ICE Meltdown

Potential for Pandemonium?

Two years ago, in one of those [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/asking-for-seconds]Radio Free Pizza [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/asking-for-seconds] dispatches [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/asking-for-seconds] that we imagine certain readers either cherish or regret having survived, we considered the coronavirus pandemic not merely as a public-health emergency, but as a crisis of narrative authority. The question, as we understood it then, was not only whether the official story had been true, or whether the response had been justified, or whether various public-health bureaucrats, pharmaceutical executives, corporate-media personalities, and supranational functionaries had behaved with the wisdom and benevolence they so often attributed to themselves. Obviously they had not. The deeper question was how quickly a population could be trained to accept an emergency as a totalizing explanation for life: for movement restrictions, censorship, mandates, social division, institutional obedience, and the sudden moral reclassification of dissent as a danger to the species. In that dispatch, we also considered the stranger question of “predictive programming,” or what might be called prophetic entertainment: the recurring phenomenon by which mass media appears, whether by design, coincidence, archetypal resonance, or retrospective pattern-seeking, to anticipate the crises through which we later live. That discussion moved through Utopia (2013), The Lone Gunmen (2001), pandemic simulations, vaccine narratives, and the broader problem of how fiction and reality now seem to chase each other around the same haunted carousel. Our point was not simply that television sometimes “predicts” the future. Our point was that modern publics increasingly experience the future through images, storylines, and symbolic templates already supplied to them in advance. That problem has not gone away, but has instead become only more obvious since the official end of the 2020–’23 public health emergency. The next emergency does not need to arrive as another coronavirus pandemic in order to activate the same machinery: it only needs uncertainty, international mobility, anxious publics, public-health coordination, media amplification, and some pathogen or other moving through the world with enough ambiguity to let institutions begin narrating the situation before ordinary people know what to make of it. In other words, the next emergency arrives pre-narrated. Which brings us, naturally enough, to this month’s hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship. May 2026 reports from the BBC [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyp1505p84o] and PBS [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/what-we-dont-know-about-the-hantavirus-outbreak-on-the-cruise-ship] described an international effort to trace passengers and close contacts after an outbreak of the Andes strain of hantavirus aboard the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius. The vessel had departed Ushuaia, Argentina, on 1 April with roughly 150 passengers and crew from more than twenty countries, made stops including St. Helena, and was continuing toward Spain’s Canary Islands when the outbreak came under international scrutiny. By 8 May, five cases had been confirmed, including three deaths, while more than 140 people still aboard approached Tenerife for medical assessment, quarantine, or repatriation. Uncertainty defined the situation: investigators had not confirmed where the outbreak began, though Argentine officials were examining whether a Dutch couple may have contracted the virus during a pre-cruise bird-watching trip. Nor was it fully clear how many people had been exposed, since dozens disembarked at St. Helena on 24 April, before hantavirus was confirmed in a ship passenger on 4 May, and some had already traveled onward to other countries. Authorities in at least twelve countries—including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Singapore—were monitoring exposed passengers or contacts, while South African and Dutch officials worked to trace those who may have encountered a Dutch woman who later died after leaving the ship. The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasized that the outbreak was not the beginning of a COVID-like pandemic, describing the general public risk as low because hantavirus usually spreads through exposure to contaminated rodent droppings rather than casual person-to-person contact. The Andes strain, however, is unusual because some scientists believe it can spread between people in rare cases, and symptoms may appear one to eight weeks after exposure. As a result, the incident produced a striking image of post-COVID emergency governance: dispersed travelers, delayed confirmation, incomplete contact tracing, medically equipped repatriation flights, anxious local residents, and public-health agencies attempting to impose order on a biological event already moving across borders. Soon after the hantavirus outbreak emerged, a New York Post [https://nypost.com/2026/05/13/us-news/how-the-x-files-and-the-simpsons-predicted-the-hantavirus-outbreak/] article from 13 May [https://nypost.com/2026/05/13/us-news/how-the-x-files-and-the-simpsons-predicted-the-hantavirus-outbreak/] reported how social-media users had begun pointing to The X-Files and The Simpsons as supposed examples of entertainment “predicting” the hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius. (For our purposes, parallels to The X-Files are more interesting—given that the aforementioned The Lone Gunmen, depicting events remarkably similar to those of 11 September 2001 just six months prior, was an X-Files spinoff—though of course The Simpsons has had a well-documented predictive capacity [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/simpsons-future-predictions-accurate-1140775/].) In The X-Files’ 1998 film, a whistleblower tells Agent Mulder that an apparent hantavirus outbreak had actually served as a cover story for something else, calling it a “silent weapon in a quiet war.” Online observers naturally connected that scene to the recent outbreak. An article on [https://www.boredpanda.com/disturbing-the-x-files-moment-resurfaces-as-hantavirus-spreads-us/]Bored Panda [https://www.boredpanda.com/disturbing-the-x-files-moment-resurfaces-as-hantavirus-spreads-us/] offered a more detailed account of the film, explaining that hantavirus functioned as a central plot device in a larger story of alien colonization, government secrecy, and biological cover-up, with deaths connected to a mysterious substance discovered in a cave are publicly explained as a hantavirus outbreak. The aforementioned whistleblower explains to Mulder the supposed outbreak was in fact a government deception concealing “the systematic release of an indiscriminate organism” by men who had been preparing a planned Armageddon for decades. Some commenters also folded the comparison into broader UFO discourse—which we discussed in a February bulletin [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/space-and-invaders]—especially after former congressman Matt Gaetz claimed on a podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fbi-releasing-eric-swalwell-files-exposing-treasonous/id1584730781?i=1000758457793] that he had once been briefed about alleged “hybrid breeding programs” involving captured aliens and humans. That’s particularly interesting when one learns, as The Daily Star [https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/x-files-eerily-predicted-hantavirus-37127734#:~:text=The%20X%2DFiles%20show%20further%20explored%20the%20Hantavirus%20plot%20which%20turned%20out%20to%20be%20a%20cover%2Dup%20for%20alien%2Dhuman%20hybrid%20experiments.%20When%20a%20group%20of%20kids%20in%20a%20small%20Texas%20town%20discovered%20a%20cave%20full%20of%20%22alien%20black%20oil%20virus%22%2C%20the%20town%20becomes%20infected.]mentioned [https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/x-files-eerily-predicted-hantavirus-37127734#:~:text=The%20X%2DFiles%20show%20further%20explored%20the%20Hantavirus%20plot%20which%20turned%20out%20to%20be%20a%20cover%2Dup%20for%20alien%2Dhuman%20hybrid%20experiments.%20When%20a%20group%20of%20kids%20in%20a%20small%20Texas%20town%20discovered%20a%20cave%20full%20of%20%22alien%20black%20oil%20virus%22%2C%20the%20town%20becomes%20infected.], that the hantavirus outbreak in the film was “a cover-up for alien-human hybrid experiments.” For our purposes, these articles’ significance lies less in whether The X-Files “predicted” anything than in how quickly a real outbreak became absorbed into an older mythology of hidden pathogens, biological cover stories, state secrecy, alien disclosure, and emergency management. The X-Files comparison shows the same symbolic mechanism discussed in our earlier dispatch on predictive programming and the coronavirus pandemic: once an outbreak appears, the public does not interpret it only through epidemiology or official statements, but through the entertainment archive, where fictional emergencies have already supplied recognizable patterns of suspicion, dread, and institutional distrust. Some reporters might frame these comparisons mostly as internet coincidence-hunting, but to our analysis, their significance is more structural: once a real outbreak enters public consciousness, audiences immediately search the archive of mass entertainment for prior images that appear to have anticipated it. But others don’t look to entertainment for evidence of predictions, but instead to the pharmaceutical industry—including our beloved Dr. John Campbell, who discussed the industry’s initiatives against hantavirus on 10 May [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FPWXLE3GQY]. Here, Campbell agrees (for once) with the WHO, arguing that hantavirus is unlikely to become a broader pandemic—with the Andes strain spreading poorly between people and generally requiring close contact with someone already visibly and severely ill—and characterizes the individual risk to the public as negligible, with infection far more likely to occur through exposure to rodent urine, droppings, blood, or contaminated dust than through casual contact with passengers from the cruise ship. At the same time, Campbell notes the unusual amount of attention generated by the outbreak, especially given two claims raised by viewers that Campbell managed to verify: that Moderna has been developing an mRNA-based hantavirus vaccine since at least 2024 in collaboration with Korea University’s Vaccine Innovation Center, which provided hantavirus antigen sequence information while Moderna produced mRNA materials under its mRNA Access Program, and that “hantavirus pulmonary infection” appears among the adverse events of special interest listed in Pfizer’s cumulative post-authorization safety report for its BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine through 28 February 2021. Campbell also connects that work to WHO pathogen-prioritization efforts, noting that Hantaviridae appears as a high-priority pathogen family in WHO’s 2024 prioritization framework, discussed in relation to the “Disease X” preparedness concept. Naturally, he asks why an mRNA vaccine would be developed for a disease with low human-to-human transmissibility and whether the public-health rationale, target population, and economic incentives make sense. While the appearance of hantavirus infection on Pfizer’s post-authorization adverse-event report, pointing out that “hantavirus pulmonary infection” appears on a long list of adverse events of special interest, Campbell repeatedly cautions that this listing does not establish causality and may reflect only temporal association, but argues that its presence is nonetheless noteworthy in the context of renewed attention to hantavirus and mRNA vaccine development. The broader conclusion is that the cruise-ship outbreak itself will probably “fizzle out,” but that public distrust has become the central issue: people no longer assume international organizations, pharmaceutical companies, or public-health institutions are acting transparently, especially after COVID-19. But hantavirus wasn’t the only viral outbreak of the past month: within days of the cruise-ship story entering the public imagination, the WHO had also elevated an ebola outbreak [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/world/africa/ebola-congo-uganda-who-public-health-emergency.html] in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda into the category of international concern. The strain in question was not the more familiar Zaire ebolavirus, for which vaccine tools exist, but Bundibugyo virus, a rarer species of ebola for which there is, as of this writing, no approved vaccine or specific treatment. According to a 20 May [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy2g197dp8o]BBC [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy2g197dp8o] report [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy2g197dp8o], the WHO warned that a vaccine specifically targeting the Bundibugyo species of Ebola could take six to nine months to become available, even as the outbreak’s suspected death toll continued to rise. WHO adviser Dr. Vasee Moorthy said two possible candidate vaccines were being developed, but neither had yet gone through clinical trials. One candidate was described as the most promising because it would be equivalent to the existing ebola vaccine used against the Zaire species, while another, based on the same platform as the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, was still being manufactured and lacked animal data to support its effectiveness. Moorthy said doses of the second candidate might be available for clinical trial within two to three months, but emphasized that considerable uncertainty remained. WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been roughly 600 suspected Ebola cases and 139 suspected deaths, with 51 confirmed cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo and two confirmed cases in Uganda, both involving travelers from DR Congo. Although Bundibugyo is generally considered less deadly than some other ebola species, its rarity means fewer medical tools exist to stop it: there is no approved vaccine, no targeted drug treatment, and only experimental countermeasures in development. The BBC also noted that early ebola symptoms can resemble malaria or typhoid, both common in the country, making detection more difficult. Health facilities in eastern DR Congo were reportedly overwhelmed with suspected cases, with local workers warning of inadequate protective equipment despite some supplies beginning to arrive. The aforementioned Campbell offered his own analysis of the proposed Bundibugyo ebola vaccine in a video posted just yesterday. Here, Campbell describes the leading Bundibugyo vaccine candidate as an Oxford-style chimpanzee adenovirus, or ChAd, viral-vector vaccine being developed in connection with Oxford University and the Serum Institute of India. He compares the platform to the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, noting that both use a genetically modified adenovirus vector rather than a traditional antigen-based approach. In this model, the injected vector delivers genetic instructions into the body’s cells, which then manufacture the target viral antigen themselves. Campbell explains that, for the Bundibugyo ebola candidate, the intended target would be an ebola glycoprotein. He contrasts this with mRNA vaccines, which use lipid nanoparticles to deliver RNA instructions, while viral-vector vaccines use a modified virus to deliver DNA instructions. In either case, he argues, the important point is that the vaccinated person’s own cells are made to produce a viral antigen. Accordingly, Campbell naturally expresses concern that if those antigens are displayed on cell surfaces, the immune system may attack the cells producing them, raising the possibility of immune-mediated harm, and therefore connects these concerns to broader criticism of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine platform, which he reminds us produced serious adverse reactions. At the same time, Campbell distinguishes Bundibugyo ebola from COVID-19 in terms of risk-benefit analysis. He noted that Bundibugyo ebola can have an estimated fatality rate of roughly 30%, making the local danger substantial, even if the virus is unlikely to produce a global pandemic because it spreads mainly through close person-to-person contact. For that reason, Campbell doesn’t dismiss the need for a vaccine response, but said he would have preferred a more traditional antigen-based vaccine rather than another genetically modified viral-vector platform. He echoes the BBC in reporting that the vaccine could potentially be ready for efficacy assessment within two to three months, while also emphasizing that the outbreak was likely to remain a severe regional crisis rather than a worldwide pandemic. In the cases of both hantavirus and ebola, then, we don’t seem to be watching the beginning of the next pandemic, at least not if one takes the WHO, Campbell, and the available epidemiology at face value—and at least not yet. With only thirteen confirmed cases as of 26 May, hantavirus appears unlikely to become a global threat, and Bundibugyo ebola, however deadly in the affected region, spreads through close contact rather than the sort of casual respiratory transmission that defined COVID-19. Neither outbreak, in other words, presently looks like the next coronavirus. But that may be exactly why they are useful to consider. The machinery of emergency narration does not require a COVID-level event in order to reveal itself: sometimes it reveals itself in smaller crises, before the full apparatus of fear, censorship, coercion, and moral theater has been fully mobilized. Accordingly, we ask, who narrates the emergency? In the official stories, the answer remains obvious: the WHO, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, national health ministries, pharmaceutical corporations, approved journalists, and credentialed experts with conference lanyards. Yet the popular imagination recalls storylines from The X-Files and The Simpsons, and, more recently, of how institutions used the coronavirus pandemic to reorder ordinary life, suppress dissent, sanctify emergency pharmaceutical products, police speech, and demand obedience while congratulating themselves for their supposed compassion. Thus, they forfeited the right to feign surprise when the public receives news of later outbreaks with suspicion. In this sense, then, the next pandemic—whether hantavirus, ebola, or another “Disease X” (perhaps one spreading during this summer’s World Cup, as MedPage Today [https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/121432]warned [https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/121432] about ebola)—has already arrived with a script. Before the pathogen is fully understood, the roles have already been assigned: the authorities will ask for trust; the skeptics will ask who benefits; the press will warn about misinformation; the pharmaceutical companies will announce their products; and the public will remember mandates, censorship, injury, profit, and lies. Whether these outbreaks fizzle out, remain regional, or develop into something more serious, the symbolic pattern is already visible. Because if the pandemic years taught us anything, it’s that biological events don’t remain merely biological once they enter the modern media ecosystem, which has the habit of displaying symptoms long before the first patient. For now, we’re told, hantavirus probably won’t become a global pandemic, and Bundibugyo ebola will likely remain a severe regional crisis rather than a worldwide threat. But if either story develops, you can count on us here at Radio Free Pizza to diagnose the narrative. Radio Free Pizza is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Radio Free Pizza at www.radiofreepizza.com/subscribe [https://www.radiofreepizza.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Ends of the Embargo

With the U.S.-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic of Iran entering its eighth week, and a U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz [https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cn4v0xm9y0kt] aimed at starving Iran of its oil income now entering its third, the logic of economic strangulation has once again moved to the center of American foreign policy. Of course, some would say it never left—particularly those in the Republic of Cuba, which has been the target of that policy not for weeks or months, but for more than sixty years. In Cuba, that logic has long since ceased to appear as a discrete policy decision, but has become a condition of life. Last month, the island’s electrical grid collapsed again [https://www.npr.org/2026/03/17/nx-s1-5749507/island-wide-blackout-knocks-out-power-to-millions-in-cuba-amid-ongoing-energy-crisis]: another in a series of nationwide blackouts that have left millions without power, with the ongoing U.S. oil blockade—which intensified [https://www.proquest.com/docview/3290523589] after January’s kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/the-calamity-in-caracas], whose administration had been supplying Cuba with oil—having cut off shipments to the island for extended periods. With Cuba faces a worsening humanitarian crisis resulting from the restricted fuel access, high-level talks in Havana [https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/cuba/cuba-confirms-recent-meetings-with-u-s-officials-in-havana-denies-ultimatum-reports/3798476/] between the U.S. and Cuba began earlier this month, though both sides have disputed what was said behind closed doors. U.S. officials have signaled that the island’s leadership faces a narrowing window to implement reforms, with some reports suggesting a two-week timeline tied to the release of political prisoners—claims Cuban officials have denied even as they acknowledge the meetings. Washington maintains that a diplomatic resolution remains possible under the Trump Administration, but the substance of those discussions suggests that material pressure is being leveraged to extract political concessions. Then, just last night [https://responsiblestatecraft.org/cuba-war-powers/], a U.S. Senate vote legitimized growing concern in Washington that U.S. policy toward Cuba may be drifting toward open conflict. Lawmakers blocked debate on a War Powers resolution that would have required congressional authorization for any military action against the island, even as some members argued that the ongoing U.S. energy blockade already constitutes a form of “hostilities.” The measure’s sponsors warned that the Trump Administration is effectively pursuing regime change, citing escalating rhetoric and reports that military options are under consideration. While some officials and analysts suggest that negotiations between Washington and Havana could still produce a diplomatic breakthrough, others argue that current U.S. policy is less about negotiation than coercion—using economic and energy pressure to force political transformation. But the congressional failure to produce a War Powers resolution suggests that, if deteriorating living conditions to demands for political reform, then U.S. policy will shift toward explicit regime change—realizing U.S. President Donald Trump’s prediction last month [https://www.npr.org/2026/03/18/nx-s1-5750563/trump-says-he-can-do-whatever-he-wants-with-cuba-floats-idea-of-taking-the-island] that he will have “the honor of taking Cuba.” With fuel restrictions collapsing the island’s economy and amplifying the empire’s leverage at the negotiating table, then the blackouts begin to read not as unintended consequences, but as instruments—conditions through which political concessions, and ultimately regime change, are meant to be compelled. Cuba’s energy system depends on imported fuel to run its aging thermal power plants, and without oil, the plants shut down. When the plants shut down, the grid collapses, and everything else follows: food spoils without refrigeration [https://tmv.in/article/world-looks-away-as-cuba-blacks-out-as-trump-and-rubio-continue-to-strangle-cuba#:~:text=food%20supplies%20are%20rotting%20in%20homes%20without%20refrigeration.], hospital patients die in blackouts [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/world/americas/cubas-health-system-us-oil-blockade.html], and water utilities stop functioning [https://apnews.com/article/cuba-power-water-routines-trump-us-government-c4e85c4a9236b881667c0e931b2b5576]. Scarcity compounds across sectors, turning a supply problem into a systemic one. But to fully understand the blackouts, the empty shelves, and the grinding scarcity that defines daily life in Cuba today, we have to return to the origin of the policy that still structures that reality more than sixty years later. Because President Trump’s oil blockade represents only the latest turn of the screw in the country’s decades-long embargo against its former economic colony. In 1959, following the Cuban Revolution, the new government moved to nationalize major industries—many of them owned by American firms. Washington responded not with a single decisive break [https://cri.fiu.edu/us-cuba-relations/chronology-of-us-cuba-relations/], but with a series of tightening economic measures. By 1960, the Eisenhower Administration had imposed partial trade restrictions, cutting off key exports and restricting most commerce between the two countries. The decisive turn came in February 1962, when John F. Kennedy formalized a near-total embargo [https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL30386.html] on trade with Cuba—effectively severing the island from its largest historical trading partner. Of course, the U.S. escalation unfolded not only through economic policy, but through covert military action: in 1961, the U.S. backed the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion [https://www.britannica.com/event/Bay-of-Pigs-invasion], an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government by force that ended in rapid defeat and lasting hostility. In March of following year, Pentagon officials drafted Operation Northwoods [https://theconversation.com/what-robert-f-kennedy-jr-didnt-tell-you-about-operation-northwoods-the-false-flag-operation-he-loves-to-denounce-270205], a now-declassified proposal for a false-flag operation that would result in the deaths of U.S. citizens to justify military intervention—plans that were never approved, but which reveal the extent to which confrontation with Cuba had moved beyond diplomacy into the realm of contingency for direct conflict. Such a confrontation became even riskier when, just seven months after that proposal, the world came within reach of direct superpower conflict during the Cuban Missile Crisis following the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles stationed on the island. The crisis ended with their removal, but it did not normalize relations. Instead, it entrenched Cuba’s position as a permanent security concern in Washington’s strategic thinking. The embargo, already in place, took on a new function—not merely as retaliation for nationalization or ideological opposition, but as part of a long-term containment posture. Taken together, these episodes underscore that the embargo did not emerge in isolation, but as one instrument within a broader strategy of pressure, destabilization, and attempted regime change conceived during the Cold War. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the long-term strategy persisted: to isolate the Cuban economy and force political change. Over the subsequent decades, the embargo was not merely maintained—it was codified, expanded, and internationalized. Laws like the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Helms–Burton Act of 1996 extended its reach beyond U.S. borders, penalizing foreign companies [https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/rr3083] that attempted to do business with Cuba. The result was not just a restriction on trade with the U.S., but a constraint on the island’s access to global markets, finance, and supply chains. In the absence of stable access to global markets, Cuba has not remained entirely cut off. Still, what has emerged in place of normal economic exchange is not recovery, but improvisation: in March, an international coalition of activists delivered humanitarian aid [https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/international-convoy-delivers-tons-aid-cuba-amid-crisis-2026-03-24/] to the island by sea and air, attempting to circumvent restrictions that have choked off conventional supply lines. Organized by the Nuestra America Convoy, the shipment—totaling roughly 20 tons of food, medicine, and basic equipment—represented a show of global solidarity. But it also revealed the scale of the gap it seeks to fill. In a country of more than eleven million people, such deliveries cannot meaningfully stabilize food systems, restore electrical capacity, or sustain medical infrastructure. They exist not as alternatives to normal trade, but as evidence that normal trade has been disrupted. Meanwhile, Russia has signaled that it will continue—and potentially expand—fuel shipments to Cuba [https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-defies-us-pressure-with-long-term-cuba-support-plan-17802], positioning itself as a key backstop to the island’s energy crisis. Following talks in Havana, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov emphasized that Moscow would not scale back its support, framing additional oil deliveries as part of a broader effort to offset the effects of U.S. sanctions and chronic energy shortages. A March shipment of roughly 730,000 barrels of oil—enough to cover only a few weeks of demand—underscored both the scale of Cuba’s dependence on external fuel and the insufficiency of ad hoc relief. While U.S. officials have allowed limited deliveries under temporary exemptions, Washington has otherwise maintained pressure on the island’s energy supply, even as Russia signals its intent to deepen its strategic presence in the region rather than withdraw from it. What emerges, taken together, is not a picture of isolation overcome, but of isolation managed at the margins. Fuel arrives, but not reliably. Aid arrives, but not at scale. Each workaround addresses a symptom, while leaving the underlying constraint intact. The embargo bends, but it does not break; and so the blackouts continue. At a certain point, the question is no longer how the embargo works, but why it persists. Because the conditions now defining life in Cuba aren’t the product of a single decision, or even a single administration, but the accumulated result of a policy that has been maintained, adjusted, and reimposed across decades, long after the geopolitical moment that gave rise to it has passed. Accordingly, its persistence suggests that what we are seeing in Cuba is not a deviation from the policy’s purpose, but its most complete expression. With that in mind, what we are now witnessing in real time in the Strait of Hormuz represents in some senses an accelerated example of the same strategy as the U.S. embargo of Cuba: after a failed military campaign with the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the empire restricted its hostilities to the economic sphere—just as its campaign against the Islamic Republic seems now doomed by the rapid depletion of U.S. military stockpiles [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/us/politics/iran-war-cost-military.html]. But Cuba doesn’t have the same oil reserves with which to sustain its industries in economic isolation. Instead, pressure accumulates under the embargo that, once sufficiently concentrated, demands release. However, that release does not have to take the form of negotiation over intervention. If the rhetoric now emerging from Washington gives us any indication, Cuba may soon find itself once again the target of a military strike—perhaps one that the U.S. will justify as a humanitarian relief and liberation of an oppressed people (as it did when it first launched its war on Iran [https://thehill.com/policy/international/5760238-trump-freedom-iranians-us-israel-strikes/]) of the very conditions it imposed—pointing toward a trajectory in which economic strangulation is not an endpoint, but a preparatory stage: a system designed to weaken, isolate, and destabilize over time, until the conditions become ripe enough for military action. What Cuba reveals, then, is not only what the embargo is, or how it works, but what it becomes over time: not a temporary measure of pressure, but a durable system—one that outlasts the conflicts that produced it, reshapes the conditions it acts upon, and, in doing so, generates its own rationale for continuation. In that sense, the line between economic coercion and military intervention is not fixed, but a fluid continuum along which pressure is applied, accumulated, and, when deemed ample enough, converted into force. If that pattern holds, then the question is no longer whether the U.S. intends to escalate, but when it will decide that the conditions its embargo produced have become sufficient to justify doing so: when, that is, that the Cuban people have suffered enough that the U.S. can pose as their savior. If that moment arrives, it will not mark a departure from policy, but its culmination. The embargo will have prepared the ground. In the end, what may appear as intervention on behalf of the Cuban people will instead reveal itself as the sole aim of the same strategy that made such an intervention seem justified in the first place. Radio Free Pizza is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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Ghosts from the Machines

Three weeks ago, rumors began circulating that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been killed in his country’s escalating war with the Islamic Republic of Iran after his early-March video address appeared to show him with six fingers on his right hand [https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/netanyahu-extra-finger-video-clone-theories-1785402]. Various “proof-of-life” videos followed purporting to show him alive, but gave us a further cascade of alleged anomalies: coffee foam that remains unchanged after he takes a sip [https://x.com/SprinterPress/status/2033256266131235231?s=20]; a jacket pocket that snaps back too cleanly [https://x.com/PamphletsY/status/2033267569495306250?s=20]; a wedding ring that flickers in and out of existence [https://x.com/HatsOffff/status/2033574206395289729?s=20]; an extra ear canal [https://x.com/CryptoWhale/status/2034193239255744766?s=20]; a stuttering shirt sleeve [https://x.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/2034741911848722717?s=20]. Meanwhile, claims about the provenance of footage for the Jerusalem café setting [https://x.com/UnityNewsNet/status/2033251994190672221?s=20] and for the cabinet meeting [https://x.com/surfalpalo/status/2034023441691509226?s=20] offer some potential origin of source material with which AI might have generated some of the above videos. (Perhaps to his own surprise, Netanyahu’s son, Yair [https://x.com/YairNetanyahu], provided additional fuel for these speculations when, on 8 March, he abruptly stopped posting on X for a period of seven days: unusual behavior for a user with more than one hundred thousand posts since starting his account in June 2017, and a period of inactivity matching the Jewish mourning tradition of sitting shiva.) While internet sleuths offer compelling observations, these might yet remain artifacts of compression, motion blur, camera settings, or simple misperception. Even the invocation of AI detection tools—reporting high “likelihood” scores [https://x.com/kian_sasan/status/2033222730124841051?s=20]—offers little firm ground, given their well-documented instability and susceptibility to false positives, as when one reportedly flagged the Gettysburg Address as AI-generated [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uGQFom6xUxA]. Our own opinion, then, remains only a posture: agnostic, provisional, and contingent on the emergence of verifiable, high-fidelity evidence that has not yet materialized. However, the question of whether Netanyahu died represents not just a factual inquiry, but a case study in epistemic collapse. Viewers dissect frames for anomalies while counterarguments invoke compression artifacts, camera limitations, and the human tendency to over-interpret ambiguous visuals. Each attempt at proof generates a corresponding wave of skepticism, and each attempt at debunking feeds the cycle further. The result is not consensus but fragmentation, with even relatively sophisticated observers arriving at an agnostic position: that the available evidence, whether authentic or artificial, no longer carries sufficient authority to settle the question. In this telling, the most significant development is not the status of the man himself, but the apparent erosion of any shared standard by which such a status could be conclusively determined. Understanding that, the risks exposed by this episode extend well beyond Netanyahu and into the structural stability of the media ecosystem itself. In the near term, the proliferation of plausible synthetic media accelerates the erosion of public trust—any more of which the U.S. certainly can’t afford [https://ourpublicservice.org/blog/trust-in-government-lower-in-the-u-s-than-in-many-other-democracies/?st_source=ai_mode#:~:text=Some%20factors%20that%20may%20contribute%20to%20the,the%20government%20more%20responsive%20to%20public%20needs]—particularly when authoritative confirmation is delayed, fragmented, or perceived as unreliable. Over the longer horizon, the implications grow more severe: as we’ve been warned since 2018 [https://nypost.com/2018/03/13/deepfake-ai-generated-videos-threaten-to-wreak-political-havoc/]—and particularly during the 2020 [https://www.govtech.com/products/deepfakes-the-next-big-threat-to-american-democracy.html] and ’24 [https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/government/deepfakes-federal-state-regulation/] presidential election cycles—electoral systems have become increasingly vulnerable to deepfakes and coordinated misinformation campaigns (besides those embodied in political campaigns themselves, that is), while the unchecked expansion of AI infrastructure introduces parallel governance challenges, from environmental strain driven by data center resource consumption [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-know-about-energy-use-at-us-data-centers-amid-the-ai-boom/] to the absence of clear regulatory boundaries. What emerges is not a single point of failure, but a layered vulnerability—informational, political, and material—whose effects compound over time. Interestingly, these increasing vulnerabilities to the political sphere from AI-generated content come paired with recent pushes to integrate AI more directly into governance. In January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump launched a sweeping restructuring of the federal government [https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/our-work/carr-ryan-commentary/what-doge-could-mean-future-democracy] through a series of executive orders aimed at reversing prior policies, freezing hiring, mandating a return to in-person work for federal employees, withdrawing from international agreements, and initiating workforce reductions under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory board instead of an official U.S. government department established by Congress. Central to this effort was the accelerated adoption of AI-driven “algorithmic governance,” promising increased efficiency but also raising profound concerns: as government functions become dependent on data systems and private-sector infrastructure, power shifts toward tech firms, institutional capacity within the state erodes, and decision-making risks being automated beyond meaningful oversight. Early examples—such as algorithmic tools overriding medical judgments—suggested both practical harms and systemic vulnerabilities, while the broader trajectory points toward a deepening fusion of state and corporate power (i.e., fascism), potential displacement of large portions of the federal workforce, and even speculative futures in which digitally governed “network states” challenge traditional democracy. In this light, the transition is less a technical upgrade than a structural transformation toward technocracy—also apparent in other initiatives of the second Trump Administration, as we outlined in a bulletin last year [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/trending-toward-a-technate]—with long-term implications for accountability, sovereignty, and democratic governance. Moreover, such a transition to algorithmic governance may only introduce further dimensions of dishonesty into modern political life. Terrence J. Sejnowski’s “Large Language Models and the Reverse Turing Test” [https://direct.mit.edu/neco/article/35/3/309/114731/Large-Language-Models-and-the-Reverse-Turing-Test] (2023) aargues that modern large language models (LLMs) represent a major advance in generating human-like text—but also expose a critical weakness: their inherent tendency to produce false or misleading information with confidence. Because they rely on statistical pattern prediction rather than grounded knowledge, they can fabricate facts or reasoning without detecting errors. Rather than possessing true understanding, LLMs operate by predicting likely word sequences based on statistical patterns in their training data. This means they can generate outputs that are fluent, coherent, and persuasive even when they are factually incorrect—a phenomenon often described as “hallucination.” Drawing on parallels to neuroscience, Sejnowski emphasizes that LLMs lack grounding in the real world: they do not verify claims, access truth directly, or maintain stable internal models of reality. Instead, they assemble plausible responses, which can include fabricated citations, incorrect reasoning, or invented facts—especially when prompted beyond the limits of their training. This, of course, creates practical risks in domains like medicine, law, and education, where confident but incorrect outputs can mislead users who assume reliability based on linguistic fluency. Accordingly, the danger of LLMs is not simply that they make mistakes, but that they make them in ways that are difficult to detect. Their outputs exploit human cognitive biases—particularly our tendency to equate articulate language with competence—thereby increasing the likelihood that users will trust and act on erroneous information. While Sejnowski’s warning concerns the epistemic layer—the reliability of what we are told—then the next question is what happens when that unreliable layer becomes embedded within systems of power and access. That, unfortunately, seems the likely result of algorithmic governance in the context of proposals to expand identity verification laws and the introduction of digital IDs, two converging trends with the potential to transform the internet [https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/the-internet-lockdown]into a highly controlled, identity-based system. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Texas law [https://apnews.com/article/internet-age-verification-supreme-court-def346d7bf299566a3687d8c4f224fec] requiring websites that host pornographic content to verify users’ ages—typically through government IDs or third-party verification—in order to block minors from access. While supporters argued that improved technology makes such checks feasible and comparable to in-person ID requirements, critics warned the law raises serious concerns about privacy, data security, and free speech, with verification systems also risked exposing sensitive personal information and restricting access to legally protected content. The decision set a broad precedent, potentially expanding similar laws nationwide and reshaping how identity verification is enforced across the internet. Since that ruling, seven more states joined the eighteen with existing age verification laws [https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-resources/state-avs-laws/], with California scheduled to introduce its own next year [https://www.biometricupdate.com/202603/californias-os-based-age-verification-law-challenges-open-source-community]. Here, the U.S. is catching up to other Western nations. Last year, the United Kingdom began requiring all pornographic websites and apps to implement robust age verification measures [https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/protecting-children/age-checks-for-online-safety--what-you-need-to-know-as-a-user] under its Online Safety Act, replacing simple self-declaration with methods like facial recognition, digital IDs, or banking checks to prevent minors from accessing harmful content. Meanwhile, the European Union has begun implementing an age verification system with digital identity wallets (EUDI Wallets) to let users prove they meet age requirements—such as being over 18—through privacy-preserving, cryptographic credentials that avoid sharing full personal data. Currently being piloted across several EU countries, the system is expected to scale as part of a broader rollout of digital identity infrastructure across Europe. As digital IDs become increasingly mandated, businesses and governments will have strong incentives to require them for access to online and even physical spaces, creating a “licensed” and gated environment. This shift would erode privacy, enable pervasive tracking, and undermine anonymous speech, as users become permanently tied to their real-world identities. Accordingly, without strong legal and technical safeguards, this emerging infrastructure risks locking society into a system of constant surveillance and restricted access to information. The problem, then, is not merely that algorithmic systems can generate convincing falsehoods, but that these same systems are increasingly being positioned to mediate who is allowed to speak, see, and participate at all. Of course, the irony shouldn’t be lost on us that governments would introduce them to, in part, prevent their citizens from doing precisely what the State of Israel—which already has a digital ID [https://www.do-israel.com/en/israel-biometric-id-teudat-zehut-guide/] to access government services—appears to have done with its recent releases of Netanyahu’s dubious “proof-of-life” videos. If the twentieth century confronted citizens with the problem of propaganda—falsehoods injected into an otherwise legible reality—the twenty-first increasingly confronts us with something more disorienting: a condition in which reality itself becomes procedurally unstable. Not merely distorted, but continuously reconstituted through systems that neither guarantee truth nor remain accountable to it. In such an environment, the question “what happened?” yields less to investigation than to interpretation, and interpretation itself becomes subject to manipulation, amplification, and constraint. At the same time, as certainty dissolves, systems of control are hardening. Identification regimes expand, access narrows, and participation becomes more tightly regulated—even as the informational substrate those systems depend on grows less trustworthy. This inversion is worth dwelling on: truth becomes harder to verify even as authority demands more verification from us. The issue is no longer simply whether something is real, but who has the authority to determine that reality—and on what basis. Accordingly, we arrive at a paradox. As synthetic media makes it more difficult to believe what we see, emerging identity infrastructures make it increasingly impossible to opt out of being seen. We are given less reason to trust, while becoming more exposed. The result is not clarity, but enclosure: an environment in which uncertainty about the world coexists with unprecedented certainty about the individual. On one axis, systems generate persuasive but ungrounded information; on the other, systems determine who may speak, what may be seen, and under what conditions. Together, they form a feedback loop in which the erosion of trust justifies greater control, and greater control further centralizes the production and validation of reality. Preserving any semblance of personal liberty under these conditions will require more than technical fixes or regulatory adjustments. It will demand a renewed commitment to the conditions that made truth politically meaningful in the first place: the ability to speak without permission, to access information without credentialing, and to question authority without being absorbed into its systems. Without such commitments, we risk arriving at a future in which everything is verified, nothing is trusted, and the distinction between reality and its simulation ceases to matter—not because it has been resolved, but because it has been rendered irrelevant. In that world, it no longer matters what’s true, but what we’re allowed to see and believed. The most important question becomes not what happened, but who has the power to decide what counts as having happened—and, within the framework of algorithmic governance, whether that power remains the responsibility of any human beings, let alone accountable to anyone or anything at all besides the spirit in which this system has been designed. Radio Free Pizza is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Radio Free Pizza at www.radiofreepizza.com/subscribe [https://www.radiofreepizza.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Space & Invaders

Dear Radio Free Pizza gourmets, Wild year so far, huh? Sorry I’ve been out of touch: for many months now I’ve been mainly focused on trading options contracts to recover all the money I wish I’d spent on precious metals. But, I’m at least still keeping up a minimum of one post per month, even if none of them are the deep-dish dispatches that had previously been my signature. While the latest release of much-redacted Epstein files [https://www.justice.gov/epstein] has once again made me regret my trademark username and title of this publication (“This even ruins pizza for me”)—though this doesn’t excuse my neglect in covering the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s late-January execution of Alex Pretti [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62r4g590wqo] in my hometown the week before—regardless, I’ve got a birthday at the end of this month, so it seems like a good occasion for another informal journal. Anyway, maybe you’ve heard that last Thursday U.S. President Trump ordered the release [https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116100300268316472] of classified materials on extraterrestrial life. This came on the heels of a 14 February interview with former President Barack Obama, in which he called [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/02/15/obama-aliens-area-51-podcast-interview/88690884007/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThey%E2%80%99re%20real%2C%20but%20I%20haven%E2%80%99t%20seen%20them%2C%22%20Obama%20said.%20%22They%E2%80%99re%20not%20being%20kept%20at%20Area%2051.%20There%E2%80%99s%20no%20underground%20facility%2C%20unless%20there%E2%80%99s%20this%20enormous%20conspiracy%2C%20and%20they%20hid%20it%20from%20the%20president%20of%20the%20United%20States.%E2%80%9D] aliens “real.” Though he walked those comments back the next day, saying that he “saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us,” his successor—who notably established the U.S. Space Force [https://www.cfr.org/articles/happy-sixth-birthday-us-space-force] in 2019—would soon claim [https://nypost.com/2026/02/19/us-news/trump-all-but-confirms-obamas-alien-bombshell-is-true-as-he-chastises-ex-prez-for-for-spilling-classified-info/#:~:text=a%20recent%20interview.-,%E2%80%9CHe%20gave%20classified%20information%2C%20he%E2%80%99s%20not%20supposed%20to%20be%20doing%20that%2C%E2%80%9D%20Trump%20told%20reporters%20on%20Air%20Force%20One.,-Follow%20The%20Post%E2%80%99s] that Obama “gave classified information” before directing his Secretary of Defense to prepare those documents for public consumption. While some (such as talk-show host Seth Meyers [https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2026/02/22/are-the-alien-files-a-distraction-from-the-epstein-files-trump-orders-release-of-documents-on-ufos-uaps-just-as-seth-meyers-predicted.html#:~:text=Meyers%20seems%20to%20have%20seen%20Trump%27s%20alien%20announcement%20coming%20in%20July%202025.]) might have interpreted Trump’s order as an attempted distraction from his numerous appearances in the aforementioned Epstein files, I viewed it through the lens of a comedy sketch from a 2008 episode of The Whitest Kids U’Know. In the sketch, a press conference disclosing the existence of a U.S. moon base ends with one intrepid reporter asking, “We wouldn’t happen to be invading Iran today, would we?” before the press secretary’s face breaks into a smile and he admits, “You got me.” So, you can imagine why: given the transit of the USS Gerald R. Ford [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/heres-what-we-know-about-the-buildup-of-u-s-military-assets-in-the-middle-east] from the Caribbean Sea (where it had been stationed in 2025 [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/tropical-truculence#:~:text=the%20USS%20Gerald%20R.%20Ford%20aircraft%20carrier%20to%20the%20Caribbean] until the successful kidnapping of the Venezuelan President [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/the-calamity-in-caracas] earlier this year) along with dozens of fighter jets from North America and Europe to join the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East, it seems clear that the U.S. stands prepared for the Islamic Republic of Iran to fall short of Trump’s demands for a “meaningful deal” (whatever that is) “over the next probably ten days.” While diplomatic negotiations will resume tomorrow [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/feb/25/donald-trump-state-of-the-union-us-politics-iran-latest-news-updates?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-699ed5408f089504d803c5c7#block-699ed5408f089504d803c5c7], Iranian officials strongly criticized Trump’s claims in his State of the Union address last night, accusing the president of spreading “big lies” about Iran’s nuclear program, missiles, and recent unrest, comparing its messaging to propaganda tactics. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned that Tehran would respond forcefully to any military attack. Since the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China have been conducting the Maritime Security Belt 2026 [https://en.mehrnews.com/news/241865/Iran-Russia-China-to-hold-drill-in-Strait-of-Hormuz] naval exercises with Iran, as they did last year [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/straitjacket-of-hormuz#:~:text=the%20deployment%20of%20seven%20B%2D2%20Spirit%20stealth%20bombers], we can hopefully expect any U.S. aggression to wait until after they’ve departed. This week’s failure of the sewage system aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford adds a little comedy to the situation, with 6500 sailors having only a handful of working toilets. However, The National Review promises us that “The [https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-ford-will-accomplish-its-mission-with-or-without-flushing-toilets/]Ford [https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-ford-will-accomplish-its-mission-with-or-without-flushing-toilets/] Will Accomplish Its Mission with or without Flushing Toilets” [https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-ford-will-accomplish-its-mission-with-or-without-flushing-toilets/]. Regardless, when it comes to whether all this presidential talk of extraterrestrial life is a distraction from the Epstein files or from an impending U.S. strike on Iran: why not both? After all (“in my opinion”), it’s clear to anyone with a brain that Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (Mossad) asset [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/9/what-were-jeffrey-epsteins-links-to-israel]—though some, mainly in the British press, seem [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/01/epstein-links-to-putin-and-fsb-raise-fears-he-was-a-russian/] to have [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/38100736/jeffrey-epstein-fbi-files-russian-spy-kgb-putin/] misplaced theirs [https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/jeffrey-epstein-took-leaf-from-vladimir-putins-playbook-hvjb2wbbb?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqdYoXqCsHllFhwMkAqFhG4c2XOIUMWEw9cKmGLSKTm6qH1Nmog9Q9pDYSnfp1E%3D&gaa_ts=699b8f85&gaa_sig=KkPu66eYmb3Y236W3I2d_vsCRHRt3zz_AdHDa3JTzDSp0QfoLSmTW0Vuv5_6WEU1SZ6AJwjQs1L9JECOl3g-ww%3D%3D]—and that the State of Israel would be the prime geopolitical beneficiary of any U.S. attack on Iran, given (at a minimum, though maybe least of all) the two countries’ military exchanges in the summer of last year [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/promises-kept]. Of course, if the U.S. hadn’t already involved itself in the campaign against the Islamic Republic, then we might have to worry that Israel would attack the U.S. itself to draw it into the conflict, as they did with the USS Liberty [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-8/israel-attacks-uss-liberty] during the Six-Day War in 1967. Understanding that, it’s curious to note that claims asserting a legitimate first contact between the U.S. and extraterrestrial life already arose from (among others [https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190390376/ufo-hearing-non-human-biologics-uaps?st_source=ai_mode#:~:text=Three%20military%20veterans%20testified%20in,biologics%22%20from%20alleged%20crash%20sites.]) an actual Israeli official, as NBC News reported in 2020. That official was Haim Eshed, retired brigadier general in Israeli Military Intelligence (Aman) and former director of the Space Committee at Israel’s Ministry of Science, Technology, and Space. In an interview published in English [https://www.jpost.com/omg/former-israeli-space-security-chief-says-aliens-exist-humanity-not-ready-651405] by The Jerusalem Post, Eshed alleges that aliens exist and that for years both the U.S. and Israel have been in contact with a group he calls “the Galactic Federation.” According to him, President Trump was aware of these aliens in his first term and had been on the verge of revealing their secrets, but this so-called Federation asked him not to in order to prevent mass hysteria. The retired general claims that humanity isn’t ready and that aliens don’t want to reveal themselves until humanity evolves and understands “what space and spaceships are” (whatever that means). Eshed also claimed that an agreement exists between the U.S. government and aliens for research into “the fabric of the universe” at a secret underground base on Mars. “If I had come up with what I’m saying today five years ago, I would have been hospitalized,” said Eshed—with his translator perhaps not knowing what the phrase “come up with” usually implies in English. (If anyone in the British press is reading, it usually refers to something produced under pressure, like an excuse or deception.) Eshed hit the press again in December 2025 [https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/trump-knew-about-galactic-federation-all-along-haim-eshed-claims-1761278] to reiterate his outlandish claims that the U.S. and Israel both maintain diplomatic relations with extraterrestrials. After all, that’s not the only thing that the two imperialists do together: last summer, they conducted joint strikes on Iran [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/promises-kept#:~:text=Now%2C%20the%20U.S.%20has%20officially%20entered%20the%20conflict%20on%20behalf%20of%20Israel], and obviously look like they’ll work together again—even though the White House claimed last year that it had destroyed all the Iranian nuclear facilities [https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/irans-nuclear-facilities-have-been-obliterated-and-suggestions-otherwise-are-fake-news/] over which it now pretends to want a deal. “We eliminated the threat, but the threat remains imminent!” Of course, we’ve been hearing about this imminent threat for decades: for over 30 years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly warned that Iran is on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon [https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/6/18/the-history-of-netanyahus-rhetoric-on-irans-nuclear-ambitions]. Beginning in 1992, he claimed Iran was only a few years away from nuclear capability—a prediction he reiterated throughout the 1990s, in U.S. congressional testimony in 2002, in private remarks revealed by WikiLeaks in 2009, and dramatically at the United Nations in 2012 with a visual depiction of a bomb. Despite shifting intelligence assessments—including statements this year from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence indicating Iran is not building a nuclear weapon—Netanyahu continues to argue that Iran could obtain one within months or weeks. His message of imminent threat has remained largely unchanged across decades of diplomatic developments and evolving intelligence findings. Maybe we’ll get a Whitest Kids U’Know reunion this year, too, since it seems like everything old is new again. But until then, we’ll wait with bated breath for the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran that their sketch depicts as the real purpose behind American disclosures of extraterrestrial life. In the meantime, we can learn more about Iran’s position from Max Blumenthal’s interview of Professor Mohammad Marandi [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QseGXTqYDc] for The Grayzone last Friday. Professor Marandi explains (at ~0:19) that Iran’s military drill simulating closure of the Strait of Hormuz is meant as a deterrent message to Washington and Tel Aviv. He outlines multiple methods Iran could use to shut the waterway: sinking ships in its narrow passage, targeting vessels across the Persian Gulf, and striking oil and gas infrastructure. He stresses that Iran does not require long-range missiles for regional warfare, citing its arsenal of medium- and short-range missiles, cruise missiles, drones, anti-ship systems, and asymmetric naval capabilities. With control of one coastline and strategic islands, Iran holds geographic leverage over Gulf monarchies hosting U.S. bases, including Al-Udeid in Qatar, from which the drone that killed General Soleimani was launched. Providing historical context (at ~3:42), Marandi describes Iran’s restraint toward Gulf states after the Iran-Iraq War, despite their financial backing of Saddam Hussein and Western support for chemical weapons used in atrocities like the 1988 Halabja massacre. He recounts how Iran restored relations even after immense losses and notes Tehran later supported Qatar when it faced Saudi-UAE pressure, despite Qatar’s prior role in Operation Timber Sycamore and Syria’s destabilization. He warns (at ~6:22) that a regional war would halt oil and gas exports from the Persian Gulf and Caucasus, potentially triggering a global economic crisis worse than 1929. Even if the U.S. is energy self-sufficient, he argues, soaring oil prices would shutter businesses before eventual collapse in demand. While Iran would retaliate against U.S. bases, Israel, and naval assets, the most devastating impact would be the shutdown of regional energy and trade flows. Marandi discusses (at ~8:51) Ali Larijani’s outreach to Gulf states, describing them as fearful but unwilling to defy U.S. policy. He criticizes their symbolic gestures for Palestine while permitting U.S. military operations. The discussion turns (at ~11:20) to Turkey, where Marandi accuses Ankara of facilitating Israeli energy flows and destabilizing Syria, weakening its own strategic buffer. Blumenthal recounts (at ~13:38) a 2024 Istanbul conference where critics questioned Iran’s Palestine support despite Turkey’s gas trade with Israel, highlighting economic dependence on Western financial systems and Iran’s relative autonomy. Emphasizing (at ~15:43) Iran’s sacrifices for Palestine, Marandi describes decades of sanctions, war, and propaganda. He identifies three hostile trends toward Iran: Western establishment elites, segments of the Western left, and Wahhabi-Salafi movements. He recalls surviving chemical attacks and visiting Halabja (at ~18:10), criticizing Western silence on Saddam’s crimes and the 1988 downing of Iran Air Flight 655. He analyzes (at ~20:29) coordinated anti-Iran narratives, including sectarian disinformation and orientalist stereotypes. Blumenthal notes (at ~25:14) hostility from Trotskyist and liberal factions, while Marandi argues (at ~26:36) that those demonizing Iran while opposing war enable military escalation, citing U.S. admissions of economic pressure campaigns and intelligence involvement in unrest. He clarifies (at ~29:00) that Iran’s deeper Syria involvement began in 2013 to counter foreign-backed insurgency serving Israeli interests. Discussing ISIS (at ~31:18), he says Iran intervened early to defend Baghdad and Erbil when the U.S. hesitated. Detailing military capabilities (at ~42:18), Marandi describes expanded underground missile systems, an asymmetric naval doctrine, and a strategic shift from defensive to offensive posture targeting U.S. forces. He outlines regional allies’ strength (at ~47:24), contrasting small Gulf monarchies with populous Yemen and Iraq. Predicting domestic U.S. resistance to war (at ~48:30), he cites economic fragility and political division. Blumenthal recounts (at ~51:04) Israel’s initial strike in the 12-day war, and Marandi reiterates Iran will not initiate conflict but may preempt imminent attack. He notes (at ~58:21) expanded Iran-Russia-China cooperation, describes (at ~1:03:46) hostile Western media appearances in which he clashed with surprise guests supporting the former Iranian monarchy, and cites (at ~1:13:15) massive Iranian counter-demonstrations following riots, dismissed by some Western commentators. The interview concludes (at ~1:21:12) with warnings about U.S. economic pressure campaigns targeting sanctioned states, as well as Marandi’s cautious optimism that global awareness of geopolitical and financial power structures is growing despite escalating tensions. Of course, the pair never got around to talking about aliens. Undoubtedly they’d agree that the topic is silly nonsense compared to the imminent threat of an armed conflict that might include nuclear powers like China and Russia—or, for that matter, that Israel finds itself on the losing side, and and decides to execute its Samson Option [https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-samson-option-will-the-temple-columns-soon-fall-on-israels-enemies/] and deploy the nuclear weapons it developed with technology stolen from the U.S. and other allies [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-arsenal#:~:text=who%20turned%20a%20blind%20eye%20to%20its%20theft]. Still, some of you with a predilection for the paranormal might wonder if aliens like those that Eshed described wouldn’t intervene to prevent a nuclear exchange. After all, a group of former U.S. Air Force personnel held a press conference in 2010 [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force-personnel-ufos-deactivated-nukes/] at the National Press Club claiming that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) had interfered with nuclear weapons systems. Former Capt. Robert Salas described a 1967 incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base in which 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles reportedly became inoperative as a glowing object hovered nearby. Retired officers also referenced the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident near RAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge in England, where military personnel reported seeing a triangular craft, unusual ground markings, and unexplained lights. Some speakers said their reports were dismissed or classified as “top secret.” Researcher Robert Hastings, who organized the event, suggested the phenomena indicated extraterrestrials were monitoring nuclear weapons as a warning to humanity. However, the Pentagon had theretofore insisted that it cannot substantiate the existence of extraterrestrial craft. So here we are. On one hand: retired Israeli officials describing a “Galactic Federation,” former U.S. presidents flirting with alien rhetoric, and the Pentagon promising document dumps about extraterrestrials. On the other: carrier strike groups repositioning, ten-day ultimatums, recycled nuclear countdown clocks, and a region that could ignite in ways that would not be confined to the desert. While we are invited to contemplate life on Mars, very real human beings are contemplating life under sanctions, drone surveillance, and missile defense systems. While social media debates whether UFOs disable nukes out of cosmic benevolence, oil tankers still pass through the Strait of Hormuz under the shadow of war games. While headlines ask whether humanity is ready for interstellar diplomacy, Washington appears ready—again—for regime diplomacy by other means. That’s the pattern that The Whitest Kids U’Know sketch understood intuitively: when the press conference gets weird, check the flight radar. Because these “disclosures” aren’t really about extraterrestrials: they’re about narrative management. If there were truly a Galactic Federation observing us, one imagines they wouldn’t be confused by our technology, but by our storytelling: by our ability to recycle urgency, our talent for turning distraction into doctrine, and our habit of announcing existential threats on a loop until they become background noise. Most likely, no alien intervention is coming to prevent escalation in the Persian Gulf. No triangular craft will descend and hit the off-switch on imperialism. If war comes—or if it is narrowly avoided—it will be because human beings made those decisions, calculated those risks, and bore those consequences. Which leaves us with something much less cinematic but far more important: attention. Attention to carrier movements, to economic warfare, to how “imminent threats” age, and above all, to who benefits when the spotlight shifts upward. Maybe that’s the real first contact—recognizing that we are not being visited, but managed. Not invaded from space, but shepherded through narratives. Not distracted by accident, but by design. Welcome back to Earth. Radio Free Pizza is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Radio Free Pizza at www.radiofreepizza.com/subscribe [https://www.radiofreepizza.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

ICE Meltdown

As you might have heard, earlier this week Officer Jonathan Ross of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed 37-year-old U.S. citizen (and mother of three [https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/renee-was-made-of-sunshine-wife-of-woman-killed-by-ice-agent-releases-statement/#:~:text=Renee%20leaves%20behind%20three%20extraordinary%20children]) Renee Nicole Good between East 33rd and East 34th Streets on Portland Avenue in Central Minneapolis. Good’s death has since inflamed national controversy, sparked widespread protests, and made headlines across the country. Video footage obtained from multiple angles—including cellphone video from Ross himself—shows an interaction in which ICE officers approached Good’s vehicle as she was stopped diagonally in the roadway during an enforcement action. An agent shouting orders reached toward the vehicle, and Ross shot Good as she attempted to drive away. Good’s vehicle then crashed further down the block, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. Federal authorities initially released limited details, and have framed Good’s actions as a threat to ICE agents [https://www.startribune.com/ice-agent-who-fatally-shot-woman-in-minneapolis-is-identified/601560214]—President Donald Trump claimed [https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115855701696773990] that she “viciously ran over the ICE Officer”—though this characterization has been challenged by local officials and independent video analysis. (Ross was involved in a prior vehicle-related incident [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/ice-agent-jonathan-ross-minneapolis-shooting.html] in June 2025, during which a motorist refused to exit during a stop and dragged him approximately 300 feet, possibly providing relevant context for his later threat perception.) In the aftermath, the federal government’s handling of the investigation has drawn criticism: state authorities, including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, have disputed parts of the federal narrative and called for transparent review of the evidence. The FBI is reportedly leading the probe, and state and local agencies have expressed frustration over restricted access to key material. Public response has been immediate and intense: protests have taken place in Minneapolis and are being organized in cities nationwide [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ice-shooting-minneapolis-victim-video-live-updates-b2898038.html], often calling for ICE accountability and raising broader concerns about federal law-enforcement tactics. The incident has become a flashpoint in the larger national conversation on policing, immigration enforcement, and civil liberties, with tensions between federal and local officials further complicating efforts to reach a common understanding of the facts on the ground. Longtime Radio Free Pizza gourmets may note this as an escalation of the city’s more longstanding tensions with policing and civil liberties, recalling our January 2024 dispatch [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/minneapolis-cant-get-up] that traced the long shadow of the late-May 2020 unrest following George Floyd’s death, when protests escalated into riots, the Minneapolis 3rd Precinct was abandoned on orders and then burned, and more than a thousand properties were damaged. We detailed how the aftermath has been marked not only by material destruction but by a lingering civic demoralization, sharp disagreements over policing, and a persistent sense among residents that public safety has deteriorated. More recent aficionados of our reporting might also remember last year’s journal [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/p/comeback-kid] describing renewed fears about political violence, then made concrete by the politically motivated killing of Minnesota lawmakers unfolding amid nationwide unrest, protests against immigration enforcement (”What else is new?”) and a polarizing military parade in Washington that symbolized deep national division. Accordingly, we can certainly call it fitting that broader conflicts between state and federal governments might here find a potential flashpoint. (If that should become the case, then perhaps we shouldn’t have stopped short of predicting it in a slice from the start of 2024 [https://zacharonipizza.substack.com/i/137983921/home-front-the-imperial-core] that noted how American society has become increasingly primed—psychologically, politically, and culturally—for internal conflict, whether sparked by a singular catalyst or from pressures already built into the system.) This killing, then, may well provide a litmus test for how authority, accountability, and restraint are exercised when federal power meets local resistance on the ground. For now, however, open questions remain about the precise sequence of events, the decisions made by the officers on the scene, and how federal use-of-force policies are interpreted and applied in dynamic, high-stakes encounters. To shed light on these questions, we turn now to the analysis [https://youtu.be/sT6Zw-HWRgQ] of Rev. Augustus Corbett, Esq. Here, Corbett explains (at ~6:40) the foundational decision in Tennessee v. Garner (1985) establishing that, under the Fourth Amendment, police officers may use deadly force to prevent escape only if they have good faith belief the suspect poses significant threat of death or serious physical injury to officers or others. He emphasizes this case forms the starting point for legal analysis in all law enforcement deadly force situations, noting that officers should not kill suspects merely to prevent escape unless the threat condition is met. From there, Corbett goes on to detail (at ~8:45) Graham v. Connor (1989), which set the governing “objective reasonableness” standard for evaluating police use of force. Under this framework, actions are judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, accounting for the fact that officers often make split-second decisions under tense and uncertain conditions. Of course, he points out (at ~19:20) the difficulty of prosecuting law enforcement officers, citing built-in protections from Supreme Court precedent and jury bias favoring police, noting that most cases aren’t even indicted—and even if Minnesota files state charges, Ross may receive Supremacy Clause immunity under the precedent of In re Neagle (1890), which may protect federal officers performing lawful duties if they reasonably believed their conduct was necessary. To determine if Ross has that immunity, courts must consider the totality of circumstances, including the severity of the alleged crime, whether the suspect posed an immediate threat, and whether the suspect was actively resisting or attempting to flee. Corbett emphasizes that this analysis explicitly excludes the officer’s subjective intent—whether good or bad—as well as hindsight judgments informed by slow-motion video review. Applying these principles (at ~23:15) to the available video, Corbett focuses heavily on the direction of the vehicle’s front tires at key moments, arguing that still frames appear to show the tires turned away from the officer rather than toward him, suggesting that the vehicle’s movement was oriented away from the officer’s position. Corbett therefore notes that if the tires had been pointed directly at the officer, the government would have a far stronger argument that deadly force was justified. Instead, the available imagery raises questions about whether an imminent threat existed at the moment shots were fired. Corbett further observes (at ~30:00) from video frames that at the moment of his first shot, Ross’s feet were not positioned directly in front of the vehicle, appearing to have space to move aside rather than fire, which weakens claims of immediate danger. He also addresses what may have been a second shot, arguing that if fired after the vehicle was clearly moving away and no threat remained, justification under Tennessee v. Garner and Graham v. Connor would be even more constrained. Examining (at ~35:03) wider video shots showing no apparent bystanders in the vicinity who would have been endangered if the officer had allowed Good to escape, Corbett notes that—since the vehicle was moving away from the officer and no one else appeared to be at risk—the use of deadly force wasn’t justified under Tennessee v. Garner. However, he acknowledges that Graham v. Connor factors still apply, providing built-in protections for law enforcers. Beyond the strictly legal analysis, the case has also exposed how rapidly questions of use of force become subsumed into broader moral and political narratives. In a separate commentary, Glenn Greenwald examines [https://youtu.be/RXSIeJwWCzY] the same footage and public reaction not to adjudicate the shooting itself, but to interrogate how different factions have responded to it—particularly the tendency, across the ideological spectrum, to justify or even celebrate death when it befalls perceived political enemies. Here, Greenwald details how conservatives have pointed to Ross’s own footage as evidence that the agent reasonably feared for his life and therefore acted in self-defense, while critics argue the video instead shows the driver turning away to flee rather than attempting to strike the agent, making the use of lethal force unjustified. Greenwald emphasizes that although the driver and her partner had behaved antagonistically toward officers before the shooting, adversarial or disrespectful speech at a protest is constitutionally protected and cannot, on its own, justify deadly force. He also highlights contextual details about the victim—who reportedly had no meaningful criminal record—to argue that the leap from protest behavior to an assumption of homicidal intent toward officers is unsupported. Greenwald then widens the lens (at ~1:54) to examine reactions across the media and political spectrum. On parts of the right, he observed a shift from legal arguments about use of force to overt dehumanization of the victim, including inflammatory labels, emphasis on her sexual orientation, and narratives portraying the agent as heroic for supposedly “saving” the child from her parents. Some political figures escalated further, referring to the victim as a “domestic terrorist” or implying she deserved to die. On the left and center, the shooting was broadly condemned as murder, but Greenwald draws a parallel to past instances in which online commentators celebrated the on-camera killing of Charlie Kirk, underscoring that the celebration of political opponents’ deaths is not confined to any one ideological camp. He stresses the importance of distinguishing between legitimate criticism of public figures and the moral collapse represented by rejoicing in someone’s death, noting with concern that expressions of mere criticism are often punished more harshly than explicit celebrations of violence. At the core of his analysis, Greenwald critiques (at ~8:53) what he describes as a broader societal coarsening and dehumanization of political adversaries, accelerated by polarized media ecosystems, online anonymity, and groupthink. He links this domestic moral erosion to U.S. foreign policy, arguing that a nation perpetually engaged in war must continually dehumanize external enemies, a habit that eventually seeps back into domestic culture. Citing Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 Riverside Church speech, Greenwald argues that violence abroad and violence at home are morally and psychologically connected. Greenwald further challenges what he describes as an inconsistent pro-law-enforcement standard embraced by some on the right: that if a person defies lawful orders and an officer reasonably fears for their life, lethal force is justified. Applying that logic consistently, he argues (at ~21:25), would imply that Capitol Police should have used far more lethal force against violent participants on 6 January 2021. Of course, many of these same voices would reject that conclusion, revealing a politically selective application of principle. For Greenwald, both the Minnesota shooting and the killing of Ashli Babbitt on 6 January fail the same ethical test: deadly force should be an absolute last resort. He concludes that the gravest danger lies not in disagreement over individual cases, but in the abandonment of consistent moral standards altogether—replaced instead by factional judgments about who deserves to live or die. In his view, resisting that trend requires reaffirming strict thresholds for lethal force, rejecting the dehumanization of political opponents, and refusing opportunistic double standards driven by partisan loyalty. Taken all together, Greenwald’s analysis situates the Minneapolis killing within a wider cultural pattern of dehumanization, selective outrage, and inconsistent standards for lethal force, in response to which one must ask what kind of society is being shaped by how we talk about who deserves to live or die. In the end, Good’s killing cannot be responsibly reduced to a slogan, a clip, or a partisan verdict rendered in advance of full evidence. As Corbett’s legal analysis makes clear, the governing standards for deadly force are demanding by design, precisely because the power to kill in the name of the state must remain exceptional, constrained, and accountable. At the same time, as Greenwald’s broader critique underscores, the danger does not lie only in whether this single shooting meets a legal threshold, but in how readily Americans now sort such deaths into moral categories based on political allegiance—excusing, condemning, or even celebrating them accordingly. If this case is indeed a litmus test, it is not only for federal use-of-force policy or intergovernmental friction, but for whether a society already strained by violence, polarization, and mistrust can still insist on consistent principles, sober judgment, and the basic sanctity of human life. Until the facts are fully known, restraint—legal, moral, and rhetorical—remains the only position compatible with justice rather than faction. Radio Free Pizza is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Radio Free Pizza at www.radiofreepizza.com/subscribe [https://www.radiofreepizza.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]