Washington’s Selective Sovereignty

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THE 592 GUARDIAN

ACCOUNTABILITY◊TRANSPARENCY ◊ INTEGRITYY◊ GEORGETOWN, GUYANA

EDITORIAL

Washington’s Selective Sovereignty

The Secretary of State’s campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court asks the world to accept a jurisdiction Washington polices for others but refuses for itself — a demand small states like Guyana should recognize immediately, because we have heard it before.

JULY 2026

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has published a declaration of war against the International Criminal Court, framing the institution as an assault on American sovereignty and pledging to “dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary.” The argument is dressed in the language of constitutional fidelity and revolutionary inheritance. Strip away the rhetoric, however, and what remains is a simpler proposition: the world’s most powerful state wants the benefits of an international accountability architecture — using it to legitimize sanctions, indictments and diplomatic pressure against Sudanese, Russian and other officials — while claiming permanent immunity from that same architecture for itself.

This is not a new argument, and it is not one that small, resource-dependent states like Guyana can afford to treat as a distant American squabble. The doctrine Washington is asserting — that a state may stand outside the very legal order it invokes against others, on the grounds that its own institutions are sufficient and its own conduct beyond meaningful external review — is the same doctrine that has, in various forms, justified extractive contracts written to Guyana’s disadvantage, oversight bodies stripped of teeth, and accountability mechanisms treated as optional once the powerful party has secured what it wanted.

THE CASE RUBIO DOES NOT MAKE

The Secretary’s op-ed is legally coherent on one narrow point: the United States never ratified the Rome Statute, and a state that has not consented to a treaty’s jurisdiction has a defensible claim to reject it. President Clinton declined to submit the treaty for Senate ratification; a bipartisan Senate majority subsequently passed legislation authorizing the president to use force, if necessary, to prevent the detention of American citizens by the Court. These are facts, not fabrications, and this news outlet does not dispute them.

What the Secretary’s argument omits is everything that complicates it. The United States has, across decades, selectively embraced international tribunals when they served its interests — Nuremberg, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ad hoc bodies convened with Washington’s blessing and often its funding. The objection, then, has never truly been to the principle of international criminal accountability. It has been to the application of that principle to Americans. Sovereignty, in this framing, is not a universal right claimed equally by all 125 ICC member states — it is a privilege reserved for the powerful, extended selectively to smaller states when their compliance is useful and withdrawn the moment scrutiny turns homeward.

A state that champions accountability for Khartoum and Moscow, while declaring itself permanently exempt from the same court, is not defending sovereignty. It is asserting a hierarchy.

COMPLEMENTARITY, NOT CONQUEST

It is also worth stating plainly what the Rome Statute actually requires, since the Secretary’s language of a court with “near-unlimited reach” obscures rather than clarifies. The ICC operates on a principle of complementarity: it may act only where a state is unwilling or genuinely unable to prosecute serious crimes through its own courts. This is not a tribunal seeking to supplant the American judicial system. It is a backstop designed for precisely the circumstance the Secretary insists could never occur — a state declining, for reasons of political convenience, to hold its own personnel to account.

Reasonable critics, including many who support the Court’s existence, have raised legitimate concerns about prosecutorial overreach — particularly the extension of jurisdiction over nationals of non-member states through the territorial acts of member states, as in the Afghanistan and Palestine matters. These are genuine questions of institutional design deserving serious reform debate. They are not, however, the same as the categorical claim Secretary Rubio advances: that any external review of American state conduct is inherently illegitimate. One is an argument about calibration. The other is an argument for exemption.

GUYANA’S STAKE IN THIS FIGHT

Readers of this publication will recognize the shape of this argument because they have watched Georgetown deploy versions of it domestically. When the Guyana Elections Commission’s composition is disputed, when the Auditor General’s findings on state contracts are met with silence rather than answers, when the Public Accounts Committee cannot achieve quorum, when a Commission of Inquiry into presidential landholding is demanded by senior counsel and ignored by the state — the underlying claim is identical to Washington’s. It is the claim that domestic institutions, controlled by domestic power, are sufficient unto themselves, and that external or independent scrutiny is an affront rather than a safeguard.

Small states do not have the luxury of asserting this doctrine and being believed. Guyana’s institutional credibility, its capacity to attract investment on fair terms, and its standing in CARICOM and before bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights all depend on accepting — not resisting — external accountability mechanisms as a complement to weak or captured domestic ones. Washington’s attempt to exempt itself from the very architecture it uses to discipline weaker states is not merely hypocritical. It is a preview of the argument every unaccountable power, in every jurisdiction, eventually makes: that scrutiny is for others.

WHERE THIS PUBLICATION STANDS

This news outlet takes no position on whether any specific American service member, officer or official has committed a prosecutable offense; that determination belongs to evidence and due process, not to editorial pages on either side of the debate. But the structural argument advanced in Secretary Rubio’s essay — that a state’s power should determine its exposure to accountability, rather than the reverse — is one this publication has spent years opposing in the Guyanese context, and we will not pretend it becomes principled simply because it is dressed in the language of American revolutionary inheritance.

The test of any accountability framework, international or domestic, is whether it applies to the powerful as readily as to the weak. Secretary Rubio’s campaign fails that test by design. Small states watching Washington’s brick-by-brick demolition of the ICC should understand precisely what is being modeled for them, and should decline the invitation to consider it sovereignty rather than what it is: the oldest argument the powerful have ever made against being watched.

— The Board

The Strait, the Silence, and the Small State’s Stake

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THE 592 GUARDIAN

EDITORIAL

The Strait, the Silence, and the Small State’s Stake

Why a war Guyanese have stopped watching is still writing our energy bill

There is a particular danger in a war that stops being new. For four and a half months the United States and Iran have traded strikes, ceasefires, and violations of ceasefires over a stretch of water 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, and somewhere in the last several weeks the story slipped out of the ordinary Guyanese news diet. It did not slip because it ended. It slipped because it became familiar, and familiarity is precisely the condition an editor should distrust most.

This week the war resumed in earnest. Iranian forces struck three commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz — a Qatari LNG carrier and a Saudi crude tanker among them — prompting the United States to strike more than eighty targets inside Iran and Iran to fire back at American positions in Bahrain and Kuwait. Washington revoked the sanctions relief it had extended to Iranian oil exports. President Trump declared, in the blunt style that has become his signature on this file, that the ceasefire brokered on 17 June was “over.” By Friday he was saying the two sides had agreed to talk again while insisting the ceasefire itself remained dead. Iran’s foreign ministry, for its part, denied requesting any such talks at all. This is not the language of resolution. It is the language of a conflict that has learned to breathe in cycles — strike, pause, strike again — without ever fully exhaling.

A chokepoint became a weapon

What makes this moment different from the war’s opening act in February is the nature of the leverage now in dispute. This is no longer, principally, a fight over Iran’s nuclear program or its missile arsenal, though both remain unresolved. It has narrowed to a fight over who controls passage through the Strait of Hormuz — the channel through which, in ordinary times, roughly a fifth of the world’s traded oil and a fifth of its liquefied natural gas must pass. Iran’s new leadership, installed after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the war’s opening strikes, has concluded that command of this waterway is a more durable deterrent than any centrifuge ever was. Officials in Tehran have called it a “golden weapon.” Washington’s Secretary of State has called it Iran’s “economic nuclear weapon.” Both descriptions concede the same point: that geography, not enrichment, is now the currency of Iranian power.

The dispute turns on a single ambiguous clause. The Memorandum of Understanding signed on 17 June commits Iran to “make arrangements” for the safe passage of commercial vessels and to work with Oman on the strait’s future administration. Washington reads this as a restoration of free navigation. Tehran reads it as license to decide, ship by ship, who may pass. That is not a technical disagreement. It is two governments claiming sovereignty over the same eleven hundred metres of shipping lane, and it is the kind of ambiguity that gets written into peace deals precisely because it lets both sides sign — and precisely because it guarantees the peace will not hold.

Why this should matter to a Guyanese reader

It is tempting, from Georgetown, to treat this as someone else’s war — a Gulf quarrel with no address on our shores. That would be a misreading of what Guyana has become. This nation is now an oil producer entering its most consequential decade, negotiating gas-to-energy infrastructure, courting sovereign capital, and building a fiscal architecture around the assumption that energy markets behave predictably. They do not. Every spike in Brent crude that traces back to a missile off the coast of Oman is a variable in the arithmetic of our own gas pricing, our own Karpowership rate schedules, our own future revenue projections. A country that has spent the last several years scrutinising the Wales Gas-to-Energy project’s escalating power-purchase costs cannot afford to treat the Strait of Hormuz as background noise. The chokepoint that moves the price of a barrel in Muscat moves the arithmetic of a kilowatt-hour in Wales.

There is a second, more structural lesson here, and it is one this publication has returned to across its extractive-sector coverage: control of a chokepoint — whether a strait, a mining concession, or a sole-source energy contract — is never merely a technical or commercial fact. It is a claim of power, and claims of power invite contest. Iran believed that command of Hormuz would function as a clean deterrent. Instead, analysts now describe a contradiction at the heart of Tehran’s strategy: the more it tries to extract toll revenue from the strait, and the more chaos its enforcement creates, the more it incentivises its rivals to build around it — new pipelines, new routes, accelerated adoption of electric vehicles, a slow erosion of the very leverage it is trying to bank. Sovereignty asserted through disruption has a shelf life. Small states watching this drama would do well to notice that the lesson cuts in both directions: leverage built on control of a single artery is leverage that erodes the moment the world finds a workaround.

The cost of looking away

Global oil prices have not collapsed the way some forecasters predicted at the war’s outset — Brent has held in the $76–80 range through this week’s escalation rather than the $200 some analysts once floated — and that relative restraint has, perversely, made it easier for the story to fade from view. Markets absorbing a shock without a headline-grabbing spike is not the same as a crisis resolving itself. It is closer to a slow-moving food crisis in parts of the developing world, a strained shipping insurance market, and a steady erosion of the assumption that global energy trade is a fixed, reliable backdrop against which small producing nations can plan.

Guyana’s editorial obligation, in a moment like this, is not to import anxiety for its own sake. It is to insist that our institutions — those managing the gas-to-energy pipeline, those negotiating power-purchase agreements, those drafting the fiscal assumptions behind the next budget — are treating global energy volatility as an active risk rather than a settled premise. A war that has receded from the front page in Georgetown has not receded from the balance sheet of every barrel this country imports or every megawatt it plans to generate. The Strait of Hormuz is four and a half thousand miles from the Demerara River. The price signal it sends is not.

The 592 Guardian — Accountability Journalism for Guyana.

Who Polices the Police? America’s Costly Campaign of Global Retribution

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BY: Staff— Writer

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣.       

The arrest of Adys Lastres Morera, a relative of a senior figure in Cuba’s military-linked GAESA conglomerate, is being presented by U.S. authorities as a matter of national security. But strip away the diplomatic language, and a more troubling pattern emerges—one that reflects an increasingly aggressive posture by Washington under Donald Trump, positioning itself as the de facto police force of the world.

Morera, a lawful permanent resident since 2023, now faces removal proceedings not for any publicly substantiated criminal act, but under the broad and elastic justification that her presence “undermines U.S. foreign policy interests.” That phrase should alarm anyone concerned with due process and the rule of law. It signals a shift away from evidence-based enforcement toward politically motivated targeting.

This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a wider doctrine—one that expends billions of dollars pursuing individuals across borders, often in the name of ideological confrontation rather than tangible national benefit.

At a time when Americans themselves are grappling with inflation, economic uncertainty, and strained public resources, such actions raise serious questions about priorities. What exactly is gained by these high-profile detentions? And at what cost?

The irony is stark. While the United States asserts jurisdiction over foreign nationals and foreign-linked entities, it increasingly blurs the line between legitimate law enforcement and geopolitical retribution. The justification often rests on opaque claims of “threats” without transparent evidence, eroding the credibility of institutions that claim to uphold justice.

Meanwhile, the broader consequences are ignored. These policies exacerbate international tensions, complicate diplomatic relations, and deepen economic pressures—both abroad and at home. The costs are not merely financial; they are institutional and moral. Each such action chips away at the principles the United States claims to defend.

And this raises the most uncomfortable question of all: who holds power accountable when it overreaches? If the United States assumes the role of global enforcer, who then enforces the law against the United States—or against leaders who weaponize that power for political ends?

The arrest of Morera may seem like a minor headline in the churn of global news. But it is emblematic of something far larger: a system increasingly driven by retribution over reason, projection over principle, and power over justice.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙘, 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙨.

Justice Department Addendum Bars IRS From Auditing Trump Tax Returns Amid Controversial $1.7 Billion Fund

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Washington, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Justice has quietly amended a controversial agreement establishing a $1.776 billion compensation fund, inserting a provision that permanently bars the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from auditing former President Donald Trump, his family, and associated business entities.

The addendum, signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and published on the Department’s website, states that the government is “forever barred” from examining any tax filings submitted by Trump-related individuals and companies prior to the agreement.
The amendment follows the administration’s announcement of the compensation fund, which was created after Trump agreed to withdraw a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and other federal entities. Reports indicate that IRS officials had advised against settling the case, raising concerns about possible political interference in the decision.

The fund itself has drawn significant criticism for its lack of transparency and oversight. It will be administered by a five-member panel whose members serve at the discretion of the president and can be dismissed at will. The agreement does not require public disclosure of recipients or the criteria used for disbursement.
During a Senate hearing, lawmakers sharply questioned the legality and ethics of the arrangement. Senator Chris Van Hollen described the fund as “an outrageous, unprecedented slush fund,” citing its broad scope and lack of accountability.

Blanche confirmed under questioning that there are no restrictions on who may apply for compensation, including individuals convicted in connection with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. While he stated that Trump and his sons would not receive payouts, the agreement does not explicitly prohibit them from filing claims.

The agreement outlines that the fund will submit quarterly confidential reports to the attorney general detailing payouts and recipients. However, Blanche asserted that information would eventually become public through reporting mechanisms and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, despite language indicating confidentiality.

The development has intensified scrutiny over the agreement, with critics warning that it raises serious questions about governance, transparency, and the rule of law.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮,𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨. — ✦—

Deadly Quake in Southern China Triggers Mass Evacuations and Transport Disruptions

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𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣

BEIJING, May 18 — A magnitude 5.2 earthquake struck China’s southwestern Guangxi region early Monday, leaving two people dead, one missing, and forcing the evacuation of more than 7,000 residents in the city of Liuzhou, according to state media reports.
Authorities confirmed that four individuals were hospitalized following the quake, though none sustained life-threatening injuries. Emergency response teams remain engaged in ongoing search and rescue operations.
State broadcaster CCTV reported that 13 buildings collapsed as a result of the tremor. Railway officials have also warned of potential transportation disruptions as inspections of rail infrastructure continue.
Despite the damage, essential services—including communications, electricity, water, gas supply, and road traffic—are reported to be operating normally in the affected areas.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣-𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 , 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨. —✦—

Iran is weaponising the world’s hidden digital chokepoint

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BY: Hem Kumar                               

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣

Iran’s threats to the Strait of Hormuz should be understood as more than another round of brinkmanship over shipping lanes.

They point to a broader geopolitical shift: power in the Middle East is increasingly being exercised not just through missiles, mines and tankers, but through the hidden infrastructure that keeps modern economies running. Under the sea, fibre-optic cables carry the digital traffic of finance, trade, diplomacy and intelligence. That makes Hormuz not only a maritime chokepoint, but a data chokepoint too.

For decades, the world has treated the Strait of Hormuz as a passageway for oil. That remains true: roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids pass through it, which is why every crisis in the Gulf sends energy markets into a nervous spasm. But the strait’s strategic meaning has widened. Subsea cables now run through nearby waters, linking the Gulf to Asia and Europe and giving the region’s economies access to the internet backbone on which banking, logistics, cloud computing and government systems depend.

The vulnerability is obvious once you look for it, which is precisely why it has been so easy to overlook.
That is what makes Iran’s posture so consequential. Tehran has spent years learning how to weaponise geography. In the past, that meant harassing tankers, seizing ships, or threatening to close Hormuz outright. Now the target set is broader. If the sea lanes are the economy’s bloodstream, the cables are its nervous system. Disrupt one and you create panic; disrupt both and you compound uncertainty.

Even without cutting a single cable, the mere suggestion that Iran might do so can raise risk premiums, unsettle investors, and force governments and companies to think about worst-case scenarios they previously filed under theoretical.
This is not just about technical damage. It is about strategic signalling. Iran does not need to sever every cable to gain leverage.

It only needs to convince its rivals that it can. In a region where perception is often as powerful as hardware, that is enough to alter behaviour. Gulf states depend heavily on stable digital links for finance, state administration, aviation, energy, and the data-heavy economies they are trying to build. The prospect of even temporary disruption introduces a new layer of pressure on governments already trying to manage conflict, deterrence and domestic expectations at once.

The wider danger is that the Strait of Hormuz becomes a model for future coercion. If one state can threaten subsea cables in a global chokepoint, others will study the lesson. The oceans are full of hidden infrastructure, and many of those systems are poorly defended, hard to repair and difficult to monitor at scale. That is a structural weakness in the architecture of globalisation. The world built a hyperconnected economy without giving enough thought to how fragile the physical layers beneath it really are. The result is that a crisis in one narrow waterway can ripple far beyond the region, affecting everything from payment systems to satellite coordination to the timing of container shipments.

The geopolitical implications are particularly severe because the Persian Gulf is already one of the world’s most militarised theatres. A move against subsea cables would blur the line between conventional conflict, economic warfare and cyber operations. It would also widen the circle of stakeholders. Europe, Asia and the United States all have an interest in keeping Hormuz open, not only for energy flows but for digital continuity.

That means any escalation could draw in outside powers more quickly and with less warning than in previous crises. A cable attack would not be a local incident; it would be read as a challenge to the stability of the global system itself.
There is also a dangerous asymmetry at work. Iran can create disruption relatively cheaply, while repair, rerouting and resilience cost others far more. A navy can escort tankers, but it cannot instantly protect every stretch of seabed. Cable repair ships are few.

Permits, access and security all slow recovery. That asymmetry is exactly why the threat matters. In modern geopolitics, the side that can create uncertainty faster than its opponents can restore order often gains the upper hand, even without winning a battle in the traditional sense.
The lesson for the West and its Gulf partners is uncomfortable.

Deterrence in the 21st century cannot be confined to missiles and minesweepers. It must extend to the physical infrastructure of connectivity: redundant cable routes, faster repair capacity, stronger monitoring, and closer coordination between governments and private operators. Yet even that is only partial insurance. Because the deeper issue is not simply vulnerability, but interdependence. The global economy has become so dependent on a handful of narrow passages, both maritime and digital, that regional conflict now has systemic consequences.

Iran understands this. By turning the world’s attention to the undersea cables beneath Hormuz, it is reminding its adversaries that power in the age of networks is exercised in layered ways. Control the sea, and you influence oil. Threaten the seabed, and you unsettle data, finance and communication. The real risk is not that Iran will literally unplug the internet, but that it will exploit the fragility of the infrastructure on which the world’s confidence depends.

That is the geopolitical message of Hormuz now: the age of chokepoints is not over. It has simply gone underground.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣-𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 , 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.— ✦—

Ukraine Escalates Drone War with Massive Strike Near Moscow

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BY: Staff— Writer

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣.    

At least three people were killed and more than a dozen injured after Ukraine launched a sweeping overnight drone assault targeting the Moscow region, marking one of the most significant escalations of the war deep inside Russian territory in over a year.
Russian state news agency TASS, citing local and military officials, reported that more than 500 drones were deployed in the attack.

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed 556 drones were intercepted, while Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said over 120 were shot down as they approached the capital and surrounding areas.
Despite the high interception rate, the fallout proved deadly.

A woman was killed in Khimki after a drone struck a private residence, leaving another person trapped beneath the rubble. In Mytishchi, two men died when falling debris hit a house under construction. Authorities reported at least 12 injuries across the Moscow region, including workers at an oil refinery.
Drone fragments also sparked fires and structural damage in multiple locations. A home in the village of Subbotino caught fire, while residential buildings in the town of Istra were hit, injuring four people.

Debris was reported on the grounds of Sheremetyevo Airport, Russia’s busiest air hub, though no casualties or major disruptions were confirmed there.
The scale and reach of the attack underscore Ukraine’s growing capacity to project force far beyond the front lines, increasingly targeting symbolic and logistical centers within Russia itself.

The strike follows a wave of Russian attacks earlier in the week on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, which killed at least 25 people and injured dozens, according to Ukrainian officials—highlighting a continuing cycle of retaliation that is intensifying both in frequency and scope.

Ukraine’s military leadership signaled the psychological dimension of the operation as it unfolded. In a message posted to Telegram, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned System Forces warned residents of Moscow’s elite Patriarchy district that their “one-way ticket to a peaceful life… has been canceled.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine reported that Russia launched 287 drones overnight into its territory, injuring civilians in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Ukrainian air defenses said they intercepted all but eight.

As both sides increasingly rely on mass drone deployments, the conflict is rapidly evolving into a high-volume, long-range war of attrition—where even intercepted attacks carry consequences, and the battlefield now stretches deep into civilian spaces on both sides.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣-𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 , 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.— ✦—

Whistleblower: CIA Blocked, Spied on COVID Investigators

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BY: Hem Kumar 

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣

A senior intelligence official has accused the CIA of obstructing the U.S. government’s own investigation into the origins of COVID-19—alleging withheld records, retaliation against cooperating staff, and surveillance of investigators.

Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, James Erdman III, who led the ODNI probe under the Trump administration, said agency personnel were “spied upon illegally” while carrying out directives authorized at the highest levels of government.
Erdman further claimed the CIA suppressed internal assessments pointing to a lab leak and punished analysts who refused to abandon that conclusion.

His testimony comes amid a shifting official stance. In January 2025, the CIA—under Director John Ratcliffe—publicly stated that a lab leak is now the most likely origin of the pandemic, reversing years of ambiguity. Earlier intelligence summaries released under the Biden administration showed a divided community, with agencies split between natural origin, lab leak, and inconclusive positions.
Erdman also pointed to the influence of former COVID adviser Anthony Fauci, alleging that scientists consulted by intelligence agencies were not neutral, but closely tied to gain-of-function research—the very field under scrutiny.

Congress had mandated full disclosure of intelligence findings in 2023, yet only a brief, partially redacted summary was released. Now, according to Erdman, efforts by ODNI under Director Tulsi Gabbard to declassify roughly 2,000 documents are being slowed by resistance from the CIA and State Department.
He cited the firing of a CIA contractor just one day after speaking with investigators as further evidence of institutional pushback.

“The deep state still resists this congressional mandate,” said Senator Rand Paul, who has long argued that a lab leak is the most plausible explanation and is pushing for stricter oversight of high-risk research.
Meanwhile, a promised policy to restrict gain-of-function research—ordered by the Trump administration for release by September 2025—remains outstanding.

Erdman warned that continued resistance from both intelligence and public health agencies is now stalling reforms aimed at preventing future pandemics.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣-𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 , 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.— ✦—

Massive 11,000-Carat Ruby Discovered in Myanmar’s Conflict Zone

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𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣

Bangkok, Thailand — May 12, 2026 — A rare and exceptionally large ruby weighing approximately 11,000 carats (2.2 kilograms or 4.8 pounds) has been discovered in Myanmar’s famed Mogok gem region, marking one of the most significant gemstone finds in recent decades.


According to state-run media, the rough ruby was unearthed in mid-April near Mogok, located in the upper Mandalay region — an area long regarded as the epicenter of Myanmar’s lucrative ruby mining industry. The discovery occurred shortly after the country’s traditional New Year celebrations.
The newly found gemstone is considered the second-largest ruby ever discovered in Myanmar by weight. While it is roughly half the size of a 21,450-carat ruby uncovered in 1996, experts suggest it may be of greater value due to its superior quality. The stone reportedly exhibits a purplish-red hue with yellowish undertones, moderate transparency, and a highly reflective surface — characteristics associated with high-grade rubies.


Myanmar remains the world’s dominant source of rubies, accounting for up to 90% of global supply, with most originating from Mogok and Mong Hsu. However, the gemstone trade has long been mired in controversy, as both legal and illicit sales have historically provided substantial revenue to military authorities and armed groups.


Human rights organizations, including Global Witness, have repeatedly called on transnational jewelers to halt the purchase of Myanmar-sourced gemstones, citing concerns that proceeds contribute to ongoing conflict and human right.


The discovery comes amid continued political instability in Myanmar. Earlier this year, a new government was installed following elections widely criticized by opposition groups and international observers as lacking credibility. President Min Aung Hlaing, the military leader who seized power in 2021, remains at the helm. He and members of his cabinet recently inspected the ruby in Naypyitaw, the nation’s capital.
Gemstone mining continues to play a dual role in Myanmar’s prolonged internal conflict, serving as a major revenue source for both the military establishment and ethnic armed groups seeking autonomy.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣-𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 , 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.— ✦—

 

 

Ali Cannot Lecture Investors While Guyana’s Own Record Raises Red Flags

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BY: Hem Kumar 

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣

President Irfaan Ali wants investors to come prepared, to do their homework, and to stop treating Guyana like a drive-through market. Fair enough. But the problem is that this is the same administration that has spent years cultivating exactly the kind of investment culture it now wants to scold—one marked by preferential access, political convenience, and a troubling tolerance for foreign actors who seem to get the soft landing locals never receive.

The President is not setting standards so much as trying to retrofit them after the fact.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐆𝐮𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐚 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭

Guyana cannot spend years projecting itself as open for business at any cost, then act offended when investors come expecting access, speed, and influence. That image was reinforced by the government’s defensive posture on the oil contract, where the 2% royalty arrangement remains protected behind the familiar shield of contract sanctity, even as ordinary Guyanese are told to accept the deal as settled history. A state that refuses to revisit glaring imbalances in its most consequential contract cannot suddenly pose as a hard-headed gatekeeper when it is convenient.

The message abroad is not hard to decode: some deals are untouchable, some interests are protected, and some players are simply more welcome than others.

𝐖𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠

That is why Congressman Gabe Evans’s recent letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio matters. Evans warned of “creeping Chinese influence” in Guyana and raised alarms about reports of Chinese firms securing contracts, financing, and political footholds in ways that could threaten U.S. interests in energy, diplomacy, and critical minerals. In plain terms, Guyana is not only being watched; it is being scrutinized for the very habits its leadership has normalized.

So when Ali stands before an American audience and lectures on investor expectations, the paradox is obvious. He is effectively telling U.S. investors to temper their assumptions while Washington is already asking whether Guyana has become too accommodating to Chinese influence.

 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐦

The U.S. ambassador’s point about predictability cuts straight through the noise. Predictability means rules that are clear, consistent, and applied without regard to who has the best political connections. It does not mean one set of doors for locals, another for foreign firms, and a VIP corridor for the well-connected.

That distinction matters because the complaints from Guyanese businesses are not imaginary. Local truckers have protested what they describe as a system that favors Chinese-linked firms and squeezes out domestic operators, with some alleging that contracts and access flow through family ties, political connections, and selective facilitation. 

When local players are forced to shout just to be treated fairly, the government has already admitted the weakness of its own system.

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞

The administration’s favorite phrase—sanctity of contract—has become a political refuge. It is invoked to shut down calls for renegotiating oil terms, yet it is rarely accompanied by equal vigor in defending local enterprise from unfair competition or foreign dominance.

That is the real sting in this debate: the government is fiercely principled when protecting corporate arrangements, but noticeably flexible when the national interest requires courage.That is not consistency. It is choreography.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐩𝐞𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦

The accusation now hanging over the administration is not simply that it welcomes investment. It is that it has rolled out the red carpet for certain foreign actors, especially Chinese businesses, and then turned around to demand restraint from everyone else.You cannot preach prudence to investors while refusing to exercise it on behalf of your own citizens.

This is not a neutral posture. It is a choice—one that signals to global capital that Guyana is willing to prioritize investor comfort over national leverage. When disputes arise, the government has too often appeared aligned with oil majors rather than the Guyanese people, particularly on issues of environmental liability, cost recovery audits, and regulatory enforcement. The result is a credibility gap wide enough to swallow the President’s Houston remarks whole.

Investors notice these signals, and so do citizens

A country cannot market itself as business-friendly, then punish the public for believing it.

𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠

If President Ali wants to be taken seriously, he must first explain why Guyana keeps attracting the same complaints: one-sided contracts, preferential treatment, weak procurement credibility, and a pattern of accommodation that now has even U.S. lawmakers sounding alarms. The issue is not that investors need to come prepared. The issue is that Guyana’s government should have prepared its own house long ago.

Until it does, the President’s lecture will remain what it sounded like in Houston: not a statement of principle, but an attempt to put discipline on an image his own administration helped create.

If President Ali truly wants investors to come prepared, then the government must first do its own preparation—by strengthening institutions, enforcing accountability, and demonstrating that Guyana is not just open for business, but serious about protecting its people, its resources, and its future.

Because in the end, the investment climate is not defined by speeches in Houston.

It is defined by the choices made at home.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣-𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 , 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮,𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.— ✦—