The Map Is Not the Territory: Ukraine, Manufactured Consent, and Europe’s War of Attrition
By Gerry Nolan | Ron Paul Institute | December 16, 2025
Western headlines are screaming that Ukraine has “encircled” Kupyansk city… a glorified town, selling it as a nightmare for Moscow. But this is not a battlefield report. It is narrative management, timed precisely to negotiations in Berlin. Kupyansk is not Stalingrad. It is not Kursk. It is not even a decisive urban fight. It is a ruined settlement on the Oskol, a former logistics node reduced to rubble, where control is measured not in flags but in fire control, drone dominance, and whether men can be rotated without being killed.
And when even Reuters couches claims as “unverified,” you know what that means. When it hedges, pauses, and inserts distance between claims and confirmation, it is signaling that fog is being weaponised. What exists on the ground is block-by-block ruin fighting, contested neighbourhoods like Yubileynyy, clashes near Mirovoye and Radkovka, infiltration attempts, temporary interdictions. Battalion-scale collisions between exhausted units in a place that barely functions as a glorified town.
The unit scale tells the truth the headlines obscure. Kupyansk has never hosted a force capable of deciding a front. Within the urban core, the Russian presence has been limited and exposed, with little time to dig in deeper, the town’s ruins making sustained fortification difficult, relying on fire control rather than secured occupation. With thousands tied down protecting the flanks and barely a battalion inside the city itself, Ukrainian assaults are not sweeping counteroffensives but concentrated pushes by swarms of worn formations, often built from forcibly mobilised men with minimal training, starving and thin on ammunition, cannibalized from fronts like Sumy, and thrown into an urban graveyard to manufacture leverage.
This is not manoeuvre warfare. It is attritional contact deliberately framed as momentum to serve a media and political narrative rather operational gain. What matters is that the map is not the territory. In this war, a coloured overlay often marks a brief window of drone interdiction, hours, not control. Fire control can deny movement, but without sustainment it cannot secure ground. Fire control without sustainment does not produce breakthroughs. It produces graveyards. Ukraine has been forced by its Western patrons into too many of them already.
Kupyansk does not change the war unless it becomes part of a broader operational rollback and it won’t. Otherwise, it is a bad PR bargaining chip, paid for in blood.
While cameras fixate on Kupyansk, the real pressure story runs elsewhere, across a widening arc Western coverage fragments to prevent pattern recognition. West of Russian liberated Seversk, claims and denials continue, but the geometry is clear: Ukrainian forces are stretched thin, defending ground without strategic depth. Around encircled Lyman, the contest is about lines of communication and Ukranian reserve erosion, not symbolism.
Central to the Donbass arc, Pokrovsk and Mirnograd matter not because of names, but because they anchor logistics. Russian control here forces a stark contrast in how the war is being fought. Ukraine is expending irreplaceable manpower to manufacture moments, brief tactical actions designed to win optics for a day. Russia, by contrast, is trading space, fire control, and logistics denial for outcomes that compound over time. One side is managing headlines. The other is managing the war.
To the south, the picture is more dangerous still. Around Gulyaypole, pressure is persistent and cumulative, not theatrical. And beyond it lies the real anxiety Europe refuses to discuss openly, the slow, grinding push toward Zaporozhye city. This is not a sprint. It is a methodical march Westward. If current trends hold, Zaporozhye can be operationally threatened, even encircled in less than six months. That outcome would dwarf any skirmish in the small town of Kupyansk.
This is where time asymmetry becomes decisive. Russia is fighting a time-positive war: industrial scaling and real capacity that dwarfs the fiat, paper-tiger illusory capacity of NATO; deep manpower reserves; and a level of internal cohesion sufficient to sustain a long campaign. Ukraine, by contrast, is fighting a time-negative war, with catastrophic demographic collapse, mass emigration, forced conscription, and shrinking public consent. Every Ukrainian media counteroffensive now borrows against a future that no longer exists to replenish it.
This is one of the real reasons behind Trump’s push. Less sentiment. Not ideology. Geometry. Timelines. Arithmetic. Washington understands that delay only makes the endgame worse, militarily and politically for project Ukraine. Europe understands this too. But Europe cannot admit it without confessing its humiliation.
So Europe clings to suicidal optics. It inflates Kupyansk. It sells illusory leverage. And it sacrifices Ukrainians to buy time, not for victory, but for narrative survival.
Here is the truth Europe works hardest to bury beneath headlines and choreographed resolve: this war no longer reflects the will of the Ukrainian people, and, in truth, it only ever did through manufactured consent that has now collapsed. Not marginally. Not ambiguously. Overwhelmingly. Even after years of saturation messaging, censorship, emergency laws, and relentless narrative conditioning, roughly four-fifths of Ukrainians now demand peace. It is devastating precisely because it persists despite one of the most intensive information campaigns the modern West has ever mounted.
Instead, men are dragged from streets and their homes, beaten, bundled into vans, forced into uniforms, and sent to the front. Videos of violent conscription squads no longer shock because they are the tragic norm.
This is not mobilisation. It is cowardly and punitive coercion, the final refuge of elites who lack legitimacy but demand sacrifice. It is the politics of cowardice, where those who made the decisions never bear the cost, and those who pay the price were never given a choice. These wars are always fought with other people’s sons, for objectives that dissolve under scrutiny, while the architects retreat behind speeches, security details, and moral posturing.
When a state must kidnap its own citizens to sustain a war, it has crossed the final moral line: it is no longer defending a nation, because it never was, but cannibalising one, deliberately sacrificing its people as a tip of the spear against a stronger Russia, to shield the reputations, fortunes, and careers of elites who will never bleed, never fight, and never answer for the ruin they leave behind.
Washington shattered Europe’s strategic autonomy years ago and quietly handed the bill to the continent. NATO expansion without strategy. Economic warfare without insulation. Energy sabotage without a contingency secured. The result was inevitable… Accelerated deindustrialisation, inflation, social fracture, political fragility. Europe emerged poorer, weaker, and strategically irrelevant, yet still clinging to the language of moral authority.
Rather than confront this collapse, Europe chose the refuge of absolutism. Negotiation became heresy. Compromise became betrayal. Peace became appeasement. Diplomacy itself was criminalised, because diplomacy invites the most dangerous question of all. What was this for?
And that question cannot be answered without consequences. Because peace does something war cannot. War suspends politics. Peace resurrects accountability.
Europe does not fear losing the war as much as it fears surviving it with memory intact.
That is why the war must continue. Not to save Ukraine, but to postpone reckoning, at the hands of Europeans.
Which brings us back to Kupyansk.
Kupyansk is not a battlefield turning point. It is a tombstone. Not only for the men buried beneath its rubble, but for Europe’s moral credibility itself.
What will damn this war in the historical record is not how it began, but how long it continued after its flimsy justification collapsed. When even manufactured consent evaporated, when diplomacy was deliberately buried, when Russian defeat quietly gave way to arithmetic, the war did not stop. It hardened. Not because it could still be won, but because ending it would have forced admissions no ruling class was prepared to make.
Kupyansk is not remembered because it mattered militarily. It matters because it exposes the moment when the war ceased to be about territory at all. It marks the point where Europe chose blood over truth, coercion over consent, and narrative survival over human life. Not out of strength, but out of fear.
History is unforgiving toward wars waged without consent and prolonged without purpose. It does not care about intentions, speeches, or moral language. It records only what was done, who benefited, and who paid. And when the record is written, it will show that Ukraine was not denied peace because peace was impossible, but because peace would have ended the lie.
That is the real defeat.
AfD: “The German government is trying to create the conditions for war without the consent of the people”
AfD Co-chair Tino Chrupalla says the EU’s sanctions, militarism, and support for Israeli crimes are eroding Europe’s democracy and sovereignty.
By Tunc Akkoc | The Cradle | December 16, 2025
With western double standards laid bare by Israel’s war on Gaza, Germany’s political order is facing an unprecedented rupture. The ruling Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), both staunch backers of Ukraine and Israel, have pushed Berlin into economic turmoil with self-destructive sanctions on Russia and unconditional support for Tel Aviv. Now, with the country in recession and the public burdened by soaring energy costs, Germany’s once-stable centrism is crumbling.
Trends in German politics point to a change unseen since World War II. The INSA poll conducted between 8 and 12 December shows the CDU/CSU has fallen to 24 percent, while the SPD has dropped to 14 percent. The rising force is the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In the INSA poll, its vote share reaches 26 percent. These figures are consistent with the Ipsos results from 7 to 9 November.
The AfD was founded in 2013, following the 2008 financial crisis. It is now the main opposition party and even a contender for power – that is, if they are allowed to participate in the elections. The party criticizes “mass migration, crime, high taxes, silenced opposition, and poverty.” It is labeled “far-right” by the ‘centrist’ neoliberal bloc. So what views do they defend to be considered “far-right”? What exactly are they saying about current issues in Europe, Germany, and the world?
Tino Chrupalla has co-chaired the AfD party with Alice Weidel since 2019. A Bundestag member since 2017, Chrupalla hails from East Germany and started his political journey in the youth wing of the Christian Democrats. He joined the AfD in 2015 and was the party’s representative at US President Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration in January 2025.
In this exclusive interview with The Cradle, Chrupalla speaks out on the failures of the Ukraine and Gaza wars, the militarization of Europe, and why he believes Germany must break from Atlanticist subservience to pursue a future of peace, trade, and sovereignty.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)
The Cradle : How do you assess the geopolitical and geoeconomic situation in Europe? Is it possible to reverse the effects of the Ukraine crisis?
Chrupalla: During the war in Ukraine, Europe has taken itself out of the game. Those who are strong are those who have multiple options. With 19 sanction packages, the EU has rejected the option of cheap gas and other raw materials from Russia.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put it aptly: if you have to do something 19 times, you have apparently made a mistake. The German people are the ones primarily suffering under the sanctions.
This policy has failed. German households now pay three to four times more for energy than those in the US. Our energy-intensive industries are relocating. Unemployment is rising. Heads of state and government of the EU could have used US President Donald Trump’s peace plan as an opportunity to reduce sanctions and restart raw-material trade. Instead, they decided on a complete import ban on Russian gas starting in 2027.
These politicians can delay the conclusion of peace. They can let their citizens suffer in order to punish Russia. But they cannot change the geography of the European continent. My goal is peace and free trade across the entire continent.
The Cradle : Germany and the EU are undergoing rapid militarization. Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks of making “Germany once again the largest military power in Europe.” Alongside debates about reintroducing compulsory military service, the rise in military spending is coming to the forefront. What are the implications?
Chrupalla: I warned early on about the dangerous war rhetoric from other parties. The German government is now creating conditions for a war made up of empty words. Defense budgets have exploded. In 2022, the Bundeswehr received a special fund of €100 billion ($117.5 billion). Now it has ballooned to €1 trillion ($1.175 trillion).
Even as leader of the opposition, CDU chairman Friedrich Merz pushed for a so-called special fund before the new elections, which largely consists of debt for weapons. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius of the SPD wants to make Germany “fit for war” against Russia by 2029. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt of the CSU wants war instruction in schools. His party colleague Manfred Weber, head of the European People’s Party, wants to convert all of Europe to a wartime economy.
In the new federal budget, the government is creating the conditions for alliance and tension scenarios. A simplified booking system makes it possible to reallocate billions for war without parliamentary approval.
The opposition is sidelined. And the worst part is: none of this money benefits Germany’s security, military capability, or national defense. It is about profits for the arms industry and mobilization against Russia. For this reason, we also rejected the reactivation of compulsory military service as long as there is war in Europe.
The Cradle : The Gaza war has further exposed western double standards. How do you view Germany’s position?
Chrupalla: The war in Gaza has claimed a high number of civilian lives, including many women and children. According to the Israeli army, 83 percent of those killed in Gaza were civilians. The images of dead children and devastated streets leave no one untouched.
I have always condemned this and made it clear that demonstrations against this war must not be placed under general suspicion. Our program is clear: no arms deliveries to war zones. I have repeatedly insisted on this demand.
Chancellor Merz shifted to this position in August. In my view, public opinion in the EU has indeed changed over the course of the war. There is far more nuance on Gaza than there ever was on Ukraine.
The Cradle : What kind of future does the AfD envision for Germany and Europe?
Chrupalla: We want a sovereign Europe in a multipolar world. That starts with strengthening nation-states. Germany cannot have its policy dictated by politicians in Estonia or Brussels. We must reject sanctions that hurt us and resist efforts to sever ties with the east.
We are against economic wars fought for foreign interests. Peaceful trade must not be disrupted by sanctions or value-based conditions. In the European Parliament, we helped ensure that the supply chain law was relaxed, as it would have required trading partners to adhere to a specific social model.
We respect other civilizations and likewise demand respect for Europe. We oppose value-driven foreign policy with a policy of mutual respect. For Germany, we strive for a future of peace and prosperity.
The Nord Stream attack was an act of economic sabotage. It cut off our industrial lifeline and pushed us deeper into recession. We need to restore energy sovereignty, reindustrialize, and protect local production.
Corporate insolvencies are increasing. Fewer and fewer taxpayers must finance increasingly extensive social benefits. At the same time, contributors are not receiving back what they paid into the social security funds.
Federal governments have relied solely on renewable energies. We, however, want a broad energy mix, including fossil energy. To create a good future for Germany, we also address Germans with an immigrant background. Sovereignty and peace, freedom and prosperity are in all our interests.
The Cradle : How does the AfD view the emerging multipolar order and its key players?
Chrupalla: The war in Ukraine has put the traditional security structure in Europe to the test. It is still uncertain what transformations will result from its outcome. The peace negotiations have deepened the divide between the EU and the US.
Washington is at least attempting to reach an understanding. Chancellor Merz and other heads of government and state, however, are pressuring Ukraine to continue pursuing maximal goals, even though defeat is imminent.
In fact, it should be the other way around. Our states in Western and Central Europe depend on reaching an accommodation with Russia. We need raw materials and would be the first to be affected by a major war.
For us, Russia is part of Europe. We seek a peace order and security architecture that includes Russia. The People’s Republic of China is Germany’s top trading partner. Commonalities are more important than differences. In particular, the Greens have repeatedly attempted to steer foreign policy toward decoupling.
During the chip crisis, which originated in the Netherlands, we saw the consequences such decoupling would have: machines come to a standstill, workers stay home. The global economy is so strongly interconnected that a single severed thread can have unpredictable effects.
We want free and peaceful trade with the whole world. The Global South has a legitimate interest in prosperity and autonomy. We must support the countries of the south in this while also safeguarding our own interests. Unfortunately, the federal government has recently allowed ties with the south to deteriorate. Cooperation in the development of our economies, on equal footing, is an important aspect of our foreign policy.
The Cradle : What is your foreign policy approach to the Islamic world?
Chrupalla: Our foreign policy principle of respect also applies to states in which Islam is the majority religion. Islam is not a monolithic bloc. Despite unity in faith, these states pursue different interests. This becomes clear when looking at conditions in West Asia.
Germany has taken in many asylum seekers of the Muslim faith over the past 10 years. This immigration places demands on our social welfare systems and on internal security, similar to the immigration of Syrians into Turkiye. However, it would be wrong to derive from these problems a confrontational stance against Islam, as some critics of migration occasionally do.
We need peaceful cooperation. We need currency diversification in trade. We don’t want foreign troops on our soil. Religion must not divide us. Mutual understanding should be the foundation.
The Cradle : How should Germany approach relations with Turkiye?
Chrupalla: Turkiye is a strategic partner. We are both NATO members. We face shared challenges. Turkiye connects Europe and Asia. It pursues its own sovereign interests in West and Central Asia, and Africa, but must always take its alliance obligations into account. It resists adopting a strategy imposed from the outside.
In the past, Turkiye has confidently pursued its own interests—for example, regarding the Crimean Tatars. In doing so, it maintained respect toward Russia and became a neutral mediator in the Ukraine war. Germany should have done the same.
Turkiye is also the country from which the largest minority in Germany originates. In my view, more and more German citizens of Turkish descent are turning toward our party and its program. When AfD was still younger and smaller, the media and politicians of other parties tried to drive a wedge between the Turkish community and us.
They portrayed us as xenophobic. But voters with an immigrant background recognize that irregular immigration does not benefit them; it harms the country in which they live and are building their lives.
We all want security and prosperity. Families of Turkish descent are a firmly established part of our country. I invite them to join us in working for Germany.
EU nation ‘disrupting normal religious life’ – UN experts
RT | December 17, 2025
Estonian authorities are undermining religious freedoms by fostering an “adversarial environment” for the country’s largest church community because of its spiritual ties to Russia, a panel of experts advising the UN Human Rights Council has warned.
In a statement issued on Monday, the experts criticized Tallinn’s approach toward the Estonian Orthodox Christian Church (EOCC), which maintains canonical links with the Russian Orthodox Church. They pointed to a series of administrative actions, a court decision that stripped the EOCC of state funding on security grounds, and a proposed legislative amendment that the panel said would “disproportionately affect a single religious community.”
“Canonical identity, ecclesiastical hierarchy and spiritual allegiance are integral components of the freedom of religion and are fully protected under international law,” the three-member panel emphasized.
The experts highlighted as particularly troubling a bill being advanced in the Estonian parliament despite objections from President Alar Karis. He has argued that the proposed ban on religious organizations accused of links to a foreign entity labeled a security threat by the government would violate the constitution.
The panel also condemned refusals to grant rent agreements and residency permits to clergy, stating: “Such actions disrupt normal religious life and may undermine the autonomy that should be granted under freedom of religion or belief.”
Moscow has long accused Estonia of pursuing discriminatory policies allegedly driven by entrenched Russophobia. The Estonian Orthodox Christian Church includes both ethnic Estonians and members of the country’s sizable Russian-speaking minority among its faithful.
NATO’s Red Pen on Ukraine: Jacques Baud and the Silencing of Dissent
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | December 17, 2025
On 15 December, the European Union took a step that few could have imagined: it sanctioned twelve individuals, including Swiss analyst and former intelligence officer Jacques Baud and French national Xavier Moreau, not for breaking the law, but for expressing views deemed politically inconvenient. Asset freezes, travel bans, and economic restrictions were imposed without any judicial process. While presented as an EU initiative, the fingerprints of NATO’s strategic communications and information-control apparatus are unmistakable, shaping both the targets and the justification. Europe is no longer simply countering disinformation; it is policing interpretation itself, turning independent analysis into a potential liability. The question now is not whether dissent will be punished, but how far these measures will go, and who will decide the boundaries of acceptable thought.
Baud, a Swiss national, is not a political activist, influencer, or anonymous online provocateur. He is a former Swiss intelligence officer and army colonel, trained in counter-terrorism, counter-guerrilla warfare, and chemical and nuclear weapons. Over the course of his career, he helped design the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) and its Mine Action Information Management System (IMSMA), served with the United Nations as Chief of Doctrine for Peacekeeping Operations in New York, worked extensively in Africa, and later held senior responsibilities at NATO, where he led efforts against the proliferation of small arms. He is also the author of multiple books on intelligence, asymmetric warfare, and terrorism, texts widely read well before the Ukraine war.
Yet this résumé, once considered exemplary, has now been recast as suspicious. On 15 December, the EU placed Baud under sanctions, freezing assets and restricting travel, accusing him of acting as a “spokesperson of Russian propaganda” and of participating in “information manipulation and influence.” No criminal charges have been filed. No judicial process has taken place. No evidence has been publicly tested in court. The punishment is administrative, political, and immediate.
DOCUMENT: COUNCIL DECISION (CFSP) 2025/2572 of 15 December 2025 amending Decision (CFSP) 2024/2643 concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia’s destabilising activities (Source: EUR-Lex)
This is not an isolated case. Baud joins a growing list of European journalists, analysts, and commentators sanctioned or publicly stigmatised for expressing views that diverge from official EU and NATO positions. Germans living in Russia, independent journalists, and alternative media figures have already faced similar measures. What unites these cases is not proof of coordination with Moscow, but a shared refusal to reproduce the sanctioned narrative framework through which the war must be interpreted.
From Foreign Policy to Narrative Enforcement
Officially, these sanctions are justified as defensive measures against “foreign information manipulation and interference”, a phrase now deeply embedded in EU and NATO communications. The stated objective is to protect European democracies from destabilisation. In practice, however, the definition of “manipulation” has expanded so broadly that any analysis which echoes, overlaps with, or even partially aligns with Russian positions can be deemed suspect, regardless of sourcing, intent, or transparency.
The problem is not that governments counter disinformation. Every state does. The problem is how disinformation is defined, who defines it, and what instruments are used to combat it.
In Baud’s case, the EU does not allege clandestine activity, secret funding, or covert coordination with Russian authorities. Instead, he is held responsible for contributing to a narrative environment that, in Brussels’ view, undermines Ukraine and EU security. This is a crucial shift: The target is no longer falsehood, but interpretation.
Once interpretation itself becomes sanctionable, the boundary between security policy and censorship collapses.
France’s Role, and NATO’s Shadow
Several reports indicate that the initiative to sanction Baud and eleven others originated with France. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot publicly announced that Europe would impose sanctions on what he described as “pro-Russian agents,” including individuals accused of repeatedly influencing French and European public debate. Among those named was Xavier Moreau, a French analyst long critical of NATO policy.
Barrot’s declaration on X was unambiguous:
“At France’s initiative, Europe is today imposing sanctions against Kremlin propaganda outlets and those responsible for foreign digital interference. Zero impunity for the architects of chaos.”
The language is revealing. “Architects of chaos” is not a legal category; it is a political one. It frames speech as an act of aggression and analysts as hostile operators.
Behind this framing lies a figure little known to the public but central to the architecture of Europe’s contemporary information policy: Marie-Doha Besancenot, Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications in the French Foreign Ministry. Prior to assuming this role, Besancenot served from 2020 to 2023 as NATO Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy.
In an interview published in English by the French Ministry of the Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs, in March 2025, Besancenot openly described founding a task force in late 2023 dedicated to detecting and analysing what she termed “hostile narratives,” with the capacity to alert authorities “in real time” and propose political responses. The task force’s mission, she explained, was to detect, track, and report information threats against NATO in the information domain. In this interview, Besancenot articulates how “France understood what was happening in the information domain was a matter of national security”, and speaks of Viginum, a French agency created in response to these perceived threats, and that is responsible for monitoring and protecting the state against foreign digital interference that, according to them, affects the digital public debate in France.
The continuity is striking. The doctrine developed inside NATO’s strategic communications apparatus appears to have migrated almost seamlessly into national and EU-level policy, without democratic debate, parliamentary oversight, or public consent.
Strategic Communications as Political Power
NATO insists that it does not police speech and that it respects freedom of expression. Formally, this is true. NATO does not arrest journalists or pass laws. Instead, it develops conceptual frameworks, “hybrid threats,” “information laundering,” and “foreign information manipulation”, which are then adopted by member states and EU institutions.
Once a narrative framework is institutionalised, it becomes self-enforcing. Media outlets internalise red lines. Publishers hesitate. Platforms over-moderate. Governments justify extraordinary measures as technical necessities or national security. The perfect storm in which sanctions replace debate.
One of the most insidious concepts to emerge from this ecosystem is that of “information laundering”, the idea that domestic journalists or analysts can unwittingly “clean” foreign propaganda simply by engaging with it critically. Under this logic, intent becomes irrelevant. What matters is effect, as defined by strategic communicators.
This doctrine eliminates the possibility of good-faith analysis. To examine Russian claims, even to refute them selectively or partially, is to risk being accused of amplifying them. The only safe position is total dismissal, which appears to be NATO and the EU’s endgame.
The Democratic Cost
The danger of this approach extends far beyond Jacques Baud.
Sanctions are no longer being used to punish illegal acts, but to discipline discourse. They operate without due process and create chilling effects far wider than their immediate targets. An analyst does not need to be sanctioned to be silenced; seeing a peer sanctioned is often enough.
Moreover, these measures are imposed by non-elected bodies, EU councils, commissions, and advisory structures, drawing heavily on NATO doctrine, an alliance that itself is not subject to democratic accountability. National parliaments are largely absent from the process. Courts intervene only after the damage is done.
The precedent is dangerous. If today the target is analysts accused of being “pro-Russian,” tomorrow it could be critics of EU defence spending, sceptics of military escalation, or scholars questioning intelligence claims. Once the machinery exists, its scope inevitably expands.
History offers ample warning. Democracies do not usually collapse through sudden repression, but through the gradual normalisation of exceptional measures, each justified by urgency, each framed as temporary, each defended as necessary.
Security Without Freedom Is Not Security
The EU and NATO argue that they are facing unprecedented hybrid threats and that extraordinary responses are required. That claim deserves serious consideration. But security achieved by narrowing the space of permissible thought is a brittle security, one that ultimately undermines the democratic resilience it claims to protect.
A society confident in its values does not need to freeze bank accounts to win arguments. It does not need to conflate analysis with subversion. It does not need to outsource intellectual authority to strategic communications units.
Jacques Baud may be wrong in some of his assessments. He may be right in others. That is beside the point. What matters is that his arguments exist in the open, supported by sources, available for rebuttal. The appropriate response to analysis is counter-analysis, and certainly not sanctions. By choosing punishment over debate, Europe is not defending democracy. It is redefining it, quietly, administratively, and without asking its citizens whether this is the kind of polity they wish to inhabit.
The sanctions against Baud are therefore not merely about Ukraine, Russia, or NATO. They are about who gets to speak, who decides what is permissible to think, and whether Europe still trusts its citizens to judge arguments for themselves.
That question, once raised, cannot be easily swept away.
The lobby is milking the Bondi Beach attack to silence critics of Israel’s genocide
By Jonathan Cook | December 15, 2025
I, for one, am struggling to stomach the spew of hypocrisy from pro-Israel groups like the Community Security Trust and its policy director, Dave Rich, in the wake of Sunday’s Bondi Beach attack.
Establishment media, on the other hand, appear to have a bottomless appetite for efforts by Israel apologists to exploit the genuine fear and grief of the Jewish community to advance a political agenda – one designed to silence criticism of Israel over its two-year slaughter and maiming of Palestinian children in Gaza.
Predictably, the supposedly liberal Guardian once again gave Rich a prominent slot in its comment pages, this time to spin the attack in Sydney into a demand for silencing opposition to Israel’s genocide.
Here are extracts from Rich’s piece in italics, followed by my observations. His all-too-obvious double standards and his glaring misdirection ploys should have disqualified this piece from publication. But the British media simply can’t get enough of this kind of bilge.
Rich: “The mobile phone footage of two gunmen calmly taking aim at families enjoying a Hanukah party is utterly chilling. It takes a special kind of dehumanisation, an ideology of pure hatred and self-righteous conviction, to do that.”
If Rich is so troubled by issues of dehumanisation, why has he remained so steadfastly mute about the long and utterly chilling dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel and by its lobby groups, including his own organisation? Remember, Israeli leaders called the Palestinians “human animals”. It is decades of that kind of dehumanisation that laid the ground for Israel’s genocide. It is precisely because of such dehumanisation that the live-streamed horrors of the past two years made barely any impact on the Israeli public or on opinion among Israel’s supporters.
The truth is it is Rich and his fellow pro-Israel lobbyists who are the ones in the grip of an “ideology of pure hatred” – one that chooses to excuse the mass murder of children when they are Palestinian, blown to pieces and starved for months on end by the very state he identifies with.
Rich: “The whole basis of western liberal democracy, the belief in shared values within a diverse society, is endangered by these attacks.”
No, it’s not the Bondi Beach attack that has endangered “western liberal democracy”. That was irreversibly hollowed out when western leaders chose to actively collude in Israel’s genocide and defy the rulings of the world’s most respected legal institutions, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Western liberal democracy was hollowed out when these leaders chose to side with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and prioritise his exterminationist agenda over the rule of law.
Rich: “Some people react as if this terrorism is akin to a natural disaster or unforeseen tragedy: blind hatred with no cause or purpose, and therefore no deeper explanation needed. But terrorism does not emerge from a vacuum. It is merely the most violent, lethal expression of a set of attitudes and beliefs that are much more widely held than just by those who wield the gun or the knife.”
How true! Terrorism does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it is the weapon of the weak, and it feeds off a festering hatred that derives from having one’s community abused and a parallel, suffocating feeling of powerlessness to stop it. That doesn’t justify the Bondi Beach attack, but it does provide us with the “deeper explanation” Rich claims to be searching for.
But even before we read on, we know where he wants to take this.
Rich: “When it comes to antisemitic terror, the ideas that some take as justification for murder are popularised and normalised through the language of much of the anti-Israel movement that has marched up and down our city streets and through our university campuses these past two years.”
And sure enough, there it is. The “antisemites”, according to Rich and the rest of the pro-Israel lobby, are British families marching though their towns and cities to protest a genocide in which the British govermment is actively colluding. They are the criminals, not Israel’s genocide machine.
The “antisemites”, Rich wants you to believe, are those incensed by witnessing Israel slaughter children day after day for more than two years; those incensed at seeing Israel bomb the hospitals needed to treat those children; those incensed at hearing Israel and its supporters deny what we have all seen happening with our own eyes; and those incensed that our governments have not only failed to stop this horror show but have actively demonised their own populations for highlighting their complicity in these crimes.
Rich: “After rapper Bobby Vylan, one half of the group Bob Vylan, chanted “Death, death to the IDF” during a set at the Glastonbury festival in June, it became the rallying cry of anti-Israel protesters everywhere. It got Bob Vylan invited to the Irish parliament and Bobby Vylan on to Louis Theroux’s podcast. Far from a call for death putting the rapper beyond the pale, it made him a celebrity.”
It takes extraordinary chutzpah to exploit the blood spilled in Sydney by special pleading for an Israeli army that is recognised by all major human rights groups, the United Nations, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the International Criminal Court to have been routinely committing crimes against humanity in Gaza over the past two years.
If Dave Rich and the Community Security Trust are really so concerned about the dangers faced by Jews because of the many documented, and unpunished, crimes committed by the Israeli army, then maybe he should dedicate a little space to distancing himself and his organisation from that military rather than denying its criminality at every opportunity.
Rich: “Is there a connection between this embrace of a call for death in the name of Palestinian rights, and people inflicting actual death apparently in the name of the same cause? As soon as you ask the question, the answer seems obvious.”
Both sides can play this game. Is there a connection between the embrace of calls for genocide in the name of Jewish supremacy, and Israeli soldiers inflicting actual death in the name of that cause? Remember Israel’s head of the military said he would deny the people of Gaza food, water and fuel, supposedly in “self-defence”, and that’s exactly what Israel did. Remember Netanyahu himself described the people of Gaza as “Amalek”, a people condemned to genocide by God, and genocide is exactly what Israel did.
Indeed, as soon as you ask the question, the answer seems obvious. But in the case of Gaza, the death toll is many thousands of times greater than anything inflicted by two twisted gunmen in Sydney.
Rich: “The devastation in Gaza is real and lots of people involved in pro-Palestinian activism do not support antisemitic violence against Jews, whether in Britain or Australia. But like it or not, it seems this movement has generated and sustained a political culture in which violence is both conceivable and enacted.”
Even were this true, it cannot compare to the political culture generated by Rich and his pro-Israel lobbyists. That political culture has not only made violence against Palestinians conceivable but a daily reality for them decade after decade. It is years of dedicated work by the Israel lobby that has ensured the mass murder of Palestinians is viewed by governments, the media and parts of the Jewish community as entirely legitimate.
Rich: “This is now a global emergency of antisemitism, and it is the consequence of two years of turning a blind eye, taking the easy path and ignoring the warnings. Make no mistake: alongside the grief and the defiance, Jews are angry. And they have every right to be.”
No, that is not the global emergency. The real emergency is a rampant anti-Palestinian racism that has utterly normalised genocide and been given institutional support across the West. It is anti-Palestinian racism, not “antisemitism”, that is the consequence of “two years of turning a blind eye, taking the easy path and ignoring the warnings”. Make no mistake: alongside the grief and the defiance, people with a conscience are angry at the two-year genocide endorsed by our governments. And they have every right to be.
Fact Checking The New York Times
Tony Heller | December 6, 2025
The New York Times has a website claiming to show an increase in 90 degree days in US cities. In this short video I fact check their claims using app.visitech.ai
How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born? – The New York Times
Villains of Judea: Ronald Lauder and his War on American Dissent
For Lauder, Israel always comes first.
José Niño Unfiltered | December 16, 2025
World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder likes to present himself as a civic minded elder statesman, a sober billionaire warning America about a rising tide of antisemitism.
At the Israel Hayom Summit on December 2, 2025, he framed the moment as a crisis of the West itself, calling it “a full-scale assault on truth, on democracy, and on the safety of Jewish people everywhere,” and insisting, “This is not normal. And it is not ‘just criticism of Israel.’ It is the world’s oldest hatred, once again wearing political clothing.”
Lauder was referring to the rise of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment worldwide in the wake of Israel’s 2-year bombing campaign in Gaza.
Then he sharpened the spear and aimed it at domestic enemies like Tucker Carlson, who has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel in the post-October 7 reality we live in. He told the audience, “Tucker Carlson is the Father Coughlin of our generation.” In the same speech he warned that complacency is over, because “antisemitism is rampant throughout our culture,” and he demanded a political and institutional counteroffensive.
That is the Lauder formula in its purest form. He wraps a totalizing political program in the language of safety and moral emergency, then treats America’s public life as territory to be reorganized around his crusade. The target is never merely hatred. The target is dissent, drift, and disobedience from the priorities he has chosen, priorities that consistently put Israel first.
Lauder did not arrive at this posture late in life. He was born into power in New York City in 1944, the heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, raised in elite institutions, and trained for international influence through business and foreign policy studies. He entered the family company early, then moved into government in the Reagan era, where he served at the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy.
Ronald Reagan then tapped him as U.S. ambassador to Austria in 1986. In Vienna, he did not behave like a neutral American emissary. He turned his diplomatic post into a stage for historical confrontation and political signaling. Lauder refused to attend the inauguration of Austria’s president Kurt Waldheim amid allegations of him being involved in or being aware of National Socialist atrocities in the Balkans during his service as a German army lieutenant in World War II. He also fired U.S. diplomat Felix Bloch for engaging in suspected espionage activities.
After government service, Lauder tried to convert his vast wealth into formal power at home. In 1989, he ran for mayor of New York City as a Republican, where he spent big bucks to get his name out and campaign to the right of Rudy Giuliani, only to lose the primary. Even in defeat, the pattern held. He treated politics as an arena where money does all the talking, and he kept looking for levers that could bend public life to his will.
He found one in term limits. During the 1990s he poured resources into imposing term limits on New York City officials, selling it as a democratic reform and a check on machine party politics. Yet in 2008, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted a third term, Lauder reversed course and supported extending those limits, a turn that mainstream critics interpreted as a billionaire bargain dressed up as civic necessity. However, from the perspective of long-time observers of Jewish behavior, Lauder’s support for Bloomberg reflects a pattern of co-ethnic solidarity among Jewish power brokers.
While Lauder played these games in New York, his real career was consolidating leadership in the organized Jewish political world. Notably, Lauder was a member of the Mega Group—a mysterious network of Jewish oligarchs that worked behind the scenes to advance Jewish interests and strengthen pro-Israel bonds among Jews in America. Leslie Wexner, founder of The Limited and Victoria’s Secret, and the late Jewish sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein were among the most prominent members of this Jewish consortium. By 2007, Lauder had become president of the World Jewish Congress, a position that turned him into a roaming power broker who meets heads of state and treats international politics as a permanent lobbying campaign.
From that perch, he repeatedly framed Western security architecture as a vehicle for Israeli priorities. In 2011, he publicly argued that Israel should be admitted into NATO, insisting, “Israel needs real guarantees for its security,” and pressing NATO states to bring Israel into the alliance.
In 2012, he attacked European pressure campaigns on Israel with maximalist rhetoric. When Irish officials floated an EU ban on goods from Israeli communities in the West Bank, Lauder called boycott talk “cynical and hypocritical,” and declared, “Minister Gilmore is taking aim at the only liberal democracy in the Middle East while keeping quiet about those who really wreak havoc in the region: the Assads, Ahmadinejads and their allies Hezbollah and Hamas.” He added that the West Bank was “legally disputed and not illegally occupied.”
He carried the same posture with respect to Iran — enemy #1 for world Jewry at the moment. In 2013, as Western diplomats negotiated with Tehran, he mocked their perceived softness and conjured Munich analogies, warning, “Just as the West gave up Czechoslovakia to Hitler in Munich in 1938, we see what is happening again and the world is silent,” and boasting, “Frankly, only France stands between us and a nuclear Iran.” In 2015, he escalated again, attacking the nuclear deal with a moral curse, saying, “The road to hell is often paved with good intentions,” and arguing that the agreement could revive Iran economically without stopping long term nuclear ambitions.
The story kept darkening as his proximity to Israeli power deepened. In 2016, Israeli police questioned Lauder in connection with “Case 1000,” the Netanyahu gifts affair. Reports said investigators sought his testimony because of his closeness to Netanyahu and the broader allegations involving luxury gifts and favors. Lauder was not charged, but the episode revealed how near he operated to Israel’s governing circle, not as an outside friend, but as part of the broader, transnational Jewish network.
By 2023, he openly wielded donor money as a disciplinary weapon in American institutions. After the October 7 attacks and campus controversies, he warned the University of Pennsylvania that, “You are forcing me to reexamine my financial support absent satisfactory measures to address antisemitism.” The message was simple. If a prestigious American university fails to police speech and activism the way he demands, he will squeeze it financially until it complies.
In 2025, Lauder continued supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza. He categorically rejected the idea that Israel bears any responsibility for ending the conflict, insisting, “The truth is simple: the war could end tomorrow if Hamas were to release the remaining hostages and disarm.” On education and propaganda, he stopped pretending the solution is persuasion alone. At the World Jewish Congress gala in November 2025, he argued that the education pipeline must be rebuilt from the ground up, declaring, “The entire education system — K-12 to college — must be retaught,” and adding, “It’s time we fight back with stronger PR to tell the truth.”
He also made the threat explicit. In a widely shared clip, he vowed, “Any candidate running for a seat… whose platform includes antisemitism, we will target them as they target us.”
Like most of the Israel First set, Lauder was ecstatic about the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria in late 2024. In September 2025, he met former al-Qaeda terrorist-turned Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly and afterward said, “We had a very positive discussion about normalization between Israel and Syria.”
Seen in order, the picture is not complicated. Lauder builds influence through money, embeds himself in elite institutions, and uses both to steer policy and culture toward a relentless Zionist agenda. He does not talk like a man defending American sovereignty. He talks like an agent of world Jewry who expects America’s parties, schools, media, and alliances to function as enforcement arms for a foreign cause.
That is why his December 2025 sermon about antisemitism matters. It is not only a warning. It is a blueprint. When Lauder says “If we don’t tell our own story, others will rewrite it,” he is not describing a cultural debate. He is declaring ownership over the narrative, and claiming the right to punish anyone in American life who refuses to repeat it.
In the end, Ronald Lauder emerges not as a guardian of American civic life but as a disciplined enforcer of a foreign political creed, using wealth, intimidation, and moral blackmail to bend institutions to his will. What he calls a fight against hatred looks increasingly like a campaign to subordinate American sovereignty, speech, and policy to the imperatives of Israel and the transnational Jewish clique that sustains it.
Stop The Hate UK: The Shadowy Israel-Aligned Group Targeting MintPress staff & anti-genocide organizers
Mint Press News | December 9, 2025
In October, MintPress graphic designer and field photographer, Ibrahim Abul-Essad opened his door to find Patrick Sawer of The Daily Telegraph demanding answers.
A prolific writer who has penned 28 pro-Israel articles in the past two months alone, Sawer asked the British Palestinian journalist to respond to pro-Israel pressure group Stop The Hate U.K.’s campaign for him to be prosecuted for “anti-Semitic hate crimes.”
Abul-Essad’s “crime” was attending an October 2024 demonstration in London protesting an event featuring former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert speaking on the future of Gaza – a case that the Metropolitan Police have already looked into and dismissed.
Sawer has previous connections to Stop The Hate U.K. A 2024 Daily Telegraph article framing pro-Palestine marchers as racists, for instance, appears to have been based largely on intelligence gathered by Stop The Hate U.K., and features multiple images of protestors taken without their knowledge.
But who are Stop The Hate U.K.? And where did they come from? MintPress News explores the group’s rise, its agenda, and its scandalously close links to both the British and Israeli governments.
Israeli Front Group?
Stop the Hate U.K. was founded in early 2024, at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza, in order to stymie and oppose the growing wave of support for Palestinian liberation across Great Britain. The group has attempted to equate support for human rights with terrorism.
As their official Twitter bio reads, “We stand in opposition to the hate marches that have swamped our country since the 7.10 massacre. We shall not be cowed. Terrorist supporters off our streets!” The organization has repeatedly pressured the British government to ban demonstrations, and condemned the police for their insufficient vigor in suppressing the movement.
Although it states that it is a non-profit organization, MintPress could find no registration of the group with the Charity Commission for England and Wales.
The organization’s website describes it was founded “in response to the repeated failures of the Metropolitan Police to address anti-Semitic incidents at Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) marches.”
This will be news to many in the U.K., where police have arrested over 2300 people under the Terrorism Act of 2000 for peacefully opposing the designation of activist group Palestine Action as a terrorist entity, putting it on a par with the likes of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. So aggressive has British authorities’ repression of free speech been, that it was officially rebuked by Amnesty International as a grave breach of human rights.
Stop the Hate U.K. organizes their own demonstrations. However, they have not been successful in attracting mass participation. Unlike pro-Palestine marches that can draw in as many as one million Britons, an image posted by Stop The Hate U.K. of their recent protest in Brighton shows fewer than 40 attendees. They have, however, had more success disrupting solidarity events, filming or harassing protestors and pushing for their prosecution. In this role, The Canary notes, they serve as unofficial “police informants.” Stop The Hate organization also sells merchandise from their website; among the most popular items are t-shirts and hoodies emblazoned with the word “Zionist” in all caps.
While trying to expose the identities of pro-Palestine marchers, Stop The Hate U.K. appears to try to keep their own a secret. There is no information about their key members on their own website, only multiple egregious typos. For example, their “About Us” section offers little about their background, except that their organization is “is a call to action for a world without racism or anti-Semitism. Every voice counts in rejecting intolerance and fostering understandinWho We Are” (sic).
Nevertheless, pro-Israel outlet Jewish News identified two Israelis, Itai Galmudy and Yochy Davis, as among the founders. Born in Rishon LeZion and raised in Re’ut, near Modi’in, Galmudy lived in the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2008, returning to Israel to study at university and serve in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). He participated in Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza, wherein the IDF is widely accused of carrying out serious war crimes, including deliberately targeting civilians. Images from Galmudy’s social media show him proudly in uniform, serving in what appears to be a tank brigade.
The British government formally condemned Israel for its actions; Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg describing them as “collective punishment” of a civilian population. Despite this, Galmudy himself was able to move back to London immediately after Operation Protective Edge, and works in the pub industry, where he proudly notes that he refuses to serve anyone wearing Palestinian clothing.
In 2024, he co-founded Stop The Hate U.K., a group that has gained plaudits from the Israeli government itself. Earlier this year, Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely recorded a video wishing Galmudy a special happy birthday, stating that: “Your great activity for the last 12 months means so much to the State of Israel.”
“It is concerning that a former Israeli soldier who represented a military which is being investigated for genocide responsible for killing 150 members of my family is part of an organization targeting me and other British citizens in the U.K. calling for a free Palestine,” Abul-Essad told MintPress.
Like Galmudy, Yochy Davis is from Israel; her Facebook profile identifying her as from Kiryat Motzkin, near Haifa. Describing herself as a “passionate” adherent of Zionism, Davis first came to public attention in 2023, when she and three other pro-Israel activists disrupted Roger Waters’ London show. The rock star is a high-profile supporter of progressive causes, including Palestinian statehood. Davis shouted at Waters, unfurling an Israeli flag and calling his views “disgusting.” The incident was well-covered in the British press, who appeared keen to undermine Waters’ message.
Yochy Davis, left, and Itai Galmudy | Photos from X and Facebook
Davis has long promoted Israeli causes. In 2019, for instance, she worked with Israeli organization, My Truth, to bring a squad of IDF soldiers to Britain to visit the Houses of Parliament and carry out a series of “educational” lectures promoting Israel and its military as benevolent forces.
Israeli charity website, Israel Gives, describes My Truth as “an educational organization that is comprised of Israeli Defense Force reservists that educate about the IDF operations and the moral standards it holds,” adding that:
’My Truth’ reservists speak up openly and with a firsthand perspective about their army experiences in response to those who attempt to slander Israeli soldiers in the name of so-called ‘full disclosure.’”
And like Galmudy again, Davis’ activism has earned her official praise from Israeli government officials. In 2019, former Shin Bet official and then-Minister of Justice, Amir Ohana, recorded a video expressing his deep gratitude, stating:
I want to tell Yochy Davis and the My Truth organization: thank you for providing justice. Thank you for providing truth to the world, and thank you for everything you are doing for the State of Israel and for the people of Israel. Thank you.”
Davis recently met with Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, and both she and Galmudy attended an official event at the Israeli Embassy in London last month. Earlier this year, the pair also traveled to Israel and the Golan Heights – Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel – where they liaised with and took photos with IDF soldiers.
Yochy Davis and Itai Galmudy pose for a photo in front of an Israeli military vehicle during a visit to the Golan Heights, as posted on social media. (Instagram)
Stop The Plagiarism
The choice to name a pro-Israel advocacy group “Stop The Hate U.K.” clearly attempts to equate support for Palestine and opposition to genocide with anti-Semitism. Yet it has also caused significant confusion, as a well-known and respected charity, “Stop Hate U.K.” (SHUK) already exists.
SHUK was established in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence affair. Stephen Lawrence was a Black British teenager murdered in London in a racially motivated killing in 1993. The attack, and the subsequent inadequate response from the Metropolitan Police, made Lawrence a cause célèbre, the George Floyd of his day. An official inquiry found that the police force was “institutionally racist” and needed to be radically reformed. Since 1995, SHUK has carried out vital work challenging hatred and intolerance. Lawrence’s mother serves as its patron.
Pro-Israel group Stop The Hate U.K. is frequently misidentified as the more legitimate body, including in Sawer’s aforementioned Daily Telegraph article, where it attributes the intelligence provided to SHUK. It is eminently possible that this sort of confusion was deliberate, and Stop The Hate U.K. is trying to bask in the legitimacy of an established anti-racist charity. MintPress contacted SHUK for this investigation, but did not receive a response.
Gaza and the rise of Stop The Hate U.K. provokes a number of important questions. How is it that a pro-Israel pressure group, co-founded by two Israeli citizens, can have such an outsized effect on British public life? How can a former member of an army carrying out a massacre put such successful pressure on U.K. authorities to arrest journalists exposing the IDF’s crimes? And who gets to decide who and who is not a terrorist: British citizens or pressure groups allied to a foreign nation carrying out a genocide?
Zelensky is stealing the election before it begins
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | December 16, 2025
Currently, with intense diplomacy taking place to – perhaps – end the Ukraine conflict, questions surrounding Kiev’s domestic politics may seem secondary. However, in reality, they are as important as the search for peace.
There are two reasons: First, Ukrainians have a right to finally be released from their perverse bondage to what is, in effect, a long-ago failed Western proxy war against Russia. Those still in denial about this fact should check out a recent interview with a former Biden administration policy official. Amanda Sloat has casually admitted that much now: The war could have been avoided if the West had not insisted on NATO membership prospects for Ukraine, which never really existed anyhow.
Observers not blinded by Western propaganda – including this author – were warning that, for Ukraine, this fake NATO perspective was a road to catastrophe. But the Sloats of this world refused to listen. Why then did the West want the war? To diminish Russia by using Ukraine as a battering ram and Ukrainians as cannon fodder.
Secondly – and more practically – no peace will last without an end to Ukraine’s ultra-corrupt current authoritarian regime. Talk about defending “democracy” in Ukraine is absurd. Under Vladimir Zelensky, there is no such thing left. By now, even some Western mainstream commentators are starting to admit Zelensky’s authoritarianism. Yet the former entertainment producer and vulgar comedian started systematically undermining what little democracy Ukraine used to have well before the escalation of February 2022, as Ukrainian observers and critics at the time widely discussed and deplored.
Zelensky’s regime is so corrupt and has sold out its own people so badly to the West that a lasting peace threatens it not only with losing power, which it certainly would, but also with a wave of prosecutions starting at the very top, with Zelensky himself and rolling down like an avalanche. Put differently, this is a regime that would always be tempted to re-start the war to distract from the retribution it must fear.
That is why US President Donald Trump is right to call for presidential elections in Ukraine. Moreover, Zelensky has extended his mandate on flimsy grounds and thereby usurped power even formally. The often-heard claim that Ukraine cannot hold presidential elections in wartime, by the way, is badly misleading, and a thoroughly politically motivated misrepresentation of the facts: In reality, the Ukrainian constitution only prohibits parliamentary elections in time of war. Elections for the presidency are impeded by ordinary laws which can, of course, easily and legally be changed by the majority which Zelensky controls in parliament. That is merely a question of political will, not legality.
By now, even Zelensky and Kiev’s political elite admit the above. Indeed, Zelensky has charged parliament with devising procedures for such elections. So, you may ask, what about his regime and its Western propagandists claiming for over a year that this is simply illegal and can’t be welcome? Simple: that was a big fat lie. Welcome to Zelensky world and its crooked reflection in the mirror cabinet of the Western mainstream media.
Yet curb your enthusiasm. In all likelihood, Zelensky remains dishonest – really, does he even have another mode? – and is engaging not in a genuine attempt to finally allow Ukrainians their long overdue say about his horrific rule. Instead, it is – alas! – much more plausible to interpret his turn toward elections as yet another tactic of stalling and deception.
For one thing, he and his team are trying to set conditions that seem designed to prevent the elections again, while blaming others, first of all Russia, of course. In essence, their demands boil down to, once again, pushing for either more Western arms or a ceasefire that they can abuse instead of the full peace agreement that is actually needed. Moscow will not agree to such a scheme, as Kiev knows very well.
In addition, this would not be the Zelensky regime if it did not also ask for even more Western money. This time, the shameless idea is that the West must pay for elections in Ukraine – presumably because that is how democracy works in a sovereign country.
Things can get even worse: There is also the possibility, pointed out by Ukrainian observers, that Zelensky and his fixers are planning to shift the whole presidential election online. If they do, falsification in Zelensky’s favor is de facto guaranteed.
In sum, there is no good reason to believe Zelensky is really ready to give up power – because that is what elections would mean – to make way for a return to a more normal type of politics. His current statements and gestures seemingly indicating the opposite are meant to deceive, most of all, the West. Neither Ukrainians nor Russia is likely to believe him anyhow.
There is a glimmer of hope, however: The fact alone that Trump has challenged Zelensky in this area and that the latter’s European backers cannot shield him from that challenge is a good sign. As is the fact, of course, that Zelensky has felt pressured and cornered enough to not revert to the old lie that presidential elections are not possible in wartime.
Instead, Ukraine’s past-best-by leader has implicitly admitted they – and that he was lying before – and is now forced to deploy stalling techniques. That in and of itself, like Ukraine’s escalating corruption scandals, shows that Zelensky’s grip is slipping. And that is good for everyone, including Ukrainians. For without an end to the Zelensky regime, it is likely that no peace can be made and certain that no peace can last.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
The Folly of Establishing a U.S. Military Base in Damascus
By José Niño | The Libertarian Institute | December 16, 2025
Recent reports indicate the United States is preparing to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus, allegedly to facilitate a security agreement between Syria and Israel. This development represents yet another misguided expansion of American military overreach in a region where Washington has already caused tremendous damage through decades of failed interventionist policies.
The United States currently operates approximately 750 to 877 military installations across roughly eighty countries worldwide. This staggering number represents about 70 to 85% of all foreign military bases globally. To put this in perspective, the next eighteen countries with foreign bases combined maintain only 370 installations total. Russia has just twenty-nine foreign bases, and China operates merely six. The American empire of bases already dwarfs every other nation combined, and the financial burden is crushing. Washington spends approximately $65 billion annually just to build and maintain these overseas installations, with total spending on foreign bases and personnel reaching over $94 billion per year.
These figures are not abstract accounting entries. They translate directly into American lives placed in volatile environments, as demonstrated by the recent insider attack in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, where a purported ISIS infiltrator embedded in local security forces turned his weapon on a joint U.S. Syrian patrol, killing two U.S. soldiers and one U.S. civilian during what was described as a routine field tour. The incident underscores how the sprawling U.S. basing network increasingly exposes American personnel to unpredictable and lethal blowback in unstable theaters far from home.
Syria itself already hosts between 1,500 and 2,000 American troops, primarily concentrated in the northeastern Hasakah province and at the Al Tanf base in the Syrian Desert. The Pentagon recently announced plans to reduce this presence to fewer than 1,000 personnel and consolidated operations from eight installations to just three. Yet now, despite this supposed drawdown, Washington reportedly plans to establish a new presence in Damascus itself, either at Mezzeh Air Base or Al Seen Military Airport. This contradictory expansion reveals the hollow nature of promises to reduce American military commitments abroad.
Since the fall of Bashar al Assad in December 2024, Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military and civilian infrastructure while occupying parts of southern Syria including Quneitra and Daraa. Israel has systematically violated the 1974 disengagement agreement and expanded control over buffer zones. These actions align disturbingly well with the Yinon Plan, a 1982 Israeli strategic document by Israeli foreign policy official Oded Yinon that envisions the dissolution of surrounding Arab states into smaller ethnic and religious entities. The plan explicitly calls for fragmenting Syria along its ethnic and religious lines to prevent a strong centralized government that could challenge Israeli interests.
A permanent American military presence in Damascus would effectively serve as a tripwire guaranteeing continued U.S. involvement in securing Israeli strategic objectives in the Levant. Rather than protecting American interests or enhancing national security, such a base would entrench Washington deeper into regional conflicts that have consistently proven disastrous for both American taxpayers and Middle Eastern populations.
The human cost of American intervention in Syria should give any policymaker pause. The Syrian Civil War has resulted in between 617,000 and 656,000 deaths, including civilians, rebels, and government forces. More than 7.4 million people remain internally displaced within Syria, while approximately 6.3 million Syrian refugees live abroad. This catastrophic toll stems partly from Operation Timber Sycamore, the CIA covert program that ran from 2012 to 2017 to train and equip Syrian rebel forces.
Timber Sycamore represented a joint effort involving American intelligence services along with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The CIA ran secret training camps in Jordan and Turkey, providing rebels with small arms, ammunition, trucks, and eventually advanced weaponry like BGM 71 TOW anti-tank missiles. Saudi Arabia provided significant funding while the United States supplied training and logistical support.
The program proved to be counterproductive. Jordanian intelligence officers stole and sold millions of dollars worth of weapons intended for rebels on the black market. Even worse, U.S.-supplied weapons regularly fell into the hands of the al Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, and ISIS itself. The program inadvertently strengthened the very extremists Washington was ostensibly fighting.
The failure of Timber Sycamore illustrates a fundamental problem with American interventionism in Syria. Washington has pursued regime change in Damascus in various forms for decades, yet these efforts have consistently backfired, creating power vacuums filled by jihadist groups and prolonging devastating conflicts. The current enthusiasm for establishing a military presence in Damascus suggests American policymakers have learned absolutely nothing from these failures.
The figure now leading Syria exemplifies the moral bankruptcy of this entire enterprise. Ahmed al Sharaa, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al Julani, currently serves as president of Syria’s interim government. This represents a stunning rehabilitation for a man who founded al Nusra Front in 2012 as an al-Qaeda affiliate and later formed Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) by merging various rebel factions. Under the name Abu Mohammad al Julani, he was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States on July 24, 2013, with a $10 million bounty maintained on his head.
Al Sharaa’s terrorist designation stemmed from his leadership of al Nusra Front, which perpetrated numerous war crimes including suicide bombings, forced conversions, ethnic cleansing, and sectarian massacres against Christian, Alawite, Shia, and Druze minorities. He fought with al-Qaeda in Iraq, spent time imprisoned at Camp Bucca between 2006 and 2010, and was dispatched to Syria by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in 2011 with $50,000 to establish al Nusra. His close associates have faced accusations from the United States of overseeing torture, kidnappings, trafficking, ransom schemes, and displacing residents to seize property. The New York Times reported that his group was accused of initially operating under al-Qaeda’s umbrella.
Yet in November 2025, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 2799, removing al Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab from the ISIL and al-Qaeda sanctions list. The U.S. Treasury Department followed suit, delisting him from the Specially Designated Global Terrorist registry. This reversal came after the State Department revoked HTS’s Foreign Terrorist Organization designation in July 2025. Washington essentially decided that a former al-Qaeda commander who oversaw sectarian massacres was now a legitimate partner worthy of American military support. This absurd rehabilitation demonstrates how completely untethered American foreign policy has become from any coherent moral framework or strategic logic.
Critics rightly question whether al Sharaa has truly broken from his extremist roots or merely engaged in calculated political rebranding. The speed with which Washington embraced him as a legitimate leader suggests American policymakers care far more about advancing Israeli interests and maintaining regional influence than about genuine counterterrorism or protecting religious minorities.
The United States needs to pursue a fundamentally different approach to foreign policy. Rather than establishing yet another military base to advance Israeli strategic objectives in Syria, Washington should implement a comprehensive drawdown of overseas military commitments. The hundreds of foreign bases it maintains abroad represent an unsustainable burden that diverts resources from genuine national security priorities like border security and stability in the Western Hemisphere. American taxpayers deserve better than footing the bill for an empire that consistently fails to advance their interests while enriching defense contractors and serving foreign powers.
Syria offers a perfect case study in the futility of American interventionism. Decades of attempts at regime change through covert programs like Timber Sycamore and direct military presence have produced nothing but chaos, empowered jihadist groups, created millions of refugees, and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The rehabilitation of a former al-Qaeda commander into Syria’s president illustrates how divorced American policy has become from any coherent strategy or values.
Rather than doubling down on failed policies, the United States should pursue strategic restraint, scale back its sprawling network of foreign bases, and allow regional powers to sort out their own affairs without American military involvement. That represents the path toward a more sustainable, affordable, and morally defensible foreign policy. The Damascus base proposal deserves to be rejected outright as yet another wasteful expansion of an already overextended military empire.
US strikes three vessels in Eastern Pacific, killing eight
Al Mayadeen | December 16, 2025
The United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced that it launched deadly strikes on three vessels allegedly involved in drug trafficking in international waters in the Eastern Pacific, resulting in the deaths of eight people.
The strikes were carried out on December 15, under the orders of US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, according to an official statement posted on X.
“Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters,” SOUTHCOM said.
The military reported that all individuals killed were adult males: three aboard the first vessel, two on the second, and three on the third.
While the US claims the targeted vessels were engaged in narco-trafficking, no verification of the alleged links to terrorism or drug networks has been provided for any of the 26 boats it struck. Critics, lawmakers, and legal experts have denounced the strikes as illegal under international law.
Part of a broader Trump-led coercion campaign
The latest strikes come amid a wider US military campaign launched by US President Donald Trump targeting so-called drug smuggling routes in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, including areas near Venezuela.
According to US officials, American forces have struck more than 20 vessels as part of the campaign, with at least 90 suspected drug smugglers reported killed so far. The operations represent a significant escalation and a marked departure from previous US approaches, which traditionally relied on interdictions, arrests, and prosecutions rather than direct military force.
Although the strategy has been widely criticized for its effectiveness in addressing the opioid epidemic in the United States, particularly given that Venezuela is not a source or transit hub for drug trafficking routes to the US, Trump and senior administration officials have continued to level baseless accusations against Caracas. Additionally, Washington has transferred an expansive force to the Caribbean, including its most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford.
Legal controversy and international concerns
“Our operations in the Southcom region are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the Law of Armed Conflict,” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters earlier this month.
Critics, however, have questioned the application of the Law of Armed Conflict outside a declared armed conflict, particularly in international waters and against individuals not formally designated as combatants. Under the United Nations Charter, the use of force by one state against another, including against that state’s vessels on the high seas, is generally prohibited unless the target has conducted an armed attack or the action is authorized by the UN Security Council or undertaken in legitimate self-defense.
Legal analysts have pointed out that there is no credible evidence presented to suggest that the vessels struck were engaged in an armed attack against the United States, meaning the strikes lack a clear legal basis under international law.
Another major issue arose from a controversial September strike in the Caribbean, in which US forces hit a suspected drug-smuggling vessel. After the initial attack, which killed the majority of those aboard, surveillance reportedly showed two survivors in the water.
According to multiple accounts, the operation’s commander authorized a second strike on those survivors, based on a directive that those on board should be left with no survivors. Legal experts and lawmakers have warned that targeting individuals who are no longer actively resisting or posing an imminent threat, “hors de combat” under international humanitarian law, is a war crime and violates both the Geneva Conventions and customary law prohibitions on denying quarter.
The biggest bank robbery in history
By Ian Proud | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 16, 2025
For over two years, there have been loud and repeated calls for Russia’s immobilised assets in Europe – valued at around $245 billion – to be permanently seized. However, those assets had hitherto been immobilised under EU sanctions which required unanimous agreement every six months.
Not any more. Given Belgium’s sturdy resistance to using $165 billion in immobilised assets held in Euroclear, the European Commission has triggered an emergency clause in the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union to bypass the principle of unanimity on sanctions policy.
On Thursday of last week European Council Ambassadors agreed by majority to freeze indefinitely immobilised Russian assets in European banks. This proposal is separate from specific lending to Ukraine to cover its financial needs, which was subject to a separate proposal.
But, in fact, the two are connected. Because the separate proposal for a so-called reparations loan makes clear that Ukraine will only have to repay the loan if its receives reparations from Russia, whereupon Russia’s frozen assets will be returned.
However, Russia will self-evidently never make reparations payments to Ukraine precisely because its immobilised assets which might be used for reparations in Ukraine have already been expropriated and are unlikely to be returned.
The measure proposed by the EU uses as its legal basis the need to cover the economic risks to the EU from the ongoing war. However, the Economist has pointed this out as an example of ‘dodgy’ legal logic. But it’s worse than that; it’s in fact untrue. The money is not intended to support Europan economies, as it only represented 1% of European GDP. It will be used to back a reparations loan that is not intended for reparations, but rather to pay for Ukraine’s bloated budget.
This includes $106 billion to cover Ukraine’s budget deficit over the next two years and $50 billion to write off the EU contribution to the G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration loan agreed in June 2024. The remainder will be pumped into Ukraine’s defence industry.
So, all of Russia’s money will effectively be given to Ukraine, albeit in the form of a loan underwritten by those European banks that hold Russian assets. In this fantasy, Russia’s assets still exist, it’s simply that EU banks have lent their equivalent value to Ukraine.
The problem Ursula von der Leyen is trying to avoid, as I have pointed out before, is the return of Russia’s assets after any peace deal that leads to sanctions against Russia being lifted. In short, peace would raise the risk of the loan collateral being handed back to Russia, meaning that Europe would need to pay for it, on the basis that Ukraine won’t have the means to repay the loan itself.
Let’s be clear, the earlier G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration loan to Ukraine agreed in 2024 had a maturity of up to 45 years. Does Europe really intend to keep Russia’s assets immobilised for that period of time?
President Trump’s initial 28 point peace plan suggested that Russia’s immobilised assets be split three ways, between $100 billion invested in Ukraine by U.S. firms, $100 billion overseen by Europe and the remainder co-invested by the U.S. and Russia in its country. On that basis, and assuming Russia was agreeable, all of Russia’s immobilised funds would be used for genuine reconstruction efforts, both inside of Ukraine and those parts which Russia has occupied. President Zelensky has spoken this week about the possible setting up of a special economic zone in the contested parts of Donetsk oblast that would be demilitarised.
As I pointed out a year ago, Russia might be willing to give up its assets for some form of de facto recognition of territory, which the Trump administration has essentially proposed. The value of its unfrozen sovereign reserves – at $425 billion – now far exceed the sum still frozen in Europe and other jurisdictions including the U.S.. So Russia might be willing to give up some assets as part of a quid pro quo on territory. And it’s clear that Europe has absolutely no intention of giving the money back anyway, so why not cut a deal that works best for Russia?
But what the Europeans want to do is to have two cakes and eat them both. Get Russia to pay for Ukraine’s day to day fiscal expenditures associated with war fighting and building up its defence industrial complex, even after the war ends. And get Russia to pay for Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. That is clearly delusional.
Because, and as I have already pointed out, Ukraine will still have an enormous fiscal hole to fill anyway when the fighting stops. So, if the actual plan is that Russia’s immobilised assets be used as collateral for day-to-day costs, then where is the capital to fund reparations? In short, it will cease to be available.
No, don’t worry about that, European Commission officials assure us, Russia will get its assets back after it pays reparations to Ukraine. But who decides how much Russia should pay? At the end of 2024, the UN estimated that Ukraine’s total recovery and reconstruction needs amounted to $524 billion.
Russia will simply not agree to pay that sum, not least as if it did, it would find that its immobilised assets were no longer available, having been spent on Ukraine’s budget. And, in any case, why would Russia agree to pay a sum of reparations that Europe adjudicates on from afar, all while the Americans have a more credible plan to use the immobilised assets?
President Trump is nudging president Ukrainian and European leaders, kicking and screaming, closer toward a peace deal that they don’t want to sign up to. In the case of Zelensky, he has resisted agreement because it might bring his time in power to a juddering halt. In the case of Von der Leyen, it would mean she had to tell Member States how much they needed to stump up to pay for Ukraine. As well as being logically confused and ill-thought-through, the asset seizure idea also brings the added risk of preventing any ceasefire.
Despite this, Trump appears to have the bit between his teeth to force a peace deal through and, with Zelensky now appearing to give up on NATO membership, we appear mercifully to be nudging in tiny steps towards the end of this needless war.
Someone will still need to pay for Ukraine’s budget when that happens. Russia will rightly point out that Europe has expropriated its money in the biggest bank robbery in history. And likely bury Brussels in a blizzard of litigation which makes investors in the developing world think long and hard about whether to keep their money in Europe.
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From the Archives
The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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