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Trump files for divorce from NATO over Ukraine

By Larry Johnson | RT | December 6, 2025

It is one thing to produce a written national security strategy, but the real test is whether or not US President Donald Trump is serious about implementing it. The key takeaways are the rhetorical deescalation with China and putting the onus on Europe to keep Ukraine alive.

The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the US, released by the White House on December 4, 2025, marks a potentially profound shift in US foreign policy under Trump’s second administration compared to his first term as president. This 33-page document explicitly embraces an ‘America First’ doctrine, rejecting global hegemony and ideological crusades in favor of pragmatic, transactional realism focused on protecting core national interests: Homeland security, economic prosperity, and regional dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

It critiques past US overreach as a failure that weakened America, positioning Trump’s approach as a “necessary correction” to usher in a “new golden age.” The strategy prioritizes reindustrialization (aiming to grow the US economy from $30 trillion to $40 trillion by the 2030s), border security, and dealmaking over multilateralism or democracy promotion. It accepts a multipolar world, downgrading China from a “pacing threat” to an “economic competitor,” and calling for selective engagement with adversaries. However, Trump’s actions during the first 11 months of his presidency have been inconsistent with, even contradictory of, the written strategy.

The document is unapologetically partisan, crediting Trump personally for brokering peace in eight conflicts (including the India-Pakistan ceasefire, the Gaza hostage return, the Rwanda-DRC agreement) and securing a verbal commitment at the 2025 Hague Summit for NATO members to boost their defense spending to 5% of GDP. It elevates immigration as a top security threat, advocating lethal force against cartels if needed, and dismisses climate change and ‘net zero’ policies as harmful to US interests.

The document organizes US strategy around three pillars: Homeland defense, the Western Hemisphere, and economic renewal. Secondary focuses include selective partnerships in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Here are the major rhetorical shifts in strategy compared to the previous strategies released during the respective presidencies of Trump (2017) and Biden (2022):

  • From global cop to regional hegemon: Unlike Biden’s 2022 NSS (which emphasized alliances and great-power competition) or Trump’s 2017 version (which named China and Russia as revisionists), this document ends America’s “forever burdens” abroad. It prioritizes the Americas over Eurasia, framing Europe and the Middle East as deprioritized theaters.
  • Ideological retreat: Democracy promotion is explicitly abandoned – “we seek peaceful commercial relations without imposing democratic change” (tell that to the Venezuelans). Authoritarians are not judged, and the EU is called “anti-democratic.”
  • Confrontational ally relations: Europe faces scathing criticism for migration, free speech curbs, and risks of “civilizational erasure” (e.g., demographic shifts making nations “unrecognizable in 20 years”). The US vows to support the “patriotic” European parties resisting this, drawing Kremlin-like rhetoric accusations from EU leaders.
  • China policy: Acknowledges failed engagement; seeks “mutually advantageous” ties but with deterrence (e.g., Taiwan as a priority). No full decoupling, but restrictions on tech/dependencies.
  • Multipolar acceptance: Invites regional powers to manage their spheres (e.g., Japan in East Asia, Arab-Israeli bloc in the Gulf), signaling US restraint to avoid direct confrontations.

The NSS represents a seismic shift in America’s approach to NATO, emphasizing “burden-shifting” over unconditional alliance leadership. It frames NATO not as a values-based community but as a transactional partnership in which US commitments – troops, funding, and nuclear guarantees – are tied to European allies meeting steep new demands. This America First recalibration prioritizes US resources for the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere, de-escalating in Europe to avoid “forever burdens.” Key changes include halting NATO expansion, demanding 5% GDP defense spending by 2035, and restoring “strategic stability” with Russia via a Ukraine ceasefire. While the US reaffirms Article 5 and its nuclear umbrella, it signals potential partial withdrawals by 2027 if Europe fails to step up, risking alliance cohesion amid demographic and ideological critiques of Europe. When Russia completes the defeat of Ukraine, the continued existence of NATO will be a genuine concern.

The strategy credits Trump’s diplomacy for NATO’s 5% pledge at the 2025 Hague Summit but warns of “civilizational erasure” in Europe due to migration and low birth rates, speculating that some members could become “majority non-European” within decades, potentially eroding their alignment with US interests.

Trump’s NSS signals a dramatic change in US policy toward the Ukraine conflict by essentially dumping the responsibility for keeping Ukraine afloat on the Europeans. The portion of the NSS dealing with Ukraine is delusional with regard to the military capabilities of the European states:

We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation… This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons.

As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant US diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.

It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.

The Ukraine War has had the perverse effect of increasing Europe’s, especially Germany’s, external dependencies. Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world’s largest processing plants in China, using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home. The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if they are trapped in political crisis.

Not surprisingly, this section of Trump’s NSS has sparked a panicked outcry in Europe. European leaders, including former Swedish PM Carl Bildt, called it “to the right of the extreme right,” warning of alliance erosion. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) praise its pragmatism, but flag short-sightedness, predicting a “lonelier, weaker” US. China views reassurances on sovereignty positively, but remains wary of economic pressures. In the US, Democrats, such as Rep. Jason Crow, deem it “catastrophic” for alliances, i.e. NATO.

Overall, the strategy signals a US pivot inward, forcing NATO allies to self-fund security while risking fractured partnerships with Europe. It positions America as a wealthy hemispheric power in a multipolar order, betting on dealmaking and industrial revival to sustain global influence without overextension.

Larry Johnson is a political analyst and commentator, former CIA analyst and member of the US State Department’s Office for Counterterrorism.

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Real Story Behind Trump’s Pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández

José Niño Unfiltered | December 6, 2025

The news came in quietly from a federal prison in West Virginia. Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras once sentenced to spend most of the rest of his life behind bars, had walked out of Hazelton penitentiary a free man.

According to an AP report, Hernández had received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump after a conviction that tied him to hundreds of tons of cocaine shipped into the United States. On paper, this was a spectacular reversal of fortune for a man whom federal prosecutors had branded the head of a Central American narco state. In practice, it looked like something else. It looked like a reward for loyalty to the one cause that towers above all others in Washington and in Trump world.

Hernández did not rise overnight. He entered Congress in the late 1990s, representing the rural department of Lempira, and spent more than a decade climbing inside the National Party machine. He then became president of the National Congress and finally president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022. While he projected the image of a tough conservative modernizer at home, another storyline unfolded in U.S. courtrooms.

Federal prosecutors charged him with a vast cocaine conspiracy involving the movement of multi-ton loads into the United States and with the possession of machine guns and other weapons in support of that network. The Justice Department later described his administration as a narco state fueled by millions in cartel bribes. Testimony and media investigations painted an even darker picture. According to Democracy Now, Hernández allegedly used Honduran security forces to protect drug shipments, partnered with major traffickers including the Sinaloa cartel, and used drug money to build his own political power. His brother Tony Hernández ended up with a life sentence in a U.S. prison on similar charges.

Court filings and investigative reports in outlets like CNN repeatedly tied the sitting Honduran president to drug traffickers. U.S. prosecutors said he took payoffs from drug networks as early as 2004. Hernández’s story also intersected with one of Honduras’s most prominent Jewish families. Prosecutors alleged that he received bribe payments and other favors from the Rosenthal family, a powerful clan of Romanian-Jewish origin led by Jaime Rosenthal, whose Grupo Continental controlled Banco Continental, a soccer club, and auto import businesses, as reported by Reuters.

The Rosenthal patriarch, a frequent Liberal Party presidential hopeful of Romanian Jewish extraction, stood near the top of the Honduran economic and political pyramid for decades. For his part, Hernández treated that network as another source of money and influence. A Univision investigation detailed allegations that he used drug money to finance political campaigns. After his arrest, Honduran authorities seized dozens of properties, vehicles, businesses, and other assets linked to his family.

The saga culminated in extradition to the United States in 2022. A New York jury convicted Hernández in March 2024, and a federal judge handed down a 45-year sentence plus supervised release in June of that year. By any normal standard, this was the end of the story. A disgraced former head of state, proven in court to have worked hand in glove with traffickers, destined to spend the rest of his days in prison.

However, Hernández did not bet his future on normal standards. For decades, he had invested in a different kind of protection. That protection wore a blue and white flag with a Star of David at the center.

His relationship with Israel began long before he held national office. As a young man in the early 1990s Hernández traveled to Israel under the auspices of Mashav, the Israeli Agency for International Development Cooperation. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted that he completed a Mashav enrichment course in 1992, at the beginning of his diplomatic career.

Three decades later, at the opening of the Honduran embassy in Jerusalem, Hernández stood before an audience and called that first visit to Israel a “life-changing” experience. He said the trip had shaped his view of security, agriculture, and innovation.

Once he entered the presidential palace, Hernández turned that personal link into state doctrine. In October 2015, he arrived in Jerusalem as head of state and told an audience convened by the Israel Council on Foreign Relations and the World Jewish Congress that “As long as I am president, Honduras will stand behind Israel.” The World Jewish Congress described the event in glowing terms and singled out his declaration that ties between the two countries had never been closer.

This was not idle rhetoric. Hernández set out to reposition Honduras as one of the most reliable pro-Israel governments in Latin America. Honduran and Israeli diplomats had initially signed formal relations in the 1950s, and Honduras had allowed Jewish immigration during the Second World War. Under Hernández, those historical connections became the foundation for a new foreign policy.

He adjusted the Honduran voting record at the United Nations so that his country would abstain from or oppose resolutions deemed hostile to Israeli interests. During the 2017 General Assembly vote that condemned the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem, Honduras was one of only a tiny group of countries that sided with Washington and Israel against the overwhelming majority.

Hernández also opened a diplomatic and trade office in Jerusalem, signaling recognition of the city as Israel’s capital. He then promised to relocate the full Honduran embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, issuing joint statements with Israeli and U.S. officials that set public deadlines for that step. In June 2021, he completed the move. At the inauguration, Hernández proclaimed that he was “here today in the eternal capital of Israel” and vowed to work “against antisemitism, often presented as anti Zionism,” as quoted by Israel Hayom.

Israel rewarded this loyalty with gestures of its own. It agreed to reopen its embassy in Tegucigalpa and provided security cooperation, technical assistance and emergency relief after devastating hurricanes and during the early stages of the COVID era.

Furthermore, Hernández pushed Honduras into the orbit of Christian Zionist networks. The Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, an institution that promotes Christian support for Israel and campaigns against antisemitism and BDS, gave him its Friends of Zion Award in 2019 for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and for his diplomatic support. The Friends of Zion Museum and the Jerusalem Post emphasized that he now shared an honor roll with figures like Donald Trump and other leaders celebrated for their pro-Israel policies.

In the security arena, Hernández took positions that aligned perfectly with Washington and Tel Aviv. His government designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, a move welcomed by major American Jewish groups. This decision mirrored similar steps by other U.S.-aligned governments in the region–such as Argentina under Mauricio Macri–and confirmed that Tegucigalpa had no intention of straying from the Judeo-American consensus on Middle East security.

Even when the walls began to close in, Hernández treated Israel as his ultimate safety net. As his legal exposure increased and the prospect of extradition grew more likely, he reportedly turned to Israeli officials to ask for help in delaying or preventing his transfer to U.S. authorities. The Times of Israel reported that plea and underscored Hernández’s assumption that his years of unwavering support had earned him political capital in Jerusalem.

That calculation looked naïve when he arrived in New York in chains. It looks far more rational now that Donald Trump has delivered a pardon.

Trump himself cultivated a brand as perhaps the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moved the U.S embassy there, backed the annexation of the Golan Heights, and surrounded himself with advisers and donors who made support for Israel a central test of loyalty. The Friends of Zion Museum honored him with the same award it later gave Hernández, presenting both men as partners in a shared historic mission.

So when Trump announced in late 2025 that he would pardon Hernández, it was natural for mainstream outlets to emphasize the legal controversy and the scale of the drug conspiracy. But there is another thread that runs from the Mashav classroom in the early 1990s to the Jerusalem embassy ribbon cutting to the moment the gates opened at Hazelton. That thread is the politics of Zionism in the Americas and the unwritten rule that governs advancement and protection in that world.

Hernández spent his adult life proving that he would stand behind Israel. He did it in the United Nations chamber, in ceremonial torch lighting invitations, in embassy relocations, in his fights against BDS and in his designation of Hezbollah. He did it in speeches where he promised that “as long as I am president, Honduras will stand behind Israel” and in the moment when he described Jerusalem as the “eternal capital of Israel.”

Trump saw that record and recognized a fellow shabbos goy traveler. He understood that this was not just a corrupt Central American politician but a loyal member of a global pro-Israel camp who had delivered meaningful victories in a region where Israel has long worked to secure dependable allies. In a political universe where servility to world jewry carries more weight than any anti-corruption sermon, Hernández did not just have a lawyer. He had a patron.

The pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández is therefore more than a quirky case of presidential clemency. It is a message about the real hierarchy of values in U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era. Flooding American streets with cocaine will not necessarily erase your credit if you have spent years moving embassies to Jerusalem, voting the right way at the United Nations, and branding your small Central American country as an extension of Israel’s diplomatic network.

In that world, a man who helped turn his own nation into a narco playground can still find a way out of a 45-year sentence, as long as his record on Zionism is pure and his friendship with the most pro-Zionist president in modern U.S. history remains intact. For Juan Orlando Hernández, that friendship did not simply buy influence. It bought his freedom.

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

EU targets platforms that refuse to censor free speech – Telegram founder

RT | December 6, 2025

The EU is unfairly targeting social media platforms that allow dissenting or critical speech, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has said.

He was responding to a 2024 post by Elon Musk, the owner of X, who claimed that the European Commission had offered the platform a secret deal to avoid fines in return for censoring certain statements. The EU fined X €120 million ($140 million) the day before.

According to Durov, the EU imposes strict and unrealistic rules on tech companies as a way to punish those that do not comply with quiet censorship demands.

“The EU imposes impossible rules so it can punish tech firms that refuse to silently censor free speech,” Durov wrote on X on Saturday.

He also referred to his detention in France last year, which he called politically motivated. He claimed that during that time, the head of France’s DGSE asked him to “ban conservative voices in Romania” ahead of an election, an allegation French officials denied. He also said intelligence agents offered help with his case if Telegram quietly removed channels tied to Moldova’s election.

Durov repeated both claims in his recent post, describing the case as “a baseless criminal investigation” followed by pressure to censor speech in Romania and Moldova.

Later on Saturday, Durov wrote: “The EU exclusively targets platforms that host inconvenient or dissenting speech (Telegram, X, TikTok…). Platforms that algorithmically silence people are left largely untouched, despite far more serious illegal content issues.”

Last year Elon Musk said the European Commission offered X “an illegal secret deal” to quietly censor content. “If we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not,” he wrote.

On Friday, European Commission spokesperson Tom Rainier said the EU fined X €120 million for violating the Digital Services Act. He claimed the fine was unrelated to censorship and was the first enforcement under the law. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticized the move on X, calling it “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.”

Durov and Musk have both faced pressure from EU regulators under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in 2023. The law requires platforms to remove illegal content quickly, though critics say it can be used to suppress lawful expression.

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

New law lets Berlin police install spyware in private homes

Critics warn the new rules could be misused, enabling overreach and deep intrusion into personal privacy

FILE PHOTO. © Getty Images
RT | December 6, 2025

Berlin officers will be allowed to secretly enter private homes to install spyware, after the German House of Representatives approved a sweeping change to the city’s police law.

Backed by the governing CDU-SPD coalition and opposition AfD, the law gives police broad new powers over both physical and digital surveillance.

The new law allows authorities to secretly enter a suspect’s home to install spyware if remote access isn’t possible. This marks the first time Berlin’s law enforcement can legally carry out such physical break-ins for digital surveillance. The updated rules also permit hacking phones and computers to monitor communication. Police can now turn on bodycams inside private homes if they believe someone is in serious danger.

Passed on Thursday, the law also expands surveillance in public areas. Authorities can now collect phone data from everyone in a location, scan license plates, and counter drones. They may use facial and voice recognition to identify people from surveillance images. Real police data can also be used to train AI. Critics say this risks misuse and intrudes on private life.

Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) has defended the move. “With the biggest reform of the Berlin Police Law in decades, we are creating a significant plus for the protection of Berliners,” she said. “We are giving law enforcement better tools to fight terrorism and organized crime,” she added.

Berlin has seen a rise in crime. In 2024, police recorded over 539,000 offences — more than the year before. Violent crimes like assault and domestic violence also increased. Officials say there is a growing problem with crimes involving young people and migrants, especially in large cities. More than half of all crimes still go unsolved.

Opposition to the law has grown since its passage. During the debate, Green Party MP Vasili Franco said the law felt like a wish list for a state with excessive control over its citizens. Civil rights groups called the expanded use of AI and facial recognition “a massive attack on civil liberties.”

The campaign alliance NoASOG also strongly criticized the reform, stating, “What is being sold as security policy is in reality the establishment of an authoritarian surveillance state.”

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Australia’s Top Censor Warns of Surveillance While Hypocritically Expanding It

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | December 3, 2025

At a press conference that could have been a comedy sketch idea, Australia’s “eSafety” Commissioner Julie Inman Grant and Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek stood before the cameras and solemnly warned the nation about the perils of surveillance. Not from government programs or sweeping digital mandates, but from smart cars and connected devices.

The irony was not lost on anyone paying attention.

Both Grant and Plibersek are enthusiastic backers of the country’s new online age verification law, the so-called Social Media Minimum Age Bill 2024, a law that has done more to expand digital surveillance than any gadget in a Toyota.

The legislation bans under-16s from social media and requires users to prove their age through “assurance” systems that often involve facial scans, ID uploads, and data analysis so invasive it would make a marketing executive blush.

But on the same day she cautioned the public about the dangers of “connected” cars sharing sensitive information with third parties, Grant’s agency was publishing rules that literally require social media platforms to share sensitive data with third parties.

During the press conference, Grant complained that “it’s disappointing” YouTube and other platforms hadn’t yet released their guidance on how they’ll implement verification.

She announced that eSafety will begin issuing “gathering information notices” on December 10, demanding details from companies about how they plan to comply once her expanded powers take effect.

She also warned that some of the smaller apps users are migrating to may soon “become age-restricted social media platforms.”

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) explains that compliance under this law can involve “age estimation” using facial analysis, “age inference” through data modeling of user activity, or “age verification” with government ID.

All three options amount to building a surveillance apparatus around everyday users. Facial recognition, voice modeling, behavioral tracking; pick your poison.

Most platforms outsource this work to private firms, which means that the same sensitive data the law claims to protect is immediately handed to a commercial intermediary.

Meta, for example, relies on Yoti, a third-party ID verification company. Others use firms like Au10tix, which famously left troves of ID scans exposed online for over a year.

The law includes what politicians like to call “strong privacy safeguards.” Platforms must only collect the data necessary for verification, must destroy it once it’s used, and must never reuse it for other purposes.

It’s the same promise every company makes before it gets hacked or “inadvertently” leaks user data.

Even small dating apps that claimed to delete verification selfies “immediately after completion” managed to leak those same selfies. In every case, the breach followed the same pattern: grand assurances, then exposure.

Julie Inman Grant calls it protecting the public. Tanya Plibersek calls it social responsibility. The rest of us might call it what it actually is: institutionalized data collection, dressed in the language of child safety.

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Russian Scientists Develop New Polymer Material to Trap Lead Ions in Water

Sputnik – 03.12.2025

A new material that traps lead ions in wastewater and natural waterways has been created and tested by researchers at Russia’s Tyumen State University.

Developed as part of an international team, the material makes it faster and easier to remove the ecotoxicant from aquatic environments.

The results were published in Polymer Bulletin. The main sources of heavy-metal pollution in the environment include the mining, metallurgical, electroplating and steel industries.

When filtration systems at industrial facilities fail, large quantities of lead and other metal ions — toxic to bacteria, plants and mammals — can enter wastewater or natural waters, the university specialists explained.

Researchers from the State University of Tyumen, together with colleagues from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, India, China and Saudi Arabia, have developed and tested a material capable of “capturing” lead from water in reservoirs.

The material is based on humic acids extracted from coal.

“We obtained lead traps with specially designed pores that can hold exactly a lead ion,” said Gulnara Shigabaeva, head of the Department of Organic and Environmental Chemistry at the university.

“Tests of the absorption process showed that the new material works more efficiently than existing analogue,” she added, and “the lead can be easily removed from our sorbent.”

She explained that the sorbent selectively captures lead ions because it is engineered with a “memory” of their size and charge — a polymer-design technique known as molecular imprinting.

“In the humic-acid and acrylic-acid–based material, there are cavities — imprints of lead ions,” Shigabaeva said “Smaller particles, such as iron ions, simply pass through them, while larger particles cannot fit into the sorbent.”

The granulated sorbent can be placed directly into water and later filtered out after swelling and absorbing the lead ions.

Laboratory experiments showed that one gram of the sorbent can extract 50 milligrams of lead ions from water in one hour. In the future, the researchers plan to develop molecularly imprinted polymer sorbents for other ecotoxicants such as nickel, copper and zinc.

They also intend to assess the effectiveness of the new materials under real environmental conditions.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Environmentalism | | Leave a comment

DR BOB SEARS DISCUSSES ‘VACCINES AND THE DISEASES THEY TARGET’

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | December 4, 2025

Pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears joins Del to unpack ACIP’s hepatitis B vaccine debate, the near-total absence of long-term safety data for newborn vaccination, and why the U.S. is an outlier in giving this shot on day one of life. He discusses the Physicians for Informed Consent’s new Silver Book “Vaccines and the Diseases They Target”, designed to give doctors and parents clear, side-by-side numbers on disease risk and vaccine risk so real informed consent can finally happen.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

Israel moves to extend army service to 36 months

The Cradle | December 5, 2025

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on 5 December a plan to extend mandatory military service to 36 months.

The move raises the current service terms from 30–32 months to a full 36 months and marks a significant shift in how Tel Aviv intends to staff its army at a time of deep political rupture and growing pressure on its northern front.

The ministers said the extension would add “10,000 service days per year” and could delay the discharge of soldiers scheduled to complete their service in 2026.

Katz’s office said the government will cut roughly 30,000 reserve duty positions and rely instead on longer compulsory service to fill the gaps.

The move also comes as the government promotes legislation to exempt the ultra-Orthodox, known as the Haredim, from the draft, while expecting regular soldiers to make up for the shrinking reserve force.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid condemned the arrangement as “a budget of corruption and draft-dodging.”

The adjustment is included in a significantly expanded 2026 defense budget. According to the prime minister’s office and statements issued by Katz, the budget now stands at $34.72 billion, up from an earlier draft of $27.90 billion.

Katz said the government will “reinforce the IDF and … reduce the burden on reservists,” though the plan effectively shifts that burden onto conscripts who will now serve an extra year. Smotrich said the overall increase compared with 2023 reached $14.57 billion.

The manpower strain has sharpened in recent months. Israeli Brigadier General Shai Tayeb told lawmakers that the army is currently short 12,000 recruits, including 7,000 combat soldiers, and warned that troop levels are projected to decline even further by early 2027.

Tayeb told the Knesset that Israel “needs to expand the base of those serving” and is preparing for three-year service terms and 70 days of annual reserve duty within five years.

Israel has even begun turning to foreign mercenaries to fill its ranks, with losses from campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, rising dropout rates, and growing reluctance among reservists to return to service, the army is left to face what officials describe as a “huge shortage” of capable fighters.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Final SIGAR report finds decades of US corruption, waste in Afghanistan

Press TV – December 5, 2025

The final audit from Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) paints a stark portrait of how tens of billions of dollars ostensibly earmarked for nation‑building were diverted, misused or wasted.

According to SIGAR’s report, from 2002 to 2021 the United States appropriated about $148.21 billion purportedly for Afghan reconstruction. Of that sum, roughly $88.8 billion went to security‑sector projects, while other enterprises disguised as development, humanitarian assistance, governance and institution‑building consumed the rest.

But the watchdog estimates that between $26 billion and $29.2 billion of those funds were lost to waste, fraud and abuse—red flags that preceded the Afghan government’s collapse and the rapid Taliban takeover in 2021.

The report logged 1,327 separate cases of misuse, mismanagement, or corruption tied directly to US‑funded programs.

Among the failures major investments in the Afghan security forces were undermined by inflated troop rolls, ghost‑salary schemes, and an inability to maintain complex gear.

As SIGAR’s acting inspector general put it, “the government we helped build… was essentially a white collar criminal enterprise.”

SIGAR’s acting inspector general, Gene Aloise, told reporters that the project was undermined by “early and ongoing US decisions to ally with corrupt, human-rights-abusing power brokers.”

This strategy, he continued, strengthened insurgent networks and eroded hopes for stable governance in Afghanistan.

Large‑scale hardware and infrastructure also went to waste. The United States funded planes, bases, and military assets, many never used or deteriorating rapidly post‑contract.

One instance involved transport aircraft bought for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that were later scrapped or abandoned when maintenance systems collapsed.

Despite almost $90 billion spent on training and equipping army and police forces, Afghan troops disintegrated quickly when US support ended, added the report.

Moreover, even broader cost estimates for the war paint an even more sobering picture.

Estimates put the total US cost — including military operations, veteran care, interest on borrowed funds and other long-term liabilities — at more than $2.3 trillion over the two decades, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.

Based on the SIGAR’s final judgement, the much-hyped mission to purportedly build a stable, democratic Afghanistan delivered neither stability nor democracy.

In September, President Donald Trump sparked a fresh geopolitical firestorm with his calls to reclaim Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, signaling a willingness to re-establish a US military presence in a country that has warned against any return of foreign troops.

Trump said the United States was “trying to get [Bagram] back” and described it as “one of the biggest air bases in the world,” highlighting its strategic runway and location to contain China.

Two days later, he posted on social media that if Afghanistan does not return the base, “BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN.”

US military officials warn that retaking Bagram would require “tens of thousands” of troops along with massive logistical and air-defense support to hold the facility, a scenario that could mirror the pitfalls of the long Afghan war.

The United States had invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the September 11 attacks, even though not a single Afghan national was among the hijackers.

Over the course of the 20-year US occupation of the Asian nation, hundreds of thousands of Afghans lost their lives.

When Washington and its allies deployed troops in 2001, they claimed their mission was to dismantle al-Qaeda under what became known as the US “war on terror.” Yet two decades later, in August 2021, the Taliban quickly retook multiple provincial capitals and then entered Kabul with virtually no resistance.

The rapid collapse of the US-backed government forced Washington into a rushed and chaotic evacuation of diplomats, citizens, and Afghan partners — a scene that drew intense criticism for the US government’s mismanagement of its own exit.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

POLITICO’s Delusion Cracks: Belgium Isn’t Helping Russia — It’s Trying to Save Europe From Itself

By Gerry Nolan | The Islander | December 5, 2025

The great farce of late-imperial Europe is that every time Brussels stumbles into another historic blunder of its own making, it immediately searches for a foreign hand to blame. And so the EU’s court chronicler, Politico, delivers its latest fever dream: that Belgium, the most indecisive, over-medicated country in the bloc, has somehow transformed into “Russia’s most valuable asset.” In reality, the only asset Russia needed was the EU’s own arrogance.

Belgium merely did the unthinkable, it told the truth.

What Politico dresses up as geopolitical intrigue is actually a confession of EU derangement. The EU are trying to engineer the largest state-sanctioned theft of sovereign wealth in modern history, a direct raid on the Russian Central Bank’s reserves and expected applause, unity, and moral ecstasy. Instead, Belgium asked the only sane question left in Europe: “Are you all completely out of your minds?” For this, Politico paints De Wever as eccentric, impulsive, unstable, the same labels always deployed when someone refuses to bow to the imperial autopilot. But the deeper scandal is that Brussels expected him to sign off on detonating the post-war financial order for the sake of one more photo-op with Zelensky.

Politico can hide behind metaphors of summit dinners and langoustines, but the legal reality is brutal: raiding another nation’s central bank is not a policy disagreement. It is a declaration of financial war on the entire world. It would obliterate sovereign immunity, destroy the neutrality of reserve holdings, and instantly signal to the global South that their assets in EU banks are hostage to EU’s emotional spasms. One act, one reckless stroke of a pen, and the euro collapses as a safe currency, capital flees to Asia, and the West loses its last functional pillar of power. Belgium saw the cliff’s edge, Brussels mistook it for a (perverse) moral leap of faith.

Politico’s narrative stumbles further when it pretends the only danger lies in Moscow’s retaliation. It does not. Russia’s symmetric countermeasures are well-known, lawful, and devastating: nationalization of Western corporate assets, seizure of industrial infrastructure, liquidation of bond holdings, and the dismantling of Western financial footprints inside Russia. The value of Western assets exposed inside the Russian Federation rivals what sits in Euroclear. Brussels knows this. Euroclear knows this. Investors know this. Only the EU pretends the ledger is irrelevant. But the real threat is not Russia’s response , it is the irreversible collapse of trust in Western custodianship. Once the EU steals central bank reserves, no nation with self-respect will ever again store wealth in Europe. The theft of Russian reserves would be remembered not as an isolated act, but as the day the West proved it cannot be trusted with global money, let alone soverign assets.

This is the part Politico is terrified to articulate. Belgium wasn’t protecting Russia. Belgium is trying to protect the very system the EU purports to defend. Yet instead of portraying De Wever as the only adult in the room, Politico stages a melodrama about a Flemish nationalist gone rogue, supposedly spoiling the EU’s grandiose plan to hurl another €140 billion onto the Ukrainian funeral pyre. The reality is simpler, Belgium refused to mortgage its own future so Europe could continue its cosplay as a geopolitical superpower utterly detached from material reality. The EU elite wanted to play empire with someone else’s risk. Belgium refused to be the guarantor of their delusion.

What makes Politico’s narrative even more absurd is that it accidentally reveals the deeper rot, Europe’s elite caste are incapable of unity, incapable of strategic thought, incapable of honesty. Merz shoots from the hip. Von der Leyen improvises legal fantasies. Orbán holds a veto the size of a continental fault line. Trump instinctively knows he needs an offramp via peace talks and is happy to download project Ukraine’s corpse along with the humiliation onto Western Europe. Zelensky arrives in Brussels begging for cash while European governments fight over whether the money should be spent on their own weapons factories. This is not a union. This is a collective suicide pact.

And through all this chaos, Politico clings to the illusion that Russia must somehow be “laughing.” But Russia isn’t laughing. Russia is watching. Watching as Europe destroys its own energy security, its own industrial base, its own strategic autonomy, its own diplomatic credibility, its own financial reputation, and finally — with this proposed asset raid — the very legal foundations of the Western economic system. If Moscow appears calm, it is because it doesn’t need to act. Europe is demolishing itself at a pace Russia could never have engineered.

Belgium’s “no” was not an act of betrayal. It was the last flicker of European rationality. The EU’s hysteria and psychosis, not Russia, created the crisis. Europe is trying to violate international law, sabotage its own financial institutions, and torch what remains of the bygone postwar order to salvage the illusion of a war it has already lost. Belgium simply refused to join the ritual suicide.

So let us rewrite Politico’s headline as history will record it: “How the EU Became Russia’s Greatest Strategic Gift.” Not because Russia manipulated Europe, but because Europe manipulated itself, into hysteria, into decay, into legal nihilism, into economic ruin. Belgium didn’t hand Russia an asset. It denied the EU the final act of self-destruction… for now.

The tragic irony of the entire Politico piece is that its authors still cling to the fantasy that Europe can recover simply by shaming Belgium into compliance. But history will not be kind to this moment. When future scholars study the collapse of the Western financial empire, this attempted seizure of Russian assets and Belgium’s lonely refusal, will stand as the point where the veil fell, revealing a Europe that could no longer distinguish faux moral posturing from strategic insanity.

Belgium didn’t break with Europe, it broke with Europe’s delusions. The EU convinced itself that tearing down the last pillars of the post-war order was an act of courage. Belgium saw it for what it was, a death rite dressed as morality. And when this era ends, when capitals move eastward, when trust evaporates, when the euro cracks under the weight of its own blind arrogance, historians will look back on this moment. They will not ask why Belgium said no. They will ask why Europe said yes.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

US warns Europe of ‘civilizational erasure’

RT | December 5, 2025

Europe is facing potential “civilizational erasure” as the continent’s policymakers encourage censorship, crack down on political opponents, and turn a blind eye to mass immigration, the new National Security Strategy released by the administration of US President Donald Trump warns.

The landmark and strongly worded document released on Friday says that while the EU is showing worrying signs of economic decline, its cultural and political unraveling poses an even greater threat.

The strategy cites EU-backed immigration policies, suppression of political opposition, curbs on speech, collapsing birthrates, and “loss of national identities and self-confidence,” warning that Europe could become “unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”

The document argues that many European governments are “doubling down on their present path,” while the US wants Europe “to remain European” and abandon “regulatory suffocation” – an apparent reference to America’s stand-off with the EU over its strict digital market guidelines, which Washington claims discriminate against US-based tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta.

One of Washington’s key goals is “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” the paper adds.

Trump’s strategy notes that the rise of “patriotic European parties” offers “cause for great optimism,” in a reference to growing bloc-wide support for right-wing Euroskeptic parties calling for strict immigration limits.

The document proclaims that “the era of mass migration is over.” It argues that large inflows have strained resources, increased violence, and weakened social cohesion, adding that Washington is seeking a world in which sovereign states “work together to stop rather than manage” migration flows.

The strategy also comes amid Trump’s push to convince European NATO members to spend more on defense. At one point, he threatened not to defend “delinquent” countries in an attack if they fail to meet his demands. At a summit earlier this year, the bloc endorsed a new plan to move toward combined defense-related spending of up to 5% of GDP, far above NATO’s longstanding 2% benchmark.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

US puts normalizing relations with Russia among ‘core interests’

RT | December 5, 2025

The US has placed the restoration of normal ties with Russia and a rapid end to the Ukraine conflict at the center of its newly released National Security Strategy, presenting both aims as among America’s core interests.

The 33-page report outlining President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy vision was released by the White House on Friday.

”It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine,” the paper states, “in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”

It notes that the Ukraine conflict has left “European relations with Russia… deeply attenuated,” destabilizing the region.

The report criticizes European leaders for “unrealistic expectations” regarding the outcome of the conflict, arguing that “a large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy.”

America, it says, is ready for “significant diplomatic engagement” to “help Europe correct its current trajectory,” reestablish stability, and “mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.”

In contrast with the US national strategy during Trump’s first term, which emphasized competition with Russia and China, the new strategy shifts the focus to the Western Hemisphere and to protecting the homeland, the borders, and regional interests. It calls for resources to be redirected from distant theaters to challenges closer to home and urges NATO and European states to shoulder primary responsibility for their own defense.

The document also calls for an end to NATO expansion – a demand that Russia has repeatedly made, calling it a root cause of the Ukraine conflict, which Moscow views as a Western proxy war.

Overall, the new strategy signals a shift away from global interventionism toward a more transactional foreign policy, arguing that the US should act abroad only when its interests are directly at stake.

The strategy is the first of several major defense and foreign-policy documents the Trump administration is expected to release. These include an updated National Defense Strategy, the Missile Defense Review, and Nuclear Posture Review, which are expected to echo the strategy’s direction.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

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