Drone Attack on Putin’s Residence Could Have Triggered a Nuclear War: Here’s Why
Sputnik – 30.12.2025
The 91-drone attack on the presidential residence in Novgorod region was an extremely dangerous provocation. And one that “could not have been carried out without the participation of European hawks” because “Zelensky would not have dared to plan or carry out such an operation on his own,” military expert Alexey Leonkov told Sputnik.
Intricate planning was required, and the timing – while Zelensky was in the US for talks with Trump, was designed to give him an alibi, “which he is now using, claiming Ukraine had nothing to do with it,” Leonkov said.
The provocation “wasn’t simply an attack on the president,” the observer emphasized. “It was a strike on a nuclear weapons control center, as each such residence contains communications nodes through which the head of state can issue the command to use the country’s nuclear forces.”
“It was intended to provoke a conflict between the US and Russia,” Leonkov said. “This was precisely the calculation: at worst, provoking a global conflict; at a minimum, disrupting the negotiation process between the US and Russia. And it’s clear that European hawks favor only this scenario,” particularly Britain.
While he issues denials now, Zelensky essentially blabbed about the attack ahead of time twice in the past two weeks: a press conference on December 18, when he said “politicians change, somebody lives, somebody dies,” and on Christmas eve, when he openly called on Ukrainians to wish for Putin’s death.
“All this suggests Zelensky was aware of the impending attack, but was playing his assigned role – pretending he had nothing to do with it and ‘advocating for peace’,” Leonkov emphasized.
Analyzing Moscow’s public reaction carefully, Leonkov said two things are certain: first, Russia will respond appropriately, and the targets and time of the response have already been determined; second, the response will be carried out in such a way as not to affect the negotiation process between Russia and the US.
Ireland’s Simon Harris to Push EU-Wide Ban on Social Media Anonymity
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 29, 2025
Ireland’s next term leading the European Union will be used to promote a new agenda: an effort to end online anonymity and make verified identity the standard across social media platforms.
Tánaiste Simon Harris said the government plans to use Ireland’s presidency to push for EU-wide rules that would require users to confirm their identities before posting or interacting online.
Speaking to Extra.ie, Harris described the plan as part of a broader attempt to defend what he called “democracy” from anonymous abuse and digital manipulation.
He said the initiative will coincide with another policy being developed by Media Minister Patrick O’Donovan, aimed at preventing children from accessing social media.
O’Donovan’s proposal, modeled on Australian restrictions, is expected to be introduced while Ireland holds the EU presidency next year.
Both ideas would involve rewriting parts of the EU’s Digital Services Act, which already governs how online platforms operate within the bloc.
Expanding it to require verified identities would mark a major shift toward government involvement in online identity systems, a move that many privacy advocates believe could expose citizens to new forms of monitoring and limit open speech.
Harris said his motivation comes from concerns about the health of public life, not personal grievance.
Harris said he believes Ireland will find allies across Europe for the initiative.
He pointed to recent statements from French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who he said have shown interest in following Australia’s lead. “If you look at the comments of Emmanuel Macron… of Keir Starmer… recently, in terms of being open to considering what Australia have done… You know this is a global conversation Ireland will and should be a part of,” he said.
Technology companies based in Ireland, many of which already face scrutiny under existing EU rules, are likely to resist further regulation.
The United States government has also expressed growing hostility toward European efforts to regulate speech on its major tech firms, recently imposing visa bans on several EU officials connected to such laws.
Despite this, Harris said Ireland does not want confrontation. “This is a conversation we want to have now. We don’t want to have it in an adversarial way. Companies require certainty too, right?” he said, emphasizing that Ireland remains committed to being a reliable home for international tech firms.
He also spoke in support of O’Donovan’s age-verification proposal, comparing it to other legal age limits already enforced in Ireland. “We have a digital age of consent in Ireland, which is 16, but it’s simply not being enforced,” he said.
From a civil liberties standpoint, mandatory identity checks could fundamentally alter the online world.
Requiring proof of identity to speak publicly risks silencing individuals who rely on anonymity for safety, including whistleblowers, activists, and those living under political pressure.
Once created, systems of digital identity are rarely dismantled and can easily be adapted to track or restrict speech.
Harris said that voluntary cooperation by technology companies could make legislation unnecessary. “These companies are technology companies. They have the ability to do more, without the need for laws,” he said, suggesting platforms could use their own tools to manage bots, algorithms, and age verification.
Drone Attack on Putin’s Residence Planned by Forces Trying to Torpedo Ukraine Peace Push: Expert
Sputnik – 29.12.2025
“They do not consider it possible to step back and allow the situation on our border region to be stabilized. Therefore, they are making gradual attempts to torpedo the negotiation process,” military analyst Alexander Stepanov told Sputnik, commenting on the attack on Putin’s residence in Novgorod region by 91 drones Sunday night.
“We’ve seen this attitude in the openly-stated positions of key EU leaders. Now, we’re seeing it in the intentions of intelligence agencies, mostly likely British, who are clearly continuing to develop plans to launch terrorist strikes on strategically significant targets, to carry out targeted terrorist attacks against high-ranking Russian military personnel, de facto transforming the war into permanent proxy-hybrid mode using the tools of state terrorism,” Stepanov, an expert from the Institute of Law and National Security at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, explained.
Naturally, these efforts serve to further “delegitimize” the Kiev regime, Stepanov said. They make it clear that Ukraine’s authorities are “war criminals and, more broadly speaking, international terrorists, who have neither the right to govern this territory nor the right to control the lives of its citizens.”
Negotiating with such actors is “impossible, and does not fit into any normative framework of international relations,” the observer stressed.
Stepanov expects a “maximum reduction” in US-Ukraine military-technical and intelligence cooperation, including for navigation and targeting systems, in the wake of Sunday’s attack.
If US statements “are backed by real will, it would be possible to remotely disable the control systems of virtually all weapons supplied through Western channels, including American ones, and to end the presence of US military specialists who, at certain stages, support the operation of both sophisticated Patriot air defense systems and long-range HIMARS tactical systems,” Stepanov said.
Same goes for Starlink, which could leave Ukraine’s military blind “within a few hours.”
As far as Russia is concerned, Sunday night’s attack on Putin’s residence will “likely entail reclassifying” those held responsible “as terrorists, subject to capture or elimination,” Stepanov believes.
US Under Secretary of State Slams UK and EU Over Online Speech Regulation, Announces Release of Files on Past Censorship Efforts
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 27, 2025
American Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers has sharply criticized British and European speech regulators for attempting to extend their laws to US-based platforms, calling it a direct challenge to the First Amendment.
Speaking during an appearance on The Liz Truss Show, Rogers said Washington intends to respond to the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom after it sought to bring the website 4chan under its jurisdiction.
She said the situation “forced” the US to defend its constitutional protections, warning that “when British regulators decree that British law applies to American speech on American sites on American soil with no connection to Britain,” the matter can no longer be ignored.
Rogers called it “a perverse blessing” that the dispute is forcing a renewed transatlantic conversation about free expression, observing that “Britain and America did develop the free speech tradition together.”
Rogers announced that the State Department will soon publish a collection of previously unreleased internal emails and documents describing earlier US government involvement in social media moderation efforts.
The release is part of what she termed a “truth and reconciliation initiative” that will include material linked to the now-defunct Global Engagement Center, which she said had coordinated with outside organizations to identify content for takedown.
That operation was “immediately dismantled” after she assumed her current post.
She argued that foreign governments have moved from cooperation to coercion in their dealings with US companies. “Europe and the UK and other governments abroad are… trying to nullify the American First Amendment by enforcing against American companies and American speakers and American soil,” Rogers said, referring to the EU’s fine against X and Ofcom’s recent enforcement campaigns.
On domestic policy, she criticized the UK’s Online Safety Act, saying that it is being sold as child protection legislation but in practice functions as a speech control measure.
“These statutes are just censoring adult political speech is not the best way to protect kids and it’s probably the worst way,” she said.
Rogers noted that under such laws, even parliamentary remarks about criminal networks could be censored if regulators deem them harmful.
Turning to Ofcom’s ongoing 4chan case, Rogers said its legal position effectively claims authority over purely American websites.
She offered a hypothetical: “I could go set up a website in my garage… about American political controversies… and Ofcom’s legal position nonetheless is that if I run afoul of British content laws, then I have to pay money for the British government.”
Rogers said she expects the US government to issue a response soon.
Throughout the interview, Rogers framed the current wave of global online regulation as an effort to suppress what she called “chaotic speech” that emerges with every major communications shift.
“People panic and they want to shove that innovation back in the bottle,” she said, warning that such attempts have “never worked.”
Her remarks mark one of the strongest rebukes yet from a senior American official toward the growing European model of compelled content moderation.
Rogers suggested that this model not only undermines open debate but also sets a precedent for governments worldwide to police political speech beyond their borders.
More: EU Launches New Push For Digital ID Age Checks and Big Tech Probe Under Digital Services Act
Moscow accuses Bloomberg of spreading ‘fake news’
RT || December 26, 2025
Bloomberg is spreading “fake news” by claiming to have inside access to Kremlin information, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
The senior diplomat criticized the news agency after it relayed what it claimed to be Moscow’s attitude toward a 20-point peace proposal presented this week by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. The story cited an anonymous source described as “a person close to the Kremlin.”
“This purported news outlet has no reliable sources close to the Kremlin. Only unreliable ones. And the wording ‘close to the Kremlin’ serves only as a cover up for fake news,” Zakharova said on Telegram.
Kiev’s proposal, which Zelensky claimed was discussed with US officials as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to resolve the ongoing conflict, envisions an 800,000-strong Ukrainian army backed by NATO members and an immediate ceasefire with the current front line frozen.
Moscow has declined to make its position public, saying sensitive diplomacy must be conducted privately. Publicizing one’s negotiation stance is “inadvisable” under the circumstances, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian presidential envoy involved in normalization talks with the US, suggested a “US/UK/EU deep-state-aligned fake media machine” is waging a pressure campaign to undermine Trump’s agenda, including on Ukraine.
Previously, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused Reuters of peddling “propaganda” about Russia after the agency alleged that a US intelligence assessment had reported that Moscow sought to “capture all of Ukraine and reclaim parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire.” Russia said the claim was false regardless of whether or not such a US document exists.
Europe’s Panic Economy: Frozen Assets, Empty Arsenals, and the Quiet Admission of Defeat
By Gerry Nolan | Ron Paul Institute | December 24, 2025
When a prime minister tells her own staff to rest because next year will be much worse, it is not gallows humor. It is not exhaustion speaking. It is a slip of the mask, the kind of remark leaders make only when the internal forecasts no longer align with the public script.
Giorgia Meloni was not addressing voters. She was addressing the state itself — the bureaucratic core tasked with executing decisions whose consequences can no longer be disguised. Her words were not about a mundane increased workload. They were about constraint. About limits. About a Europe that has crossed from crisis management into managed decline, and knows that 2026 is when the accumulated costs finally collide.
What Meloni let slip is what Europe’s elites already understand: the Western project in Ukraine has run head-first into material reality. Not Russian propaganda. Not disinformation. Not populism. Steel, munitions, energy, labor, and time. And once material reality asserts itself, legitimacy begins to drain.
The War Europe Cannot Supply
Europe can posture for war. It cannot produce for war.
Four years into a high-intensity war of attrition, the United States and Europe are confronting a truth they spent decades unlearning: you do not sustain this kind of conflict with theatrical speeches, sanctions, or abandoning diplomacy. You sustain it with shells, missiles, trained crews, repair cycles, and production rates that exceed losses — month after month, without interruption.
By 2025, the gap is no longer theoretical.
Russia is now producing artillery ammunition at a scale that Western officials themselves concede outpaces the combined output of NATO. Russian industry has shifted to continuous near-wartime production (without even being fully mobilized), with centralized procurement, simplified supply chains, and state-directed throughput. Estimates place annual Russian artillery production at several million rounds — production already flowing, not promised.
Europe, by contrast, has spent 2025 celebrating targets it cannot ever materially meet. The European Union’s flagship pledge remains two million shells per year — a goal dependent on new facilities, new contracts, and new labor that will not fully materialize within the decisive window of the war, if ever. Even the dreamed target if reached, would not put it at parity with Russian output. The United States, after emergency expansion, is projecting roughly one million shells annually once and a big if, full ramp-up is achieved. Even combined on paper, Western production struggles to match Russian output already delivered. Talk about paper tiger.
This is not a gap. It is a major tempo mismatch. Russia is producing at scale now. Europe is dreaming of rebuilding the ability to produce at scale later.
And time is the one variable that cannot be sanctioned.
Nor can the United States simply compensate for Europe’s hollowed-out capacity. Washington faces its own industrial choke points. Production of Patriot air-defense interceptors runs in the low hundreds per year while demand now spans Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and US stockpile replenishment simultaneously — a mismatch senior Pentagon officials have acknowledged cannot be resolved quickly, if ever. US naval shipbuilding tells the same story: submarine and surface-combatant programs are years behind schedule, constrained by labor shortages, aging yards, and cost overruns that push meaningful expansion into the 2030s. The assumption that America can industrially backstop Europe no longer matches reality. This is not a European problem alone; it is a Western one.
War Footing Without Factories
European leaders speak of “war footing” as if it were a political posture. In reality, it is an industrial condition and Europe does not meet it.
New artillery production lines require years to reach stable throughput. Air-defense interceptor manufacturing runs in long cycles measured in batches, not surges. Even basic inputs such as explosives remain bottlenecks, with facilities shuttered decades ago only now being reopened, some not expected to reach capacity until the late 2020s.
That date alone is an admission.
Russia, meanwhile, is already operating inside wartime tempo. Its defense sector has delivered thousands of armored vehicles, hundreds of aircraft and helicopters, and vast quantities of drones annually.
Europe’s problem is not conceptual; it is institutional. Germany’s much-vaunted Zeitenwende exposed this brutally. Tens of billions were authorized, but procurement bottlenecks, fragmented contracting, and an atrophied supplier base meant delivery lagged years behind rhetoric. France, often cited as Europe’s most capable arms producer, can manufacture more sophisticated systems — but only in boutique quantities, measured in dozens where attritional war demands thousands. Even the EU’s own ammunition acceleration initiatives expanded capacity on paper while the front consumed shells in weeks. These are not ideological failures. They are administrative and industrial ones and they compound under pressure.
The difference is structural. Western industry was optimized for shareholder efficiency and peacetime margins. Russia’s has been reorganized for endurance under pressure. NATO announces packages. Russia counts deliveries.
The €210 Billion Fantasy
This industrial reality explains why the frozen-assets saga mattered so much, and why it failed.
Europe’s leadership did not pursue the seizure of Russian sovereign assets out of legal creativity or moral clarity. It pursued it because it needed time. Time to avoid admitting that the war could not be sustained on Western industrial terms. Time to substitute finance for production.
When the attempt to seize roughly €210 billion in Russian assets collapsed on December 20th, blocked by legal risk, market consequences, and resistance led by Belgium, with Italy, Malta, Slovakia and Hungary, aligned against outright confiscation, Europe settled for a degraded substitute: a €90 billion loan to Ukraine for 2026–27, serviced by 3B in annual interest, further mortgaging Europe’s future. This was not strategy. It was triage, and further divided, an already weakened Union.
Outright confiscation would have detonated Europe’s credibility as a financial custodian. Permanent immobilization avoids the blast — but creates a slow bleed. The assets remain frozen indefinitely, a standing act of economic warfare that signals to the world that reserves held in Europe are conditional and not worth the risk. Europe chose reputational erosion over legal rupture. That choice reveals fear, not strength.
Ukraine as a Balance-Sheet War
The deeper truth is that Ukraine is no longer primarily a battlefield problem. It is a solvency problem. Washington understands this. The United States can absorb embarrassment. It cannot absorb open-ended liabilities indefinitely. An offramp is being sought — quietly, unevenly, and with rhetorical cover.
Europe cannot admit it needs one. Europe framed the war as existential, civilizational, moral. It declared compromise appeasement and negotiation surrender. In doing so, it erased its own exit ramps.
Now the costs land where no narrative can deflect them: on European budgets, European energy bills, European industry, and European political cohesion. The €90 billion loan is not solidarity. It is securitization of decline — rolling obligations forward while the productive base required to justify them continues to erode.
Meloni knows this. That is why her tone was not defiant, but weary.
Censorship as Panic Management
As material limits harden, narrative control tightens. The aggressive enforcement of the EU’s Digital Services Act is not about safety. It is about containment, in its most Orwellian form — constructing an information perimeter around an elite consensus that can no longer withstand open accounting. When citizens begin asking calmly, and then not calmly, relentlessly, what was this for?, the illusion of legitimacy collapses quickly.
This is why regulatory pressure now reaches beyond Europe’s borders, provoking transatlantic friction over jurisdiction and speech. Confident systems do not fear conversation. Fragile ones do. Censorship here is not ideology. It is insurance.
Deindustrialization: The Unspoken Betrayal
Europe did not merely sanction Russia. It sanctioned its own industrial model.
By 2025, European industry continues to pay energy costs far above those of competitors in the United States or Russia. Germany, the engine, has seen sustained contraction in energy-intensive manufacturing. Chemical, steel, fertilizer, and glass production have either shut down or relocated. Small and medium enterprises across Italy and Central Europe are failing quietly, without headlines.
This is why Europe cannot scale ammunition the way it needs to. This is why rearmament remains a promise rather than a condition. Cheap energy was not a luxury. It was the foundation. Remove it via self-sabotage (Nordstream et. al), and the structure hollows out.
China, watching all of this, holds the other half of Europe’s nightmare. It commands the deepest manufacturing base on earth without having entered wartime footing. Russia does not need China’s breadth, only its strategic depth behind it in reserve. Europe has neither.
What Meloni Actually Fears
Not hard work. Not busy schedules. She fears a 2026 in which Europe’s elites lose control of three things at once.
Money — as Ukraine’s funding becomes an EU balance-sheet problem, replacing the fantasy that “Russia will pay.”
Narrative — as censorship tightens and still fails to suppress the question echoing across the continent: what was this all for?
Alliance discipline — as Washington maneuvers for exit while Europe absorbs the cost, the risk, and the humiliation.
That is the panic. Not losing the war overnight, but losing legitimacy slowly, as reality leaks out through energy bills, shuttered factories, empty arsenals, and mortgaged futures.
Humanity at the Abyss
This is not just Europe’s crisis. It is civilizational. A system that cannot produce, cannot replenish, cannot tell the truth, and cannot retreat without collapsing credibility has reached its limits. When leaders begin preparing their own institutions for worse years ahead, they are not forecasting inconvenience. They are conceding structure.
Meloni’s remark mattered because it pierced the performance. Empires announce triumph loudly. Systems in decline lower expectations quietly, or loudly in Meloni’s case.
Europe’s leadership is lowering expectations now because it knows what the warehouses contain, what the factories cannot yet deliver, what the debt curves look like — and what the public has already begun to understand.
For most Europeans, this reckoning will not arrive as an abstract debate about strategy or supply chains. It will arrive as a far simpler realization: this was never a war they consented to. It was not fought to defend their homes, their prosperity, or their future. It was fought for greed for Empire, and paid for with their living standards, their industry, and their children’s future.
They were told it was existential. They were told there was no alternative. They were told sacrifice was virtue.
Yet what Europeans want is not endless mobilization or permanent austerity. They want peace. They want stability. They want the quiet dignity of prosperity — affordable energy, functioning industry, and a future that is not mortgaged to conflicts they did not consent to.
And when that truth settles, when the fear recedes and the spell breaks, the question Europeans will ask will not be technical, ideological, or rhetorical.
It will be human. Why were we forced to sacrifice everything for a war we never agreed to and told there was no peace worth pursuing? And this is what keeps Meloni up at night.
Gerry Nolan is a political analyst, writer, and strategist focused on geopolitics, security affairs, and the structural dynamics of global power. He is the founder and editor of The Islander, an independent media platform examining war, diplomacy, economic statecraft, and the accelerating shift toward a multipolar world.
How reporting facts can now land you in jail for 14 years as a terrorist
By Jonathan Cook – December 22, 2025
Starmer’s government has set the most dangerous of precedents: it can now outlaw any political group it chooses as a terrorist organisation – and thereby make it impossible to defend it.
The moment the British government began proscribing political movements as terrorist organisations, rather than just militant groups, it was inevitable that saying factual things, making truthful statements, would become a crime.
And lo behold, here we are.
The Terrorism Act 2000 has a series of provisions that make it difficult to voice or show any kind of support for an organisation proscribed under the legislation, whether it is writing an article or wearing a T-shirt.
Recent attention has focused on Section 13, which is being used to hound thousands of mostly elderly people who have held signs saying: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” They now face a terrorism conviction and up to six months in jail.
But an amendment introduced in 2019 to Section 12 of the Act has been largely overlooked, even though it is even more repressive. It makes it a terrorism offence for a person to express “an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation” and in doing so be “reckless” about whether anyone else might be “encouraged to support” the organisation.
It is hard to believe this clause was not inserted specifically to target the watchdog professions: journalists, human rights groups and lawyers. They now face up to 14 years in jail for contravening this provision.
When it was introduced, six years ago, Section 12 made it impossible to write or speak in ways that might encourage support for groups whose central aim was using violence against people to achieve their aims.
The law effectively required journalists and others to adopt a blanket condemnatory approach to proscribed militant groups. That had its own drawbacks. It made it difficult, and possibly a terrorist offence, to discuss or analyse these organisations and their goals in relation to international law, which, for example, allows armed resistance – violence – against an occupying army.
But these problems have grown exponentially since the Conservatives proscribed Hamas’ political wing in 2021 and the government of Keir Starmer proscribed Palestine Action in 2025, the first time in British history a direction-action group targeting property had been declared a terrorist group.
Now journalists, human rights activists and lawyers face a legal minefield every time they try to talk about the Gaza genocide, the trials of people accused of belonging to Palestine Action, or the hunger strikes of those on remand over attacks on weapons factories supplying killer drones to Israel.
Why? Because saying truthful things about any of these matters – if they could lead a reader or listener to take a more favourable view of Palestine Action or the political wing of Hamas – are now a terrorist offence. Any journalist, human rights activist or lawyer making factual observations risks 14 years behind bars.
Few seem to have understood quite what impact this is having on public coverage of these major issues.
A month and a half into the hunger strike by eight members of Palestine Action – the point at which people are likely to start dying – the BBC News at Ten finally broke its silence on the matter. That was despite the hunger strike being the largest in UK history in nearly half a century.
There are clear political reasons why the BBC had avoided this topic for so long. It prefers not to deal with matters that directly confront the legitimacy of the government, which funds it. The BBC is effectively the British state broadcaster.
But in a naturally spineless organisation like the BBC, the legal consequences have clearly weighed heavily too. In a recent short segment on the hunger strike, BBC correspondent Dominic Casciani carefully hedged his words and admitted to facing legal difficulties reporting on the strike.
In these circumstances, news organisations make one of two choices. They simply ignore factual things because it is legally too dangerous to speak truthfully about them. Or they lie about factual things because it is legally safe – and politically opportune – to speak untruthfully about them.
The so-called “liberal” parts of the media, including the BBC, tend to opt for the former; the red-tops usually opt for the latter.
The government itself is taking full advantage of this lacuna in reporting, injecting its own self-serving deceptions into the coverage, knowing that there will be – can be – no meaningful pushback.
Take just one example. The government has proscribed Palestine Action on the grounds that it is a terrorist organisation. It has justified its decision by implying, without producing a shred of evidence, that the group is funded by Iran, and that its real agenda is not just criminal damage against arms factories but against individuals.
Any effort to counter this government disinformation, by definition, violates Section 12 of the Terrorism Act and risks 14 years’ imprisonment.
Were I to conduct an investigation, for example, definitively showing that Palestine Action was not funded by Iran – proving that the government was lying – it would be a terror offence to publish that truthful information. Why? Because it would almost certainly “encourage support” for Palestine Action. There is no fact or truth exemption in the legislation.
Similarly, the government has suggested that the current “Filton Trial” – which includes discussions of events in which a police officer was injured during a struggle over the sledgehammers being used to destroy the Elbit factory’s weapons-producing machinery – demonstrates that Palestine Action was not just targeting property but individuals too.
Were I to try to make the case that the alleged actions of one individual – only one person is charged with assault – prove nothing about the aims of the organisation as a whole, I would be risking a terrorism conviction and 14 years’ imprisonment. Which is one, very strong reason not to make such an argument.
But in the absence of such arguments, the reality is that social media is awash with posts from people echoing outrageous official disinformation. This spreads unchallenged because to challenge it is now cast as a terrorism offence.
In truth, since proscription, any statements about the political aims of a deeply political organisation like Palestine Action occupy a grey area of the law.
Is it a terrorism offence to point out the fact, as I have done above, that Palestine Action targeted Elbit factories that send killer drones to Israel for use in Gaza. In doing so, may I have “recklessly” encouraged you to support Palestine Action?
Can I express any kind of positive view about the hunger strikers or their actions without violating the law?
The truth is that the law’s greyness is its very point. It maximises the chilling effect on those who are supposed to serve as the public’s watchdogs on power: journalists, human rights groups, lawyers.
It allows the government – through compliant police forces – to selectively pick off those dissenting individuals it doesn’t like, those without institutional backing, to make examples of them. This is not conjecture. It is already happening.
The abuse of the Terrorism Act discourages research, analysis and critical thinking. It forces all journalists, human rights activists and lawyers to become lapdogs of the government. It creates a void into which the government can spin events to its own advantage, in which it can avoid accountability and in which it can punish those who dissent. It is the very antithesis of democratic behaviour.
This ought to appall anyone who cares about the truth, about public debate, about scrutiny. Because they have all been thrown out of the window.
And in proscribing Palestine Action, the government has set the most dangerous of precedents: it can outlaw any political group it chooses as a terrorist organisation and thereby make it impossible to defend that group.
That is what authoritarian governments do. That is exactly where Britain is now.
US Department of State Discloses Names of 5 Europeans Sanctioned for Censorship Against US
Sputnik – 24.12.2025
US Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers has disclosed the list of five Europeans who have been sanctioned by Washington for the extraterritorial censorship of Americans.
The list includes Thierry Breton, who is described as a mastermind of the Digital Services Act (DSA); Imran Ahmed, who headed the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) that called for deplatforming US anti-vaxxers, including now Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy; Clare Melford, who leads the Global Disinformation Index (GDI); Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, the founder of German organization HateAid that was allegedly created to “counter conservative groups” and is an official censor under the DSA; and Josephine Ballon, the co-leader of HateAid.
“These sanctions are visa-related. We aren’t invoking severe Magnitsky-style financial measures, but our message is clear: if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil,” Rogers wrote on X.
The introduction of sanctions against five Europeans was announced by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The secretary said that “these radical activists and weaponized NGOs” had aided censorship crackdowns by foreign states, targeting American speakers and American companies.
Failed Diplomacy & Collapse of Ukraine
Glenn Diesen | December 22, 2025
Larry Johnson is a former intelligence analyst at the CIA who also worked at the US State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism. Johnson outlines why the negotiations are failing and what the pending collapse of Ukraine will entail.
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Australia evaluates purchase of Israeli AI-powered weapons used in Gaza: Report
The Cradle | December 22, 2025
Australia’s Department of Defense has begun a live assessment of Israeli-made, “combat-proven” AI-powered weaponry tested during Israel’s genocide in Gaza, according to a report by Australia Declassified published on 21 December.
The Australian Defence Force is currently trialing the SMASH 3000 AI-assisted targeting system, produced by Israeli arms firm Smartshooter Ltd., and openly advertised as battle-tested, a label arms manufacturers use to demand a higher price for their product.
Under a four-month contract worth approximately $495,910.49, signed for equipment provision and training, the ADF has acquired multiple units of the rifle-mounted electro-optical fire control system and has been evaluating its operational suitability for Australian forces since 25 August, with the trial scheduled to conclude on 25 December.
The SMASH 3000 uses artificial intelligence to detect, track, and lock onto targets, dramatically increasing hit probability for existing firearms, and while it is marketed primarily as a counter-drone system, it is also capable of engaging ground targets with lethal effect.
Smartshooter openly advertises the system as “combat-proven,” explicitly citing its deployment by Israeli armed forces in Gaza, and has repeatedly emphasized that its battlefield use forms a core part of its commercial appeal.
Despite the system’s documented use by Israel during its genocidal war on Gaza, Canberra has proceeded with the evaluation, with no indication that Tel Aviv’s conduct in the besieged enclave has altered Australia’s engagement with the Israeli arms industry.
Smartshooter claims the SMASH 3000 is already operational with armed forces in Europe, the UK, and the US, framing the Australian trial as part of a broader expansion strategy.
On 11 December, Smartshooter’s Australia and New Zealand director Lachlan Mercer said the delivery marked a “strategic breakthrough” after extensive ADF evaluation, pointing to possible later purchases and wider uptake across Australian defense programs.
The Israeli firm is already expanding its Asia-Pacific presence, having supplied India in 2020, with hundreds more units reportedly destined for another Asian state. Singapore is the only other regional country publicly known to have assessed the system.
UK doctor arrested under pressure from Israel lobby over ‘anti-genocide posts’
Press TV – December 21, 2025
British police have arrested a senior doctor under pressure from pro-Israel lobby groups over social media posts condemning the regime’s genocide against Palestinians.
Ellen Kriesels, a consultant paediatrician with more than 15 years of service at London’s Whittington Hospital, was arrested at her home on Saturday by officers from the Metropolitan Police.
According to a colleague of Kriesels, she was arrested in front of her children.
“The Israeli lobby began hunting her in September because of her sign at a national Palestine demonstration,” Doctor Rahmeh Aladwan wrote in a post on X.
“Britain is doing this to our NHS doctors for Israel. Britain is occupied,” she added.
Kriesels was first targeted after appearing at a pro-Palestine protest holding a placard opposing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Within days, she was suspended from Whittington Hospital.
She was subsequently reported to the General Medical Council (GMC) and later to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), which suspended her medical license for nine months.
Healthcare workers’ group HCWs Against Censorship also condemned Kriesels’ arrest, which it said was followed by a coordinated campaign against her after she participated in a national pro-Palestine demonstration in September.
“The Israeli lobby strikes again,” the group said, adding that police acted following complaints from pro-Israel lobbying organisations, including UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) and the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).
The arrest was carried out “on behalf of a foreign-aligned lobby,” the group said, describing it as “an absolute outrage.”
“This is what Britain now does to NHS doctors for speaking about Palestine,” one supporter said. “It is repression, plain and simple.”
No formal charges have been publicly confirmed yet. The Metropolitan Police have not released details of the specific offences under investigation.
In a post on X dated September 17, Kriesels criticized the NHS for reporting her to the police over her “anti-genocide posts and placards.”
“Leaving the front door ajar so the police don’t have to use force when they come and get me,” she wrote at the time.
Her arrest comes as British police have threatened a renewed crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, warning they will arrest anyone chanting the phrase “globalize the intifada” or displaying it on placards.
Intifada, an Arabic word meaning uprising, is used by Palestinians to describe resistance to Israel’s occupation of their land.
The Metropolitan Police made their first arrests linked to the chant at a pro-Palestine demonstration in London on Sunday, claiming the slogan constitutes “a call for violence against Jewish people.”
Pro-Israel lobby groups are pressing for a harsher crackdown on demonstrations and have even suggested that chants such as “Free, free Palestine” inherently incite violence.
Pro-Palestinian protests have surged across London over the past two years, amid Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and in response to the UK government’s military and diplomatic support for Israel.
The Empire of Lies: How the BBC Strangles Free Speech Under the Mask of Objectivity and Why Trump is Right to Sue
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – December 21, 2025
Against the backdrop of hysteria over “repressions in Russia,” Great Britain itself has long since transformed into a police state, where dissent is stigmatized and truth is replaced by propaganda. Putin’s response has exposed the double standards of Western media.
The Smokescreen of the “Free Press”
On December 19, 2025, Vladimir Putin gave comprehensive and calm answers in a live broadcast to provocative questions from BBC journalist Stephen Rosenberg. Instead of honestly analyzing his arguments about foreign agents, security, and sovereignty, Western media, and the BBC itself first and foremost, prepared another portion of distortions under headlines like “Putin Denies the Obvious.” This moment is the perfect prism through which to discern the essence of the phenomenon. While the missionaries from Northgold Street teach the whole world about “democracy” and “free journalism,” the British Isles themselves are rapidly sinking into the quagmire of ideological conformity and censorship. The BBC Corporation, once a symbol of respectability, has become the epitome of systemic bias and an industry for manufacturing narratives. It is no coincidence that Donald Trump, whom this media machine has vilified for years, has filed a lawsuit against it—this is a logical act of self-defense against organized lies.
Hypocrisy as Editorial Policy. “Repressions” There and Censorship Here
Putin’s answer on the issue of “foreign agents” was crystal clear: the law is a copy of the American FARA, requiring only transparency of foreign funding, not criminal prosecution for opinion. This thesis reveals a monstrous contrast with the realities of Great Britain itself, where freedom of speech has become a fiction, covered by bureaucratic and ideological terror.
Thought Police in Action: From Tweets to Kitchen Conversations. In Russia, it’s registration for NGOs; in Britain, it’s a criminal charge for an ordinary citizen. The Online Safety Bill is nothing other than an architecture of preemptive censorship. UK police regularly detain people for “offensive” or “alarming” posts on social media. There are known cases of a man being interrogated for a sarcastic tweet about transgender people, and a pensioner for a “racist” comment about migration on Facebook. These are not isolated excesses; this is the system. Where is the freedom of speech that the BBC so fiercely defends in its reports about Russia?
De Facto “Foreign Agents”: Stigmatization Instead of Discussion. The BBC has appropriated for itself the right to define the boundaries of permissible discourse. Any criticism that goes beyond these boundaries, be it doubts about the radical environmental agenda, questions about transhumanism, or analysis of the problems of mass migration, is instantly branded by the corporation as “marginal,” “extremist,” or “propagandistic.” Independent analysts, scientists, and journalists who disagree with the general line are systematically pushed out of the airwaves and public sphere under the convenient pretext of “fighting disinformation.” That is, the BBC itself creates “disinformation,” defines it, and fights it, eliminating competitors. This is a classic monopoly on truth.
Trump’s Lawsuit is an Anatomy of the BBC’s Lies. From the “Steele Dossier” to the Myths of “Russiagate”
Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the BBC is not the gesture of an offended politician, but a legal exposure of the festering wound of systemic malfeasance. Trump accuses the corporation of “deliberate and malicious defamation,” and history provides him with ample evidence.
The “Steele Dossier” — A Fake as a Journalistic Standard. In 2016-2017, the BBC, like many Western media outlets, zealously circulated sensational allegations from an unverified dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton’s political allies. Citing “high-ranking sources,” the BBC built a narrative for months about “Trump’s ties to Moscow,” presenting unconfirmed gossip as facts. Subsequent FBI and US Department of Justice investigations proved the dossier was fabricated, its key “evidence” unsubstantiated. No apologies or serious editorial conclusions ever came from the BBC. The corporation simply moved on to the next topic, leaving a poisoned residue of lies in the minds of millions of viewers.
Salisbury — Verdict Instead of Investigation. The story of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal became a textbook example of how the BBC replaces journalistic investigation with state propaganda. From the first minutes, the corporation abandoned the basic principle—presumption of innocence. The airwaves carried not questions of “who and why?” but assertions: “Russia committed an act of war on British soil.” Alternative versions, inconsistencies in the official story (for example, the complete absence of traces of the “Novichok” poison in the places the Skripals allegedly were), expert opinions questioning the British version—all of this was either hushed up or ridiculed in specially designated “disinformation” segments. The BBC brazenly turned an unverified accusation into an indisputable dogma, denying viewers the right to information.
The Myth of Trump’s “Russian Links,” Which Lasted for Years. Throughout Trump’s presidency, the BBC peremptorily supported the obsessive narrative of his “secret collusion” with the Kremlin. This “link” was the central theme of thousands of reports, analytical programs, and articles. The final report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller (2019) found no evidence of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. For an objective media outlet, this would have been a reason for a deep review of its own editorial policy. For the BBC—merely a reason to change rhetoric: if not “collusion,” then “interference” that Trump “didn’t condemn enough.” The goal was not to inform but to shape the desired, pre-set perception of Trump as illegitimate and hostile.
Censorship in the Name of Security: British Total Control vs. Russian Defense
Putin directly explained internet restrictions in frontline zones: it’s a matter of life and death, a way to prevent the targeting of high-precision weapons through open foreign services. This is a military necessity in conditions of real conflict.
Double Standard as a Principle. And what does peaceful, democratic Great Britain do? Under the same pretext of “national security,” one of the world’s most total surveillance mechanisms over its own citizens has been created here. The Investigatory Powers Act (or “Snoopers’ Charter”) allows intelligence agencies to mass-collect the browsing history, calls, and message metadata of every resident without any court warrant. In partnership with the government, major IT companies and social networks engage in preemptive content censorship, removing viewpoints inconvenient to the authorities under vague labels like “hate propaganda” or “disinformation.” The difference is fundamental: Russia is protecting its physical borders from real military threats in the context of the Special Military Operation. The British state, with the tacit approval and participation of the BBC, actively and undemocratically protects the ideological boundaries of the ruling establishment from dissent, passing it off as “concern for security” and “protection of democracy.”
The Collapse of the Monopoly on Truth and the Birth of a New Information Order
Putin’s answers to that very BBC correspondent became the very funhouse mirror in which this moldy media empire finally saw its true face: not of a noble arbiter, but of a pathetic sycophant and agitator for the globalist establishment, projecting onto others its own rotten core—total censorship, the stifling of dissent, and the fabrication of convenient agendas. Trump’s lawsuit is not the beginning, but a logical final act. It is a shameful verdict for an organization that, with hypocritical, sanctimonious zeal, searched for “tyranny” in far-off lands, blinded by its own arrogance, until it itself turned into the main strangler of free thought at home, on those very blessed islands ruled by arrogant mandarins from Whitehall, detached from reality, and their lackeys at the BBC.
Readers and viewers around the world have long been sick of this hypocritical sham. They are fleeing these dreary, pompous preachers of the “only correct” truth to vibrant alternatives, live streams, and independent voices, bypassing these filtered sewer channels of the old, thoroughly rotten guard.
The world no longer believes in the sacred cow of the “public broadcaster” BBC, whose editorial policy has long been groveling low and basely before the powers that be. All the world’s vileness is committed not by the powers that be, but by the most cowardly dregs, in this case, “the dregs of journalism.” They cannot win in an open fight, and therefore always act with rat-like methods, basely and brazenly distorting obvious facts. Cowards from journalism always rely on baseness and prefer to strike from behind, like rats. This word is the best characterization of the BBC’s current state.
The era when a bunch of pompous dandies from the Thames could arrogantly tell the world what to think has irrevocably sunk into oblivion. And in this lies the best slap in the face to their ossified arrogance and a real breath of freedom for the word in the 21st century.
Victor Mikhin, Writer, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Expert on Middle Eastern Countries
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… As Netanyahu meets with Trump to push new lies to justify a new war in Iran, it is well worth remembering Israel’s previous role in pushing lies and pushing for the war in Iraq. – Read full article
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