control over a vast Latin American nation, has little precedent in recent decades,” Sanger wrote, “recalling the imperial U.S. military efforts of the 19th and early 20th centuries in Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.”
What comes next
Given the uncertainties of the moment, experts said the next phase in Venezuela will hinge on answers to several core questions:
Does the Trump administration have an arrangement with Rodriguez and other Maduro regime officials to do the White House’s bidding? If not, how will the U.S. respond if they fail to oblige? Does the U.S. have a plan to remove those leaders? What might trigger that “second wave” Trump referred to, and the deployment of U.S. forces to the country?
What milestones must be met for the end of the interim period? Would elections follow – and would the U.S. organize or oversee those? What will the major U.S. oil companies do?
“Uncertainties abound in Venezuela about what comes next,” Shifter said. “For now, a framework of coerced cooperation between the Venezuelan regime, now led by Delcy Rodriguez, and the Trump administration, seems to be in effect. But it is far from clear whether that model is viable, much less sustainable.”
Fontaine said that “the default could well be to work with a compliant President Delcy and most of the existing government. It would be a head of state change more than regime change.” But he added that such an arrangement would do little to satisfy the opposition – the same people who have cheered the news of Maduro’s capture. “Many would-be supporters of this move hoped for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela, not just a different approach on drugs and oil.”
He also noted that Trump was hardly the first president to decry nation-building projects, only to wind up taking them on.
“For 25 years, every U.S. president has opposed nation-building abroad and then gotten involved in it,” Fontaine said. “Trump, with the commitment to run Venezuela, appears to be the latest. The welcome fall of Maduro is not the end, or the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.”
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.
If you’re investigating making your own soil or wondering what your bagged soil is composed of, you’ve probably ... Read More
The post What’s the Difference Between Peat Moss vs Coco Coir? appeared first on Garden Therapy.
CIPHER BRIEF EXPERT INTERVIEW – While the U.S. operation to detain Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro took just hours to execute, a full assessment of its global impact will take weeks or months to fully understand in part, because of the complicated dynamic connecting the country’s assets, allies and oil.
“Venezuela is what I would call one of those hyphenated accounts,” says Norm Roule, a global energy expert who also served as former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at ODNI. “Venezuela in and of itself is important, but it's also Venezuela/oil, Venezuela/Russia, Venezuela/China, Venezuela/Cuba. There are a lot of different accounts and issues that must be taken into consideration.”
Venezuela’s partners depend on it for various strategic reasons: Cuba for economic support, Iran for political alignment in Latin America, and China for a notable share of its oil imports. The United States, meanwhile, is signaling a major shift in how it intends to assert influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Cipher Brief Executive Editor Brad Christian talked with Roule, a leading global consultant on Middle East and Energy issues, about what is likely to happen next as the U.S. signals a major shift in how it intends to assert influence in the Western Hemisphere. Their conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Norman Roule is a geopolitical and energy consultant who served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to Iran and the Middle East. He also served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran (NIM-I)\n at ODNI, where he was responsible for all aspects of national intelligence policy related to Iran.
THE INTERVIEW
The Cipher Brief: The Trump administration recently released an updated national security strategy that weighed heavily on the Western hemisphere. Are we seeing perhaps the first kind of inclination that this is going to actually be something to pay close attention to?
Roule: Absolutely. And I think the national security strategy is something that every one of the Cipher Brief's readers and listeners should pull out today. Look at it again, because I can assure you that policymakers around the world - in both our partner and adversary countries - are certainly doing so. If you look at events in Venezuela and read that national security strategy, a number of themes come forward.
The U.S. will be the dominant power in the Western hemisphere. In Venezuela, we saw a display of massive U.S. power and skill in the form of our military intelligence and technology. This is very similar to the display that the world witnessed in Iran last June. So, this is coming very, very close to two sets of actions. And I think this is meant to be seen also, as the president alluded to in his press conference, as a visible reset of what he described as a previous erosion of U.S. military power in his predecessor's administration.
This is also showing that the U.S. is now capable of executing what was described by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an extraordinarily large and complicated military and intelligence operation, without being leaked. This did not require foreign partners. And it also did not require the disruption of regional commercial air operations. If you listen to what the chairman talked about, this involved 150 aircraft from multiple locations descending upon another country. And other than closing the airspace for a short period of time, commercial air traffic was not disrupted. But you're seeing some other things that are also notable. The U.S. will undertake regime change when it perceives that the existing regime threatens core U.S. national security interests.
This also represents another U.S. blow against a Chinese partner in the Western hemisphere following the Trump administration's actions in Panama. The operation also took place on the anniversary of the killing of Iranian Quds Force leader General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 as well as the surrender of Manuel Noriega in 1990.
These are both examples of the long arm of the U.S. government. And certainly, the United States may have thought that the selection of this date would dampen any commemorations by the Iranian government for Soleimani's death in Tehran. Which would have been difficult enough given the ongoing demonstrations in Tehran. But the ripples from this Venezuela operation will be global. And I think the national security strategy puts some meat on the bone with this operation.
The Cipher Brief: Just looking at the intelligence that was needed to pull off an operations like this for a moment, what do you think this says about U.S. intelligence and what would have gone into that for this particular operation?
Roule: Well, it tells you a couple of things. It tells you that first, the intelligence was exquisite and up to date. But it also tells you that the intelligence was integrated into the military operation with an intimacy, with care, so that our military personnel were able to move with extraordinary speed to get to the location as quickly as humanly possible. We've seen this in the past with the operation against Osama bin Laden. This is just another example of the close integration between the U.S. intelligence communication and our amazing and extraordinary special forces personnel. I can't speak highly enough of those extraordinary and humble operators.
This also shows you the breadth of that intelligence community. The intelligence agencies that were cited included, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). So, you're getting a sense of some very broad intelligence capabilities which were brought to bear and then integrated.
The president, I believe, also mentioned that a house had been built in advance. I mean, you're just watching some incredible intelligence capability that was brought to bear by people on the ground over many months. It shows courage, it shows tenacity, it shows you the resources that were pulled together. And it also shows an ability to compartment this information and to prevent a leak. The U.S. government is doing what it's supposed to do. And in a world where we're often complaining about government, the American people and our partners should be gratified that our tax dollars are being well spent. And that the U.S. intelligence community and the military are performing superbly.
Need a daily dose of reality on national and global security issues? Subscriber to The Cipher Brief’s Nightcap newsletter, delivering expert insights on today’s events – right to your inbox. Sign up for free today.
The Cipher Brief: There's a lot of connective tissue between Venezuela and the rest of the world when you consider the oil industry, including China. As an energy expert, can you share what’s top of mind for you on the broader impact on the oil and energy markets?
Roule: Maybe the best way to answer that is to just explain a little bit about the Venezuelan oil system. First, the operation did not occur near Venezuelan oil production. Upstream oil operations are not located near Caracas, although exports and storage are highly sensitive to obviously, as you correctly put it, a U.S. maritime enforcement of a U.S. embargo.
Most of Venezuela's oil production, about two thirds, is derived from what is known as the Orinoco belt. And oil production from this Orinoco belt had fallen to about 498,000 barrels by the end of December, which is about a 25% drop from just a couple of weeks earlier. And it's been shutting down because they're running out of storage space because Venezuela can't export oil because of the blockade. So, they're trying to put the oil anywhere they can. They've put it in their own storage, they've put it in ships that are docked. They're putting it in almost in teacups at this point because they are running out of space to store the oil that they're producing.
Let's talk about the oil that is produced in Venezuela. They produce it from tar sands. It's extra heavy. It's a heavy type of crude oil and there are relatively few refineries that can process this grade of oil. It's difficult to extract. It's expensive to extract. Chinese refineries in 2025 tended to get a majority of Venezuelan exports. That amount ranged from 75 to 90% depending upon the amount. But even here, the Chinese tended to put much of that oil in their own storage. And China and Russia tend to be the two big players in Venezuela. For China, it is transactional. Chinese buyers look at it as a way to purchase cheap oil that they again put in storage. It's about 4% of China's exports and China again, has used a shadow fleet of intermediaries to purchase this oil. If China were to lose access to this, it's a problem. But because much of this has gone into storage and there are other suppliers out there in Saudi Arabia and other places, they could make this up.
Russia's a different story. Russia is an enabler of the Venezuelan oil industry. Because Venezuela's oil is so tar heavy, in essence, they need to import naphtha from Russia and this dilutes the ore and eco output and makes it blendable and then shippable. So, Russia sends in naphtha, it blends the stuff down and then stuff can then be exported. What would happen if suddenly Venezuela is opened up? Well, a couple of things.
First, because the oil market is relatively well supplied, people would look at it and ask, ‘where are the investment opportunities?’ If you look at the places where the world has changed suddenly and investment opportunities occurred, production didn't dramatically change. Let's take Iraq and Libya for example.
In Iraq, it took about a dozen years to get back to the level of pre-Saddam. And at that point, China was a major player. The U.S. is now returning to Iraq. In Libya, we're now a number of years after the fall of Gaddafi, and they are still about 25% below production levels under Gaddafi.
And again, the U.S. is returning. Much of it does depend upon the security of the country and the stability of the country. So, the president's comments about running Venezuela the right way really does strike at the heart of what happens in the oil industry.
The Cipher Brief: Devil’s Advocate here: how does it compete with Texas’ output? What does the U.S. do with that oil? Is it going to be sold to China?
Roule: The president and the Secretary of State have talked about stolen oil. What does this refer to? Is there a U.S. case there? I'll leave it to others to talk about the amounts and so forth but when this is talked about, this refers to a 2007 Venezuela expropriation of what I believe was then Conoco Phillips or ExxonMobil investments. That Venezuela did indeed expropriate. So, there is indeed a legal case of Venezuela nationalization of U.S. assets for which the U.S. was not compensated. If Venezuela's government did change and if U.S. oil companies were to go in, could the oil industry be dramatically changed? Yes, but it would depend upon security.
Maybe my final comment would be that Chevron has been heavily invested there, and they have maintained a very mature and stable outlook for the country. If you hear Chevron’s CEO speak about Chevron's investments, they've been very levelheaded and unflappable about national security events. So, I think you're going to see them stay there as well. And I think when you listen to the president's comments about how the U.S. would run Venezuela, he seemed fairly confident that the U.S. oil industry would play a role there. Which makes one think that there have been some sort of discussions in this regard playing out in some way in the background.
The Cipher Brief: At the most recent Cipher Brief Threat Conference, there was a lot of discussion around the idea of global conflict and some people believe that we are at the precipice of World War III. Certainly everyone agrees that global disruption is at fairly unprecedented levels. What is your thinking on this?
Roule: We are in a different world, but we're in a world of permanent gray zone conflict. But gray zone is defined and very, very differently. Gray zone was once defined by Iranian militias and it was defined by drone attacks or cyberattacks that were non-attributed. But we now have drone attacks or drone flights in Europe that come from God knows where, but they're Russian. We have Chinese routine harassment for more than a decade in the South China Sea. We have routine theft of intellectual property by China and North Korea, which in and of itself is a type of attack against our economy. But it's not necessarily a traditional gray zone attack. Because the people who are often involved in gray zone operations only see a certain number of colors on the palate. But the theft of intellectual property is just another form of attack.
We're in that kind of a world and the people who are running the countries, they don't need to launch a war per se. They need to launch a series of short, sharp conflicts. Or short, sharp attacks. Now they said these could lead to a war if people believe we don't care about certain areas. And I do think there is the issue of what could happen in Taiwan in 2026. That should be a worry for everyone.
Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There is no better place to get clear perspectives from deeply experienced national security experts.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business
OPINION — “I knew the possible danger. It was a very dangerous operation. It was amazing that we had a few injured, but all are in good shape right now, but I knew there was great danger. You got off a helicopter. The helicopters were being shot out. They got on the ground amazing talent and tremendous patriotism, bravery. The bravery was incredible…They got off the helicopter and the bullets were flying all over the place. As you know, one of the helicopters got hit pretty badly, but that we got everything back. Got everything back and nobody killed,” meaning Americans.
That was President Donald Trump speaking Sunday aboard Air Force One on the way back from Florida about what he observed watching the early Saturday morning U.S. raid in Caracas that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
While events in Venezuela are still unfolding and I will discuss some below, I use that quote because it illustrates that deaths of American service members is one thing I believe is high in Trump’s mind as he has in recent months undertaken a series of worldwide military actions.
Trump almost regularly points out that no Americans have been killed in the four months the U.S. has been blowing up alleged narco-trafficking boats. No Americans were lost in the bombing of Iran nuclear facilities.
And despite Trump’s threat that he could put U.S. boots-on-the-ground if needed to “run” Venezuela, there is no immediate indication he has plans to do that.
Instead, it appears Trump’s plan is to “run” Venezuela using what remains of the corrupt Maduro military/police hierarchy as long as they do what Trump wants. To me it recalls Trump as a builder working with questionable union leaders and construction firms to get jobs done.
The Cipher Brief brings expert-level context to national and global security stories. It’s never been more important to understand what’s happening in the world. Upgrade your access to exclusive content by becoming a subscriber.
Just why has President Trump spent time and money, first to negotiate with Maduro to get him to leave, and finally to dramatically oust the Venezuelan President from office?
I divert for a moment.
On Friday, the original beginning of this column was, “Most fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking into the U.S. occurs through official ports of entry along the southwest border, according to DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency).”
That was a quote from a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled, “Illicit Synthetic Drugs: Trafficking Methods, Money Laundering Practices, and Coordination Efforts,” that was sent to Congress and released publicly December 18, 2025.
The GAO’s report, including the finding cited above, focuses attention on fentanyl primarily coming into the U.S. through land ports of entry while the Trump administration made its anti-fentanyl focus on attacking narco-trafficking swift-boats initially from Venezuela, claiming they were headed for the U.S.
More recently, the attacks, and killing of those aboard, have been those in the eastern Pacific.
The New York Times published a story by Carol Rosenberg that discussed what happens when U.S. Coast Guard cutters intercept narco-trafficking boats, seize drugs and capture those aboard – but not kill 115 on 35 speedboats as the U.S. military did last year.
Putting together the December GAO report and the Times story raised some serious questions about the rationality of the Trump administration’s so-called anti-drug program.
Up to that time, interception of drug-carrying boats and interrogation of the crews gave valuable information on drug routes.
However, as The Times noted, “Attorney General Pam Bondi directed [U.S.] prosecutors in February to mostly stop bringing charges against low-level offenders in favor of bigger investigations.” According to The Times, “For the most part, people captured by the Coast Guard in the same smuggling routes the U.S. military is bombing are being repatriated -- either directly, before reaching the United States, or through deportation after briefly being questioned near U.S. ports.”
The Times noted that many earlier captured crew members were “poor, undereducated farmers or fishermen [who] would reach cooperation agreements that offered details of their engagement at the bottom rung of the drug smuggling business in exchange for possible leniency.”
The Times quoted Tampa-lawyer Stephen M. Crawford, who in the past had been assigned to represent defendants captured by the Coast Guard, who said the killing of crew members without prosecution amounted to very dangerous “political theater.”
I could say the same today for what I consider today’s ill-thought-out Trump actions in Venezuela.
What national security news are you missing today? Get full access to your own national security daily brief by upgrading to Subscriber+Member status.
As many others have pointed out, returning democracy to the Venezuelan people was not uppermost in Trump’s mind.
On Saturday, in announcing the raid, Trump told reporters he had not been in contact with Venezuelan Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado. He then went on to say, "I think it'd be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn't have the support or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman but she doesn't have the respect."
What I believe Trump meant was that the Maduro power structure – the Venezuelan Army, Bolivarian National Police and urban paramilitary networks known as colectivos -- remain active and it is they that don’t “respect” Machado.
They are also probably the reason there are no U.S. boots-on-the-ground.
Instead, Trump seems to believe that by keeping major U.S. military forces near Venezuela, he can threaten additional military attacks to keep the ex-Maduro crowd in line.
As Trump put it Sunday on Air Force One, “Venezuela thus far has been very nice, but it helps to have a force like we have. You know, we were ready for a second wave. We were all set to go, but we don't think we're going to need it.”
Apparently it is Venezuela’s oil which is primarily on Trump’s mind.
As with other matters, Trump seems to be living in the past as illustrated when he told reporters over the weekend, “We [the U.S.] had a lot of oil there [in Venezuela]. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”
Nationalization was the culmination of a decades-long effort by Venezuelan administrations of both the right and the left to bring under government control an industry that an earlier leader had largely given away.
American oil companies, including Exxon and Mobil, which merged in 1999, and Gulf Oil, which became Chevron in 1984, were hit hardest. The Dutch giant Shell was also affected. The companies, which had accounted for more than 70 percent of crude oil production in Venezuela, lost roughly $5 billion in assets but were compensated just $1 billion each, according to news stories from that period.
On Sunday, Trump said, “The oil companies are ready to go. They're going to go in, they're going to rebuild the infrastructure. You know, we built it to start off with many years ago.
They took it away. You can't do that. They can't do that with me. They did it with other presidents.”
According to several sources, major oil companies are not eager to spend the years and money at the present time to revive the Venezuelan oil industry, but as with much about the Venezuelan situation, there’s little yet that is predictable.
One potentially dangerous outcome, looming already, is how Trump reads what he so far considers his military success.
On Sunday he made open threats to both Colombia and Cuba.
He called Colombian President Gustavo Petro “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he's not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you?”
And as for Cuba, Trump said, “Cuba always survived because of Venezuela. Now, they won't have that money coming in. They won't have the income coming in.”
He then went on to point out, “You know, a lot of Cubans were killed yesterday. You know that. A lot of Cubans were killed…There was a lot of death on the other side.”
But then Trump quickly added, as I have pointed out before, “No death on our side.”
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.
Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Who's reading this? 500K+ dedicated national security professionals. Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because national security is everyone’s business.
Unsure of what to do with that growing heap of ashes by the fireplace? Why not try composting them. Composting wood ash is an easy and effective way to increase the pH of acidic soil and add nutrients such as calcium and potassium. Read on to learn how and when to use wood ashes in the compost and in your garden.
The post How to Compost Wood Ash from Your Fire appeared first on Gardener's Path.
It’s that time of year again, which is to say, roughly the same time as last year — but never exactly the same time — because it’s Hanukkah… right? Yes! As a genuine Jewish person with access to a lunar calendar, I can assure you that tonight is indeed the first night of the “festival of lights.”
Hanukkah commemorates the military victory of warrior priest Judah “The Hammer” Maccabee’s guerrilla army over the numerically superior forces of the Seleucid Empire and the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s kind of a long story, but here’s the gist: A Syrian king tried to outlaw Jewish worship and claim the Temple — the nucleus of ancient Jewish culture and law — for Hellenistic rituals.
In the end, the victorious Maccabee rebels regained control of the Holy Temple, which contained the menorah, a ceremonial oil lamp that needed to be lit to rededicate the temple for worship. Left with only enough oil to light the sacred lamp of the Holy Temple for one night, the Maccabees fired up the lamp anyway and it stayed lit — for eight days and nights.
Now, if you have enough oil, staying lit for eight days is just a matter of persistence and scheduling. But what if you only have one gram of oil? For me, making one gram of oil last eight days would be nothing short of miraculous. Frankly, I don’t recommend doing this on purpose, but if circumstances require you to be especially economical with your oil, here’s a few tricks — eight of them, because Hanukkah:
Experiment with microdosing — it’s so hot right now anyway. This isn’t exactly advanced calculus here; if you take smaller dabs you’ll use less, which should help stretch out your stash. The nice thing about smaller dabs is they often provide a more accurate and balanced expression of the flavor profile than a huge glob.
Alternately, you can take larger dabs and get the heavy lifting out of the way when it comes to the desired impacts. I mean, if your goal is to get lit every day for eight days you could just portion your gram into eight 1/8-gram globs and take one every day. This method works best if combined with methods #3 and #6 — and all of these work best if you follow method #5.
This is just my pet theory, but I’m convinced the volume of vapor you pull from a dab has more to do with surface area than weight. Hear me out. Based on my extensive personal research, if you take a quarter gram of shatter and roll it up into a ball, it will produce less vapor when dropped on the nail than the same quarter gram pressed out into a thin strip and laid across a larger section of the heating element. This sounds weird, but in my experience it works and the pressing will generally improve the clarity of your shatter.
All you need to do is take some shatter, warm it gently and roll or press it out through a silicone mat or wax paper: I like to sandwich the shatter between two small non-stick mats and use a lighter and/or my hands to heat it slightly, then I use a lip balm tube or a lighter to press it out. This also makes it easier to take a “bigger” dab while using less product.
Assuming you’re taking proper low-temp dabs (because the alternative is dumb and dangerous), you should usually end up with at least a small amount of liquefied oil in your banger. Generally this would probably end up soaked into the ends of a q-tip, but if you’re looking to stretch your stash, you might consider running the torch under the nail for a few seconds, just until you see any activity in the oil, then recap and hit it again. The flavor profile will likely be diminished slightly, but there are still cannabinoids in there, and if you’re so inclined, you can get them.
This is actually the easiest way to stretch your oil out as far as possible. It’s pretty hard to justify taking baby dabs of bland soup, but then again, it’s even harder to justify taking big ones — just don’t dab bland soup. It’s not worth the money you save, because you just end up buying more. It’s like buying one-ply toilet paper at the dollar store; sure you save money, but the poor quality always gets you in the end. And anyway, it’s a celebration! You don’t have to buy the $100-a-gram stuff, but get something tasty and potent — think of it as a present to yourself.
You should really be doing this anyway, but if you’re one of those “no pre-run” people who doesn’t smoke flowers anymore, you should really reconsider. Sure, there’s no substitution for a great dab, but the full spectrum benefits of an old fashioned joint or bong bowl provide a fantastic compliment to the more refined effects and flavors of your oil.
The upside is you’ll have more dabs. The downside is you’ll be dabbing homemade rosin. Your call.
It can’t hurt.
TELL US, how do you make your cannabis concentrates last longer?
The post How to Make One Gram of Oil Last 8 Lit Days appeared first on Cannabis Now.
A one-pot soup meal made with leftovers and greens, this is great for a working day dinner or when you’ve got surprise guests
Part two of the Lettuce Series as I’ve dubbed it was about throwing things into a large pot to put together a soup – the kind that makes life a whole lot better (read: bearable) when your home has been invaded by painters and you are sneezing your head off courtesy allergies. The Chicken Lettuce Soup isn’t a planned recipe but it’s the kind that, after you’ve sampled, you realise needs to be shared with the world. Or the little pockets of the world this blog reaches.
The best thing about this soup is that the mothership liked it and trust me when I say, her liking food that has chicken (she’s developing a dislike for chicken and meat) and lettuce (read part one of the Lettuce Series) made me feel like a parent whose child has accomplished something major in life!
For those of you who’re coming into this rodeo late, check out the Lettuce Sourdough-wich recipe to know all about reverse parenting. And for those of you like all things soup, check out the recipes for Masala Chicken Soup and Pumpkin Carrot & Spring Onion Soup for some inspiration.
A spicy, robust pickle made with garlic and potent red chilli from Nagaland, this pickle will add the good kind of heat to your palate
As an introvert, I tend to avoid stepping into spaces that are traditionally marked as belonging to the ‘family’ – for example the kitchen, the dining area, the family room, etc. But all of that respect for space went flying out of the window in the face of the Khonoma’s bone-numbing cold that had my teeth clattering out unheard of tunes. A and I shuffled into the kitchen looking for something warm to ensure we stayed alive until dinner… and the taste of this garlic chilli pickle made me sit up, quite literally!
Offered rather tentatively by the homestay owner – she was probably afraid to let us face the wrath of the local red chilli that Nagaland is famous for – the sharp, spicy and robust taste opened up the sinuses and had my blood rushing to all those cold-number places.
I am a garlic girl through and through so of course I loved it a lot but oh my my…
Understanding the recipe was a bit of a struggle as the homestay owner grappled with words and terms to explain the process, until we resorted to hand actions. Made with pantry essentials and ingredients that are available in most Indian (and non-Indian) kitchens, the Garlic & Naga Red Chilli Pickle makes for a deliciously fiery achaar to your dal chawal, the drizzle to your sad sabji, the exquisite touch to your sourdough cheese grilled sandwich and more.
I’ve used the local garlic I bought in Khonoma village along with the red chilli powder I picked up from a farmers’ market outside Kigwema village. The mustard seeds, mustard oil and tomato are from the provision store and vegetable vendor a few steps from my home.
And obviously, you won’t have the Naga garlic and chilli so feel free to use whatever you have… I’m sure it’ll taste brilliant!
If you like to keep your refrigerator stocked with condiments that uplift the mundane, check out the recipes for the Apple Chutney, the Mixed Fruit Chaatni as also the Tomato & Dates Chutney.
Pumpkin & potato are tempered with nigella seeds and slow-cooked in mustard oil for a dish that heroes the pumpkin’s sweetness.
Calling all home cooks looking for quick and healthy weekday/weeknight meal ideas – add this pumpkin & potato in mustard oil dish to your repertoire! It’s the kind that comes together in a jiffy, requires just one spice (coz salt and turmeric powder are MUSTS and don’t count) and pairs well with rice or Indian bread of choice.
The Pumpkin & Potato in Mustard Oil is a version of the Kumdo’r Chechki, a traditional Bengali side dish wherein the pumpkin is grated or (extremely) thinly sliced and slowly cooked in its own juices. It’s the kind of dish that celebrates the natural flavours of the vegetable. If you’d like to try a traditional chechki, head over to the recipe for Mulo Chechki (provided radishes are in season).
These decadently delicious chocolate lava cookies use my soft, chewy, almond flour cookie dough and a flowy, chocolate ganache filling that oozes out when you break them in half! (gluten-free and soy-free with nut-free options)
It’s cookie season, and I wanted to make a decadent, chocolatey cookie. And what better idea than to convert molten lava cake into cookie form!
My motto is that baking should be super easy and flexible, so that even if you make a few measuring errors, things still turn out great. Nobody has time to whip up butter and sugar and all that, so I use my trusty almond flour cookie dough, which works every time.
To make this simple dough, you just add all the dry ingredients to a bowl, mix really well, add some melted coconut oil and maple syrup, mix again, and that’s it! You have a dough!
For this recipe, we’ll add cocoa powder to make a chocolate cookie dough. Then, we make a molten chocolate “lava bomb,” which is a melted chocolate ganache that goes inside the cookie. As the cookie bakes, it spreads and traps the chocolate ganache inside. When you break it open, it’s oozy, melty, and so delicious.
Continue reading: Molten Lava Cookies
The post Molten Lava Cookies appeared first on Vegan Richa.
The versatility of soup can be such a beautiful thing. It can be made with four ingredients or 40, completed in 15 minutes or simmered over several hours. In summertime soups are served deliciously chilled, like a supremely refreshing gazpacho — but most of the time they are steaming hot and soul satisfying, like this twice-medicated vegetable soup. With the addition of infused olive oil, this recipe is a keeper.
A hearty soup, a simple salad and some crusty bread make for a fabulous winter meal. Vegetable soup is as simple to make as it is delicious. Just fill a sauce pot with any combination of vegetables, some liquid to cover, a bunch of your favorite fresh herbs and spices, maybe a can of your favorite legume and simmer. Nine times out of 10, it’ll be tasty. And if it’s not, add some shredded cheese, some sour cream and maybe some sriracha.
To add some protein, consider adding firm tofu cubes, sliced cooked sausage, cooked chicken or bacon crisps.
Ingredients
2-3 tablespoons canna-olive oil
2 cups shredded cabbage
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
1 large onion, sliced
1 cup green beans, trimmed and cut in pieces
1 cup grape tomatoes (cut in half if large)
3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
5 ounces kale, rinsed, dried, stacked and sliced
1 cup corn, frozen
½ cup peas, frozen
2 quarts water
2 cans beans (1 can white northern, 1 can pinto) rinsed and drained
Ingredients
2 tablespoons canna-oil
1 cup bread cubes
4 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
1. Heat the canna-olive oil in a large saucepan. Sauté the cabbage, carrots, onion, green beans, grape tomatoes, garlic and kale. Sauté for 8 to 10 minutes.
2. Add the corn and peas and stir. Add the water, followed by the rinsed beans. Allow to simmer for 35 to 40 minutes.
3. Heat the remaining canna-olive oil in a small sauté pan. Cook the bread cubes until golden brown.
4. Divide the soup into bowls, top with croutons and shave the Parmesan over the bowls of soup.
Originally published in issue 13 of Cannabis Now Magazine.
The post Vegetable Soup with Medicated Garlic Croutons appeared first on Cannabis Now.
DEEP DIVE – By any traditional definition, the city of Ryazan doesn’t belong on a list of battlegrounds in the Ukraine war. There are no Ukrainian soldiers or tanks deployed there, and it’s in western Russia, roughly 600 miles from the active front lines of Pokrovsk or Kupiansk.
But residents and officials in Ryazan – population 550,000 – wouldn’t be surprised to find their city on such a list. Ukraine has attacked Ryazan at least a half dozen times, as part of an escalating drone-and-missile campaign against Russia’s oil sector. Most recently, an oil refinery in Ryazan – Russia’s fourth-largest – was forced to shut down after an Oct. 23 attack by Ukrainian drones.
Ryazan is hardly alone.
Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, head of the Ukrainian Security Service, said last week that Ukraine has carried out more than 160 successful attacks on Russian refineries and other energy targets this year; an Open Source Centre investigation identified more than 90 strikes between Aug. 2 and Oct. 14. In the last week alone, Ukraine has struck an oil terminal and tanker in Russia’s Black Sea port of Tuapse; energy facilities in Russia's Oryol, Vladimir, and Yaroslavl regions; and the Koltsevoy, or “ring,” pipeline, which links refineries in Moscow, Ryazan, and Nizhny Novgorod, and supplies fuel to the Russian military. Earlier strikes damaged one of Russia's biggest oil refineries near St. Petersburg, and perhaps most impressive – from the Ukrainian point of view – the campaign has reached as far as the Siberian city of Tyumen, some 1200 miles east of Moscow.
Stretching the conventional notion of front lines is clearly part of the Ukrainian strategy; the strikes have forced the Kremlin to worry about drone and missile attacks across a broad swath of Russian territory. But the main aim is to hurt the Russian oil sector – the country’s richest revenue source, and a key reason why the Kremlin has been able to maintain the funding of its war machine.
“Ukraine’s theory of victory now includes destroying Russia’s energy sector,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Forces in Europe, told The Cipher Brief. “They’ve developed capabilities that can reach great distances with precision, exposing Russia’s vulnerability – its inability to protect critical infrastructure across its vast landscape.”
Last week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to intensify the pace and scope of the campaign. “We must work every day to weaken the Russians. Their money for the war comes from oil refining,” Zelensky said in an Oct. 27 address to the nation. “The most effective sanctions - the ones that work the fastest - are the fires at Russia’s oil refineries, its terminals, oil depots.”
Zelensky also noted that 90 percent of the strikes have been carried out by Ukrainian-made drones and missiles – a not-so-subtle message to Europe and the U.S.: get us more of your long-range weapons, and we can help bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
“It’s very impressive,” said Balazs Jarabik, a former European Union diplomat and analyst for RPolitik, said of Ukraine’s campaign against the Russian energy sector. In an interview with The Cipher Brief, Jarabik said the attacks have “had an impact in terms of getting headlines, making the Russian war effort more expensive, and creating shortages so the Russian people feel the pain of the war.”
That’s also the aim of the recent U.S. sanctions against energy giants Rosneft and Lukoil, the first American economic penalties imposed on Russia since Donald Trump returned to office. The Treasury Department said the sanctions would “increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine.”
While Ukrainian officials have welcomed the sanctions, they have also said that their drone and missile attacks pack a more powerful punch.
“Our strikes have already had more impact than sanctions,” Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s head of Military Intelligence, said on Telegram following last week’s spate of attacks.
For their part, Putin and other Russian officials have downplayed the impact of the strikes while at the same time warning that they are dangerously escalatory. The Kremlin has also said that neither the attacks nor the sanctions will move them to change course in the war.
Experts say both sides may be right – that in the short term, the Kremlin can probably ride out the impact of the Ukrainian campaign, but that Russia may feel significant pain if the sanctions are enforced and the oil sector strikes continue.
“Russia’s oil refineries are a bit like a man who is being repeatedly punched,” Sergey Vakulenko, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote in a recent assessment for Carnegie Politika. “He will not die from one punch, or even half a dozen punches. But it becomes harder and harder for him to recover after each subsequent blow. Although no single punch is fatal, he could end up being beaten to death.”
Need a daily dose of reality on national and global security issues? Subscriber to The Cipher Brief’s Nightcap newsletter, delivering expert insights on today’s events – right to your inbox. Sign up for free today.
Assessing the damage
To date, the Ukrainian strikes have hit 21 of Russia's 38 large oil refineries, according to the BBC, and several have been struck more than once. Roughly 20% of the nation’s refining capacity has been damaged or destroyed, and last month the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that Russia's revenues from crude oil and refined products had fallen to their lowest level in a decade – excluding the period immediately following the COVID-19 outbreak.
"Persistent attacks on Russian energy infrastructure have cut Russian crude processing by an estimated 500,000 barrels per day, resulting in domestic fuel shortages and lower product exports," the IEA said. In an accompanying forecast, the agency said that if the sanctions remain in place and the attacks continue – even without Zelensky’s promised scaling-up of their cadence – the impact to Russia’s refining would stretch to at least mid-2026.
Beyond the macroeconomic impact, the Ukrainian campaign has also been felt by Russian citizens, in the form of higher fuel prices and – in some regions – shortages and long lines for gas.
“The economic impact of strikes against Russian energy infrastructure is beginning to be felt outside of Moscow, as Russia diverts available energy from the regions to keep Moscow supplied,” Rob Dannenberg, a former chief of the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division, wrote last week in The Cipher Brief. “There are shortages and energy price hikes that the Kremlin can no longer conceal.”
And in a broader reflection of Russia’s economic woes, this week the central bank downgraded the country’s growth forecast. Experts say the sanctions and Ukrainian strikes are a big part of the problem for Moscow.
“Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure are strategically meaningful and increasingly so,” Jacek Siewiera, a former head of Poland’s National Security Bureau, told The Cipher Brief. He said the strikes are serving three strategic functions: forcing Russia to divert efforts to rear-area defense; raising the overall cost of war by creating new logistical costs inside Russia; and a less tangible, more symbolic impact.
“These attacks send a message to Moscow and its economy that Ukraine – and its backers – can reach deep,” Siewiera said. “That has symbolic as well as material value.”
What comes next
Might the Ukrainian campaign alter the course of the war? Experts are divided on the question.
On the one hand, dozens of Russian oil sector targets are now within reach of Ukrainian missiles and drones – and it’s clear that Zelensky’s vow to expand and intensify the campaign is underway. An already-bruised industry in Russia is surely girding for more punishment.
But several experts said that in order to sustain the tempo and volume of the attacks, Ukraine will need help from the West or a significant boost to its own capabilities.
“Ukraine has made impressive inroads but it’s not yet clear whether the strikes will fundamentally degrade Russia’s war-fighting capacity,” Siewiera said. He and others echoed Zelensky’s point – that the West should support Ukraine’s deep-strike capabilities to boost the impact of the current attacks, and improve the odds that they will effect change in Moscow. Until then, Siewiera said, it’s unlikely that the campaign can deliver “a knockout blow.”
Jarabik agreed, noting that Ukrainian drones typically carry payloads of only 50-60 kilograms (roughly 110-130 pounds); long-range missile systems can inflict far greater damage. He and others said that much will depend on the success of the Ukrainian-made Flamingo missile – which has been touted as a homegrown alternative to western long-range weapons. Officials say the Flamingo is now operational, and that it can carry more than 1,000 kilos (2000+ pounds), with a range of roughly 1800 miles.
“I think we are going to see the Ukrainian strikes increasing,” Jarabik said. “The big question here is whether Ukrainians are going to have the missile capabilities to scale the attack.” At the current rate, he said, Ukraine cannot compel the Kremlin to alter its approach. “So far, neither the sanctions nor this (campaign of strikes) is actually enough to bring the end of the war. Russia has the means to continue.”
All those interviewed for this piece agreed that the success of the Ukrainian campaign will depend on whether Ukraine can hit more targets, more frequently, and with heavier payloads.
“As Ukraine continues to improve its long-range precision strike capability – and if the West adds its own weapons to Ukraine’s arsenal – the impact is going to increase significantly,” Lt. Gen. Hodges said. And that, he said, “could lead to a successful outcome for Ukraine.”
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.
Most people are familiar with the industrial and commercial usefulness of hemp for making clothing, paper, plastic, fuel and even hempcrete, which can be used to build homes and other structures. Hemp’s ability to enrich the soil that it’s grown in with nitrogen and other nutrients, as well as the fact that it grows quicker than trees and produces recyclable and biodegradable products, also makes it an environmentally friendly crop.
This fibrous plant produces edible seeds — sometimes referred to as hemp hearts — which are a great source of vegan, plant-based protein. They can be eaten or pressed into a deeply nourishing oil for use in all kinds of skincare staples like cleansers, lotions, face masks, eye cream and makeup products from mascara to lip gloss.
The nutritional properties of this wondrous oil read like a grocery list of all the best things to put on your skin. It’s rich in protein, polyunsaturated fatty acids, insoluble fiber, vitamin E, potassium, magnesium, iron, zinc, calcium and phosphorus. All of these nutrients are good for you inside and out and can make a major impact on the overall appearance of your skin whether you consume hemp seeds or apply hempseed oil topically in a product. Hempseed oil’s balanced ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids improves cardiovascular function, supports the immune system and promotes healthy flow in the intestines.
Unlike other medicated, cannabis-infused topicals that lots of people use to help reduce pain, aching muscles and tension throughout the body, hempseed oil products contain almost no traces of THC, which make them completely legal and easily accessible to anyone in any state, regardless of the legislation surrounding cannabis use.
If you have skin issues that you’re looking for some assistance with, check out all the ways hempseed oil can make a difference and consider adding it to your daily skincare routine.
Hemp oil is a humectant that not only draws moisture to the skin, but also helps the skin retain and preserve moisture, reducing dryness overtime. It’s easily absorbed by the skin and can penetrate the epidermis and subdermal layers for deep relief that can stop itching and skin irritations like eczema, which can leave your skin looking and feeling very parched.
Hempseed oil contains all 21 known amino acids that play a role in helping your skin stay plump, firm and looking youthful. Most importantly, hempseed oil has oleic acid that can help to reduce atopic dermatitis and it contains linoleic acid, which can slow down signs of aging. Regular use can regenerate and energize the skin’s natural protective layer that can become dull, porous or rough over time.
Because hempseed oil has a composition that’s incredibly similar to lipids produced by the skin’s epidermal cells, it’s suitable for all skin types whether your skin is dry, oily, combination or sensitive. It’s also non-comedogenic, meaning that it softens and smooths skin without the risk of clogging pores, which can cause unsightly blackheads due to excess oil on the surface.
This powerful anti-inflammatory also has antioxidant properties that can balance the skin’s natural sebum production and even-out skin tone. When combined with a good cleanser, hempseed oil can reduce and prevent acne caused by dead skin cells, dirt buildup or hormonal changes.
Originally published in Issue 30 of Cannabis Now. LEARN MORE
TELL US, have you ever tried hemp oil?
The post Hempseed Oil Inside & Out appeared first on Cannabis Now.
A cozy, hands-off, no sauté mushroom potato casserole that needs just 1 pan. Layers of rich mushroom gravy with beans and veggies, layered with crisp garlic herb potatoes that take only minutes to put together as the oven does all the work. (gluten-free with soy-free and nut-free options)
It’s fall, and it’s time for some comfort food. And what’s more comforting than this casserole, which has a stewy mushroom gravy with beans and veggies, topped with potatoes smothered in garlic butter? There are lots of fall herbs, like fresh thyme and sage, and it all comes together really quickly.
This is a super easy one-pan casserole. No need to sauté or stand around the kitchen for long periods of time cooking the onions and mushrooms. Everything goes right into the baking dish, and the oven does all the work.
Once the mushroom and onions are cooked, add the beans, herbs and stew ingredients and top them with some sliced potato and bake, and thats it. You get all the fall flavors and a dish that reminds of mashed potatoes and mushroom bourguignon w/o all the work.
It’s comforting, stewy, and perfect for a fall dinner with your family, served with a side salad, garlicky dinner rolls, or some crusty bakery bread. Or serve it however else you like!
Continue reading: 1-Pan Mushroom Potato Casserole
The post 1-Pan Mushroom Potato Casserole appeared first on Vegan Richa.
Want to help your garden rest well this winter? Winter mulching is a great way to prolong harvests, improve soil quality, and protect overwintering plants by insulating soil with organic materials. Learn how to use mulch to better support perennials and annual crops this winter. Read more now.
The post How to Use Winter Mulch to Protect Plants in Cold Weather appeared first on Gardener's Path.
This air fryer sesame chicken has been a life changing discovery! Being an avid fan of Asian chicken recipes, I was badly missing them as they are mostly all deep-fried which I am avoiding due to my fatloss targets; but not any more thanks to this incredible air fryer sesame chicken recipe!
The air fryer sesame chicken is a simple & quick high-protein yet low-calorie recipe which can be relished as a fulfilling meal with rice or as a quick snack on its own while you reminisce the festive memories!
What is air fryer sesame chicken?
Sesame chicken is an Asian-cuisine-inspired recipe that was invented in North America and has become super popular thanks to its flavor, taste and ease of prep!
Now like any other Asian stir fried recipe, a typical sesame chicken is also fried in a generous amount of oil before being tossed in the flavorful sauce.
The sauce! Yes, that’s the USP of this classic sesame chicken!
To recreate that same incredibly mouthwatering saucy sesame chicken dish without the load of oil, I have this air fryer sesame chicken for you today!
About 4 to 5 servings of chicken is air fried in just a couple of tablespoons of oil which means you can enjoy this restaurant style air fryer sesame chicken at home absolutely guilt-free!
One small tweak I did in my sesame chicken sauce is that I have reduced the sweet element in it. Many sesame chicken recipes have a generous amount of honey in it which I have completely omitted.
During my short stay in the US a few years ago, I realized that the Asian/Chinese dishes are more on the sweeter side there which is not what I am very fond of and neither is my better half.
So I just used a small amount of brown sugar for just that subtle hint of sweetness which complements the savoriness and tartness beautifully.
The post Air Fryer Sesame Chicken for Weight Loss | Easy Crispy Sesame Chicken in Air Fryer first appeared on Flavor Quotient.
DEEP DIVE – Looking at the recent headlines from Russia, this much seems clear: the West’s sanctions against the country are finally working.
Oil revenues have fallen dramatically. Growth is anemic – official forecasts for this year have dropped from 2.5% to 1%. The budget released this week cuts military spending for the first time since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and while Vladimir Putin had promised no tax increases, the Kremlin now plans to raise the value-added tax to a staggering 22% and boost levies on businesses as well. Meanwhile, Russia has drained its rainy-day National Welfare Fund; the fund’s liquid assets have dipped by two-thirds since the war began.
President Donald Trump’s claim last week that Russia was in “big financial trouble” looks only slightly hyperbolic – and it also looks like evidence that after more than three and a half years of war, the sanctions are punishing Russia’s economy and the Kremlin’s war coffers.
But then there is the other news.
In the past week, Moscow has won fresh pledges from India and China to keep buying Russian oil and other sanctioned goods; China actually vowed to “elevate” its energy cooperation with Russia. A September report found that Russia’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers has proved a highly effective sanctions workaround. And for all of Trump’s threats of fresh sanctions, his administration has yet to pull the trigger.
For its part, Moscow says no sanctions will alter the course of its war against Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month that sanctions had been “absolutely useless” in changing Russia’s stance.
So which is it? Are sanctions having the desired effect? Or are they a fundamentally weak lever unlikely to change Russian behavior?
“The question is, what did you want sanctions to do?” Thomas Graham, a long-time Russia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told The Cipher Brief. “If the goal was to cause Russia to rethink what it's doing in Ukraine to pull back from its aggression, the short answer is no… That said, it's also clear that the sanctions have raised the cost (for Russia) of continuing the conflict.”
“Sanctions are a slow-burn tool,” Gonzalo Saiz, a Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told The Cipher Brief. “They aren’t bringing about the collapse of the Kremlin or the Russian economy, but Russia is suffering quite significantly.”
What 6,000+ sanctions have accomplished
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it was met with an early beating on the battlefield and a raft of economic penalties from a surprisingly unified group of western nations. As early as the summer of 2022, experts were forecasting a Russian economic meltdown.
The U.S. alone sanctioned some 6,000 individuals and companies with links to the war effort. The European Union has implemented 18 sanctions packages; last week it proposed a 19th round. The measures have targeted Russia’s financial, military and energy sectors.
Some of the impact is clear and quantifiable. Since the February 2022 invasion, more than 1,300 international companies have scaled back operations in Russia and some 500 have left entirely, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. The firms that left represented about $109 billion in annual revenue. Several Russian banks were barred from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the interbank messaging service that processes international payments.
“The investment community has outright abandoned Russian assets, and foreign capital investment is essentially gone at this point,” Daniel Tannebaum, a former U.S. Treasury official who leads anti-financial crime efforts at Oliver Wyman, told The Cipher Brief. “20 years ago, Russia was growing its economy, becoming more of a global player – that day really is done.”
The U.S. and Europe also went after Russia’s energy sector – a source of at least $240 billion in revenues in the year before the invasion. The EU imposed an embargo on most Russian crude oil, and the U.S. and its G-7 allies capped the price other countries could pay for Russian crude oil. Earlier this year, the EU pledged to fully end its imports of Russian gas.
While Russia has found several workarounds, its oil revenues have fallen. The latest forecast for this year is $200 billion.
The oil sector has also been hurt by the war itself. Last month, as Ukraine stepped up drone attacks against Russian energy infrastructure, Reuters reported that the damage had cut Russian oil refining by almost a fifth, and reduced shipments from key ports. The Kremlin has responded by banning some diesel fuel exports and extending a gasoline export ban through the end of 2025. Sanctions have also cut Russian access to advanced drilling tools and other oil industry technology – all part of what the Wall Street Journal referred to as “The Slow Demise of Russian Oil.”
Beyond the oil sector, the Russian economy is showing across-the-board weakness, with implications for the war as well.
“Russia has been heavily reliant on North Korea for almost a year for military support, both in the form of munitions and soldiers,” Tannebaum said. “That doesn't strike me as a signal of anything that's going so well.”
The Cipher Brief Threat Conference is happening October 19-22 in Sea Island, GA. The world's leading minds on national security from both the public and private sectors will be there. Will you? Apply for a seat at the table today.
The Kremlin workarounds
Taken together, the pileup of economic danger signs would seem to
support Trump’s statement that Moscow is in “big financial trouble”. Last month Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went further, suggesting that a new round of sanctions would bring the “full collapse” of Russia’s economy.
But it’s not clear that those new sanctions are coming. And for a variety of reasons, experts see neither an imminent collapse nor any likelihood that Putin will soon slow his war effort.
“The fact that Putin continues his war despite 19 rounds of EU sanctions, and after more than three years, is a clear sign of policy failure,” Clayton Siegle, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told The Cipher Brief. “President Trump’s August ultimatum for Putin to end the war or face severe consequences changed nothing.”
Experts say that “failure” has many roots. For one, Putin prepared the Russian economy for the sanctions. Prior to the 2022 invasion, Russia spent years stashing away more than $600 billion in central bank reserves, only half of which are now subject to Western sanctions. Less than a month before he ordered his troops into Ukraine, he cemented a new partnership with China – which has proved to be a critical customer for Russian oil and other items on the sanction lists.
“We have to remember, this was one of the largest economies in the world up until three years ago,” Tannebaum said. “This wasn't Iran, this wasn't a hermit kingdom like North Korea. To truly atrophy this economy was always going to take time. It was always like a vice grip where you just keep tightening the pressure. Unfortunately, we haven't tightened it enough.”
After Russia’s early setbacks in Ukraine, Putin put his country on a war footing that included a military-spending-induced boom in 2023-24. That gave the economy an artificial but powerful jolt – Russia’s economy grew by more than 4% in that period, a higher rate than the U.S.
“From a macroeconomic standpoint, (Russia) was actually in very good shape for this massive invasion of Ukraine,” Graham said, adding that the wartime boost raised wages and stimulated poorer regions of the country.
“You put all of this together and you still have a Kremlin that is able to maintain the necessary level of public support, and raise the money that it needs to continue this conflict.”
Russia has also benefited from lax enforcement of the sanctions, and clever workarounds of its own.
The New York Times reported recently that several global financial institutions, particularly in China and the UAE, have faced no consequences for facilitating Russian transactions. The reason? A concern that sanctioning these banks – China’s in particular – would cripple international trade and damage global supply chains.
And while the oil sector has taken a big hit, the revenues keep coming.
In 2023, China imported record amounts of Russian energy, and India, Turkey, and some members of the EU have also continued to purchase Russian oil and LNG. Europe still imports nearly a fifth of its gas from Russia – that plan to wean the continent off Russian fossil fuels won’t come to fruition until 2027.
Sanction-busters: 1,000 aging tankers
Russia has also made extensive and profitable use of the so-called “shadow fleet,” vessels carrying illegal Russian oil exports via a complex web of transshipments. These ships are typically older, with questionable ownership, flying third-country flags and often sending false location information – all meant to hide their connections to Russia. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, the shadow fleet now numbers nearly 1,000 vessels and accounts for about 17 percent of oil tankers sailing today.
In a September report, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) said that governance of the shadow fleet must be "radically improved." Saiz, a co-author of the report, said the fleet remained “a vital lifeline” for Russia.
“The ease with which vessels can obtain flags without scrutiny, avoid ownership transparency and escape enforcement actions has created the conditions for an entire parallel shipping ecosystem,” the report said.
The EU’s most recent sanctions package includes a new effort to target the shadow fleet, identifying more than 500 vessels and adding them to its sanction lists. This would presumably make ports less willing to work with them. But Saiz and other experts say Russia continues to add vessels to take the place of ships on the lists.
Sign up for the Cyber Initiatives Group Sunday newsletter, delivering expert-level insights on the cyber and tech stories of the day – directly to your inbox. Sign up for the CIG newsletter today.
New and improved sanctions?
Certainly the sanctions haven’t succeeded in making Putin a global pariah. Last month, the Russian leader hosted representatives from more than 70 countries at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. That same week, Putin traveled to Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war. Putin stood alongside Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi, and announced that China and Russia had agreed to build a pipeline that would send Russian gas from Siberia to China.
For now, the U.S. intelligence community’s threat assessment – issued in March – looks accurate. “Russia has proven adaptable and resilient, in part because of the expanded backing of China, Iran, and North Korea,” the report said. “Russia has shown it can navigate substantial economic challenges resulting from the ongoing drains of the war, Western cost imposition, and high inflation and interest rates, for at least the near term by using financial and import substitution workarounds.”
Might a new round of sanctions change things?
Trump has continued to threaten new penalties against Russia, and Bessent’s “full collapse” remark came with a claim that the economic troubles would force Putin to negotiate.
“A lot of that is just rhetoric from Secretary Bessent,” Tannebaum said. “Let's be very clear, this administration has not imposed a single sanction on anyone related to the war in Ukraine…We're long past time for words on this.”
“It's hard for me to imagine a set of sanctions that would lead to the collapse of the Russian economy,” Graham said of Bessent’s claim, and he added a cautionary note. “That begs the question: are we really interested in the collapse of the Russian economy? Chaos in Russia, from the standpoint of US national interest, is really not a good thing.”
Graham, who served in the early 2000s as Senior Director for Russia at the National Security Council, noted that Russia still has 5-6,000 nuclear warheads, and recalled that as the Soviet Union was unraveling, the U.S. was worried about a resulting economic calamity.
“We want Russia to be weaker,” he said. “We want it not to be able to prosecute this war at the intensity it has up to this point, but crippling or crashing the Russian economy has first- and second-order consequences that are actually quite negative from the standpoint of U.S. national interests.”
“Sanctions have hurt the Russian economy,” Gen. Phillip Breedlove, a former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, told The Cipher Brief, “but they have never changed Russian actions on the battlefield… There's a whole host of things we could do that would truly bring Russia to their knees and we haven't done it.”
Experts agree on a short list of measures that might move the needle when it comes to Russia’s prosecution of the war: imposing secondary sanctions aggressively against buyers of Russian oil – as Tannebaum said, “really forcing third countries to make a choice between Russia and a decent swath of humanity”; boosting enforcement for the financial-sector sanctions; better policing of the “shadow fleet” traffic in Russian oil; and – an idea that has been discussed for years – seizing the roughly $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets frozen in the West.
The latter is controversial; it has never been done, and opponents argue that it would violate a long-standing principle of global finance.
“There is absolutely a precedent of not trying to cross that line of seizing a sovereign's assets,” Tannebaum said, but then he added: “You also don't see a sovereign invade another sovereign in the 21st century.”
Siegle has argued that in addition to the secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil, a surcharge should be imposed on every barrel of imported Russian oil, in return for the waiving of those tariffs.
“Russia is still making enough from oil sales, those sold on the G-7-compliant market and those via the shadow fleet,” Siegle said. “This new surcharge would crush Moscow’s oil revenues and provide a new cash flow that could be used to confront Putin and defend Ukraine.”
Graham says that no economic sanctions will match the power of effective military aid to Ukraine.
“It's the battlefield that's critical here, not sanctions, particularly if we're looking at the near term,” Graham said. “If Russia is not making progress in the actual battle, that is something that is going to lead to reconsideration in the Kremlin of whether it makes sense to continue this horrific loss.”
Sanctions busting 101
Russia has one more answer to the West’s sanctions, and it comes from an unlikely place: the university campus.
Russia’s elite Higher School of Economics has created a master’s program focused on sanctions evasion. The two-year course, taught in Russian and English, trains students to navigate Western sanctions and untangle compliance issues for Russian firms. Annual tuition: $6,260.
Igor Lipsits, a former professor at the university, told Russian media that “there’s a recognition that sanctions are here to stay. People are expected to learn how to work around them.”
Tannebaum said the degree program was one more piece of evidence to suggest that sanctions were hurting the country. “If they're not hurting them, why are you teaching people how to evade sanctions?”
Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There is no better place to get clear perspectives from deeply experienced national security experts.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.
A one-pot soup meal made with leftovers and greens, this is great for a working day dinner or when you’ve got surprise guests
Part two of the Lettuce Series as I’ve dubbed it was about throwing things into a large pot to put together a soup – the kind that makes life a whole lot better (read: bearable) when your home has been invaded by painters and you are sneezing your head off courtesy allergies. The Chicken Lettuce Soup isn’t a planned recipe but it’s the kind that, after you’ve sampled, you realise needs to be shared with the world. Or the little pockets of the world this blog reaches.
The best thing about this soup is that the mothership liked it and trust me when I say, her liking food that has chicken (she’s developing a dislike for chicken and meat) and lettuce (read part one of the Lettuce Series) made me feel like a parent whose child has accomplished something major in life!
For those of you who’re coming into this rodeo late, check out the Lettuce Sourdough-wich recipe to know all about reverse parenting. And for those of you like all things soup, check out the recipes for Masala Chicken Soup and Pumpkin Carrot & Spring Onion Soup for some inspiration.
Do let me know if you try this recipe! Leave a comment and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram at from.the.corner.table and hashtag it #fromthecornertable. I’d love to see it
For regular updates on recipes, recommendations on things to read and watch and ramblings that make sense, subscribe to the newsletter – you’ll find the form in the sidebar if viewing on a screen and at the bottom if viewing on the phone. Since spamming or flooding your inbox is a huge no for me, these newsletters go out only when I’ve put up a new post or sometimes, once in a month only.
A one-pot soup meal made with leftovers and greens, this is great for a working day dinner
Login