Monthly Archives: December 2025

Europe doesn’t realize that it’s no longer a geopolitical big dog. From J. Ricardo Martins at zerohedge.com:

Authored by J.Ricardo Martins via journal-neo.su,

Europe’s long-standing security framework is undergoing profound strain, increasingly overshadowed by economic instruments that shape geopolitical influence.

This analysis examines how geoeconomic logics are reshaping Europe’s strategic posture and challenging the foundations of its traditional security order.

1. The Unraveling: How Europe Lost Control of Its Own Security Architecture

The photograph of Steve Witkoff with Vladimir Putin in Moscow is not merely another episode in the long chronicle of American informal diplomacy. It is a symbol of something far more consequential: the definitive erosion of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture that has anchored Europe since 1945. Europe now finds itself a spectator to a negotiation that directly concerns its future but in which it has no meaningful voice.

For decades, European leaders assumed that their security environment was guaranteed through three pillars: American military supremacy, NATO cohesion, and a Russia that could be simultaneously contained and marginalised. The war in Ukraine temporarily sustained this illusion. The European Union interpreted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as validation of the post-1991 Atlantic order, proof that Europe needed more NATO, more American leadership, more defence spending, and more ideological alignment with Washington.

Europe’s tragedy is not that it is being excluded from the negotiations shaping its own future, but that it does not yet fully grasp the depth of its exclusion

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Canada has become a kleptocracy. From Elizabeth Nickson at elizabethnickson.substack.com:

When you build a politics of envy, thievery and lies are your currency.

They hate. They hate hard. They hate Americans, they hate men, they hate competence, they hate white people, they hate the oil industry, they hate developers, and they hate traditional Canadians, especially rural Canadians. As a country we have descended into a morass of hatred, and our entire politics is “making right” past harms that we have invented.

First let me say that because of the Substack business model, we now have an even dozen good journalists working in Canada and they are changing things fast. We have a chance because of them.

Also because of Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta and separation rumblings in Saskatchewan. In British Columbia, a new political party has risen that is ringing all the alarm bells of the socialist goons who stole the last provincial election.

We have a chance because of Sam Cooper. Cooper writes The Bureau. Because of his work, we know how deeply corrupt our banks and immigration system are, catering to Mexican, Venezuelan cartels and all the Asian Triads. We know fentanyl factories have replaced sawmills and mines in British Columbia, and we know our casinos and real estate are used to launder much of the drug money in North America.

Still, still, the mainstream of the culture is filled with the politics of envy and fabrication of harm. Trudeau spent $200 billion we don’t have on climate change mitigation which did not move any “carbon” needle at all, and the government spent another few hundred million on indigenous teams looking for actual bodies and paying off indigenous who fabricated those deaths. Indigenous funding, which receives NO auditing rose from $10 billion to $60 billion in ten years. That money vanished. The fiction tore around the world, stating that Catholic nuns were killing indigenous kids and burying them in mass graves, to the point that even the Chinese, who killed 68 million of their own citizens in state sponsored murder, were scolding us.

No body has been found. Not one child is missing from any census or band record keeping or Church school record.

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h/t el gato malo

So far, the government’s release of Epstein materials has not answered Donald Jeffries’ questions or assuaged his doubts. From Jeffries at donaldjeffries.substack.com:

Move along, there’s nothing else to see

Note: Many thanks to Peter Secosh for much of this information. He has helped me immensely with his incomparable research skills.

Our Congress, which is noted for honestly representing the interests of the general, unwashed, riffraff public, has forced the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. You know, the ones that Donald Trump called a “Democrat hoax.” The ones that Kash Patel and Pam Bondi said didn’t exist. Thank goodness they exist again.

First, we were treated to intriguing photos of the world’s only teacher without a college degree, in the company of Bill Gates. And Woody Allen. And Noam Chomsky. And lots of Bill Clinton. There was also Donald Trump, accompanied by what looked to be a very young girl, perhaps the same very young girl photographed with Bill Clinton. Strangely enough, there were photos of Epstein with Steve Bannon. Supposedly, Bannon interviewed Epstein extensively, but has curiously never released that to the public. Really, everyone who is anyone was photographed with this kind and humble sex trafficker/blackmailer. Walter Cronkite- the voice of the owl for decades at Bohemian Grove. Jimmy Buffet. Woody Allen, who infamously married his own stepdaughter. Michael Jackson, indicating perhaps there was an underage boys’ stable as well on Lolita Island. Mick Jagger, looking morose next to Ghislaine Maxwell. Couldn’t all those celebrities get underage girls on their own?

Then the documents started coming out. The redactions were hilarious. It was like J. Edgar Hoover and James Jesus Angleton were back in power again, responding to FOIA requests with a bunch of black lines. One of those files without many redactions revealed that Jeffrey Epstein, the non-Irish math teacher turned billionaire, was a bit of a racist. It seems that he preferred to traffic underage White girls. He was quoted as saying, “Why are you bringing me a dark girl?” Now, raping underage girls is one thing, but being selective about the race of your victims is a far more serious offense in our “Woke” society. How are they ever going to make a movie about this, without a lot of diversity? Seriously, some of the documents consist of entirely redacted text. Is the claim “national security” here? Why would anything having to do with the actions of a vile sex trafficker be classified? I mean, are you trying to say that our leaders have a vested interest in covering this up? Think about the children!

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There are some games where you place your bets, take your chances, and if you get cheated, too bad. From Jacob Hornberger at fff.org:

Among the many rationalizations that the Trump administration is using to initiate massive force and violence against the Venezuelan people is that the Venezuelan government nationalized American oil interests many years ago. The notion is that since “they stole our oil” several decades ago, it is entirely proper, U.S. officials say, for the U.S. government to retaliate against Venezuela, including, presumably, getting back the oil they supposedly “stole from us.”

But contrary to what many Americans now have convinced themselves is true, Venezuela never stole “our oil,” especially if one is referring to you and me and most other American citizens with the use of the possessive pronoun “our.” That’s because neither you nor I or the vast majority of other Americans ever owned Venezuelan oil.

For that matter, the U.S. government didn’t own any Venezuelan oil either. It was U.S. oil companies that were granted concessions from the Venezuelan government near the beginning of the 20th century to extract oil from Venezuela in return for payment of concession fees to the Venezuelan government.

The situation was similar to what happens when an oil company enters into a lease contract with a private landowner here in the United States. The oil company pays the landowner a bonus to sign the lease. If it later strikes oil, the oil company pays royalties to the landowner.

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“(And while some readers may give nary a rat’s backside about the Land of 11,482 Lakes, bureaucratic malfeasance isn’t a tundra-specific problem—it’s a preview of what happens anywhere questionable politics meets unlimited funding.)” From Jenna McCarthy at jennasside.rocks:

This week’s political weather brought to you by an intrepid 23-year-old YouTuber

I hope everyone had a blessed, joyous Christmas filled with dear family, close friends, delicious food, and an embarrassment of excess. Thanks for your patience while I enjoyed my favorite people under one roof and a desperately needed media fast. This week will be a short one also—apologies in advance—but for now I’m back, caffeinated, and at your service.

Yes, it was 80 degrees on Christmas here. We managed. 😉

Over the weekend, while normal people were waiting in two-hour lines to return the Abercrombie & Fitch Christmas sweaters we they somehow accidentally bought twice after briefly blacking out during a “40% off ends tonight” shopping spree, the internet was very busy blowing up over a documentary by an independent YouTuber I’d never even heard of until my group chat exploded. In the 42-minute flick, Nick Shirley exposed the latest public-assistance fraud in Minnesota—this time, seemingly bottomless piles of taxpayer dollars that were paid out to Somali childcare centers that claimed to be operating at full capacity—but in reality, didn’t actually exist.

What the 23-year-old self-described “watchdog” found, according to publicly available data cross-referenced with his own footage, was a constellation of providers collecting tens of millions in public funds while appearing—on a random weekday during normal business hours—to be closed, vacant, unmarked, or operating at a level best described as theoretical.

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And you’ve still got Trumpists saying it was a travesty that he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize. From Thomas Knapp at antiwar.com:

On December 17, surrounded by festive holiday decorations, US president Donald Trump delivered an upbeat — one might even say manic — address to the nation, preempting — and enraging fans of — network TV shows such as Survivor, The Floor, and Christmas in Nashville.

While many expected something weighty (perhaps announcement of further military escalation versus Venezuela), what they got was laundry list of Trump’s “accomplishments” since his inauguration in January.

Most of those “accomplishments” — ruinous tariffs on American consumers, immoral and economically damaging immigration raids, etc. — were things we already knew about from watching our bank balances draw inexorably down.

One, however, stood out to me as the most risible. “For the first time in 3,000 years,” Trump said, he’s brought “peace to the Middle East.”

He said that, with as close to a straight face as he ever shows, hours after saluting the flag-draped caskets of two US National Guard members and a civilian interpreter killed in Syria the previous week.

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“And Netanyahu might also be selling a radical new idea that he is promoting which will involve the posting of armed paramilitaries trained and commanded by Israel in various places in the world where there are large Jewish communities.” It can’t happen here? Trump’s in Israel’s pocket and the U.S.’s Jewish population is about the same as Israel’s. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

As has been reported, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will yet again be in Washington on Monday December 29^th. It is a visit that initial media reports claimed had been requested by Trump, which would underline the value of the relationship to the US president. Nevertheless, there have also been some suggestions that Netanyahu, working through his Embassy in Washington and employing the considerable resources of the domestic US Israel Lobby, might have been the real force behind the fifth such meeting in Washington this year plus an additional meeting on October 13^th in Israel to celebrate the non-ceasefire with Gaza which was being promoted as some kind of victory.

To look at it all another way, both Trump and Netanyahu have somewhat clashing viewpoints that they will likely be promoting when the two men finally sit down and talk. Trump, who set up a ceasefire that is 90% fake, giving Israel a free hand which it has used to kill more Gazans while also taking de facto control of most of historic Gaza through expansion of its “yellow line” security zone, will seek to sustain the fraud by convincing Israel to reign in its aggression just enough to allow the so-called “Trump Peace Plan” to proceed to its next phase. That will give Trump a new property to name after himself in reconstructed Gaza and will also strengthen his claim on the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize which he clearly so strongly desires and it will also mute criticism of his foreign policy that is increasingly coming primarily from within the younger ranks of MAGA itself.

Netanyahu, who has made clear that there will be no Palestinian entity that has actual sovereignty will be willing to play the game up to a point, but he will quite possibly be demanding his own quid pro quo, which will be a joint attack on Iran. Netanyahu’s argument will likely center on the Iranian acquisition as well as independent development of a superior missile inventory which has shifted the balance of forces in the Middle East. Netanyahu is not likely to raise the claimed “threat” posed by Iran’s alleged secret nuclear weapons development as Trump continues to insist that the US attack on Iran in June “obliterated” the nuclear program.

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Is the U.S. headed for a civil war? A war of secession? From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

International Man: What do you see as the single most important thing that people should prepare for in 2026?

Doug Casey: Strauss and Howe asked that question in their book, The Fourth Turning. We’re at a major turning point in the U.S.

I’ve felt for years that the U.S. was heading toward something like a civil war. It could be as serious as the unpleasantness of the 1860s, just different. The red people and the blue people in the U.S. really dislike each other; they can’t even talk to each other. When things get to that stage, things are typically solved by force; I expect that’s what’s going to happen. Very likely during the next three years, while Trump is still in office. He’s the perfect catalyst.

It’s going to be exacerbated by the long-term migration trends. If we look 100 years down the road, it’s pretty clear that with modern travel and communications technologies, the migration of people from poor countries to rich countries all around the world will accelerate. Eventually, the U.S. won’t even exist in its present form. Of course, that’s true of every country. The colors of the map on the wall have been running since Day One.

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The pharmaceutical companies are looking for one more payday from seniors before they go. In many instances, the payday hastens seniors’ deaths. From Michael Snyder at theeconomiccollapseblog.com:

So many seniors that were once so full of life are now just shadows of their former selves.  It can be really easy to assume that they are “just getting old” and that nothing unusual is happening to them.  But the truth is that in so many cases the reason why America’s seniors are shutting down is because they are simply being overmedicated.  Our entire medical system has been designed to push pills, and so when our seniors seek medical help that is usually the solution that they are offered.  As you will see below, the proportion of our seniors that are on at least 8 pharmaceutical drugs is truly alarming.  Of course those that consume pharmaceutical drug cocktails on a daily basis for an extended period of time are quite likely to experience very serious consequences.

Most people don’t realize that modern terms such as “pharmacy” and “pharmaceutical” originally come from the Greek word “pharmakeia”…

The word “pharmacy” has a fascinating origin story that’s as complex as the practice itself.

It comes from the Greek word “pharmakeia”, which referred to “the practice of the druggist”. But here is the twist: “phármakon”, the root of the term, was a double-edged sword – it meant a plant or herb that could be used for either healing or harmful purposes, blurring the line between medicine and poison.

No society in the entire history of the planet has taken “pharmakeia” to the extremes that we have.

We are the most drugged nation that the world has ever seen, and this is particularly true for our seniors.

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