aletho

Polish railway ‘sabotage’ runs on time for Europe’s military Schengen plan

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 19, 2025

The European Commission is proposing to make the European Union of 27 nations a seamless territory for NATO transport across national borders. The concept is to create a “military Schengen” in analogy to the free movement of civilians across the bloc.

The controversial idea is strongly advocated by pro-NATO European leaders. The proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and the escalating tensions of a wider war have helped push the sweeping militarization of the EU as a single bloc.

This week, as the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen makes her pitch for an EU-wide military Schengen zone, there were suspicious sabotage attacks on Poland’s railway network.

Von der Leyen is leading the calls for coordination of military forces to have free access to the EU’s transport links. The idea for a military Schengen-type arrangement for the EU has been around for several years, but there has been resistance from nations giving up control of their borders. The last time Von der Leyen’s German compatriots did that by marching across Europe did not go down too well.

What the proponents of the concept would like is for military forces from one country to be able to cross over several others with minimal inspection. The idea brings closer to realization the formation of an “EU army.” It also blurs the lines between NATO and the EU to the point where all 27 members of the EU become de facto members of the military alliance.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Von der Leyen were quick to blame Russia for “shocking sabotage” of Poland’s railway after trains were disrupted by an explosive attack on Sunday. No one was injured. And, as usual, no evidence was provided. Russia was not openly blamed by name, but the media reporting implicated Russian involvement. Moscow has previously denied accusations of carrying out hybrid war attacks on transport and communication infrastructure across Europe, including the use of drones to disrupt air traffic.

Questions arise about the latest railway incidents in Poland. The affected rail line was from Warsaw to Lublin, and onwards to Ukraine. Tusk described the rail link as “crucially important for aid to Ukraine.” Indeed, the rail line is a major vector for munitions flowing to Ukraine. If it is such a vital supply route for NATO military equipment to Ukraine, one wonders why the rail line was not better guarded.

The railway damage was reported by a train driver on Sunday morning, yet the government and security authorities did not act until Monday. The delay in response caused anger among Polish citizens who remonstrated with officials at public gatherings. Were the authorities deliberately being negligent in ensuring the rail line was made safe, to contrive an accident?

The BBC reported local people claiming that they heard a massive explosion whose impact could be felt several kilometers away. The strange thing is that the reported railway damage did not appear to be extensive. One would expect from such a powerful blast that whole sections of the rail would have been destroyed, making the line impassable. However, it was reported that several trains were able to traverse the damaged section on Monday before the authorities acted. The traversing trains incurred shattered windows. But if they were able to traverse, then the tracks could not have been blown apart.

We might reasonably speculate, therefore, that the explosion was not the actual cause of the relatively limited rail damage. Perhaps the blast was detonated to bring the public’s attention to a separate act of sabotage to derail the trains (without causing a calamitous loss of life). The purpose was to conflate the perception of explosion with railway sabotage. And as Tusk, Von der Leyen, and the media have all dutifully followed suit, the convenient upshot is to level accusations implicating Russian hybrid warfare.

Poland’s Army Chief of Staff, General Wieslaw Kukula, articulated the narrative as quoted by Euronews : “The adversary has started preparations for war. They are building a certain environment here to bring about an undermining of public confidence in the government and bodies such as the armed forces and the police… [creating] conditions that are convenient for the potential conduct of aggression on Polish territory.”

Week after week, European politicians, military, security, and bureaucratic chiefs are claiming with shrill rhetoric that Russia is preparing to attack member states imminently. Earlier this year, Poland’s Tusk even accused Russia of intending to blow up civilian cargo airplanes. How easy it is to plant incendiary devices to blame someone else and report “suspects” arrested without court cases. The European public is browbeaten into consenting to increased military budgets, air defenses, anti-drone walls, and tens of billions of Euros more to prop up the corrupt Kiev regime. All to “defend” Europe against an evil aggressor.

Moscow has repeatedly dismissed claims that it intends to attack European states. But the war propaganda continues relentlessly to project Russia as a drooling barbarian.

A cruel irony is that passenger trains have been sabotaged in Russia in recent months, with the loss of lives, acts which have been attributed to NATO and Ukrainian covert operations. The Western media hardly reports on those atrocities.

But an apparently contrived false-flag operation in Poland is given maximum Western media coverage with the choreographed narrative that Russia is the villain. As with the flurry of mysterious drones suddenly invading European airspaces.

The proposal for a European military Schengen is very much aimed at bringing rail networks across Europe under a seamless command to enable the rapid mass movement of NATO forces over national borders. No questions asked. Just do it.

A false-flag sabotage on Polish railways reinforces the messaging that Europe’s transport network has to be turned over for military logistical control.

The militarization of Europe and its “NATO-ization,” entails an unprecedented and mind-boggling shift in public money to military corporations, the financial elite, and their political puppets. The corruption in the Kiev regime is a microcosm of the bigger war racket that Europe has become. False flags to scare European citizens into passive acceptance of the rip-off are running like clockwork.

It used to be joked about Mussolini and Hitler that at least the old fascists made the trains run on time. The new fascists make the trains come off the rails on time.

November 19, 2025 Posted by aletho | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | European Union, Poland | Leave a comment

Otto Reich: The Jewish Regime Change Agent Who Spent 40 Years Destabilizing Latin America

By Jose Alberto Nino | The Occidental Observer | November 18, 2025

In the shadowy world of U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, few names inspire as much controversy as Otto Reich, a Jewish-Cuban exile whose career reads like a manual for regime change, complete with illegal propaganda operations, coup connections, and an unwavering commitment to toppling governments that defy Washington.

The story begins in Havana, where Otto Juan Reich was born on October 16, 1945, to an Austrian Jewish father who had fled National Socialist Germany in 1938 and a Cuban Catholic mother. His father’s escape from Germany became the foundational narrative of Reich’s worldview, a tale of authoritarian evil that he would later project onto Latin America’s leftist movements. Raised as a Catholic despite his Jewish heritage, young Otto attended the elite, American-run Ruston Academy, where he absorbed both Cuban culture and American influence in equal measure.

During Reich’s youth, Cuba was under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, whose political repression was so severe that even Reich’s own family, as he told The New Yorker, was “pro-revolution, anti-Batista.” The lone exception was his father, whose experience fleeing one authoritarian regime had made him suspicious of revolutionary movements. When Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, that suspicion proved prophetic—or so Reich would claim for the rest of his life. Castro’s consolidation of power prompted Reich’s father to flee once more, this time taking his family to North Carolina in 1960, when Otto was just 15 years old, as the New York Times reported.

His father’s double exile—first from Germany, then from revolutionary Cuba—became the crucible that forged the younger Reich’s political identity. Where some might see tragedy, Reich saw opportunity. Where others might advocate reconciliation, Reich would pursue confrontation. The teenage refugee would grow into one of Washington’s most zealous operators against Latin American leftism, a man for whom the line between communism and democracy admitted no gray areas, no nuance, no possibility of coexistence.

From the Military to the Foreign Policy Blob

Reich’s trajectory toward influence was methodical. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1966, then immediately joined the U.S. Army, serving three years as an officer in the 3rd Civil Affairs Detachment stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. This posting provided Reich with more than military experience; it offered a frontline view of U.S. power projection in Latin America, where American military presence wasn’t just about defense but about maintaining influence over an entire hemisphere.

After his military service, Reich completed a Master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University in 1973, assembling the credentials that would make him indispensable to conservative policymakers seeking expertise on the region.

When Ronald Reagan swept into the White House in 1981, Reich found his moment. The Reagan administration needed operatives willing to prosecute an aggressive anti-communist agenda in Latin America, and Reich eagerly volunteered. From 1981 to 1983, he served as Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, managing American economic assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean during a period of revolutionary upheaval. But this posting was merely preparation for Reich’s true calling.

The Architect of the Contra Propaganda Machine

In 1983, Reich established and began directing the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, an anodyne name for what would become one of the most controversial operations in modern American foreign policy. The OPD’s official mission was to promote the Contra guerrillas fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Its actual function, as would later be revealed, was to conduct what the Comptroller General characterized in 1987 as “prohibited, covert propaganda” to bolster the Contra’s image among the American public.

Under Reich’s management, the OPD became a factory for disinformation. The office planted false stories in U.S. media outlets, including unsubstantiated claims about the Nicaraguan government’s involvement in drug trafficking. It published opinion pieces in mainstream newspapers attributed to fictitious Nicaraguan rebel leaders. It coordinated with paid consultants who wrote pro-Contra articles while concealing their government connections—a practice congressional investigators would later identify as “white propaganda.”

Reich had effectively turned his office into a domestic propaganda operation aimed at manipulating American public opinion to support a covert war. A House Foreign Affairs Committee report didn’t mince words, characterizing the OPD as “a domestic political and propaganda operation.” For three years, Reich oversaw this machinery of deception, becoming what journalist Ann Bardach would later call the “chief spinner” of the Iran-Contra effort.

The scandal that eventually engulfed the Reagan administration would shut down Reich’s operation in 1987. Yet remarkably, Reich himself was not personally accused of illegal activity. He had operated in that gray zone where government officials claim plausible deniability—close enough to the crime to be indispensable, distant enough to avoid prosecution. It was a skill he would refine over decades.

The Lobbyist Years

When Reich left government service in 1989, following a stint as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela from 1986 to 1989, he didn’t abandon his mission. He simply changed his methodology. For 12 years, Reich worked as a corporate lobbyist, first as a partner in the Brock Group and later as president of his own firm, RMA International. But these weren’t ordinary lobbying gigs; Reich selected clients whose interests aligned perfectly with his ideological agenda.

He represented Bacardi rum company in a campaign to nullify Cuba’s trademark protection for “Havana Club,” an effort that succeeded with the enactment of the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, which further fortified the Cuban embargo. He worked on behalf of Lockheed Martin to sell F-16 fighter jets to Chile. Where others saw business opportunities, Reich saw another front in his endless campaign to maintain American primacy in Latin America.

Return to Power

When George W. Bush captured the White House in 2001, Reich saw an opportunity to return to government service. Bush nominated him for Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, but the appointment immediately sparked controversy. The Senate, wary of Reich’s Iran-Contra record and his advocacy for Orlando Bosch—a Cuban exile militant suspected of organizing the bombing of Cubana de Aviación Flight 455, which killed 73 people—refused to hold confirmation hearings.

Bush’s solution revealed the depths of Reich’s value to Republican hardliners: He simply bypassed the Senate through a recess appointment, allowing Reich to serve for one year without confirmation before being appointed as Special Envoy to Latin America. Democracy be damned; Reich’s expertise in destabilization was too valuable to sacrifice to Senate oversight.

The 2002 Venezuelan Coup

Reich’s tenure coincided with one of the most controversial episodes in recent Latin American history: the brief coup d’état in Venezuela on April 11, 2002, that temporarily removed President Hugo Chávez from power. During the coup, Reich communicated with coup leader Pedro Carmona Estanga and contacted ambassadors from other Latin American countries. Cuban sources would characterize Reich as the “mastermind of the April 2002 coup plot against Hugo Chávez,” though Reich has denied direct involvement in the coup planning.

The pattern was familiar: A left-leaning, democratically elected leader who defied Washington’s preferences; a sudden coup involving military and business elites; and Otto Reich in communication with the coup leaders. Whether Reich masterminded the operation or simply provided encouragement and diplomatic cover, his presence at the center of events spoke volumes about his role in Bush administration policy.

The Ideological Entrepreneur

After leaving government service in 2004, Reich established Otto Reich Associates, a Washington consulting firm providing international government relations advice. But he remained far more than a mere consultant. Reich positioned himself as an ideological entrepreneur, shaping policy from outside government through media appearances, congressional testimony, and advisory roles to Republican presidential candidates, including John McCain in 2008 and Jeb Bush in 2016.

During Donald Trump’s first term, Reich played a significant behind-the-scenes role in shaping Latin American policy. In August 2018, he was credited with recommending Mauricio Claver-Carone to National Security Advisor John Bolton for the position of top official for Latin America policy at the National Security Council. Bolton later acknowledged: “I wouldn’t have known [Claver-Carone’s] name if Otto hadn’t recommended him. I trusted Otto’s judgment.”

Reich praised the appointment of Cuban-American hawks to key Trump administration positions, stating: “We have people who understand the cause, and not just the symptoms, of the problems in Latin America—not all the problems—and that is Cuba.” He argued that “the United States has been a fire brigade in Latin America for the last 60 years and we have ignored, to a large degree, the arsonist,” referring to Cuba’s role in supporting leftist movements throughout the region.

The Unending Campaign to Preserve U.S. Hegemony

Reich’s crusade against Latin American leftism never wavered, never softened. He characterized Venezuela as a “branch” and “subsidiary” of Cuba, accusing President Chávez of “having put a lot of his country’s money at the service of Fidel Castro” and “giving away” petroleum to the Caribbean island. This close alliance, Reich claimed, fueled what he called the “disgusting and gloomy process of Cubanization” unfolding in the petroleum-rich nation.

Then-Vice President José Vicente Rangel defended Venezuela’s sovereignty in July 2005, claiming that Reich “permanently attacks the Venezuelan government, because all of the petroleum business that [the US] has with Venezuela frustrates him.” Rangel rhetorically asked Reich to clarify “exactly which process of Cubanization is he talking about,” arguing that “the true Cubanization of Venezuela occurred years ago with the infiltration of anti-Castro Cubans into Venezuela’s police bodies.”

In a February 2015 panel discussion at the University of Miami titled “Venezuela: A Deepening Political and Economic Quagmire?”, Reich compared the Venezuelan government to National Socialist Germany, stating that officials there could claim they were “simply obeying the laws of the land” just as German officials did, warning “we have to be careful what the laws of the land are.” The comparison was as hyperbolic as it was revealing—for Reich, every leftist government in Latin America was potentially the next Third Reich.

By January 2024, Reich’s criticism had intensified following the Biden administration’s temporary sanctions relief on Venezuela. In an interview with PanAm Post, Reich declared that Biden’s policy toward Venezuela “has been a failure since the beginning of his administration” and characterized it as “not just a failure but a humiliation.” He warned that “not only the ideological pressure groups of the left but now also the commercial groups, the American oil companies that are doing business with Maduro, are going to put pressure on the Biden government not to restore the sanctions.”

Expanding the Enemy List

For Reich, the list of adversaries extended far beyond Cuba and Venezuela. He grouped Nicaragua and Bolivia together with Venezuela and Cuba as what he called “21st Century Socialist States,” arguing they represented a coordinated Cuban-Venezuelan effort to undermine democracy throughout Latin America. In March 2014 testimony before Congress titled “U.S. Disengagement from Latin America,” Reich warned that these governments constituted “organized crime states” where “top politicians and high-ranking military officers have been implicated in drug trafficking, support of terrorism and other illicit activities.”

Reich’s recent writings reveal an expansion of his ideological enemies to include Middle Eastern actors. In a November 2023 article for the Jewish Policy Center, Reich argued that “for more than one year, Iran secretly provided the weapons and training that Hamas needed for planning the October 7th attack against Israel.” He specifically accused Cuba of being “a key Iran-Hamas ally” in diplomatic efforts supporting the Palestinian militant organization.

Reich documented three high-level meetings that he claimed demonstrated Cuba’s complicity in the attack: a February 5, 2023 visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian to meet with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel; a February 25, 2023 Hamas delegation visit to Jorge León Cruz, the Cuban Ambassador in Lebanon, where Cruz recognized “the legitimate right of the Palestinians to defend their land,” stating that Palestinians “are fighting for a just cause”; and a June 15, 2023 meeting between Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Díaz-Canel in Havana.

Reich asserted that these meetings, coupled with Cuba’s “long history of both antisemitism and support of extremist terrorist organizations in the Middle East,” proved that Cuba operated “terrorist training camps in secret locations” and allowed Hezbollah to establish “an operational base in Cuba, designed to support terrorist attacks throughout Latin America.”

Regime Change Villain

Throughout his career, Reich’s targets have consistently accused him of the very interference he claims to oppose. The Cuban government has consistently accused Reich of supporting terrorism and interfering in Cuban affairs. In 2002, Cuba’s Foreign Relations Ministry categorically denied Reich’s claims that four Cuban airplanes landed at Venezuela’s airport during the 2002 coup attempt, calling Reich’s assertion “an absolute lie.” The ministry stated that “if it had been necessary to land a Cuban civilian airplane to collect Cuban diplomatic personnel who were besieged by Mr. Reich’s friends, or for any other humanitarian and peaceful objective, we would have done it and we would have no reason to hide it.”

During a diplomatic visit to South America in July 2002, Reich drew criticism for instructing the Argentine government to commit to an austerity program demanded by the International Monetary Fund–one of the most notable vehicles of Judeo-American power. His aggressive approach to diplomacy was so abrasive that Senator Lincoln Chafee, a Republican member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, reported getting first-hand experience of Latin American hostility toward Reich during travels in the region. The term “hemispheric security mechanism” that Reich promoted stirred “unpleasant interventionist memories” throughout Latin America, according to a report by Toby Eglund.

Venezuelan officials have been particularly vocal about Reich’s skullduggery, even in the Obama era. In March 2013, Venezuela’s then-interim president Nicolás Maduro accused “factors in the Pentagon and the CIA” of conspiring against Venezuela, specifically naming Reich and Roger Noriega, who directly succeeded Reich as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Maduro stated: “We want to say to President Barack Obama, stop this madness,” claiming to have “testimonies and direct, first-hand information” about U.S. plots. Both Reich and Noriega rejected the claims of orchestrating a plot to assassinate Maduro’s rival Henrique Capriles as “untrue, outrageous and defamatory.”

In September 2013, Maduro cancelled his planned trip to speak at the United Nations, citing “serious provocations that could threaten his life.” He specifically accused “the clan, the mafia of Roger Noriega and Otto Reich” of conspiring against him, stating that “the US government knows exactly that these people were behind a dangerous activity being plotted in New York.”

A Legacy of Fire-Starting

In January 2018 testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Reich called President Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba “a foreign policy failure.” He argued that it “consisted of a series of unrequited unilateral concessions to the Castro regime that had negative consequences for US national security, foreign policy interests and traditional values, and which brought increased repression to the Cuban people while filling the coffers of the Cuban military, the Communist Party, and the Castro family.”

Reich emphasized that “unlike previous, successful American initiatives, Obama’s rapprochement with the Castro dictatorship identified the US with a nation’s oppressor instead of the oppressed.” This framing revealed his consistent position: U.S. policy should align with opposition movements rather than incumbent leftist governments—in other words, perpetual regime change over diplomatic engagement.

In March 2023, following the International Criminal Court’s issuance of arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine, Reich called for scrutiny of Cuba’s support for Russia’s “criminal and illegal war.” He stated that “the Cuban government has been actively using its diplomatic and propaganda services to support the illegal and criminal invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia,” while “Cuban strongman Raúl Castro, his hand-picked president Miguel Diaz-Canel, and the rest of the ruling class, are profiting from Putin’s criminal war of aggression by receiving deliveries of Russian contraband oil, and wheat stolen from Ukraine.”

As of 2025, Reich continues his work through Otto Reich Associates and serves on the Advisory Board of United Against Nuclear Iran, an organization dedicated to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

As Washington’s confrontation with Venezuela intensifies, observers should recognize that this escalation did not materialize out of nowhere. They are the predictable outcome of decades of work by regime change specialists such as Otto Reich, figures who helped design a long-term interventionist blueprint for Latin America. Today, that blueprint is being dutifully executed by hawks like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a close ally of Reich and a committed interventionist in his own right.

Just as Reich’s kinfolk in Israel labor tirelessly to secure regional supremacy for the Jewish state, Reich has devoted his career to making the Western Hemisphere safe for world Jewry by safeguarding Washington’s full-spectrum dominance in Latin America.

In this transnational criminal enterprise, the roles are clearly defined. And Reich’s role is to ensure that Empire Judaica’s strategic footholds in Latin America remain firmly intact.

November 19, 2025 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Latin America, United States, Venezuela, Zionism | Leave a comment

Legal Nonsense to Justify Non-Judicial Killings

By Jacob G. Hornberger | Future of Freedom Foundation | November 18, 2025

Many years ago, when I was practicing law in Texas, I learned that there were, generally speaking, two types of lawyers when it came to being asked for a legal opinion by a client who wished to pursue a certain course of action.

The first type of lawyer would carefully research the issue and give his honest, independent-minded opinion as to the legality of the proposed action, even if it wasn’t what the client wanted to hear. That type of lawyer had integrity and would not compromise his legal judgment, even if it angered — and risked the loss of — his client.

The second type of lawyer would instead come up with whatever legal reasoning was necessary to please the client, stretching case law and legal analysis in such as way as to justify what the client wanted to do. This type of lawyer had no integrity. His task, as he saw it, was to provide legal cover for his client in case things went the wrong way.

When it comes to President Trump’s and the Pentagon’s extra-judicial drug-war killings in the Caribbean, there is little or no doubt that the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice falls into the second category. Asked to provide a legal opinion as to the legality of such killings, the office has come up with a memorandum containing inane legal justifications, in an obvious effort to provide legal cover for the people involved in the extrajudicial killings. In fact, the still-secret memo expressly assures U.S. military personnel that they will not face future criminal prosecution for their involvement in the killings.

The memo states that the high number of deaths from drug use among American drug consumers constitutes an “armed attack” against the United States. Really? Where are the armaments? Are Latin American drug dealers entering the United States, kidnapping regular American citizens, physically holding them down, and then injecting drugs into their noses, mouths, or other parts of their bodies?

I don’t think so. There is certainly no evidence of that. All of the evidence is that American consumers of drugs are voluntarily buying and ingesting mind-altering substances knowing full well that this isn’t a risk-free endeavor.

Another part of the memo claims that the boats that are suspected of carrying drugs are generating revenue for groups that are supposedly in armed conflict with the United States.

Really? Where are the conflicts? I don’t see any Latin American cartels landing on American shores and killing American citizens. Indeed, I haven’t seen those boats firing at American Naval vessels or at American B-52s. All I’ve seen is massacres of defenseless private individuals in the face of overwhelming U.S. military power.

According to the Intercept: “One senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, blasted the opinion. ‘I don’t know what’s more insane – that the ‘President of Peace’ is starting an illegal war or that he’s giving a get out of jail free card to the U.S. military,’ said the official, referencing President Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed moniker. ‘Hopefully they realize there’s no immunity for war crimes. Nor is there a statute of limitations.’”

One of the other justifications on which Trump and the Pentagon are relying is their claim that these boat people are “terrorists.” Apparently that governmental accusation means that they are subject to being exterminated without arrest, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and sentence — that is, without any due process of law for what amounts to an accusation of a criminal-law violation, whether it is drug-war-related or terrorist-related.

For some time, Trump has been claiming that Venezuela immigrants have been “invading” the United States. I guess we should be thankful that the Office of Legal Counsel hasn’t yet opined that the U.S. is repelling an immigrant “invasion” of the United States by killing people in those boats.

One of the most fascinating and revealing aspects of these extra-judicial killings is when U.S. forces took custody of two targeted people who survived the attack on their vessel. What happened afterward reveals what a sham these drug-war killings are. U.S. officials released both men back to their home countries.

What? Yes, they took two supposed “narco-terrorists” into custody and then released them, which means that they are now free to engage in more “narco activity” and more “terrorism.” Does that make any sense whatsoever?

The real interesting question is: When they saw that those men had survived the military attack on their vessel, why didn’t U.S. military personnel simply fire missiles at them or just shoot them while they were bobbing in the water? After all, they had just tried to kill them inside their boat. What’s the difference with killing them outside their boat?

I’ll tell you why. Those military attackers felt sheepish about killing those two survivors. Even more, I will guarantee you that they were scared to do so. They were scared that they would ultimately be put on trial for unlawfully killing people. That’s why they stood down and took custody of them instead of just finishing the job and killing them.

Why not instead bring them back as “prisoners of war”? Isn’t this an “armed conflict” against “terrorism”? Why not imprison them at the Pentagon-CIA prison camp and torture center at Guantanamo? Why not torture them into divulging the secret locations of other “narco-terrorists”?

I’ll tell you why. Because U.S. officials didn’t want to take the chance that those two men might challenge their custody in a federal district court. I will guarantee you that U.S. officials had to have freaked out when those two men survived. “Release those ‘narco-terrorists’ immediately so that our inane legal opinion that justifies our drug-war killings cannot be challenged in court,” we can imagine them exclaiming.

Make no mistake about it: These drug-war killings are the equivalent of legalized murder. They are morally illegitimate, legally illegitimate, and constitutionally illegitimate, no matter the inane legal opinion issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in an obvious effort to provide cover for the people involved in these killings.

November 19, 2025 Posted by aletho | Deception, War Crimes | Latin America, United States | Leave a comment

Germany Turns an X Post Into a Police Raid at Dawn

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | November 18, 2025

The story starts with a tweet that barely registered on the internet. A few hundred views, a handful of likes, and the kind of blunt libertarian framing that is common on X every hour of every day.

Yet in Germany, that tiny post triggered a 6am police raid, a forced phone handover, biometric collection, and a warning that the author was now under surveillance.

The thing to understand is that this story only makes sense once you see the sequence of events in order.

The story goes like this:

A man in Germany, known publicly only as Damian N., posts a short comment on X, calling government-funded workers “parasites.”
The post is tiny. At the time he was raided, it had roughly a hundred views. Even now, it has only a few hundred.
Despite the post’s obscurity, police arrive at Damian’s home at six in the morning.
He says they did not show him the warrant and did not leave documentation of what they seized.
Police pressured him to unlock his phone, confiscated it, took photos, fingerprints, and other biometric data, and even requested a blood sample for DNA.
One officer reportedly warned him to “think about what you post in the future” and said he is now “under surveillance.”
The entire action was justified under Section 130 of the German Criminal Code, which is meant to prohibit inciting hatred against protected groups.
Government employees are not such a group, which makes the legal theory tenuous at best.
Damian’s lawyer says the identification procedures and possibly the raid itself were illegal.

That is the sequence. A low-visibility political insult becomes a criminal investigation involving home searches, device seizure, and biometric collection.

The thing to understand is that this is not about one man’s post. It is about a bureaucracy that treats speech as something to manage and a set of enforcement structures that expand to fill the space they are given.

Start with the enforcement context. Germany has built a sprawling ecosystem around “online hate”: specialized prosecutor units, NGO tip lines, and automated scanning for taboo keywords.
The model is compliance first and legal theory second.

Once you create an apparatus like this, it behaves the way bureaucracies behave. It looks for work. It justifies resources by producing cases. A tiny X post with inflammatory language becomes a target because it contains the right keyword, not because it has societal impact.

Police behavior fits the same pattern. Confiscating phones is strategically useful because it imposes real pain without requiring a conviction.

Even prosecutors have said that losing a smartphone is often worse than the fine.

Early-morning raids create psychological pressure. Collecting biometrics raises the stakes further. None of this is about public safety. It is about creating friction for saying the wrong thing.

The legal mismatch is the tell. Section 130 protects groups defined by national, racial, religious, or ethnic identity.

There is also the privacy angle, which becomes impossible to ignore. Device access, biometrics, DNA requests: these are investigative tools built for serious crimes.

Deploying them against minor online speech means the line between public-safety policing and opinion policing has already been crossed. Once a state normalizes surveillance as a response to expression, the hard part becomes restoring restraint.

It is a deterrence strategy, not a justice strategy. And it reinforces why free speech and strong privacy protections matter. Without them, minor speech becomes an invitation for major intrusion.

The counterintuitive part is that the smallness of the post makes a raid more likely, not less.

High-profile content generates scrutiny and political costs. Low-profile content discovered through automated or NGO-driven monitoring is frictionless to act on. Unless people are reading Reclaim The Net, most people never hear of these smaller cases.

Looking ahead, the pressure will only increase. As more speech moves to global platforms that are harder to influence, local governments will lean more heavily on domestic law enforcement as their lever of control.

That means more investigations that hinge on broad interpretations of old statutes and more friction between individual rights and bureaucratic incentives.

This is particularly true in Germany and places like the UK, where the government doesn’t seem to feel any shame about raiding its citizens over online posts.

November 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Germany, Human rights | Leave a comment

US’s Gaza Plan Designed to Give Palestine’s Subjugation Veneer of UN Legitimacy – Mohammad Marandi

Sputnik – 18.11.2025

The UN Security Council approved the US’s Gaza ceasefire and international stabilization force plans on Monday. Russia and China abstained from the vote. Sputnik asked renowned Iranian-American political analyst Mohammad Marandi for his reaction.

The US Gaza plan is “a fake peace plan that is approved by the UN Security Council will only enhance the strength of the United States and the Israeli regime to further abuse Palestinians and to push Palestinians out of Gaza,” Marandi told Sputnik.

The plan proposes what the observer fears amounts to “an international occupation” of the Strip, with “no mention of Palestinian independence” in the US resolution.

“With this fake mantle of the UN Security Council, they will be able to do a lot of harm in the name of the international community,” Marandi emphasized.

The US “has no intention of allowing the Palestinian people to have a state.” The stabilization force will amount to “international occupation,” according to the observer.

The US is “a party to the holocaust in Gaza, and so are all Western allies of the Israeli regime, even regional countries that have preserved political and economic ties with the regime over the last two years… they’re all complicit in the genocide in Gaza,” Marandi stressed, pointing out that without US support, “the Israeli regime, Netanyahu, would not be able to carry out the mass murders that we saw on a daily basis, [and] continue to see… as we speak now.”

The observer characterized last month’s Gaza Peace Summit in Egypt as a shameful “monkey show,” and suggested that attendees “literally sold out the Palestinian people” to try to get in the US president’s good graces.

Russian representative Vassily Nebenzia said the Security Council resolution on Gaza passed Monday was “reminiscent of colonial practices and the British mandate for Palestine” that was “granted by the League of Nations, when the opinions of the Palestinians themselves were not taken into account whatsoever.”

He also warned that the lack of clarity about the stabilization force’s mandate could make it into an unwitting party to the conflict.

Russia and China abstained from Monday’s vote, but did not veto the resolution outright in light of the desire expressed by the Palestinian Authority and regional countries to avoid a resumption of bloodshed in the besieged Strip.

November 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Palestinian leader Barghouti subjected to brutal torture in Israeli prison, says advocacy group

Jailed Palestinian leader Abdullah Barghouti

Press TV – November 18, 2025

A Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy group says jailed Hamas leader Abdullah Barghouti has faced extreme physical and psychological torture at the maximum-security Gilboa Prison in the northern part of the Israeli-occupied territories since his abduction more than two decades ago.

The Asra Media Office (AMO) announced in a statement on Monday that 53-year-old Barghouti is currently enduring conditions that have been described as “a form of slow execution,” aimed at one of the leading figures of the Palestinian Captive Movement. Concerns have been raised that his life could be at risk at any moment.

The statement disclosed that the prison administration has been systematically and repeatedly targeting Barghouti with assaults for more than 25 months.

Prison guards storm his cell relentlessly, day and night, often accompanied by dogs. They taunt him, claiming they missed assaulting him, before three of them restrain him and viciously attack him with batons. The beating leaves him with severe injuries, including bleeding and deep wounds.

His fellow inmates are left to care for him, using torn fabric and rudimentary cleaning supplies to tend to his wounds.

Barghouti, currently serving 67 life sentences, is enduring severe, untreated injuries. These include fractures in his right elbow and hand that have persisted for more than three months, a broken pinky finger on his left hand, two fractured ribs, torn tendons, and a drastic weight loss of approximately 35 kilograms caused by starvation and inadequate nutrition.

The rights group added that guards have doused him with water before subjecting him to electrocution and confined him to a cell infested with scabies, resulting in painful boils all over his body. To minimize the risk of further infection, he now resorts to sleeping on the floor.

Barghouti currently struggles with significant difficulty in moving his hands, with one almost completely paralyzed. Despite his condition, Israeli prison authorities deny him any form of medical treatment, including pain relief, and block human rights organizations from reaching out to him.

The AMO asserted that Barghouti’s suffering is part of a broader campaign against the leadership of the Captive Movement.

It emphasized that the mistreatment he endures surpasses mere punishment, amounting to a calculated effort to end his life, underscoring the urgent need for international intervention.

The circumstances surrounding the detention of Palestinian inmates by Israel are unacceptable and characterized by inadequate hygiene standards. Moreover, Palestinian detainees have endured persistent torture, harassment, and oppression.

Palestinian detainees have consistently participated in indefinite hunger strikes to express their frustration over their unjust imprisonment.

Human rights organizations say that Israel continues to violate the rights and freedoms granted to abductees as stipulated by the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws.

According to the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, around 60 percent of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons suffer from chronic illnesses, with many having passed away either during their incarceration or after their release due to the seriousness of their health issues.

November 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Israel’s Elbit Systems reports record profits on the back of Gaza genocide

The Cradle | November 18, 2025

Israel’s leading defense technology company, Elbit Systems, reported a sharp rise in quarterly profit on 18 November after months of fueling the genocide in Gaza by supplying weapons, munitions, and surveillance systems, while simultaneously securing a wave of new European contracts.

The company posted $3.35 per diluted share excluding one-time items, up from $2.21 a year earlier, and reported $1.92 billion in revenue compared to $1.72 billion last year.

Its order backlog reached $25.2 billion, with the company saying 69 percent comes from outside Israel.

Elbit CEO Bezhalel Machlis said the performance reflected “the significant contracts the company has secured across Europe and from customers worldwide,” driven by expanding defense budgets.

Israel accounted for over 33 percent of revenue, with Elbit supplying munitions, drones, guided rockets, and reconnaissance systems during the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Sales to Europe, the world’s second-largest buyer of Israeli weapons, rose from $430 million to $536 million, comprising 28 percent of total revenue.

The company said 69 percent of its backlog comes from outside Israel and declared a quarterly dividend of $0.75 per share.

Separately, Elbit announced the largest contract in its history, a $2.3-billion deal with an undisclosed international buyer for weapons systems to be delivered over eight years.

The company did not reveal the customer or the type of systems being supplied, citing confidentiality.

Elbit Systems has also expanded its footprint across Europe, the Balkans, and the UK through a series of new agreements disclosed in recent months.

In Albania, the company is leading a government-to-government deal that includes ATMOS howitzers, SPEAR mortars, and Magni-X and Thor drones, and will assist the state-owned KAYO firm in establishing production lines and a new weapons plant.

Elbit deepened its presence in the country earlier this year through a flight-school agreement and is expected to support Albania’s goal of developing local drone manufacturing by 2027.

The firm has simultaneously continued to sign additional contracts worldwide, including Hermes 900 sales to Singapore and Brazil.

In the UK, Elbit is competing with Raytheon for a $2.7-billion Ministry of Defense contract that would make the company a “strategic partner” responsible for training 60,000 British troops annually.

The prospective agreement follows a separate $1.64-billion Elbit deal with Serbia and builds on the company’s existing role managing the Ministry of Defense’s Project Vulcan, a $75-million simulation-training program for tank crews.

Elbit subsidiaries in Britain have come under sustained protest, and Elbit’s central role in Israel’s war on Gaza has prompted renewed scrutiny, with the UN special rapporteur for Palestine noting that “for Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems … the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture.”

November 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Albania, Brazil, Elbit Systems, Israel, Palestine, Serbia, UK, Zionism | 1 Comment

Slaves aren’t friends to their masters: Damascus traded sovereignty and regional commitments for illusions of survival

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | November 18, 2025

Many were taken aback by the recent visit of Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to the White House, causing immense debate over whether it should have happened at all, if it benefits either side, and if this new relationship between Damascus and Washington will be significant.

Analysts and commentators from across the political spectrum have attempted to grapple with Syria’s collaboration with the United States. On the one hand, a former ISIS commander who went on to lead Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch, now joining the official US-led coalition against ISIS, has bewildered many. Yet for those who have a depth of knowledge on the course of the Syrian War, this comes as little surprise.

In the United States, there are what can only be labelled as two camps of liars and lunatics: One being a contingent of anti-Muslim advocates who are obsessed with “Islamic Extremism”; the other is the base of die hard supporters of the new regime in Damascus.

The first group used Ahmad Al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House, at the invitation of US President Donald Trump, to fearmonger about some kind of Muslim plot and that the US leader was being fooled. This narrative, spread primarily by paid Zionist propagandists, is simply part and parcel of a campaign designed to attack all Muslims and fear mongers about “Islamic Extremist” plots as a means of channeling right-wing anger away from the Israelis.

The other group consists of a range of figures, some of whom are paid to espouse their propaganda, then there are the delusional types and sectarian minded people whose tribalism rules their political outlet. Paid agents are slaves to their pay masters, whereas the sectarian tribalists are unreachable with logic. Only the misled can be reached from this crowd, which is who needs addressing.

The White House slave

Now is time to reconcile with the fact that Ahmad al-Sharaa is a creation of the West. This statement is not meant to be provocative, nor is it hyperbole. Syria’s current leader is the product of those who own him, hence why I said Ahmad al-Sharaa and not his former alias, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.

For those of us who covered the horrifying and bloody war in Syria, we know the new President as al-Jolani, the man who led Jabhat al-Nusra. This organisation not only committed countless civilian massacres, allied itself in certain battles with ISIS, ran its own torture centers in Idlib, recruited child soldiers, and committed various other war crimes. To some, however, it later became the “saving grace” of a “blessed revolution” to overthrow a tyrant.

These two narratives evidently don’t have many grey areas, but as often has shown to be the case in Syria, nothing truly makes complete sense. The war revealed that almost anything is possible. At the same time, black and white thinking is very much prevalent amongst many when it comes to this issue.

So instead of arguing the merits of whatever side one chooses to fall on, let us deal in facts as means of dispelling illusion.

There was a reason why the United States launched Operation Timber Sycamore, one of the most costly CIA operations in its history, with the intent of backing anyone to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. There is also a reason why the Israelis began backing at least a dozen Syrian opposition groups, beginning in 2013, including al-Jolani’s Jabhat al-Nusra, with funds, arms, and medical support.

Neither the US, nor the Israelis, cared for the civilian population of Syria. Although their propaganda machines churned out nonsense about their opposition to dictatorship, civilian massacres and mass incarceration, their involvement was never to do with any of this.

You want proof that the US, its Western allies and “Israel” didn’t care? They are all normalising, collaborating with and hosting frequent meetings with a man who is not democratically elected, has built a regime that is more corrupt than his predecessor, and is standing by as sectarian violence takes thousands of lives.

Their goals were clear: They sought to collapse Syria into a number of opposing sectarian groups who rule their own territory based upon ethnicity or religious affiliation; loot its resources; bankrupt the country to tie it to the IMF and World Bank [because Syria was previously self sufficient]; conquer the Golan Heights; permanently destroy its strategic military capabilities; end Syria’s role in backing or facilitating the Palestinian Resistance; stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah and end Iran’s role in the country; in addition to installing a puppet leadership. All of these goals were achieved.

The narrative that al-Jolani’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (the rebrand of al-Nusra) defeated Bashar al-Assad is false. There wasn’t a battle to take Damascus, there was a deal struck that enabled a handover of power. It wasn’t a “war of liberation”; it was a regime transfer.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, nearly 9,000 civilians have been murdered across the country since the new government came to power. These are considered to be conservative figures also, as other sources put the death toll much higher, especially due to the sectarian mass extermination campaign that targeted Alawites and other minorities along the coast earlier this year.

The cost of living in Syria is getting worse, gangsters and sectarian lunatics parade through the streets, kidnappings are rampant, the murder rate is through the roof, and there is still no long promised democracy in sight. Meanwhile, the Israelis are pushing deeper into southern Syrian lands, occupying more territory, setting up checkpoints, bombing wherever they choose on a routine basis, and are even arming Druze separatist militias.

Washington, for its part, is taking over two air bases, openly collaborates with the Syrian authorities on missions inside the country, and CENTCOM is busy playing basketball with al-Sharaa. Israelis, who would once be executed should they step foot in Syria, are openly arriving in Damascus, getting taken on tours around sensitive military sites for their documentaries.

All this as Damascus has cracked down, kicked out, and disbanded all the Palestinian Resistance groups that once operated in Syria, instead choosing to hand over the body of an Israeli soldier captured in 1982, along with the belongings of infamous Israeli spy Eli Cohen.

Now, the argument that some make in favour of this regime, to ignore all of the facts stated above, is that Ahmad al-Sharaa is doing this to lift the sanctions and repair his country.

To address this, let us ask the question: Has all of this collaboration, selling out the Palestinian cause, collaborating with those committing a genocide in Gaza, and meeting for basketball practice ended the sanctions on Syria permanently, or even triggered economic revival? No, of course not.

So you are now left with two possible explanations: Either Ahmad al-Sharaa is so politically incapable that he believes in this so-called “economic revival” master plan, or he is part of a project used to secure the aims of the US, its Western allies, and the Zionist entity. If you chose option one, he isn’t fit to be a political leader and should perhaps be placed in control of a Shawarma store instead.

Under Ahmad al-Sharaa, there is no Syrian leadership, there is simply a group of slaves who were let into the house; in this case the White House. They aren’t to be compared to other Arab regimes either, as they have no autonomy at all, nothing they do is independent as the sanctions are only ever going to be temporarily lifted in order to keep them in line. Under this model, Donald Trump is Syria’s President, not Ahmad al-Sharaa.

In fact, none of this is even about al-Jolani at all. If Bashar al-Assad would have been willing to invite the Americans in, kick out Iran and the Palestinian resistance, stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah, negotiate a deal with the Israelis, hand them the Golan Heights, and give over his strategic weapons arsenal, it would have been him in the White House. This is because the Western powers and Israelis have no standards at all, they will deal with anyone of any ideology that bows down to them.

If you argue this all to those who still back the new Syrian leadership, they will come back with deflective arguments such as “we are tired” and notions about “the Syrian people”. The same such sentiments can be heard from Yasser Abu Shabab’s ISIS-linked gangsters in Gaza, who work with the enemy of their people because they want material goods and are willing to fight against their own nation’s causes in order to secure this for themselves.

This argument is the “being a slave in the house isn’t so bad” argument, but discounts the fact that the majority of Syrians don’t qualify for house slave status, they will instead remain field slaves, some of whom will be abused more than others, but are nonetheless field slaves. The same applies to those who choose to be slaves in Lebanon, or Palestine, or wherever else in the region. Everyone is being subjected to the “Greater Israel Project”, which means that the “prosperity” that US envoy Thomas Barrack carries on about is not in the plan for them.

Keep in mind that even when you are a good slave, you are never actually your master’s friend. You need only look to the example of the deposed Iranian Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was only granted asylum and later died in Egypt. Despite his closeness to Washington, his value only came from the usefulness of his regime, nothing less and nothing more.

None of this is to say that there are not legitimate grievances from all sides across regional conflicts, this is undoubtedly true as wars bring out the very worst in people. Yet it is simply delusional to conclude that anything good comes out of being a slave. There is a reason why generation after generation across the Arab World has set the Palestinian cause as the litmus test for whether a government or movement is behaving in their interests, it is because it is a proven fact that collaborating with the enemy leads to chaos and destruction.

If the Israelis and US intended to “let Syrians live”, they would have done so since day one of the new regime. Instead, Washington greenlit the largest ever Israeli aerial assault across Syria and the occupation of more Syrian lands. Why? Because this was always the plan from the beginning, and everyone who fell for the promises of the new Syrian leadership were simply deceived.

November 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Israel, Palestine, Syria, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

EU defense chief wants to use Ukrainian military as ‘security guarantee’

RT | November 18, 2025

EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius has suggested using Ukrainian troops as an “additional security guarantee” to defend the bloc from the alleged threat of a Russian attack once the current conflict is resolved.

Western officials, particularly representatives of the Baltic states, have increasingly invoked the supposed Russian threat to justify major military spending spikes in recent months. Moscow has rejected claims it plans to attack anyone as “nonsense,” arguing the West is using Russia as a “monster” to stoke tensions, ramp up military budgets, and distract from domestic problems.

Speaking at the ‘Defending Baltics’ conference in Vilnius on Monday, Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister, said the bloc needs Ukraine’s “battle-tested” military to strengthen its borders.

“It would be good that a battle-tested Ukrainian army, after peace has been established in Ukraine, would be ready to be present in all the countries of our frontier region… next to the German brigade and the rotating US battalions as an additional guarantee for our security,” he stated.

Kubilius claimed Russia could attack the EU – starting with the Baltic states – within two-to-four years, and said Ukrainian troops can offer the bloc “the most precise answers” on how to defend itself. He suggested Brussels should find ways to integrate Ukrainian defense capabilities, soldiers, and industry into its military ecosystem.

The commissioner did not explain how Brussels could use the Ukrainian military without Kiev joining either the EU or NATO. While Kiev has demanded NATO accession, Moscow has opposed it, insisting Ukrainian neutrality and demilitarization must be part of any future settlement. The US and several other of Kiev’s backers are opposed to its membership.

Moscow has not yet responded to Kubilius’ remarks, but Russian officials have long accused the West of intending to fight “to the last Ukrainian” in their proxy war against Russia. Moscow has also warned that increased militarization only risks a wider conflict in Europe.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week that Russia does not seek a confrontation with the West but could be forced to take measures to ensure its security in response to its increasingly “militaristic” rhetoric.

November 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Russophobia | European Union, Ukraine | 1 Comment

Western countries insist on failed strategy to defeat Russia – Mearsheimer

The US and its allies want to subordinate Moscow to their interests

By Lucas Leiroz | November 18, 2025

Western countries continue to insist on an irrational strategy of weakening Russia through military encirclement and economic pressure. This type of strategy has proven unsuccessful over the past few years, as Russia has managed to circumvent sanctions and embargoes, and is winning the conflict in Ukraine. Nevertheless, Western countries refuse to change their plans.

According to John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, the goal of defeating Russia is so important to the West that the US and its allies are even risking losing their own status as a global hegemon in this attempt. Moreover, Mearsheimer made it clear that Ukraine is not important to the West, being merely “cannon fodder” in this policy of hostilities against Russia.

He emphasized that Western countries even want to “defeat Ukraine” along with Russia – in other words, they want to neutralize the political and economic potential of a future integration between Ukraine and Russia. In this sense, the Kiev regime works as a junta in service of foreign powers that want the worst for the Ukrainian people – which explains the draconian policies of forced mobilization, which decimate thousands of Ukrainians without any effective military or strategic gain.

Mearsheimer stated that the West wants to “bring the Russians to their knees.” He acknowledges that so far no clear opportunity has arisen to do this, but makes it clear that the US and its allies would immediately take any opportunity to quickly defeat Russia. According to Mearsheimer’s assessment, the intention behind the conflict in Ukraine and the constant economic sanctions is simply to use military and economic pressure to progressively weaken Russia – but, unlike Western propagandists, he admits that these measures have not been sufficient to “finish Russia off as a great power.”

Mearsheimer also acknowledged the legitimacy of the Russian diplomatic position. He states that Russian President Vladimir Putin has sufficient reasons to distrust the intentions of the Collective West during the diplomatic dialogue. He praised Putin’s political abilities, describing him as a smart leader who understands the real international political situation and who acts considering the possibility of a worst-case scenario. Mearsheimer seems to believe that these virtues, which should be typical of any political leader, are currently rare in the West – which insists on strategies that have already proven useless.

“[The goal is] to defeat Russia and Ukraine, wreck the Russian economy with sanctions, and bring the Russians to their knees (…) We’ve been unable to do that, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to do it, of course, we want to do it (…) If the opportunity to do it popped up tomorrow, we would leap at it in a second, we would love to finish Russia off as a great power (…) [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, the last time I checked, has a triple-digit IQ, and that means he’s figured this out, he understands what he’s dealing with (…) [Putin] is assuming worst case in good realist fashion,” he said.

It is important to remember that Mearsheimer is one of the most renowned authors in the field of International Relations in the West. Until a few years ago, he was widely recognized for his work as an academic, but now he has been frequently rejected and criticized in many Western universities for continuing to conduct realistic analyses and refusing to be a mere NATO propagandist. He does not speak as someone “pro-Russia” or “pro-West,” but as an international analyst trying to understand how states deal with global problems. And that is why he speaks publicly about the West’s real intentions regarding the conflict in Ukraine.

It seems increasingly clear that Ukraine has been used by the West since the beginning of the crisis, with no real intention ever to “militarily defeat Russia.” The Western objective is a long-term strategy focused on extinguishing Russian capabilities as a great power. In this game, Ukraine functions as a proxy whose objective is to “wear down” Russian defenses, but it has always been clear to the West that the Ukrainians would be defeated in this move.

On the “economic front,” the sanctions were similarly an attempt to isolate Russia from its traditional European partners – which failed to have an economic impact on Russia, since it is a self-sufficient country, with all the resources it needs, and a strong presence in the emerging Asian market.

Insisting on failed strategies is a serious mistake that could have an existential cost for the West. The path of pressure, isolation, and escalation can only lead to total war – which, in the case of Russia and NATO, would threaten the entire world. The best course of action, from a realistic point of view, is to negotiate while there is still time and establish mutually favorable terms of coexistence in a multipolar world.

Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.

You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.

November 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | Militarism | European Union, Russia, UK, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

Ukrainians blew up Polish rail line – Tusk

RT | November 18, 2025

Two Ukrainians have been identified as the suspected perpetrators behind two acts of sabotage targeting a railway line between Warsaw and Lublin on Monday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the parliament on Tuesday. According to him, the suspects sought to provoke a train crash.

The prime minsiter accused the suspects of working “with the Russian intelligence for a long time.” According to Tusk, both alleged perpetrators fled to Belarus after the incidents.

A military-grade C4 explosive charge was used in a least one of the incidents, Tusk said, adding that a 300-meter-long cable was used to detonate it. The National Prosecutor’s Office also confirmed that a cable “that was most likely used to set off the explosive” was discovered.

Another incident involved a steel clamp on a track to cause a derailment, Tusk said. The alleged perpetrators also left a smartphone with a power bank at the scene to record a potential incident, he added.

The prime minister called the two incidents “the most serious” security situation over the past years. “A certain line has been crossed,” he said.

Warsaw’s statements show that Russophobia is “flourishing” in Poland, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, commenting on the developments on Tuesday. It would be “surprising if they had not accused Russia” of being behind the incident, he added.

Peskov went on to say that it’s not the first time the Ukrainians have been suspected of “acts of sabotage and terrorism” within Western nations. Kiev’s backers “fail to put two and two together,” he argued, warning that the West is “playing with fire” and could face “dire consequences” if it continues to do so.

The C4-like explosives were originally developed by the British during World War II and reintroduced as Composition C family by the US military. The C4 variant was developed in the US in 1950s. Russia does not produce C4 explosives and relies on its own types of plastic explosives known as PVV family that were developed back in the USSR.

In September, Moscow warned that Kiev could be planning false-flag operations in Romania or Poland to frame Russia for them. The attacks could escalate into a third world war, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned at the time, citing reports in Hungarian media alleging that Ukraine intended to stage acts of sabotage in neighboring NATO nations.

November 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | Poland | 2 Comments

Zelensky Signs Deal to Buy 100 Fighter Jets From France

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | November 17, 2025

During a meeting with French President Macron, Ukrainian President Zelensky signed a major weapons deal for Rafale fighters and drones. The warplanes will be delivered over the next decade, and Paris said training Ukrainian pilots will take at least three years.

“One of the most productive visits of this year, and certainly a new step in our strategic partnership with France. We have signed a historic agreement providing for a new fleet of fighter jets for Ukraine: 100 Rafales,” Zelensky wrote on X Tuesday.

He continued, “We will also receive highly effective French radars as well as new SAMP/T air defense systems, designed to precisely counter the types of missiles used against Ukraine. We have also agreed on the supply of air-to-air missiles and guided aerial bombs.”

The letter of intent signed by Zelensky will also see the transfer of drones and anti-drone systems to Ukraine.

Marcon and Zelensky did not provide a timeline on the transfer of the Rafales or who would pay for the weapons. Rafales cost over $100 million per plane. A French official said it would take at least three years to train the Ukrainian pilots.

Zelensky said Paris agreed to provide Kiev with some immediate security assistance. “France is additionally preparing a new package of military aid, which we will receive by the end of the year,” the Ukrainian leader wrote on X.

Zelensky was in France to attend a meeting of the “coalition of the willing.” The group is a bloc of European countries working to fill Kiev’s massive budget deficits. On Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sent a letter to the leaders of the European Union’s member states, arguing that it was essential for the bloc to plug Ukraine’s $157 billion budget gap over the next two years.

Part of von der Leyen’s proposal calls for European nations to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort. Zelensky said he believed the coalition of the willing would be able to come to an agreement on this issue.

“I believe that in the end we’ll reach an agreement to push this topic to the end and be able to use Russian assets for the European defense package, for Ukrainian production, and for the most part for the air defense systems from the United States of America,” he said.

November 18, 2025 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Militarism | European Union, France, Ukraine | Leave a comment

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Blood Passover, English Version

The Bloody Satanic Sacrifice Rituals of the Jewish Race

Ariel Toaff | 2016

The following translation was performed free of charge to protest an injustice: the destruction by the ADL of Ariel Toaff’s Blood Passover on Jewish ritual murder. The author is the son of the Chief Rabbi of Rome, and a professor of Jewish Renaissance and Medieval History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, just outside Tel Aviv.

Dr. Toaff is uniquely qualified to write this book, being thoroughly familiar with the derivative literature in English, French, German and Italian, as well as the original documentary sources in Latin, Medieval Italian, Hebrew and Yiddish. This is not something he worked on in secret. On the contrary, he worked on it openly with his university students and colleagues in Israel for several years; one of his students was even going to publish a paper on the subject. The author is extremely careful about what he says, and his conclusions must be taken seriously. It reads like a detective story.

If it had been published in Israel, in Hebrew, no one would have cared. There are large bodies of literature in Hebrew that Jews do not wish Gentiles to know about. But Dr. Toaff’s announcement of its publication in Italy, in Italian, raised a worldwide firestorm of fury.

Under unbearable pressure, the book was withdrawn from publication. Come in out of the darkness, and strike a blow for the light.

READ AND PASS ON.

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Jailed Palestinian leader Abdullah Barghouti

By Lucas Leiroz | November 18, 2025

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