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I was canceled by three newspapers for criticizing Israel

By Dave Seminara | Responsible Statecraft | December 9, 2025

As a freelance writer, I know I have to produce copy that meets the expectations of editors and management. When I write opinion pieces, I know well that my arguments should closely align with the publication’s general outlook. But I’ve always believed that if my views on any particular topic diverged from an outlet I’m writing for, it was acceptable to express those viewpoints in other publications.

But I’ve recently discovered that this general rule does not apply to criticism of Israel.

In fact, it appears that publications I’ve had an ongoing relationship with up until recently have canceled me for articles I wrote in other media outlets that were critical of the Israeli government and the Israel lobby in the United States.

In recent years, I penned more than 100 columns for prominent right-leaning publications, including The Wall Street Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, and The Daily Telegraph. I’ve covered woke corporationsillegal immigrationinflationforeign policythe State DepartmentcensorshipFlorida politics and a host of other issues. I never once pitched a column concerning Israel to the aforementioned publications because I know the editors and leadership at those outlets are staunch backers of unlimited U.S. aid to Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his merciless assault on Gaza, not to mention President Trump’s efforts to deport foreign critics of Israel, his administration, and other related issues.

I have never seen an opinion column in The Journal, City Journal or The Telegraph expressing compassion for Palestinian victims of Israel’s military assaults. In fact, quite the opposite. For example, Ilya Shapiro, a contributing editor and the Director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute, said in a since deleted tweet, “Ethnic cleansing would be too kind for Gaza.” That comment isn’t an outlier. The prevailing wisdom at these publications is to excuse and defend the behavior of the Israeli government, regardless of the situation.

And so, when I wanted to express my disgust at the outrageous number of civilian casualties in Gaza — the Israeli military has killed at least 70,000 Palestinians according to the U.N., including more than 18,000 children — and lament the Trump administration’s efforts to deport people for criticizing Israel, I never considered pitching editors at those three publications.

Between November 2023 and May 2024, I published several columns, including for The Spectator and on my personal Substack, Unpopular Opinions, criticizing Israel and U.S. policy toward Israel. I think my critiques were mild — for example, I never categorized Israel’s actions as a genocide. Given Israel’s flagrant human rights violations, my commentaries were well within the boundaries of how most Americans feel about the carnage in Gaza. For example, in a column I wrote in November, 2023, I noted that:

I was horrified by the October 7 Hamas attacks. And I was disgusted to see some self-proclaimed pro-Palestine advocates celebrating or justifying the barbaric attack act. This was a horrific act of terrorism, and there’s no excuse for it.”

But I added that I was disappointed with “how many conservative politicians and conservative media refuse to articulate any concern for thousands of innocent Palestinians killed or the more than one million rendered homeless.”

In subsequent columns, I criticized the Republican Party for its fixation on Israel and argued how hypocritical many on the right are in conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism in order to silence critics of the Jewish state.

None of my editors at The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Telegraph or City Journal ever said a word to me about what I wrote in these columns. But my relationships with these three outlets deteriorated rapidly and dramatically after I started covering the topic. Prior to being cut off by the Wall Street Journal, I published 34 opinion columns for them since 2017. My relationship with the opinion editor, James Taranto, was good enough that when he visited Tampa, where I live, in 2022, he and his wife took me out to dinner.

I knew where Taranto stood on Israel, having once called Rachel Corrie, an American citizen who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting Israel’s settlement policy, a “dopey… advocate for terror.” Prior to writing critically of Israel, my success rate in pitching columns to Taranto was roughly 30-40% positive. Since then, he has rejected 12 consecutive pitches, all on topics unrelated to the Middle East. Previously, he would send a generic one-liner when he rejected an idea. “I won’t be able to use this, but thanks for letting me see it.” Lately, my pitches don’t even merit a formal rejection. I went from being a regular contributor and on friendly enough terms to socialize after-hours, to being ghosted.

My apparent dismissal at City Journal, where I contributed 62 columns from 2020-2024, took longer and my editor there, Paul Beston, was kinder, but the result was the same. Rather than ignoring me, Beston would apologetically respond to my pitches weeks or even months later once the idea was too late to publish. He also stopped asking me to write columns for the website. Around the same time, the Manhattan Institute, which produces City Journalfired prominent conservative economist Glenn Loury for being too critical of Israel, so perhaps there was a purge of Israel critics afoot. At least one other Manhattan Institute fellow who was critical of Israel, Christopher Brunet, was also fired last year.

My seeming dismissal at the rabidly pro-Israel Daily Telegraph, where I contributed 30 columns from 2023-2024, was similar to the City Journal experience. My editor there, Lewis Page, was cordial enough, but he, too, started to ignore my emails and stopped asking me to write for his publication. In one case, he asked me to write a column but then never published it.

Is it a coincidence that these three prominent, pro-Israel publications all stopped publishing me last year as I started to criticize Israel in other outlets? It’s conceivable, but quite unlikely given the zero tolerance for dissent on Israel that now permeates much of conservative media.

RS asked Taranto whether the Journal had stopped publishing me because of my views on Israel. Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot — whom I did not work with — responded that Taranto had passed on our inquiry and said, “I don’t recall ever reading a piece by Mr. Seminara on Israel or Gaza, so I have no idea what his views on those subjects are.”

Lewis Page at the Telegraph said my version of this story is “false” and that neither he nor anyone else at his publication knew that I had been critical of Israel. He added that the paper has not “consciously stopped using” my copy.

A spokesperson I do not know and never worked with at City Journal said that they are unaware of my position on Israel. Of course, I don’t expect any of these publications to say, “We stopped commissioning you because we don’t agree with your position on Israel.”

The bottom line is that my views on Israel and U.S. policy toward Israel are in line with those of the majority of Americans and even of a majority of American Jews. According to a Washington Post poll conducted in October, 69% of American Jews think Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza and 39% believe it is guilty of genocide. A Pew Research poll released around the same time revealed that 59% of Americans have a negative opinion of the Israeli government. And in a September New York Times/Sienna poll, 35% of Americans said they sympathize with Israel, while 36% said they side with Palestinians.

I am not sorry for criticizing Israel even though it has cost me professionally. In fact, I was probably too cautious and diplomatic in my critiques. But I think it’s a very sad statement on conservative media when news outlets that many Republicans trust have so little tolerance for dissent on a critical issue that undermines American national interests and damages our credibility around the world.

During the crazy, cultural revolution days of 2020, when statues were being toppled and progressives were claiming scalps on a weekly basis, I thought it was just the left that embraced cancel culture and silenced enemies through intimidation. Now I know better.

Dave Seminara is a writer and former diplomat based in St. Petersburg, Florida. He’s the author of four non-fiction books, including, most recently, “Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed & the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth.” He vlogs about his travels on his YouTube channel, @MadTraveler.

December 11, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

Patrik Baab: War Propaganda Destroyed Media & Freedom of Speech

Glenn Diesen | December 6, 2025

Patrik Baab is a German journalist and best-selling author who reported on both sides of the frontline in Ukraine. Baab argues that war propaganda has destroyed the credibility of the media and freedom of speech.

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December 6, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Video | | Leave a comment

Pro-Israel Forces Intensify Effort To Control American Discourse

Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | December 4, 2025

Across the American political spectrum, support for the State of Israel is steadily eroding. With the long-running, staggeringly expensive redistribution of American wealth and weapons to one of the world’s most prosperous countries under unprecedented threat, Israel’s advocates inside the United States are growing increasingly desperate to suppress the facts, opinions, questions and imagery that are causing this sea change.

Pro-Israel forces have long worked to limit and shape US discourse to Israel’s advantage. However, the intensity and novelty of what’s taking place in 2025 — from the government-coerced transfer of a social media platform to pro-Israel billionaires, to the jailing and attempted deportation of a student for writing an opinion piece, and more — deserves the attention of every American who values free expression, an enlightened electorate, and independence from foreign influence.


Many Americans know that Congress and President Biden teamed up in 2024 to force the Chinese company ByteDance to divest its US operation of the popular video-sharing app TikTok, yet few realize this unusual intervention was motivated in large part by a desire to serve the interests of Israel.

Though politicians pointed to the supposed Chinese menace lurking inside the app — while revealing their lack of sincerity by continuing to use it themselves — the catalyst for the extraordinary legislation’s passage was a sea of viral content illuminating Israel’s rampage in Gaza, casting Palestinians in empathetic light, and questioning the legitimacy of the political philosophy that is Zionism.

The idea that passage of the ban was largely about Israel is no conspiracy theory. American politicians who supported the compelled divestiture of TikTok have candidly said so themselves. Sharing a stage with Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2024, then-Senator Mitt Romney said:

“Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down, potentially, TikTok or other entities of that nature. You look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites — it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts, so I’d note that’s of real interest to the president, who will get the chance to take action in that regard.”

Similarly, Rep. Mike Lawler of New York told a webinar that pro-Palestinian student protests were “exactly why we included the TikTok bill… because you’re seeing how these kids are being manipulated by certain groups or entities or countries to foment hate on their behalf and really create a hostile environment here in the US.”

Of course, mere divestiture wouldn’t guarantee that TikTok would start suppressing anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian content in the United States. To have the desired effect, the buyer — who required White House approval — would have to be an ardent supporter of Israel. That’s just how things played out. In September, President Trump approved the sale of TikTok’s US operations to a joint venture led by Larry Ellison, the founder of tech-titan Oracle and the fourth-richest man in the world.

Ellison has expressed his “deep emotional connection to the State of Israel” and has been a major benefactor of the Israeli Defense Forces, via donations to IDF-supporting organizations. He spent at least $3 million on Marco Rubio’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, after being assured by Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations that Rubio would “be a great friend to Israel.” There are other Israel-favoring billionaires in the consortium now controlling TikTok’s American presence, among them NewsCorp head Rupert Murdoch and investment trader Jeff Yass.

Americans were propagandized into fearing Chinese control of TikTok users’ data. Now that data will be controlled by Oracle, a firm whose founder has described Israel as his own nation, said “there is no greater honor” than supporting the IDF, and invited Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take a seat on the board. It’s also a firm with strong business ties to the Israel government, and a firm whose Israel-born executive vice chair and former CEO last year declared, “For [Oracle] employees, it’s clear: If you’re not for America or Israel, don’t work here.”

A few months before the TikTok divestiture was finalized, the company installed former IDF soldier and self-described “passionate” Zionist Erica Mindel as TikTok’s hate speech manager in July. Weeks later, and just days before the transfer of TikTok’s US operation was approved, the platform posted new guidelines on Sept 13 about what’s allowed on the platform.

Soon after the change, users and content creators began sharing examples of content being deleted by TikTok, with the platform exploiting its vague new rules about “conspiracy theories” and “protected groups” to reject negative content about Israel — wielding the threat of demonetization of repeat offenders. In a recent appearance on the Breaking Points podcast, Guy Christensen, who has 3.4 million TikTok followers, shared his experience:

“What all these videos have in common that have been removed since Sept 13 are that I am talking about Israel, I’m talking about AIPAC’s influence, I’m talking about Larry Ellison and the attempt to put TikTok under Zionist control — I’m criticizing Israel in some way. It’s the same thing I’ve heard from my audience, my friends who are creators. Ever since Sept 13, they’ve had the same exact experience. Videos that are more informational and critical of Israel get removed.”

In a late-September meeting with pro-Israel social media “influencers,” Netanyahu hailed the transfer of TikTok’s US ownership. “We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield with which we’re engaged, and the most important ones are in social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is TikTok. Number one.” Expressing hope that, by “talking” with Elon Musk, his X platform could be reshaped to be more Israel-protective too, Netanyahu added, “If we can get those two things, we can get a lot.”


Ellison’s TikTok takeover is troubling enough, but that wasn’t his only media move this year. He also financed his son David’s takeover of Paramount Skydance, the media company that controls many movie and television properties, including CBS. David Ellison quickly installed as head of CBS News Bari Weiss — a self-described “Zionist fanatic” who took a gap year before college to live on an Israeli kibbutz.

Weiss’s history of wrangling over the bounds of acceptable speech vis-a-vis Israel goes back to her sophomore year at Columbia University, when she was part of a group of students who claimed they were subjected to intimidation by Middle East Studies professors over the students’ Zionist views. A university panel found only one of the supposed incidents represented unacceptable conduct.

Both outside observers and network insiders are braced for Weiss to nudge the outlet’s reporting to Israel’s benefit, and there are early indications validating worries about her bias. Citing executive sources inside CBS, the Wall Street Journal reported that foreign correspondent Chris Livesay, who was set to be laid off as part of a downsizing move that preceded Weiss’s arrival, sent Weiss an email expressing his affinity for Israel and claiming he was “bullied” for his beliefs. Weiss intervened and saved Livesay from the layoff. Other correspondents told the Journal that Livesay’s claim about bullying was bogus.

Compounding the expectations that CBS News is about to become a de facto Israel PR outlet, the network’s new ombudsman — the arbiter of editorial concerns — also has strong Zionist credentials. The New York Times describes Kenneth Weinstein as a “firm and vocal champion of Israel.” On X, Grayzone editor-in-chief Max Blumenthal noted that, “during a 2021… event with Mike Pence, Weinstein touted his Israel lobbyist creds, describing how he’d been groomed by the Tikvah Fund, the Likudnik training network which will award Bari Weiss its Herzl Award this November.” (The Likud Party is the Israeli party led by Netanyahu.)

Summing up the TikTok and CBS moves, Glenn Greenwald wrote, “The minute the American public starts turning against Israel and the US financing of that country, the world’s richest and most fanatical pro-Israel billionaires start buying up large media outlets and TikTok, then install Bari Weiss and an ex-IDF soldier to control content.”


The transfer of TikTok into Israel-friendly hands isn’t the only example of intensified US government intervention in America’s public square on behalf of the tiny Middle Eastern country.

Much of the Trump administration’s war against anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian speech has focused on college campuses. In the most alarming such move in 2025, the Trump administration has arrested, jailed and attempted to deport foreign students for merely voicing their support for Palestinians or opposition to the Israeli government.

The most atrocious example — which Stark Realities examined in depth earlier this year — centers on a 30-year-old, Turkish Tufts University PhD candidate who was arrested on a Boston street and whisked away to a dismal Louisiana prison, just for co-authoring a calmly-written Tufts Daily op-ed urging the university to formally characterize Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, and to sell the school’s Israel-associated investments.

This cruelly despotic tactic is the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation. In a policy paper, the think tank urged pro-Israel groups and the US government to characterize pro-Palestinian activists as “effectively members of a terrorist support network,” and then use that characterization to target activists for deportations, expulsions from colleges, lawsuits, terminations by employers, and exclusion from “open society.”


Supporters of Israel have long attempted to stifle critics of the Israeli government by smearing them as antisemites. In 2016, that kind of mislabelling was codified in a definition of antisemitism that’s now being embraced by governments, universities and other institutions in the United States and around the world: the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of antisemitism.”

Some elements of the IHRA definition are reasonable, but others irrationally conflate criticism of the State of Israel with hatred of all Jews. For example, the IHRA definition says it’s antisemitic to “claim that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” or to merely “draw comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

Other, vague elements of the definition are open to creative interpretations, facilitating bogus accusations of bigotry against Israel’s critics. For example, the IHRA says it’s antisemitic to “apply double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” The IHRA also says it’s antisemitic to make statements about the “power of Jews as [a] collective,” which can put someone who talks about the enormous influence of the pro-Israel lobby squarely in the crosshairs.

Similarly, the IHRA says it’s antisemitic to “deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” a definition that could ensnare people who — right or wrong — advocate for the State of Israel to be replaced by a new governing arrangement for the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, those who want speech to be policed on Israel’s behalf frequently point to the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as inherently antisemitic.

As I wrote in another Stark Realities essay, “No Country Has a Right To Exist”:

Those who support the State of Israel are free to present a case that it’s a just arrangement for the 7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Palestinians “between the river and the sea.” However, painting those who demand a new arrangement as inherently immoral, genocidal or antisemitic is ignorant at best and maliciously misleading at worst.

Doing its part to vilify Israel’s critics and mislead the public and policymakers, the Anti-Defamation League has employed expansive definitions in its numerical tracking of antisemitic incidents — statistics that are unquestioningly quoted by journalists and cited by pro-Israel politicians.

For example, in early 2024, the ADL claimed that, in the first three months after the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel and the IDF’s brutal assault on Gaza, antisemitic incidents skyrocketed 360%. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said Jews faced a threat “unprecedented in modern history.” However, the ADL admitted that it was counting as antisemitic incidents all protests that included “anti-Zionist chants and slogans”

Of course, exaggerating the scale of antisemitism does more than facilitate efforts to suppress criticism of Israel: It also helps the ADL justify its existence and boost its fundraising. The ADL’s over-counting is nothing new. In 2017, the ADL claimed antisemitic incidents in the United States had soared by 86% in the first quarter of the year, and major media outlets ran with the story. However, much of the increase springs from the ADL’s decision to include a huge number of bomb threats phoned into US synagogues and schools by a Jew living in Israel.


The IHRA definition is at the forefront of a broad campaign to suppress candid discourse about Israel and Palestine on college campuses, with multiple state governments ordering public schools to use it to determine what can and can’t be said.

Bard College’s Kenneth Stern, a lead drafter of a 2004 antisemitism definition that was subsequently adopted by the IHRA, has spoken out against the weaponization of the definition to stifle discourse at universities. “The history of the abuse of the IHRA definition demonstrates the desire is largely political—it is not so much a desire to identify antisemitism, but rather to label certain speech about Israel as antisemitic,” Stern wrote at the Knight First Amendment Institute.

Even at schools that haven’t adopted the IHRA definition, activists and scholars who are critical of Israel and empathetic to the Palestinians are being subjected to countless false accusations of antisemitism, and universities are being sued by pro-Israel students who claim the schools tolerate antisemitism.

Stark Realities analysis of an 84-page complaint filed against the University of Pennsylvania found nearly every alleged “antisemitic incident” was merely an instance in which Penn students, professors and guest speakers engaged in political expression that proponents of the State of Israel strongly disagree with. Eighteen months later, a federal judge agreed. “At worst, Plaintiffs accuse Penn of tolerating and permitting the expression of viewpoints which differ from their own,” Judge Mitchell Goldberg wrote as he dismissed the case.

Courtroom victories, however, can only do so much to counter the chilling effect of campaigns that vilify students, professors and institutions as antisemitic. That’s especially true when university cash flows are threatened.

Major pro-Israel donors have withdrawn or threatened to suspend donations to various schools, and those threats have been credited with forcing out university presidents like Penn’s Liz Magill. Donor pressure has also led schools to adopt the problematic IHRA antisemitism definition, shut down chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, and strip Israel-critical professors of chair positions.

The greatest financial pressure being exerted on universities, however, is coming from the Trump administration, which has not only suspended billions of dollars in funding from various universities that are supposed hives of antisemitism, but has also filed lawsuits and hammered schools with fines. Many of them are surrendering, paying the government large sums and making policy and staffing changes. Last week, Northwestern agreed to pay $75 million to the federal government for its alleged failure to fight “antisemitism.” Earlier, Columbia agreed to a $200 million fine payable over three years, and Brown will surrender $50 million.


There are other avenues by which government force is being tapped to squelch criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinians. Dozens of states have passed legislation that bar individuals and businesses from contracting with the state if they boycott or divest from Israel. That led to a bizarre spectacle in which hurricane-battered Texans applying for emergency benefits were asked to verify that they do not and will not boycott Israel. Comparable federal measures have been introduced, but not yet enacted.

Another proposed federal bill is the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require the Department of Education to use the IHRA definition when evaluating accusations that colleges tolerate antisemitism — essentially codifying a Trump executive order. It sailed through the House in 2024 by a 320-91 vote, but stalled in the Senate this year amid bipartisan concerns about the definition. Seven amendments had been attached in committee, including one clarifying that criticism of the Israeli government isn’t antisemitism.

Tellingly, champions of the bill said amendments like that were poison pills that would render it un-passable.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Sinophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

The missing ‘If’ that could get us killed: How Western media distorted Putin’s words about war with Europe

The message was rather simple: Russia is ready to respond to aggression. But you wouldn’t know it if you read the headlines

By Timur Tarkhanov | RT | December 4, 2025

A depressing pattern has taken hold in the way parts of the Western press cover Russia: take a volatile subject, strip it of the conditional language that contains it, and then act surprised when the public grows more fearful, more hardline, and less able to distinguish deterrent rhetoric from an intent to attack.

The latest example is the frenzy around Vladimir Putin’s remark about Europe and war. In Russian, his meaning is not subtle: “We are not going to fight Europe, I’ve said it a hundred times already. But if Europe suddenly wants to fight and starts, we are ready right now.” A refusal paired with a threat of readiness if attacked. Many headlines flattened that into “Russia is ready for war with Europe.”

In news reporting, headlines aren’t neutral labels. They are the main event. They set the emotional temperature for millions who will never read beyond the first line, especially on mobile feeds where nuance is a luxury and outrage is a business model. So when a headline drops the words “we are not going to” and discards “if Europe starts,” it’s not just a shortening – it reverses the reader’s perception. The public walks away believing Putin signaled readiness to launch a war against Europe, not readiness in response to one. In a moment when misperception can harden policy and policy can harden into escalation, that is reckless.

Worse, this kind of framing does real political work. It amplifies the narrative long championed by certain European officials – that Russia is poised to attack the EU next, regardless of evidence. If you swallow the headline alone, those officials sound validated. If you read the quote, at minimum you have to admit the claim is not what was said. Maybe you’ll even start asking questions. That difference is the hinge between journalism and propaganda.

This pattern didn’t start this week. Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, Western coverage has too often treated Russia’s declared motives as unworthy of even being stated without scare quotes, while the most intimidating interpretation of Russian intent is treated as default reality. “Imperial ambition.” “War of conquest.” “Russia wants to reconstitute an empire.” The public is denied the basic reporting function of hearing why Russia is doing what it’s doing. Instead we get a morality play with prewritten roles: one side’s motives are analyzed in paragraphs; the other’s are assumed in headlines.

The same sloppiness shows up in claims that Putin “stalled” peace talks. Negotiations are not a TikTok trend; they are an exhausting grind of sequencing, verification, backchannels, domestic politics, and face-saving. Many major conflicts have required long, ugly diplomatic marathons before anything moved. The Vietnam peace talks, for example, dragged on for years. To declare “stalling” because a meeting ended without a breakthrough is to confuse diplomacy with customer service: “Where is my peace deal? I ordered it an hour ago.”

And if we’re going to talk about “stalling,” we should at least look honestly at which actors have been most allergic to acknowledging battlefield realities. The Russia-US channel – whatever one thinks of it – is the only vector that has shown any capacity to force trade-offs into the open, because it involves the parties with the leverage to make and enforce them. By contrast, the EU and the UK’s public posture has often resembled a maximalist wish list: demands unmoored from the war’s trajectory, presented as prerequisites rather than negotiating positions. It has hardened expectations so thoroughly that any compromise looks like betrayal, and any diplomacy looks like surrender. That is the worst kind of stalling – not merely delaying talks, but by making talks politically impossible.

It didn’t have to be like this, and it isn’t universal. Some outlets have demonstrated that integrity is still possible: they lead with the full quote and include the conditional. They are at least honest with the readers about what was said and what was implied, allowing them to distinguish threat from intent. Far from being “soft on Putin”, this is basic journalistic competence. In a climate where fear sells and escalation eats, and the Doomsday Clock is at 89 seconds to midnight, faithful quotation is a mandatory public safety measure.

Timur Tarkhanov is a journalist and media executive.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

The Ukraine War Hawks Sabotaging America First

By Harrison Berger | The American Conservative | December 2, 2025

As the White House moves to negotiate an end to the yearslong Ukraine proxy war, establishment members of Congress, elements of the deep state, and their corporate media allies work overtime to sabotage the president’s efforts.

The aggressive establishment campaign seeks to derail a draft settlement, negotiated largely in Washington, that would bar Ukraine from NATO in exchange for U.S. security guarantees, grant Russia de facto control of Crimea and the Donbas, and limit the size of the Ukrainian armed forces, among other measures.

By pursuing a negotiated resolution to the Ukraine war, the Trump administration is doing exactly what it was democratically elected to do. Voters who wanted to continue the proxy war against Russia were told to—and overwhelmingly did—vote for the defeated candidate, Kamala Harris.

But even though President Donald Trump and voters may prefer restraint and diplomacy with nuclear powers like Russia, the Washington political establishment that drives U.S. foreign policy has long made clear that it does not—and that it will take aggressive measures to subvert democratically decided policies in favor of its own. With a peace deal possibly within reach, this remarkably bipartisan campaign has become increasingly overt.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers last week floated the rumor that the Trump administration’s 28-point peace plan was secretly a Russian-authored “wish list.” The claim has since fallen apart—and never made sense in the first place—because, as Steve Bannon has pointed out, the terms of the deal are, if anything, overly favorable to Kiev, not Moscow. Under the proposal, the Ukrainian military would be permitted to build a fighting force of up to 600,000 troops. “That’s unacceptable to the Russians,” says political scientist John Mearsheimer. And while the draft would formally rule out NATO membership for Ukraine, it nonetheless commits the United States to extending security guarantees, a provision that leaves the door open for future rounds of confrontation between Ukraine and Russia.

Nonetheless, bipartisan factions continue to argue that Trump’s proposal favors Moscow, branding the pursuit of peace as Neville Chamberlain-style appeasement. Joining them to do it has been former Trump official Mike Pompeo, who argued against the 28-point plan on X, saying that “any so-called peace deal that limits Ukraine’s ability to defend itself would look more like a surrender.”

The former CIA director has in recent weeks emerged as a regular guest on Fox News to sabotage Trump’s peace plan, while simultaneously serving on the advisory board of the Ukrainian defense company FirePoint. The Murdoch-owned news network, which previously partly fired Tucker Carlson over his opposition to the Ukraine war, does not disclose that the former CIA director stands to profit directly from the war he goes on air to promote.

The most brazen and revealing effort to derail the Trump administration’s diplomacy comes from anonymous leakers, likely from the U.S. security state, which, through their servants in corporate media, repeatedly leak classified information in what has so far been a failed attempt to embarrass and undermine the president’s lead negotiator, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.

The campaign against Witkoff began when Reuters reported that unnamed “U.S. officials” were “increasingly concerned” by Witkoff’s discussions with Russian diplomats to end the war. Soon after, Bloomberg published a selective leak of a classified call transcript, claiming Witkoff had “advised Russia on how to pitch Ukraine plans to Trump,” framing his diplomacy as improper.

The bipartisan pro-war establishment took their cue and seized on the leak, deploying the same strategy wielded against Trump’s first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in 2017, when classified surveillance material was leaked to derail détente with Moscow. Now in the case of Witkoff, routine diplomatic back-channeling has again been framed as sinister and improper, in a controversy likely manufactured by unelected elites in northern Virginia to sabotage the foreign policy agenda of the elected president.

Their efforts fell flat, however, when the next morning, Trump reassured the press that nothing improper had occurred with Witkoff’s diplomacy. “That’s a standard thing… he’s got to sell this to Ukraine. He’s got to sell Ukraine to Russia. That’s what a dealmaker does,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

While negotiations with Russia nonetheless continue to advance, the episode reveals an unsustainable tension for the Trump presidency: the figures actively sabotaging its foreign policy agenda are largely the same Republican establishment actors the president continues to defend and campaign for.

At the same time, Trump has now spent several months campaigning against the chief opponents of Ukraine war spending in the House of Representatives—retiring Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky—mainly because they dared to consistently apply America First principles. Yet the actual saboteurs in the GOP work hard to subvert Trump’s foreign policy agenda without any consequences.

With the administration’s disapproval ratings now approaching record highs, there has never been a better moment for Trump to cut loose those saboteurs from his coalition and rediscover the America First instincts that first carried him to the White House.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Denmark hit by boomerang effect: War vs. welfare

By Ron Ridenour | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 3, 2025

The Social Democratic Party (SD), which has led two governments since 2019, experienced the worst regional election in a century thanks to its leading role in spending more on the Ukraine-Russia war than any other country per capita, and number four in absolute sums—$13 billion, with another billion in the pipeline.

That is $2,100 per person. It is also three times Denmark’s defense budget as of three years ago. The U.S. has appropriated $184 billion for a population of 340 million, according to the March 2025 Department of Defense figures. That is $410 per person.

According to EU figures from August, the EU has spent $186 billion, committed $54 billion more, and has “mobilized” $3.9bn of Russian assets kept in western finance institutions for Ukraine. More than $300bn Russian funds have been “immobilized” and might be used to kill Russians and Ukrainians. Danes think they are protecting Ukraine’s “democracy and sovereignty”, and do so at greater cost to them than any of the 57 countries citizens lined up against Russia.

SD Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen heads a three-party coalition government, including the conservative Moderate party and the land-owner conservative Liberal (VenstreParty. Moderate Party is a recent off-shoot of the Liberal Party. Frederiksen’s ratings before the proxy war against Russia fluxed between 27% and 35%. Following November 18 regional elections, Frederiksen’s rating fell to 17%.

Social Democrats lost mayor posts in most towns and main cities, including the over-mayor post in Copenhagen, which it has held for over 100 years. Leading members of Frederiksen’s party are calling for a new leader already a year before parliament elections.

None of the 12 parliamentary political parties in Denmark, or the handful of Communist and Trotskyist parties, consider that Russia has the right to protect its sovereignty against the ever-encroaching NATO alliance, which now has six countries bordering Russia out of 14 countries around its border. Schools do not allow pro-Russian views to be taught, nor does the media allow pro-Russian views to be expressed.

Nevertheless, for the first time to this reporter’s knowledge, state-sponsored TV news, and other msm, began reporting following the November election that many voters are tired of spending so much money for Ukraine, and less for welfare. Voters mainly blame the key spokesperson for war, Social Democrat Frederisken.

The Social Democrat-led governments have increased NATO funding from 1.3% of its GNP to 3.5% since 2022, and plan to reach 5% to meet President Trump’s demand. Defense budgets have tripled since 2022.

The mass media usually does not report on Ukrainian corruption, but they did when on November 10 anti-corruption investigators revealed that at least $100 million was siphoned from contracts to rebuild energy losses, plus money laundering conducted by Justice Minister German Galushchenko and, ironically, the Energy Minister, Svitlana Grynchuk.

Investigators also searched Tymur Mindich’s house just hours after he fled to Israel, in order to avoid possible prosecution. Mindich is considered President Zelenskyy’s close associate and confidant. Among other roles, he is co-owner of the TV production company “Kvartal-95,” which Zelenskyy helped set up.

In reality, Ukraine’s government officials have skimmed scores of $billions from at least $400 billion sent to Ukraine. It is no longer taboo to be wary of continued support despite the population’s traditional culture of not challenging Denmark’s authority powers. This scandal created skepticism about just what this war is all about only a week before Danes went to the polls.

Even the CIA-friendly Wikipedia admits that corruption is endemic. “Corruption in Ukraine is a significant issue that effects society going back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.”

Welfare Down $4 Billion

The largest magazine in Denmark is Ældre Sagen (Senior’s Cause) with a 750,000 circulation out of six million people often reports on how the governments are spending less on welfare. Since 2015, welfare spending has deceased three percent ($4 billion).

The current issue of “Senior’s Cause” shows how much less support there is for seniors who cannot care for themselves without communes’ health care. Lack of help for bathing when needed has increased to 37% from 20% in 2021, just before the war. Percentage of elders need for cleaning homes has increased to 45% from 33% in the same period. Only 40% of those who have need for help at home or take a walk receive any whereas it was 56% just four years ago.

Sanctions against Russia cause a boomerang effect, because Danes have to use much more money to import expensive oil and gas energy sources from Norway and the U.S. after they sabotaged the Nord Stream Pipelines, with Sweden and Denmark’s assistance.

Food prices have skyrocketed in the past couple of years. Just before the war, average Danes used 15% of their income for food and now 17%. Moreover, some favorite items have skyrocketed in price: coffee by 67%, hamburger meat by 50%, cheese 47%, milk 44%.

Despite silent but growing war weariness, PM Frederiksen spent time during her local election campaign to provoke Russia even though the election had nothing to do with foreign policy. She blamed Russia for sending drones over Denmark for which no evidence has been forthcoming. Nevertheless, some elected politicians proposed to shoot down drones that fly over these “targets” even if it may not be known that “they” are drones, or even if the senders are unknown.

Among false accusations was her claim that a Russian tanker, Boracay, which was sailing peacefully in international waters close to Denmark, was a “provocation”. At that time, Frederiksen was entertaining 26 heads of state on the Prime Minister grounds to discuss how to keep the war going in Ukraine. Her French sidekick, President Emmanuel Macron, then sent a war ship with soldiers to seize Boracay with the intention of putting its captain on trial.

Macron said: “We want to increase pressure on Russia to convince it to return to the negotiating table… [we are moving] towards to a policy of obstruction when we have suspicious ships in our waters that are involved in this trafficking.”

“Trafficking” means shipping oil to-and-fro countries, which is what the world’s capitalist economies do.

The Danish government is also encouraging more youth to join the military for longer times than the 11-month draft increased from just four months. The draft now includes women. The proposal to have women forced into military garb came during this war by a former communist party, now called Enhedslisten (Red Green Alliance or Unity List). It has nine of the Parliament’s 179 members.

Denmark invites Ukraine to produce rocket fuel

In September, the Danish government announced that it will build a factory for Ukraine missiles by the military Skrydstrup airport near the town of Vojens. Skrydstrup is where most of Denmark’s F-35s are located and where the U.S. will have one of its military contingents. This is the first time that a NATO country has invited a Ukrainian firm to produce weaponry on its soil.

The Ukrainian company Four Points is behind the project. It is best known for developing the 3,000-km range Flamingo cruise missile, which is having difficulties when fired. Four Points and Denmark will employ a couple hundred workers. They will produce rocket fuel and parts for at least two types of ballistic missiles, FP-7 and FP-9. These missiles will be transported to Ukraine where the military will fire them at targets inside Russia. FP-7 has a range of 200 kilometers at a speed of 1,500 meters per second. FP-9 has an 855-kilometer range at 2,200 meters per second.

At first, it was left unstated whether fuel will be made for the Flamenco in Denmark. Nevertheless, Denmark is considering buying some Ukrainian missiles and/or U.S.’s long-range Tomahawks. Denmark has put up $80 million for the rocket fuel project.

The media reported the response of Russian Ambassador to Denmark Vladimir Barbin: “Denmark is determined to continue the bloodshed in Ukraine. If Ukraine produces rocket fuel for cruise missiles on Danish soil, then it is increasingly difficult not to consider Denmark a direct participant in the conflict. The Ukrainian side has stated very openly that these missiles are intended to carry out attacks deep inside Russia.”

Then, a week after Zelensky’s buddy Minditi fled to Israel, it was revealed that he is the “mastermind” behind Four Points. Vojens citizens and opposition political parties now demand that their government assure people that no corruption will take place when the Ukraine team comes to work beside Danish workers to build the rocket fuel factory. No one is yet publically questioning why do this when it is all too apparent that Russia will win this war soon.

That scandal, though, was not enough. On November 30, the main war commander and peace negotiator, Chief-of-Staff Andriy Yermark, was forced to resign due to new economic corruption revelations, the extent of which is not yet out. These scandals tell the world that Zelensky only wants personal loyalty for his side-kicks, and not honesty and competence.

Nevertheless, construction of the war factory began as planned on December 1, under the name FPRT ApS. The media let many local citizens express concern that something amiss could occur, such as explosions of fuel inside the factory, and concern about what Russia might do.

Denmark Supports Palestinian Genocide While Preparing for Total War

Denmark’s government is also a supporter of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. There was even an arms fair last August with seven Israel weapons firms selling their wares and Danish weapons sold to Israel. The weapons festival was held at the invitation of Denmark’s military. Two parliamentary parties complained about Israel’s participation. What was the Danish government’s explanation? “We need to quickly rearm for national security to meet the Russian threat.”

Frederiksen and company have concocted one falsehood after another about how Russia will attack first one of its non-NATO neighboring countries, then one NATO neighbor, and within five years invade the entire of Europe: 32 NATO countries have a total of 3.33 million troops (2022) compared to Russia’s 850,000. Six hundred million people inhabit the 30 European NATO countries, compared to Russia’s 140 million. The two North American NATO countries have 335 million and 40 million.

Allegedly, the only obstacle for Russia’s total invasion is to finish the war in Ukraine. Denmark’s only intelligence service, the Defense Intelligence Service (FE), subordinate to the CIA (about which I have written extensively), purports this scenario without offering one iota of evidence.

Since this hypothesis-as-truth surfaced last February, we are repeatedly told by politicians, military experts, and the media to prepare for war by storing water, food, medicines, hygiene articles, warm clothes and blankets, batteries, flashlights, cash, sun-cell or battery radios for three days. Shelters should be constructed or repaired. Land-owner-associations shall call community meetings to learn how best to prepare for war. Military experts are available to give advice.

Following the recent economic corruption cases, the media is open to question how long the war will last as enthusiasm is waning. For instance, some media reports that very few people are actually following the government’s advice to hoard necessities in case of war.

TV stations have long run several one-sided war programs daily. However, on November 26, DR TV’s “War’s Day” weekly program closed with a truthful and cynical Major in the Defense Academy stating: “If the Americans pull out completely, it will be very difficult for Ukraine but still better for us Europeans to continue fighting there, and cheaper than fighting Russians elsewhere.”

Danish Voters Getting Tired of War Cries

In September, dozens of drones (possibly) of various sizes popped up over civilian and military airports. Some were in the air for four hours the first day. Earlier reports of the like turned out to be that the “drones” were sun reflections, but this time they were real, averred the government.

Should unannounced drones be shot down, asked msm and some politicians? The hard-core right says yes. Middle-of-the-roaders point out that when Poland shot down a drone, its own missile destroyed a Polish house.

The key tabloid newspaper Ekstra Bladet went bananas. Its September 26 headline, “Drone Catastrophe-Denmark Humiliated” started seven pages of text and photos with front and back cover—one-fourth of the newspaper. Its reporters sharply criticized the government-military management for not either shooting them down or intercepting them, or knowing where they came from or where they went.

However, the tone in some media changed. I was pleasantly surprised to read the front-page story in the Christian Daily, November 28, headlined: “Critique: Drone-Communication Has Created Fear and Wild Theories”.

The article opens with a staunch supporter of Ukraine war. “Frederiksen and government rhetoric brings Denmark more in danger than what is necessary, and that worries me…Denmark’s interference in the war is too quick-tempered.”

The article points out that after several days of government shouting about how the Russians are threatening “our skies, our airports… ” silence ensued. No proof of what the “drone interference” really was, not even if they were drones, or where they came from. Nevertheless, Frederiksen wouldn’t give up her rhetoric about the evil Russians. The newspaper quoted her: “It is primarily one land that constitutes a threat: Russia.”

The daily ended with the conclusion that the government presents its people with “a lack of information. [Regardless of what the disturbances were] the point is the government wishes to frighten the people and in that way keep them in an iron cage.”

Just three days before this seminal front-page story, PM Frederiksen spoke on TV about how it was still possible for Ukraine with even more massive European aid to win the war. She said so after Russia completely rejected Europe’s “Coalition of the Willing” 19-point peace proposal as a substitute to Trump’s 28-point plan, which the government and media imply is pro-Russian and supported by President Putin. Both suppositions are false.

The only peace plan for the inevitable Russian victory will be:

  1. a) Crimean and Donbas regions now in the Russian Federation since the peoples’ referendum remain in Russia.
  2. b) Ukraine will not be in NATO nor have associated “military security”.
  3. c) Legal protection for ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
  4. d) A de-Nazification process must begin to re-educate the rampant fascist mentality instilled in the government and military, and much of the population since the 2014 neo-fascist coup financed and organized by the Obama-administration.

November 2025 will be remembered as the beginning of the end for PM Mette Frederiksen’s political career, and the end of silence among the Danish population: Enough is Enough!

December 4, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Georgia to sue BBC over ‘absurd’ chemical weapons claims

RT | December 3, 2025

Georgia has announced that it is suing the BBC “for spreading dirty, false accusations,” after the British state broadcaster alleged that the government in Tbilisi used chemical weapons against protesters last year.

The South Caucasus nation was rocked by violent pro-EU demonstrations in late 2024, which broke out after the government temporarily froze integration talks with the bloc, accusing it of weaponizing Tbilisi’s accession bid for political leverage.

In an article on Monday, the BBC claimed that the Georgian authorities used WWI-era chemical weapons during the protests – an allegation which the ruling Georgian Dream party said was based on “absurd and false information.”

According to the BBC investigation, authorities used an outdated riot-control agent mixed into the water fired from water cannons to disperse protesters.

Tbilisi said the broadcaster provided no evidence to substantiate its claims.

Despite approaching the BBC for an explanation and giving exhaustive answers to its questions, the Georgian government “received a cornucopia of lies” and “serious accusations” in response, it said.

“We have decided to start a legal dispute against the false media in international courts. We will use all possible legal means to hold the so-called media that spread lies accountable for spreading dirty, false accusations.”

Georgian Dream claimed that the BBC “has no moral or professional inhibitions about carrying out dirty orders and spreading lies,” and referred to recent scandals which have damaged the broadcaster’s credibility.

Earlier this month, several top-level staff resigned after it emerged that the BBC had aired a documentary in 2024 that spliced together two parts of Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech at the US Capitol in a way that it admitted falsely gave the “impression of a direct call for violent action.”

Trump has accused the broadcaster of meddling in US elections with the controversial 2024 documentary, and threatened to sue for “anywhere between $1 to $5 billion.”

The BBC is losing more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) a year in mass cancellations and fee evasion, according to a recent UK parliamentary report.

December 3, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

NATO members terrorizing their own people – Russian envoy

RT | November 28, 2025

European NATO members are instilling a false fear of Russia in their citizens in order to drum up support for militarization and a potential confrontation, Moscow’s envoy to Belgium, Denis Gonchar, has said.

Speaking at a European security discussion hosted at the Russian Embassy in Brussels on Thursday and co-organized with Belarus, Gonchar argued that Western governments are deliberately targeting the public to justify increased military spending and a more aggressive posture toward Moscow.

“NATO, which is terrorizing its own population with the Kremlin’s non-existent plans to attack the allies, is preparing for a big war with Russia, as crazy as it sounds,” he said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

“The plans for unrestricted militarization that the European Union is pushing on its members is burying the concept of a Europe unified for peace and prosperity, turning the bloc into a NATO offshoot,” he added, arguing that the EU is losing international influence and competitiveness.

According to Gonchar, Western efforts to weaken Russia extend beyond Europe and target Russia’s neighbors as well as countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. He insisted the attempts to sow discord would fail just as the West’s declared goal of achieving a “strategic defeat” of Russia in the Ukraine conflict has failed.

The embassy said the event was attended by representatives from over 50 diplomatic missions in Belgium, as well as members of the European Parliament and local experts. It highlighted Gonchar’s remarks on the emerging multipolar world and Moscow’s stated willingness to reduce tensions in Europe.

Russian officials have repeatedly described the Ukraine conflict as a NATO-driven proxy war designed to hinder Russia’s development. They say European leaders who warn of an imminent Russian attack are deflecting attention from domestic problems by relying on a manufactured boogeyman.

November 28, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

This Thanksgiving, We’re Being Served ‘Fake China Threats’

By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | November 26, 2025

As a long-time critic of Washington’s obsession with the so-called “China threat”—and having written an entire book debunking it, The Fake China Threat—I could not in good conscience allow this year’s Report to Congress of the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission to pass without comment. If anything, the 2025 edition is an even more sweeping reiteration of the assumptions and exaggerations I have challenged for years. Page after page, the report presents an alarming narrative about Beijing’s intentions and capabilities, while simultaneously insisting that every corner of the globe—and every sector of American life—now constitutes a frontline in a zero-sum geopolitical struggle.

The report opens by accusing Beijing of such dire transgressions as “holding regime security” as “a core interest,” of seeking “control and influence” over “regional spheres,” of cooperating with “authoritarian states” for “geopolitical and strategic benefits,” and of “shaping narratives” through “propaganda, disinformation, and malign influence.” One could easily imagine identical language appearing about the Soviet Union, about Washington itself, or literally any power throughout history—yet when applied to Beijing, these otherwise banal behaviors are transformed into signs of imminent global domination.

Nowhere is this tendency more pronounced than in the section worrying over China’s “electrification drive” and its increasingly important role in global energy markets. More than sixty pages are devoted to the idea that China’s leadership in electric vehicles, solar manufacturing, and critical minerals mining represents a strategic threat. Absent from the report is any acknowledgment that Western corporations themselves eagerly shifted production to China, or that Washington—not Beijing—has been the global pioneer in using export controls as geopolitical coercion. When the United States weaponized semiconductor export restrictions, Beijing responded in kind with export controls on rare earths and battery materials. To portray this sequence of events as evidence of China’s uniquely sinister strategy is simply dishonest.

The Commission displays the same lack of self-awareness in its discussion of China’s space program. According to the report, “China has embarked on a whole-of-government strategy to become the world’s preeminent space power,” viewing space as a “warfighting domain” and seeking “superiority” to achieve “information dominance” in future conflicts. These statements are presented as though they reveal some shocking and destabilizing ambition. Yet even the report itself admits that the United States pursued precisely the same aims throughout the Cold War, beginning with Sputnik and culminating in the Apollo program—a state-directed race for prestige, technological supremacy, and ideological credibility. One could be forgiven for marveling at the Commission’s ability to recount this history without recognizing that China today is behaving exactly as the United States once did.

No area attracts more overwrought commentary than Taiwan. The Commission repeats the standard Beltway line that Taiwan is a “vital national interest,” a geopolitical linchpin whose fate somehow determines the future of American security. Yet as I have argued repeatedly, these claims fall apart under scrutiny. Taiwan is important to Washington because Washington has decided it is important. The obligations cited—the Taiwan Relations Act, American “credibility,” regional “order”—are political choices, not laws of nature. Yes, Taiwan produces world-leading semiconductors. But nothing about that fact requires risking a catastrophic great-power war; supply chains can be diversified or on-shored. Beijing’s pressure, moreover, is far from the unprovoked aggression the report suggests—it is rooted in the unresolved civil war of 1949, the inevitable conclusion of which Washington prevented, and remains largely reactive. None of this is to deny tensions exist, but turning Taiwan into a test of American resolve is precisely how manageable disputes become existential crises.

The report’s alarmism reaches farcical heights in Chapter Five: “Small Islands, Big Stakes: China’s Playbook in the Pacific Islands.” Here the Commission insists that tiny Pacific states—many with populations smaller than a Michigan suburb—constitute a strategic battleground essential to the wellbeing of the American people. Any Chinese port investment, loan program, or diplomatic visit is portrayed as a step toward regional domination. Yet nowhere does the Commission attempt to explain how the average American benefits from micromanaging the political and economic decisions of Kiribati or Fiji.

The underlying logic is clear: assume U.S. hegemony is the natural order of the world, treat any erosion of influence anywhere as an existential threat, and convert distant, marginal islands into “vital interests.” This rhetorical sleight of hand is a hallmark of threat inflation. It serves contractors, think-tankers, and bureaucracies far more than it serves the American public.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Commission’s sprawling list of recommendations. These range from creating a consolidated economic-statecraft agency with law-enforcement powers, to launching new global initiatives on undersea cable security, to deepening U.S. military and political involvement throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. They continue with calls for massive industrial-policy subsidies, a quantum-computing “race,” bioeconomy initiatives, and new industrial-finance mechanisms—all justified by the specter of Chinese power.

The recommendations amount to a blueprint for a vastly expanded national-security state: more intelligence authorities, more intervention abroad, more surveillance tools at home, more taxpayer-funded subsidies for favored industries. It is striking how rarely the Commission pauses to explain how these measures relate to the concrete economic or physical security of ordinary Americans. Instead, all problems—whether involving undersea cables in Micronesia or chip production in Taiwan—are collapsed into a single narrative of geopolitical rivalry requiring endless resources and unquestioned bipartisan support.

This is not a sober analysis of Chinese capabilities or intentions; it is a maximalist wish list for Beltway institutions whose influence grows in direct proportion to the threats they amplify. And when one examines who actually produced the report, the outcome is unsurprising: longtime Nancy Pelosi staffer Reva Price; former Project 2049 Chairman Randall Schriver; and contributions from the Atlantic Council and American Enterprise Institute. This is a who’s who of professional China hawks, each institutionally invested in perpetuating a highly militarized U.S.–China rivalry.

In sum, the Commission’s report is emblematic of the broader problem in Washington: a foreign-policy establishment unable to conceive of international politics except as a struggle for primacy, uninterested in distinguishing vital interests from peripheral ones, and institutionally incentivized to magnify threats rather than manage them. The American people deserve better than a foreign policy driven by inertia, ideology, and bureaucratic self-interest.

The good news is that alternative perspectives exist—and that skepticism toward these narratives is growing. The United States can pursue a stable, prosperous relationship with China without embracing the fear-mongering, militarism, and threat inflation that dominate reports like this one. It only requires the courage to question the assumptions that have guided Washington for too long.

November 27, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Kremlin aide sees Washington infighting behind leak

RT | November 26, 2025

Someone in Washington could be trying to undermine US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov has suggested, commenting on the recent leaks of his conversations with the envoy. At least some of the purported leaks are fake, he added.

Speaking to Kommersant newspaper on Wednesday, Ushakov defended continued contacts between Moscow and Washington, including by phone, and maintained they are needed to build trust between the two nations. He also said that neither side was interested in leaking the contents of the conversations.

According to the presidential aide, the incident might point to infighting in Washington. “Do you remember the case of [former National Security Adviser] Michael Flynn? This case could be the same,” the official said.

Flynn was forced to resign in 2017 after being accused of misleading officials about a phone conversation with then Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak. Trump, who was serving his first term as president, stated that the conversation was “illegally leaked” by US intelligence.

Flynn initially pleaded guilty to the false statement charges before reversing his position and calling the case politically motivated. Trump pardoned him in late 2020, bringing the case to a close.

Speaking to journalists on Monday, Ushakov warned that such leaks risk undermining the whole process of normalization of relations between Moscow and Washington. “This is unacceptable… in such relations, when most serious issues are discussed,” he said.

“There can be no cooperation with a partner when information about what was discussed is revealed. Otherwise, there will be no trust.”

On Tuesday, Bloomberg published what it described as a transcript of Witkoff’s conversation with Ushakov from October 14. The US special envoy was then accused of “coaching” the Russians on how to deal with Washington. Trump dismissed the allegations by saying that Witkoff was using a “standard” approach.

Ushakov noted that some of the leaks are fake, adding that he would not comment on the others. “My conversations with Witkoff are confidential. No one should make them public. No one.”

November 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Bosnian war propaganda resurgence: the last hurrah

By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 26, 2025

Most were under the impression that the war in Bosnia was behind us. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s was characterised by the use of the crudest kind of propaganda, but it was undoubtedly in the Bosnian theatre that the crassness was the most pronounced.

It turns out however that for those who had politically benefitted from that war, or who think that they might still benefit a little more with an improvised replay of the propaganda techniques that were successful thirty years ago, the war in Bosnia remains the gift that keeps on giving.

Evidence of that is the intense media barrage, reminiscent of the 1990s, about alleged “Safari tourism” in the hills overlooking besieged Sarajevo. The story goes that wealthy psychopaths from Italy and other Western countries were paying enormous fees, running up to 100,000 euros in today’s money, eagerly collected by the Bosnian Serbs who held the hillside positions, for permission to shoot and kill defenceless civilians in the besieged city below.

The macabre “spirit cooking” dinners organised for the perverse pleasure and entertainment of the crème de la crème of Western elite circles, not to mention numerous other similar examples of depravity, make the Sarajevo allegation seem plausible, in principle at least. There are no moral factors on the side of this scenario’s Western perpetrators that would have prevented it from happening, assuming that the conditions were propitious.

That having been said, agreement that something could have happened is not an automatic confirmation that it actually did. Evidence is still needed to bridge the gap between a theoretical possibility and a demonstrated fact. For purveyors of propaganda, however, bridging that gap is not a major concern because their craft operates on emotional manipulation, not empirical proof. Their task is accomplished once they have successfully embedded in the public’s mind the subconscious impression they desired to implant there.

How does the Sarajevo “safari tourism” allegation stack up when examined with a reasonable degree of scepticism and the application of rigorous standards of proof? Like most propaganda constructions, it falls apart.

The first thing one notices that calls for extreme caution is that the alleged events occurred in the mid-1990s but are being brought to light and, it is claimed, investigated by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office only now, in 2025, more than thirty years later. The Bosnian war ended after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in December of 1995 and soon thereafter conditions were sufficiently normalised in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There were no serious impediments to conducting war crimes investigations and numerous agencies and institutions did precisely that. Shooting safaris where the targets were human beings would be a crime against humanity of extraordinary gravity. A reasonable explanation is required why no police or judicial organs investigated these heinous allegations soon after those events are said to have happened, whilst witnesses could still be found with relative ease and, just as importantly, forensic evidence might still have been intact. That first and most obvious question is not even asked, let alone answered by anyone.

The other key unasked (and therefore also unanswered) question is about the source for these belated allegations. It is a documentary film “Sarajevo Safari,” released in 2022. We now come to the interesting part. The film was financed by Hasan Čengić, one of the founders of the Democratic Action Party of Bosnia’s war-time President Alija Izetbegović. Mr. Čengić therefore is by no means an impartial source. During the war he was one of the principal funds and arms procurers for Izetbegović. The film’s producer is the Slovenian film director Franci Zajc who during the conflict created numerous documentaries which uniformly presented only the Serbian side in an unfavourable light. Zajc also happens to be one of the only two supposedly percipient witnesses of this safari tale. The other alleged witness is Mr. Čengić himself who, however, is unavailable for cross examination because he passed away in 2021.

Some would argue that Zajc is a shady witness because of his extravagant claims that during the conflict in Bosnia he was an agent of Western intelligence agencies but that nevertheless the Serbs allowed, and in some versions even invited, him to observe these morbid proceedings. Why the Serbs would allow a hostile witness like Zajc to observe them in such a compromising situation is unexplained. Be that as it may, these are the only two ocular witnesses of the Sarajevo “tourist safari” events known so far. One of them claims and the other, Čengić, almost certainly did have intelligence connections. These are the exclusive sources for a sensational story that is making headlines in the collective West media and has even attracted the attention of one of the frequent contributors to this portal.

Yet even these scant sources for an event of major significance, if it is authentic, are not in complete harmony about an important detail of their story. Zajc has claimed that wealthy foreigners paid huge amounts of money to the besieging Serbs to shoot civilians and that they were provided with sniper weapons for that purpose by their Serbian hosts. Čengić on the other hand claimed before his death that foreigners were paying trifling fees for the morbid privilege and brought their own weapons.

But there are more problems with this affair. It is said that the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office is conducting an investigation. That may well be the case. But the important question that anyone with legal training will immediately ask is what is the statute of limitations for murder in Italy? It happens to be 21 years. That means that if the imputed crime was committed more than twenty-one years before apprehension, even if the perpetrator were to be identified and linked to the crime he could not be prosecuted. The alleged offences date back to the mid-1990s, which means that the Italian statute of limitations has expired and nobody any longer can be brought to court to answer charges of sniping at civilians from the hills that surround Sarajevo. If the Prosecutor in Milan is indeed investigating, would he not be wasting his time?

If the motive were purely judicial, he certainly would be. But if the motive is predominantly political, not necessarily so.

Furthermore, even if statutory obstacles could be overcome, for instance by reclassifying the offence as a crime against humanity for which there is no statute of limitations instead of treating it as a simple murder under Italian law, there would still be a problem. For a conviction to be achieved under either indictment, beyond the necessity of personally identifying the shooters, which is the sine qua non, to actually convict them they would have to be directly linked to a lethal outcome on the ground. For an indictment to be viable, victims would have to be identified as well, almost thirty years after the fact. Shooting with a sniper weapon is not a crime unless it results in someone’s death. For culpability to be established, a forensic investigation would have to be conducted to determine for each imputed victim the cause and manner of death, and bullets which struck the victims would have to be provably traced to the weapons that were in the hands of the perpetrators at the time of shooting, almost thirty years ago. Does that seem like a feasible undertaking for the Milan Prosecutor, no matter how competent he may be? That is doubtful.

The media frenzy that has erupted around allegations of war-time tourist safaris on civilians in Sarajevo recalls the worst propaganda excesses of that conflict. Their most notable feature was that critical questions were not being asked and that few and largely unverified facts were force-fitted into a Procrustean propaganda matrix. When subjected to close scrutiny most of these claims almost always are found to be uncorroborated and spurious.

That certainly seems to be the case with the Sarajevo Safari story, regardless of the fact that the collective West media are having a field day expanding on it in endless and strikingly imaginary detail.

The Safari story will soon die a natural death once it is concluded that its political purpose has been achieved. The purpose is not to convict anyone because given the complete unavailability of any evidence, even under the most rigged trial conditions that would be nearly impossible. It is, rather, to create a sinister impression that would further discredit the Serbian entity in Bosnia, the Republika Srpska, for colluding with depraved individuals and facilitating their heinous behaviour in return for money. The successful dissemination of such an impression will serve as an additional argument for the liquidation of Republika Srpska and will indirectly validate other heinous allegations made at the expense of the Serbian side during the Bosnian conflict. That explains the timing.

As for the Milan Prosecutor’s Office, it will quietly drop its investigation for some specious bureaucratic reason that no one will ever question. And there on the legal level the matter will end. There will be no facts, only emotionally charged impressions.

November 26, 2025 Posted by | Film Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Ambassador Mike Huckabee Secretly Meets Top Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard

Let’s remove both Huckabee and Israel from American foreign policy

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • November 25, 2025

Given the high visibility of the Israeli genocide being carried out in Gaza, for the first time many among the American general public are beginning to ask why a rich country like Israel should be getting billions of dollars from the United States taxpayer to pay for waging its war when many Americans are struggling. Inevitably, of course, the press coverage of the questions being asked about the cash flow and what is playing out in Gaza have failed to discuss the real magnitude of the “aid,” which goes far beyond the $3.8 billion a year that President Barack Obama committed to America’s “best friend and closest ally.” In fact, over the past two years, Washington has given Israel more than $21 billion in weapons and cash and just last week the 1,000th US transport plane filled with weapons landed in Israel. On top of all that, there are trade concessions, co-production “defense partnership” projects and dicey charitable contributions from Zionist billionaires that our federal and many state governments shower on the Jewish state, easily exceeding $10 billion in a “normal” year without Israel claiming having “greater need” as it goes about violating ceasefires and killing Gazans, Lebanese and Iranians.

The fact that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have enabled Israel’s slaughter without so much as the slightest hesitation should in itself be damnable, but the average American is fed a steady diet of propaganda favoring Israel through the devastatingly effective Jewish media control that prevails nationwide. Interestingly, however, as the American public is beginning to tire of the Israeli lies, the Israel Lobby in the US is following the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu, who has declared that his country will be fighting eight wars – seven against all of its neighbors and one to control the United States’ increasingly negative opinion of what Israel represents. As a result, laws like the Antisemitism Awareness Act are being passed to silence “freedom of speech” critics of the Jewish state and criminalize what they are saying.

During his 2016 campaign Donald Trump swore that he would be the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House, a pledge that some viewed skeptically as Trump was also committed to bringing the troops home from “useless wars” in Asia, most of whom were in the Middle East supporting Israeli interests. More recently Trump admitted that America was in the Middle East to “protect Israel” and he has indeed proven to be the great benefactor he promised to be in responding fully to Netanyahu’s wish list. In his first term in office, Trump increased tension dramatically with Iran, moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights, and basically gave Israel the green light to do whatever it wants on the Palestinian West Bank, including getting rid of the Palestinians.

And currently as all that has already played out the Israelis have attacked and killed thousands of civilians in Gaza, Syria and the West Bank with impunity, protected by the US veto in the UN Security Council against any consequences for their actions while a subservient Congress gives Netanyahu fifty-six standing ovations and bleats that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Trump has made the United States completely complicit in Israeli war crimes and has added a few unique touches of its own to include the widely condemned assassination of the senior Iranian official Qassem Soleimani while on a peace mission in Baghdad in January 2020.

Israel more-or-less openly admits that it controls the actions of the United States in its region, Netanyahu having boasted how the US federal government is “easily moved” when it comes up against the Israeli Lobby. Nor is there any real secret to how the Lobby uses money to buy access and then exploits that access to obtain real power, which is then used to employ all the resources of the US government in support of the Jewish state. The top donor to the Democratic Party, Israeli-American Haim Saban has stated that he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel. This single-minded focus to promote Israel’s interests at the expense of those of the United States makes the Israel Lobby the most formidable foreign policy lobby in Washington.

One of the tools used by Trump to facilitate the virtual slavery under the Israeli yoke is the appointment of passionately Zionist US Ambassadors to Israel, where they often behave as if they are there to represent Jewish interests rather that those of the United States. Trump’s first term appointment David Friedman was a personal lawyer with no diplomatic or international experience, so he inevitably endorsed with some enthusiasm every extreme proposal coming from Netanyahu, which he then went on to sell to Trump. Friedman, now retired, has a home in Jerusalem and has reportedly opted to spend much of his time in Israel.

Friedman was, however, somewhat of a gem compared to the current ambassador Mike Huckabee, an Israel-Firster Baptist preacher from Arkansas, who repeatedly expresses his love for the Jewish state and white-washes whatever it does. For what it’s worth, on October 13th, 2025, Friedman and Huckabee performed a rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s hit song Sweet Home Alabama in Jerusalem but with altered lyrics that promoted Zionism and the city of Jerusalem itself. Friedman played guitar while Huckabee played bass. Trump, of course, is similar in his overweening embrace of Israel, whether it be because he is being blackmailed, or honestly believes in what he is saying, or even because he has converted to Judaism in 2017, as some believe. In any event, the theatrical duet performance by the two Israel-loving ambassadors failed to provide any benefit to the United States of America.

The complete contempt that the Israelis and Israeli supporters in the US – to include the Ambassador Huckabee – have for other Americans and their interests has been on full display recently and it involves the most significant espionage operation that Israel has ever “run” inside the United States. Jonathan Pollard, the most damaging spy in American history, stole for Israel the keys to accessing US communications and information gathering systems, which gave the Jewish state access to all US intelligence as it was being collected. He was Jewish and a US citizen, his father a professor at Notre Dame University. As a student at Stanford, where he completed a degree in 1976, Pollard’s penchant for dissimulation was already noted by other students. He is remembered for having boasted that he was a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, claiming to have worked for Mossad, to having attained the rank of Colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (even sending himself a telegram addressed to “Colonel Pollard”), and to having killed an Arab while on guard duty at a kibbutz. All the claims were lies.

Physically Pollard was also unappealing, overweight and balding, seemingly an unlikely candidate to become a US Navy intelligence analyst which he accomplished after having failed a polygraph test when trying to join CIA. One review board determined that he had been hired in the first place under pressure from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). According to an intelligence agency after-the fact-damage assessment “Pollard’s operation has few parallels among known US espionage cases… his first and possibly largest delivery occurred on 23 January [1984] and consisted of five suitcases-full of classified material.”

Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger wrote a forty-six page review of the Pollard case that remains largely classified and redacted to this day, detailing what incredible damage Pollard had done. Part of the document states: “In this case, the defendant has admitted passing to his Israeli contacts an incredibly large quantity of classified information. At the outset I must state that the defendant’s disclosures far exceed the limits of any official exchange of intelligence information with Israel. That being the case, the damage to national security was complete the moment the classified information was given over. Ideally, I would detail… all the information passed by the defendant to his Israeli contacts: unfortunately, the volume of data we know to have been passed is too great to permit that. Moreover, the defendant admits to having passed to his Israeli handlers a quantity of documents great enough to occupy a space six feet by ten feet… The defendant has substantially harmed the United States, and in my view, his crimes demand severe punishment… My foregoing comments will, I hope, dispel any presumption that disclosures to an ally are insignificant; to the contrary, substantial and irrevocable damage has been done to this nation. Punishment, of course, must be appropriate to the crime, and in my opinion, no crime is more deserving of severe punishment than conducting espionage activities against one’s own country.”

Pollard was detected and arrested in 1985, convicted in 1987, and imprisoned. The case sent shockwaves through both Washington and Tel Aviv at the time of the conviction. Pollard pled guilty, confessing to selling the thousands of pages of secret documents to the Israelis for cash, vacations to Europe, and promised future payments to be wired to a Swiss bank account. A federal judge correctly dismissed pleas for clemency.

In 2015 Pollard was released from prison under parole which required him to remain in the United States. But in January 2021 Pollard was released from the parole conditions and was allowed to fly “home,” meeting Netanyahu as he disembarked from a private plane that had departed from Newark New Jersey before being given a hero’s welcome. The Pollard trip to his “home” occurred because Donald Trump had obligingly lifted the travel restrictions on him the week before, one more favor to Israel. At the airport, Pollard and his wife knelt to kiss the Israeli soil before Netanyahu handed him an Israeli citizen ID and welcomed him. The 737 luxury-fitted executive jet Pollard and his wife flew on belonged to Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, then the chief donor to the Republicans and to Donald Trump. Adelson was married to an Israeli, Miriam Adelson, who now survives him and continues the donations to the Republicans. Sheldon famously once said that he regretted having worn a US Army uniform when he was drafted in World War 2, much preferring instead that he might have done military service in the Israel Defense Forces.

But the Pollard story does not end there. In July Jonathan Pollard was a guest at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, where he met with Ambassador Mike Huckabee. The meeting was his first with US officials since his release and immigration to Israel. It was a break with precedent and the move by Huckabee, even all these years after the crime, still alarmed American intelligence officials even though, as it was Israel, media coverage in the US was minimal. John Kiriakou, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, has argued that Pollard should have been detained by the Marine guards at the American Embassy in Jerusalem and should not have been allowed to meet with the ambassador. “[Pollard] has called for Jewish Americans who have security clearances… to begin spying for Israel, just like he did… So for him to be welcomed into the American Embassy is a bridge too far. If anything, he should have been snatched when he entered the American embassy.”

The Trump administration was apparently not consulted regarding the planned get-together. “The White House was not aware of that meeting,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt claimed. It was reportedly left off the public schedule of the ambassador, suggesting at a minimum that it was a terrible decision by Huckabee acting on his own which he made some attempt to conceal. And yet, when the story broke the Trump administration still condoned the actions of the ambassador, who reportedly had a friendly chat with the spy who had done the most grave damage ever to the United States. “The president stands by our ambassador, Mike Huckabee,” Leavitt added, “and all that he’s doing for the United States and Israel.” She did not elaborate on what he has been doing for the United States.

After the story broke, Pollard accused “anti-Israel and isolationist elements within the US government of leaking that he met off-the-books with US Ambassador Huckabee in a bid to discredit and oust the pro-Israel envoy.” He claimed that “the New York Times story was part, or is part, of an effort to discredit the ambassador and have him removed. I think the people behind this are anti-Israel elements within the Trump administration, the neo-isolationists… and others, perhaps pro-Saudi, pro-Qatari elements within the administration that would like to see a person like Ambassador Huckabee sent home.” Pollard later gave an interview in which he named Steven Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as likely culprits “representing Saudi and Qatari rather than US interests” in brokering the Gaza ceasefire, and he added that he “despises them” for daring to “carry on with terrorists.” Pollard added his view that the 20-point ceasefire plan, leaving the door open to the possibility for Palestinian statehood, threatens Israel’s security and “undermines our independence,” and the October 9th truce-hostage deal that is based on that plan would have been worthwhile only had Israel “unleashed… hell on Hamas” following the October 13th release of the last 20 living hostages from Gaza.

Pollard described his meeting with Huckabee as “personal” and “friendly” and confirmed that it was his first meeting with a US government official after his release by Trump from travel restrictions. He concluded that “A lot of people seem to think that I harbor an anger toward the United States, which I don’t. There were specific people that lied about me, that lied about Israel, that tried to use me as a weapon to undermine the US-Israel special relationship, and those are the people I have problems with but certainly people like Ambassador Huckabee, and others, I have absolutely no problem talking to. If I could guess, I would say it’s that community, particularly the CIA station in the embassy, that probably was the one that initiated this whole effort to discredit the ambassador.”

Pollard clearly is promoting a false narrative that makes himself look like some kind of honorable and valiant defender of Israel when in reality he did what he did for the most base of reasons, i.e. for money. Money is indeed how the Israeli boosters in the United States have been able to flat out corrupt America’s political process to attain the dominance that has enabled them to promote the Israeli agenda. They have bought or intimidated every politician that matters to include presidents, congressmen and even those in state and local governments. Anyone who criticizes Israel or Jewish collective behavior in support of the Israeli state is subject to character assassination and blacklisting a la Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tom Massie. Those who persist are denounced as anti-Semites, a label that is used liberally by Zionist groups. Now Pollard is portraying himself as some kind of Israeli hero. The end result is that when Israel kills civilians in violation of a ceasefire in Gaza and is allowing rampaging armed settlers to destroy Palestinian livelihoods the United States government chooses to look the other way and instead showers the rogue state with money so it can continue to do its dirty work. Providing that political cover for Israel is in part the real dark side of Huckabee’s job as he sees it, not to engage over real American interests.

And then there are the hot buttons a-la the lies about Israel being advanced by Pollard and his ilk which, if the US actually had a functional government that is responsive to the people, should have been pushed long ago. “Best friend” Israel is ranked by the FBI as the number one “friendly” country in terms of its spying against the United States. Pollard is an exception who was actually punished since his crime was so dramatic and damaging, but Israeli spies are routinely slapped on the wrist when caught and never face prosecution for that crime, as one might note in the current “investigation” of Jeffrey Epstein, which was undoubtedly a major MOSSAD intelligence operation.

And there are also the MOSSAD agents who were the “Dancing Shlomos,” celebrating while the twin towers went down on 9/11, who were allowed to go home and various assassinations including JFK and even Charlie Kirk that have an Israeli back story. And Israel has never truly paid any price for the horrific bombing and torpedoing of the USS Liberty fifty-eight years ago, which killed 34 Americans and injured over one hundred and seventy more. The completely unprovoked attack took place in international waters and was later covered-up by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Congress. May they burn in hell. The few remaining surviving crew members are still waiting for justice.

Good riddance to scum like Jonathan Pollard and the Israel-Firsters who enable him. It is reported in Israel that Pollard is now preparing to run for the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, which explains his demeanor and phony narrative. It also all means that it is past time to get rid of folks like Ambassador Mike Huckabee who prefer to advance Israeli interests rather than those of his own country because, he believes, God is telling him to do so. More generally speaking, it is well past time to get rid of the special relationship with Israel, sanctified in the halls of Congress and by a Jewish dominated media, which does nothing good for the United States and for the American people. Israel’s constant interference in the US political system and economy comes at a huge cost, both in dollars and in terms of actual American interests.

So, let’s all resolve for 2026 to do whatever we can to pull the plug on Israel. Let Israel, which is now seeking a 20 year commitment of even more cash annually from the US taxpayer, pay its own bills and take care of its own defense. American citizens who prefer the Jewish ethno-religious state to our constitutional republic should feel free to emigrate. In fact, they should be encouraged to leave. Lacking Washington’s backing, Israel will also be free to commit atrocities and war crimes against all of its neighbors but without the US United Nations veto it will have to begin facing the consequences for its actions. But most of all, as Americans, we will no longer have to continue to carry the burden of a country that manipulates and uses us and also has a certain contempt for us while doing so, witness how Trump’s kid-glove handling of Jonathan Pollard has played out. And maybe just maybe freeing the United States from Israel could lead to an end to all the wars in the Middle East that Washington has been waging in spite of the fact that we Americans are threatened by no one in the region and have no real interest whatsoever in prolonging the agony of staying engaged there.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

November 25, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment