Episode 5048: Protecting The J6 Prisoners; What 2026 Hold According To Senator Tubberville


Posted originally on Rumble on Bannon War Room on: January 6, 2026

China Loses Access to Venezuelan Oil


Posted originally on Jan 8, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

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China became Venezuela’s largest oil purchaser through oil-for-debt deals. Socialism failed, and the nation was desperate for funds, especially after being ostracized from Western trade. Beijing supplied Venezuela with credit in exchange for heavily discounted crude. China’s access to cheap oil from Venezuela came to a sudden halt after the US takeover.

China was purchasing around 778,000 barrels a day before Maduro’s capture. Venezuela had borrowed up to $100 billion from China in loans since 2007, using PDVSA crude sales to ChinaOil as collateral. Venezuela agreed to ship fixed volumes of crude to Chinese buyers through small “teapot” refineries. While the average output was 778,000 bpd DAILY, exports reached 952,000 bpd at the end of 2025. These flows accounted for 4% of China’s total oil imports.

China is now looking to Iran and Russia for crude, furthering the disconnect between the East and West. Cargoes secured in Asian waters can cover two and a half months of China’s demand, easing any immediate shocks. Yet, Venezuela still owes China around $19 billion in outstanding debt that was largely secured by long-term crude imports.

China is enraged. Foreign Ministry spokespeople Mao Ning and Lin Jian demanded Venezuela retain “full and permanent sovereignty” over its natural resources and accused the US of “seriously breaching” international law. China’s “legitimate rights and interests in Venezuela must be protected,” according to state media. China’s United Nations representative reiterated this statement, demanding that the US  “cease its bullying and coercive practices.”

Russia stepped in to protect China’s short-term investments using a military submarine to protect an oil carrier from US forces. However, US forces successfully boarded and seized the cargo ship. There was no direct conflict between Russia and the US, but “direct” is key as Russia is showing its willingness to oppose Western influence.

Canada’s Carney chimed in to offer clean Canadian oil as an alternative. No one cares if the oil is clean; everyone wants the best deal.

Rest assured China will ensure it is repaid. Yet, the Trump Administration may not permit repayment in crude. The situation is unfolding and tensions are rapidly rising. The international community is split on America’s actions, with even America’s European allies condemning the move. Europe is now painting Trump with the same brush as Putin by insisting he will continue nation-building and expanding the great American Empire. The models pointed to geopolitical upheaval during the first week of January as we move toward the pinnacle of the panic cycle set to explode in 2026.

ChatGPTHealth—AI to Collect Health Data


Posted originally on Jan 8, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

ChatGPT

The dawn of AI began years ago with data collection. Commercialism has become pinpointed. Inputting phone numbers during every commercial transaction, “free” search engines, social media platforms sending user information to companies—everything we buy is documented, everything we do is tracked and noted by governments and companies alike.

The announcement that AI platforms will now collect personal medical records under the banner of “helping people manage their health” is being sold as progress. But history shows us that every time information is centralized, it is eventually weaponized — either politically, financially, or legally.

“ChatGPT Health is another step toward turning ChatGPT into a personal super-assistant that can support you with information and tools to achieve your goals across any part of your life,” Fidji Simo, CEO of applications at OpenAI, wrote in a post on Substack. Smartwatches will now connect to larger centralized databases. Your every step is calculated and tracked.

The creators claim the data will not be used for training. They claim enhanced privacy and safeguards. Governments and institutions always make these claims at the beginning of every cycle, not the end. The real issue is not what they intend today, but what the system will demand tomorrow.

Health data is not merely personal information it is a source of leverage and power. Once digitized and centralized, it becomes subject to subpoenas, regulatory capture, political agendas, and social engineering. People forget that HIPAA does not protect you from the government. Every database has been hacked at some point in time. Health records are sensitive information that people would not willingly share. Accessing that information could wield tremendous power. The company stated that “hundreds of millions” of ChatGPT users ask health-related questions every week. What if those questions were publicized? The government demands backdoor access to every platform and will undoubtedly demand access to these records.

The danger here is not artificial intelligence. The danger is centralization without accountability. AI itself is neutral and has acted as more of a search engine, but one must wonder how they provide such a service for “free.” The problem is who controls the switch when political pressure inevitably arrives. No system remains voluntary once it becomes essential.

The First ADP Report of 2026


Posted originally on Jan 8, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

Jobs

Unemployment will be a pivotal piece of economic information in the new year. The first ADP report of 2026 shows a modest increase of 41,000 jobs, beneath forecasts of 47,000. Yet, the report comes on the heels of an extremely weak November report with a revised loss of 32,000 jobs as hiring lagged in Q4.

Do not take these figures at face value or as proof of a recovering job market. A 41,000 uptick is far below the strong payroll growth seen earlier in the decade. We are witnessing a structural slowdown. Businesses are fragile and adjusting to higher costs in both rates and goods. Workers have become more expensive for businesses to retain in the once deemed “entry level” roles that have been adjusted to meet arbitrary price standards instead of productivity. Manufacturing remains weak despite every administration focusing on bringing production back to America. The most recent report showed a decline of 5,000 positions in manufacturing and another 3,000 gone in the goods-producing industries overall.

Large businesses are not hiring. They’re at capacity based on the economic reality of an economy in stagflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the closely monitored nonfarm payrolls report this Friday for the first time since the government shutdown. The Fed may look to determine rates, but lower borrowing costs will not suffice as employers simply do not have confidence in the economic landscape of tomorrow.

Socrates & War


Posted originally on Jan 7, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

AE Equity War Index M 11 3 25

QUESTION: Marty, Socrates has been targeting the first week of January and the month of January as a panic cycle in war. How did you ever create a computer that can predict such events well in advance?

MK

ANSWER: Look. I have stated many times, this was never my intent. Some of humanity’s most important breakthroughs happened completely by accident—the kind of discoveries where someone spills something, leaves a mess, or makes a mistake and ends up changing the world.

Probably the most famous was the discovery of Penicillin. Alexander Fleming went on vacation in 1928 and left a dirty petri dish in the lab sink. When he returned, bacteria had grown everywhere except where mold had formed. That observation revolutionized medicine and has saved countless millions of lives.

Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896 when he opened a drawer. He’d left uranium on top of a photographic plate with wooden crosses between them during overcast weather, and when he developed the plates, the crosses appeared—the uranium was exposing them without sunlight.  This accidental finding earned him half a Nobel Prize and led to Marie Curie’s groundbreaking work.

Some accidents were downright messy. Spencer Silver at 3M was trying to create a super-strong adhesive in 1968 but accidentally made a weak one that could be easily removed—it seemed like a failure until someone realized it was perfect for Post-it Notes

The list goes on an on. But while this maybe a discovery of great importance, it has also been my curse. They have done everything to me from trying to kill me to throwing me in civil contempt without any explanation completely against everything in the Constitution denied a trial under the pretense it was “civil” and not “criminal.”

MA Socrates Prison

Socrates was my inspiration. I paid my respects to the jail cell in Athens where they imprisoned Socrates for also standing by his convictions. His fearlessness in the face of death is one of the most powerful themes in the Apology. His reasoning is remarkable.

Socrates argued that when performing an action, the only relevant question is whether one is acting justly or not—considerations of life and death are selfish and unimportant next to considerations of justice. He compared his philosophical calling to a soldier’s duty: just as a good soldier shouldn’t abandon his post in battle even at the risk of death, he couldn’t abandon his post as a truth-seeker.

His central argument was that fear of death is just another kind of false wisdom, of claiming to know the unknowable. Since no one actually knows what death is, fearing it presumes knowledge we don’t have. Socrates then offered what’s essentially a win-win scenario. Death is either a state of nothingness—like a peaceful, restful sleep. How many of us have such a wonderful night not to be awakened by a dream. Or it’s a migration of the soul where he could meet all his great friends and figures from the past to engage in a conversation about wisdom. Either way, he saw no reason to fear it.

When the jury offered to let him go if he’d just stop philosophizing, Socrates refused, saying he would rather die than give up participating in philosophical inquiry, claiming that the unexamined life is not worth living.

This was my inspiration. Once you lose the fear of death, there is nothing left for them threaten you with. When they threatened my family, I wrote to Dorthy Heyl of the SEC and threatened to commit suicide to save my family, but I promised I would not go as quietly as they forced Stephen Schiffer in a previous SEC case taking his lawyers away and their threats led him to comit suicide.

We the People

My philosophy was forged by their ruthless corruption. Federal prosecutors used threats against Michael Milken’s family members to pressure him into pleading guilty to a crime he did not commit. They inverted insider trading from a director selling stock ahead of declaring bankruptcy to the fraud being the public did not have the same information to profit from. As I wrote, there is no such crime defined by Congress. This is a bureaucratic rule when laws are supposed to be created by the PEOPLE, not rules by bureaucrats.

We live in tyranny. There is no rule of law. Judges do as ordered by the government which is why the conviction rate in federal cases is virtually 99% whereas Adolf Hitler’s conviction rate in the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof), a political tribunal, had devastating statistics between 1937 and 1945. The court heard over 14,000 cases and condemned over 5,000 people to death. That’s roughly a 36% death sentence rate overall, though the numbers grew far worse as the war progressed. However, The most notorious court in history had been that of Hitler which had a 90% conviction rate to something overall. The American justice system has outdone Hitler.

Hect Model Schiavoni REDACTED

They demanded the source code even in writing. That had nothing to do with anything but political prosecution. If I turned that over, then what? Even my lawyers told me it did not matter what I turned over, they would NEVER release me. When they want something, you have no rights. The only reason they were forced to release me was when the Supreme Court ordered them to respond. If it was not for the Supreme Court, I would have died in civil contempt long ago not much different from Socrates. They wanted this war model that they saw as national security.

World War III Unfolding Before Our Eyes


Posted originally on Jan 7, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |  

Tanker 2026

The Neocons have won. Taking Venezuela followed the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis agenda to prevent Russia from installing nukes as a countermeasure for Ukraine. There are now even discussions about using military force to seize Greenland, but the most audacious direct slap in the face to Russia is the seizing of a tanker with a Russian flag, and Putin assumed would be enough to warn the US to keep its hands off it.

2026_01_07_09_39_01_US_Says_It_Has_Seized_Russian_Flagged_Tanker_Connected_to_Venezuelan_Oil_The_E

Russia had staked its reputation and geopolitical credibility on conferring official protection on the shadow-fleet oil tanker the Neocons pushing for WWIII have pursued with total disregard for the consequences. As the more than two-week pursuit of Bella 1 unfolded, Russia re-flagged the vessel with its own colors, renamed it the Marinera, and added it to an official Russian ship database. The Neocons do not give a shit. What they hell, they send other people’s children to die – never themselves. The re-flagging to a Russian ship was assumed it would say hands off or war. The Neocons want war. This is about the total destruction of Russia which they have been dreaming about since childhood. People like John Bolton joined the National Guard so he did not have to go to Vietnam.

1964 Troika over throw Khruschev

The danger here is that when Khrushchev backed down in 1962, there was a coup and he was replaced with Brezhnev. When a proposal for Russia to join NATO, a second coup took place this time against Gorbachev. Slapping Putin across the face may make the press cheer, but this puts internal pressure on Putin. If does not respond definitively, he too will be overthrown by their Neocons.

Nuclear Deterrence

Nuclear war could be just one step away!

No that the Neocons have deliberately put Americans in the direct confrontation with Russia, Putin made a fatal mistake. He assumed that nuclear weapons are still a deterent. He has limited him to rhetoric about ‘red lines’, and the Neocons are showing the world that they think that Russia is just a very large Venezuela, that can be pushed around without any real consequences. The Neocons are drooling over the idea of sending American forces into the Black Sea with Tomahawk missile carriers. They perceive Putin as weak who is afraid to push the button.

Britain and France have signed a historic agreement committing to boots on the ground in Ukraine as soon as any ceasefire with Russia comes into place. They are determined to have WWIII with Russia that they think will make Europe relavant again geopolitically.

World War III

We will do a special update on the Private Block with the computer’s latest forecasts on timing.

Border Czar Tom Homan Gives Update on Ongoing ICE Operations


Posted originally on CTH on January 8, 2026 | Sundance

January 8, 2026 | Sundance | 8 Comments

President Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan speaks with “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil about the Minneapolis ICE shooting, the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations and more.

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Vice President JD Vance Hints at Major Administration Announcement Regarding National Fraud Rings and Illegal Alien Benefit Schemes


Posted originally on CTH on January 8, 2026 | Sundance

During a Fox News interview, Vice President JD Vance hints at major announcements likely from the Trump administration in the next few days.

At 7:49 of video: “I believe Jesse, we are going to have some significant announcements on this stuff in the next couple of days. I don’t want to get ahead of the President on anything, but we believe there is a nationwide fraud ring that’s rooted in illegal aliens and others taking advantage of the American welfare system. We are going to get to the root of it, and anybody who is involved is going to get prosecuted.”   WATCH:

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DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Briefs Media Following Attack on ICE Officials in Minneapolis, Minnesota


Posted originally on CTH on January 7, 2026 | Sundance 

On Wednesday, a confrontation between ICE agents and an aggressive anti-ICE protester in Minneapolis resulted in the ICE officer defending himself while a vehicle was weaponized against him.  The female driver named Renee Nicole Macklin Good (37) was shot and killed.

Antifa aligned activists have been chasing and trying to disrupt immigration enforcement operations throughout the Minneapolis area.  Leftist Mayor Frey and Minnesota Governor Walz are using the ICE shooting to stir up anxiety and take attention away from the rampant fraud recently outlined in the state.

DHS secretary Kristi Noem held a press conference to address the shooting.

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Secretary Rubio and Secretary Hegseth Speak to Media Following Senate Briefing on Venezuela


Posted originally on CTH on Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth deliver remarks to the media following a briefing of Senators on the ongoing Venezuela operations.

As noted by Secretary Rubio, the U.S. is now in control of all Venezuela oil production and distribution.  WATCH:

Further to Rubio’s remarksEnergy Secretary Chris Wright said Wednesday that the United States will sell Venezuelan oil “indefinitely” after completing sales of the crude currently accumulating in storage there.

Wright said the proceeds from those sales would be “deposited into accounts controlled by the U.S. government” and then “flow back into Venezuela to benefit the Venezuelan people.”

“Instead of the oil being blockaded, as it is right now, we’re gonna let the oil flow … to United States refineries and around the world to bring better oil supplies, but have those sales done by the U.S. government,” he said at Goldman Sachs’ Energy, CleanTech & Utilities Conference.

“We’re going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela, first this backed-up stored oil, and then indefinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” Wright added. (read more)

January 7, 2026 | Sundance