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The Authoritarian Stack – How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next

[Superb graphics on original]

The Authoritarian Stack
A project led by Prof. Francesca Bria with xof-research.org, 12 December 2025. https://www.authoritarian-stack.info/

Research and editorial team: Francesca Bria, José Bautista
Data analysis: Autonomy Institute
Map development and design: xof-research.org
Web development: José Núñez
Supported by: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
Funded by: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Future of Work

The Contract That Changed Everything

In late July 2025, deep within the Pentagon’s bureaucratic machinery, the U.S. Army quietly signed away a piece of its sovereignty.

A ten-billion-dollar contract with Palantir Technologies—one of the largest in the Department of Defense’s history—was framed as a move toward “efficiency.”

It consolidated seventy-five procurement agreements into a single contract.

A strategic handover of core military functions to a private company whose founder, Peter Thiel, has declared that “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible.”

The Authoritarian Tech Network:
The Kingmakers

J.D. Vance, propelled to the vice-presidency by $15 million from Peter Thiel, became the face of tech-right governance. Behind him, Thiel’s network moved into the machinery of the state.

Under the banner of “patriotic tech“, this new bloc is building the infrastructure of control—clouds, AI, finance, drones, satellites—an integrated system we call the Authoritarian Stack. It is faster, ideological, and fully privatized: a regime where corporate boards, not public law, set the rules.

Our investigation shows how these firms now operate as state-like powers—writing the rules, winning the tenders, and exporting their model to Europe, where it poses a direct challenge to democratic governance.

Silicon Valley isn’t building apps anymore.
It’s building empires.

State Capture: Personnel Pipeline

To understand why this capture is happening so rapidly, follow the personnel. The revolving door no longer spins between government and industry—it locks them together into a new architecture of power.

Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps

This goes further—commissioning Silicon Valley executives directly into military ranks. In June 2025, four tech executives were sworn in as lieutenant colonels:
The line between contractor and commander has been erased.

The Pipeline Made Visible

Unlike old authoritarianism built on fear and force, this new system rules through code, capital, and infrastructure — making resistance feel architecturally impossible.

It’s a self-reinforcing loop:
Ideology fuels venture capital → capital captures the state → the state feeds the same private systems that built it. A new model of power — privatized sovereignty.

Each layer reinforces the others. Ideology justifies investment. Investment captures state power. State power secures contracts. Contracts build infrastructure. Infrastructure becomes indispensable. Indispensability generates returns. Returns fund more ideology.

The Capital Machine: Financial Flows — From Taxpayers to Venture Capital

Follow the Money

Funding

Government

Tech Companies

Venture Capital

Founders Fund, Thiel’s $17 billion flagship, led Anduril’s $1 billion round at a $30.5 billion valuation. It was the first institutional investor in both Palantir and SpaceX. Palantir’s quarterly revenue now exceeds $1 billion—up 53 percent in government contracts. 1789 Capital epitomizes dynasty.

Founded by Thiel’s confidants and joined by Donald Trump Jr., it grew from $150 million to over $1 billion. It channels tens of millions into Musk’s empire—SpaceX for orbital dominance, xAI for military AI. 

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), through its “American Dynamism” fund, backs defense tech and what it calls builders of the American state. Andreessen rallied Silicon Valley’s billionaire class to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Smaller giants like 8VC and General Catalyst reinforce the pattern. 8VC poured $450 million into Anduril; General Catalyst led a $1.48 billion round.

The Stack: Five Domains of Privatized Sovereignty

Critical state infrastructures are being privatized across five domains—data, defense, space, energy, and money—the foundations of democratic power. These domains form the architecture of privatized sovereignty: a technological regime where power flows through laws, infrastructure and automated platforms.

Crypto Sovereignty

The Nuclear AI Complex

SpaceX: Orbital Infrastructure

Anduril: Autonomous Warfare

Palantir: The Operating System of Government

Privatizing the state’s data and decision making.

Systems

  • Gotham (intelligence)
  • Foundry (DOGE budget automation)
  • ImmigrationOS (ICE tracking)
  • NHS Federated Data Platform

Contracts

ICE Immigration Platform (2025)

$10 B U.S. Army Enterprise Agreement

Europe’s Deepening Trap

y mid-2025, its reverberations were already felt across Europe. In Rome, Italian defense officials moved to integrate Elon Musk’s Starlink into military communications. In Berlin, Rheinmetall and Anduril expanded their joint venture to deploy autonomous drone swarms for NATO. The German variants of its drones still run on Californian code. Musk livestreams with the AfD’s Alice Weidel, endorsing the German far-right while supplying NATO infrastructure.

In London, the NHS scaled Palantir’s £330 million Federated Data Platform across tens of millions of patient records, By May 2025, the government had to pay KPMG £8 million just to encourage hospital adoption. Meanwhile, a £1.5 billion defense partnership binds Britain to Palantir’s AI systems.

None of these decisions provoked real debate. Few reached front pages. Together, they reveal the systematic outsourcing of European sovereignty to American oligarchs whose ideology openly undermines democracy.

It is a paradox with devastating implications: pursuing digital sovereignty while ceding control through every signed contract.

Each new contract deepens the trap. Once Palantir becomes indispensable, once Anduril’s drones are NATO standard, once nuclear facilities power AI that runs everything else— the transformation is irreversible.

Europe faces an existential choice: build genuine technological sovereignty now, or accept governance by platforms whose architects view democracy as an obsolete operating system.

The Infrastructure of Control

ilicon Valley’s Authoritarian Tech Right is not theorizing this world. They are already building it. The pipelines are operational. The feedback loops are functioning. The sovereignty transfers are completing.

Democracy persists as a legacy interface— maintained for stability, while being systematically hollowed out and replaced.

The question now is whether democratic societies can recognize this formation for what it is—and build alternatives before the infrastructure of control becomes too deeply embedded to dislodge.

The Authoritarian Tech Complex

Explore the Map [by clicking on graphic on original]

December 13, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Trump gives Zelensky ‘days’ to respond to peace plan – Financial Times

The US president reportedly hopes for a deal by Christmas.

10 Dec, 2025, https://www.rt.com/news/629243-trump-sets-zelensky-deadline/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

US negotiators have given Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky days to respond to a peace proposal requiring Kiev to accept territorial losses to Russia in exchange for unspecified security guarantees, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing officials familiar with the matter.

One person told the FT that US President Donald Trump was hoping to reach a deal by Christmas. Zelensky reportedly told US envoys that he needed time to consult with Kiev’s European backers.

Although Trump had said last month that he would like to see an agreement by Thanksgiving, he later told journalists that he did not have a specific timeline.

he US president submitted a peace plan in November that reportedly called for Ukraine to withdraw troops from part of Russia’s Donbass they currently control, one of Moscow’s key conditions for a broad ceasefire.

Zelensky acknowledged during his trip to London on Monday that the US was pushing him towards “a compromise,” but added that no agreement on territory had been reached. He reiterated that Ukraine was not willing to give up any land without a fight.

Russian troops have been making steady gains on different sections of the front line, while Ukrainian commanders say they are outgunned and struggling to replenish battlefield losses with new conscripts.

In early December, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the liberation of Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk), a Donbass city President Vladimir Putin has described as an important “bridgehead” for further offensives.

December 13, 2025 Posted by | Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

US House passes $800mn aid package for Ukraine

New military assistance has been signed off on a month after Kiev was shaken by a major corruption scandal.

The US House of Representatives has passed a defense spending bill that would provide $800 million in military aid to Ukraine through 2027.

The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was approved 312-122 on Wednesday and will now advance to the Senate, where it is expected to receive bipartisan support, according to The Hill.

Some legislators objected to directing more taxpayers’ money to help Ukraine fight Russia. “I thought we were getting out of Ukraine. I don’t know why we still need to spend money there,” Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, said.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump slammed what he described as a “massive corruption situation” in Kiev, referring to the recently uncovered $100 million kickback scheme in the country’s energy sector, which heavily relies on Western aid.

Prosecutors named Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s longtime associate and former business partner Timur Mindich as the ringleader. Mindich fled the country to evade arrest after apparently being tipped off.

The scandal led to the resignation of two government ministers, and further anti-corruption raids prompted Zelensky to fire chief of staff Andrey Yermak last month.

Ukraine’s military procurement system has also been shaken by several graft and embezzlement scandals, one of which led to the resignation of Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov in 2023.

The bill was approved as Trump has been pressuring Ukraine to sign a peace deal with Russia, with some reports suggesting that he hopes to reach an agreement by Christmas.

Russia considers Western military cooperation with Ukraine one of the root causes of the conflict and has listed ending foreign weapons deliveries as a condition for a ceasefire. President Vladimir Putin has argued that otherwise, Ukraine would use the pause in the fighting to rearm and regroup, as he says happened when Ukraine refused to implement the 2014-2015 Minsk

December 13, 2025 Posted by | politics, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

THE NEXT WARS WERE ALWAYS HERE: How Post 9/11 Law and the Monroe Doctrine Converged in the Caribbean.

December 9, 2025 By Michelle Ellner, https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/09/the-next-wars-were-always-here-how-post-9-11-law-and-the-monroe-doctrine-converged-in-the-caribbean/

The first U.S. missiles that struck the boats in the Caribbean in early September 2025 were described by Washington as a “counter-narcotics operation,” a sterile phrase meant to dull the violence of incinerating human beings in an instant. Then came the second strike, this time on survivors already struggling to stay afloat. Once the details emerged, however, the official story began to fall apart. 

Local fishermen contradicted U.S. claims. Relatives of those killed have said the men were not cartel operatives at all, but fishermen, divers, and small-scale couriers. Relatives in Trinidad and Venezuela told regional reporters their loved ones were unarmed and had no connection to Tren de Aragua, describing them instead as fathers and sons who worked the sea to support their families. Some called the U.S. narrative “impossible” and “a lie,” insisting the men were being demonized after their deaths. U.N. experts called the killings “extrajudicial.” Maritime workers noted what everyone in the region already knows: the route near Venezuela’s waters is not a fentanyl corridor into the United States. Yet the administration clung to its story, insisting these men were “narcoterrorists,” long after the facts had unraveled. Because in Washington’s post 9/11 playbook, fear is a tool. Fear is the architecture of modern American war.

The U.S. did not emerge from the Iraq War into peace or reflection. It emerged into normalization. The legal theories invented and abused after 9/11 – elastic self-defense, limitless definitions of terrorism, enemy combatants, global strike authority – did not fade. They became the backbone of a permanent war machine. These justifications supported drone wars in Pakistan, airstrikes in Yemen and Somalia, the destruction of Libya, special operations in Syria, and yet another military return to Iraq. And behind every expansion of this global battlefield was a U.S. weapons industry that grew richer with each intervention, lobbying for policies that kept the country in a constant state of conflict. What we are seeing today in the Caribbean is not an isolated action; it is the extension of a militarized imperial model that treats entire regions as expendable. 

The next wars were always there because we never confronted the political and economic system that made endless wars a profitable cornerstone of U.S. power.

A Post-9/11 Legal Framework Built for Endless War

The Trump administration has advanced several overlapping legal arguments to justify the strikes, and together they reveal a post-9/11 framework that stretches executive power far beyond its intended limits.

According to detailed reporting in The Washington Post, a classified Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo argues that the United States is engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with so-called narcoterrorist organizations. Under this theory, the strikes qualify as part of an ongoing armed conflict rather than a new “war” requiring congressional authorization. This framing alone is unprecedented: drug-trafficking groups are criminal networks, not organized armed groups targeting the U.S.

A second pillar of the memo, described by lawmakers to the Wall Street Journal, claims that once the president designates a cartel as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, it becomes a lawful military target. But terrorism designations have never created war powers. They are financial and sanctions tools, not authorizations for lethal force. As Sen. Andy Kim put it, using an FTO label as a “kinetic justification” is something “that has never been done before.”

The OLC memo also invokes Article II, claiming the president can order strikes as part of his commander-in-chief authority. Yet this argument depends on a second unsupported premise: that the boats posed a threat significant enough to justify self-defense. Even internal government lawyers questioned this. As one person familiar with the deliberations told The Washington Post, “There is no actual threat justifying self-defense — there are not organized armed groups seeking to kill Americans.” 

At the same time, the administration has publicly insisted that these operations do not rise to the level of “hostilities”  that would trigger the War Powers Resolution because U.S. military personnel were never placed at risk. By the administration’s own logic, that means the people on the boats were not engaged in hostilities and therefore were not combatants under any accepted legal standard, making the claim of a wartime self-defense strike impossible to reconcile with U.S. or international law.

Under international law, executing people outside a genuine armed conflict is an extrajudicial killing.  Nothing about these strikes meets the legal threshold for war. Because the people on the boats were not lawful combatants, the operation risks violating both international law and U.S. criminal law, including statutes on murder at sea, a concern reportedly underscored by Admiral Alvin Holsey’s early resignation.

The memo goes further still, invoking “collective self-defense” on behalf of regional partners. But key regional partners, including Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico, have publicly criticized the strikes and said they were not consulted, undermining the very premise of “collective” defense.

This internal contradiction is one reason lawmakers across both parties have called the reasoning incoherent. As Sen. Chris Van Hollen put it, “This is a memo where the decision was made, and someone was told to come up with a justification for the decision.”

And beneath all of this lies the most dangerous element: the memo’s logic has no geographic limits. If the administration claims it is in an armed conflict with a designated “narcoterrorist” group, then, by its own theory, lethal force could be used wherever members of that group are found. The same framework that justifies strikes near Venezuela could, in principle, be invoked in a U.S. city if the administration claimed a cartel “cell” existed there. 

If Trump truly believes he leads “the most transparent administration in history,” then releasing the memo should be automatic. The American people have the right to know what legal theory is being used to justify killing people in their name.

For decades, OLC memos have been used not simply as legal advice but as the internal architecture that allows presidents to expand their war-making power. The Bush torture memos treated torture as lawful by redefining the word “torture” itself, calling it “enhanced interrogation,” thereby enabling years of CIA black-site operations and abusive interrogations. The Libya War Powers memo argued that bombing Libya did not constitute “hostilities,” allowing the administration to continue military action without congressional approval. Targeted-killing memos, including those related to drone strikes on U.S. citizens abroad, constructed a legal theory that lethal force could be used outside traditional battlefields, without trial, based on executive determinations alone. In each case, the memo did not merely interpret the law; it reshaped the boundaries of presidential war powers, often without public debate or congressional authorization.

The American people have the right to know what “legal theory” is being used to justify killing people in their name. Congress needs it to conduct oversight. Service members need it to understand the legality of the orders they receive. And the international community needs clarity on the standards the U.S. claims to follow. There is no legitimate reason for a president to hide the legal basis for lethal force, unless the argument collapses under scrutiny. A secret opinion cannot serve as the foundation for an open-ended military campaign in the Western Hemisphere.

The Older Foundation: A 200-Year-Old Doctrine of Control

If the legal foundation comes from the post-9/11 era, the geopolitical foundation is older. Almost ancestral. For 200 years, the Monroe Doctrine has served as the permission slip for U.S. domination in Latin America.

The Trump administration went even further by openly reviving and expanding it through what officials called a “Trump Corollary,” which reframed the entire Western Hemisphere as a U.S. “defense perimeter” and justified increased military operations under the language of counter-narcotics, migration control, and regional stability. In this framework, Latin America is no longer treated as a diplomatic neighbor but as a security zone where Washington can act unilaterally. 

Venezuela, with its vast oil reserves, sovereign political project, and refusal to submit to U.S. pressure, has long been marked as a target. Sanctions softened the terrain. Disinformation hardened public opinion. And now, military strikes near its waters test how far Washington can push without triggering public revolt at home. The term “narcoterrorism” is simply the newest mask on a very old doctrine.

The strikes in the Caribbean are not isolated. They are the predictable intersection of two forces: a post-9/11 legal regime that allows war to expand without congressional approval, and a 200-year-old imperial doctrine that treats Latin America as a zone of control rather than a community of sovereign nations. Together, they form the logic that justifies today’s violence near Venezuela.

The Label that Opened the Door

After 9/11, every administration learned the same lesson: if you label something “terrorism,” the public will let you do almost anything. Now, this logic is being used everywhere. The cruel, decades-long blockade on Cuba is justified by claiming that the island is a “state sponsor of terrorism.” Mass surveillance, border militarization, endless sanctions, all wrapped in the language of “counterterrorism.” And now, to authorize military action in the Caribbean, they simply take the word “narco” and attach it to the word “terrorism.” The label does all the work. The danger is not confined to foreign policy: after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the same elastic definition of “terrorism” is now being used domestically to justify crackdowns on NGOs the administration claims are inciting “anti-American” political violence.

The only reason Trump has not launched a full-scale attack on Venezuela is that he is still testing the ground, testing resistance inside Venezuela, testing Congress, testing the media, and testing us. He knows nearly 70% of people in the United States oppose a war with Venezuela. He knows he cannot sell another Iraq. So he is probing, pushing, looking for the line we will not let him cross.

We are that line.

If we do not challenge the lie now, if we do not demand release of the memo, if we stay silent, “narcoterrorism” becomes the new “weapons of mass destruction.” If we allow this test case to go unanswered, the next strike will be a war. We are the only ones who can stop him. And history is watching to see whether we learned anything from the last twenty years of fear, deception, and violence.

Because the next wars were always here, looming. We just need the clarity to see them and the force to stop them before they begin.

December 11, 2025 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

New York Times Wants The US Military Built Up For War With China.

Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 10, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/new-york-times-wants-the-us-military?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=181225843&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Just as the United States hits its first official trillion-dollar annual military budget, the New York Times editorial board has published an article which argues that the US is going to need to increase military funding to prepare for a major war with China.

The article is titled “Overmatched: Why the U.S. Military Must Reinvent Itself,” and to be clear it is an editorial, not an op-ed, meaning it represents the position of the newspaper itself rather than solely that of the authors.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows that The New York Times has supported every American war throughout its entire history, because The New York Times is a war propaganda firm disguised as a news outlet. But it is surprising how brazen they are about it in this particular case.

The article opens with graphics I saw one commenter describe as “Mussolini-core” because of their conspicuously fascistic aesthetic, accompanied by three lines of text in all-caps which reads as follows:

“AMERICA’S MILITARY HAS DEFENDED THE FREE WORLD FOR 80 YEARS.

OUR DOMINANCE IS FADING.

RIVALS KNOW THIS AND ARE BUILDING TO DEFEAT US.”

The narrative that the US war machine has “defended the free world” during its period of post-world war global dominance is itself insane empire propaganda. Washington has abused, tyrannized and starved the world at levels unrivaled by any other power during that period while spearheading the theft of hundreds of trillions of dollars from the global south via imperialist extraction. The US empire has not been defending any “free world”, it has been actively obstructing its emergence.

The actual text of the article opens with another whopper, with the first sentence reading, “President Xi Jinping of China has ordered his armed forces to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027.”

This is straight-up state propaganda. The New York Times editorial board is here uncritically parroting a completely unsubstantiated claim the US intelligence cartel has been making for years, which Xi Jinping explicitly denies. While it is Beijing’s official position that Taiwan will eventually be reunited with the mainland, not one shred of evidence has ever been presented to the public for the 2027 timeline. It’s a US government assertion being reported as verified fact by the nation’s “paper of record”.

And it doesn’t get any better from there. The Times cites a Pentagon assessment that the US would lose a hot war with China over Taiwan as evidence of “a decades-long decline in America’s ability to win a long war with a major power,” arguing that this is a major problem because “a strong America has been crucial to a world in which freedom and prosperity are far more common than at nearly any other point in human history.”

“This is the first of a series of editorials examining what’s gone wrong with the U.S. military — technologically, bureaucratically, culturally, politically and strategically — and how we can create a relevant and effective force that can deter wars whenever possible and win them wherever necessary,” The New York Times tells us.

The Times argues that the US needs to reshape its military to defeat China in a war, or to win a war with Russia if they attack a NATO member, saying “Evidence suggests that Moscow may already be testing ways to do this, including by cutting the undersea cables on which NATO forces depend.”

The “evidence” the Times cites for this claim is a hyperlink to a January article titled “Norway Seizes Russian-Crewed Ship Suspected of Cutting an Undersea Cable,” completely ignoring the fact that Norway released that ship shortly thereafter when it was unable to find any evidence linking it to the event, and completely ignoring reports that US and European intelligence had concluded that the undersea cable damage was the result of an accident rather than sabotage.

And then, of course, comes the call for more military funding.

“In the short term, the transformation of the American military may require additional spending, primarily to rebuild our industrial base. As a share of the economy, defense spending today — about 3.4 percent of G.D.P. — remains near its lowest level in more than 80 years, even after Mr. Trump’s recent increases,” the Times writes, adding that US allies should also be pressured to ramp up spending on the war machine.

“A more secure world will almost certainly require more military commitment from allies like Canada, Japan and Europe, which have long relied on American taxpayers to bankroll their protection,” the authors write, saying “China’s industrial capacity can only be met by pooling the resources of allies and partners around the world to balance and contain Beijing’s increasing influence.”

Of course the idea that perhaps the United States should avoid fighting a hot war with China right off the coast of its own mainland never enters the discussion. The suggestion that it’s insane to support waging full-scale wars with nuclear-armed great powers to secure US planetary domination never comes up. It’s just taken as a given that pouring wealth and resources into preparations for a nuclear-age world war is the only normal option on the table.

But that’s the New York Times for you. It’s been run by the same family since the late 1800s and it’s been advancing the information interests of rich and powerful imperialists ever since. It’s a militarist smut rag that somehow found its way into unearned respectability, and it deserves to be treated as such. The sooner it ceases to exist, the better.

December 11, 2025 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

The War Department Unleashes AI on New GenAI.mil Platform

U.S. Department of War, Dec. 9, 2025

The War Department today announced the launch of Google Cloud’s Gemini for Government as the first of several frontier AI capabilities to be housed on GenAI.mil, the Department’s new bespoke AI platform. This initiative cultivates an “AI-first” workforce, leveraging generative AI capabilities to create a more efficient and battle-ready enterprise. Additional world-class AI models will be available to all civilians, contractors, and military personnel, delivering on the White House’s AI Action Plan announced earlier this year.

This past July, President Donald Trump instituted a mandate to achieve an unprecedented level of AI technological superiority. The War Department is delivering on this mandate, ensuring it is not just ink on paper. In response to this directive, AI capabilities have now reached all desktops in the Pentagon and in American military installations around the world.

The first instance on GenAI.mil, Gemini for Government, empowers intelligent agentic workflows, unleashes experimentation, and ushers in an AI-driven culture change that will dominate the digital battlefield for years to come. Gemini for Government is the embodiment of American AI excellence, placing unmatched analytical and creative power directly into the hands of the world’s most dominant fighting force………………

The launch of GenAI.mil stands as a testament to American ingenuity, driven by the AI Rapid Capabilities Cell within the War Department’s Office of Research & Engineering. Their achievement directly embodies the Department’s core tenets of reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding American military capabilities, and re-establishing deterrence through technological dominance and uncompromising grit.

“We are pushing all of our chips in on artificial intelligence as a fighting force. The Department is tapping into America’s commercial genius, and we’re embedding generative AI into our daily battle rhythm.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth remarked

“AI tools present boundless opportunities to increase efficiency, and we are thrilled to witness AI’s future positive impact across the War Department.”………………..https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4354916/the-war-department-unleashes-ai-on-new-genaimil-platform/

December 11, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump warns Ukraine is ‘losing’ Russia war, calls for new elections despite wartime prohibition.

Trump occasionally says something sensible, even if by accident.

New York Post, By Richard Pollina, Dec. 9, 2025

President Trump said in an interview Monday that Ukraine should hold new elections despite its ongoing war with Russia — prompting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to declare he’s “ready” for them to begin when voters can be safe. 

“I think it’s time. I think it’s an important time to hold an election,” the president told Politico reporter Dasha Burns. “They’re using war not to hold an election, but, uh, I would think the Ukrainian people would, should have that choice.”

Under Ukraine’s constitution, elections cannot be held during period of martial law — which President Volodymyr Zelensky imposed in response to Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Under normal circumstances, the terms of Zelensky and Ukraine’s parliament would have ended in May and August 2024, respectively.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Zelensky said he has the “will and readiness” to hold elections. But he cited issues in Ukraine’s way, including the security of voters in a war zone at risk of missile strikes and Ukrainian law that prevents elections when the country is under martial law.

Zelensky said he’s seeking a legislative fix, and if he has help from the US on ensuring the safety of voters during a war, Kyiv would be ready to hold elections in “the next 60 to 90 days.”

“Maybe Zelensky would win,” Trump said of the prospect of a wartime election. “I don’t know who would win. But they haven’t had an election in a long time. You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.”

The president also responded to a weekend claim by first son Donald Trump Jr. that the commander-in-chief may be willing to walk away from Ukraine, saying: “It’s not correct. But it’s not exactly wrong.”

“We have to, you know, they have to play ball,” the president went on. “If they, if they don’t read agreements, potential agreements, you know, it’s not easy with Russia because Russia has the upper, upper hand. And they always did. They’re much bigger. They’re much stronger in that sense.

The president’s comments came as his administration makes another effort to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War, with Trump telling reporters Sunday that Zelensky had yet to read the latest peace framework hashed out by US and Ukrainian negotiators.

“It would be nice if he would read it,” the president told Politico Monday. “You know, a lot of people are dying. So it would be really good if he’d read it. His people loved the proposal. They really liked it. His lieutenants, his top people, they liked it, but they said he hasn’t read it yet. I think he should find time to read it.”

Zelensky disputed the accusation on Thursday, telling reporters he has in fact “read many different versions of this plan.” https://nypost.com/2025/12/09/us-news/trump-says-ukraine-should-hold-elections-despite-wartime-prohibition/

December 11, 2025 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

U.S. Military Budget Bill Would Ramp Up Israel Aid to Fill In ‘Gaps’ When Other Countries Impose Embargoes Over Genocide.

“this means the US would explicitly use federal law to step in and supply weapons to Israel whenever other countries cut off arms to halt Israel’s ongoing violations across the region.”

The House Armed Services Committee said in September that the measure “combats antisemitism.”


Stephen Prager, Dec 09, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-israel-weapons-gap-ndaa

A little-reported provision of the latest military spending bill would direct the US to create a plan to fill the “gaps” for Israel whenever other nations cut off arms shipments in response to its acts of genocide in Gaza.

As Prem Thakker reported Monday for Zeteo, the measure is “buried” more than 1,000 pages into the more than 3,000-page National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which is considered by lawmakers to be “must-pass” legislation and contains a record $901 billion in total spending.

Republicans are shepherding the bill through the US House of Representatives, where—as is the case with most NDAAs—it is expected to pass on Wednesday with Democratic support, even as some conservative budget hardliners refuse to back it, primarily over its $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine.

Since the genocide began following Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, the US has provided more than $21.7 billion to Israel, including hundreds of millions that have been supplied through NDAAs.

The new NDAA includes at least another $650 million to Israel, an increase of $45 million from the previous one, even though this is the first such bill to be introduced since the “ceasefire” that went into effect in October. This aid from the Pentagon comes on top of the $3.3 billion already provided through the State Department budget.

But this NDAA also contains an unprecedented measure. It calls for the “continual assessment of [the] impact of international state arms embargoes on Israel and actions to address defense capability gaps.”

The NDAA directs Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to assess “the scope, nature, and impact on Israel’s defense capabilities of current and emerging arms embargoes, sanctions, restrictions, or limitations imposed by foreign countries or by international organizations,” and “the resulting gaps or vulnerabilities in Israel’s security posture.”

As Drop Site News explains, “this means the US would explicitly use federal law to step in and supply weapons to Israel whenever other countries cut off arms to halt Israel’s ongoing violations across the region.”

“The point of this assistance, to be clear, is to make up for any identified insufficiencies Israel may have due to other countries’ embargoing it as a result of its ongoing genocide in Palestine,” Thakker wrote.

A similar provision appeared in a September version of the NDAA, which the House Armed Services Committee praised because it supposedly “combats antisemitism”—explicitly conflating a bias against Jewish people with weapons embargoes that countries have imposed to stop Israel from continuing its routine, documented human rights violations in Gaza.

Among the nations that have cut off weapons sales to Israel are Japan, Canada, France, Italy, and Spain. Meanwhile, other major backers, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, have imposed partial freezes on certain weaponry.

While official estimates from the Gaza Ministry of Health place the number of dead from Israel’s military campaign at over 70,000, with more than 170,000 wounded, an independent assessment last month from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany and the Center for Demographic Studies in Spain found that the death toll “likely exceeds 100,000.” This finding mirrored several other studies that have projected the true death toll to be much higher than what official estimates show.

Embargoes against Israel have been called for by a group of experts mandated by the United Nations Human Rights Council, including Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, numerous human rights organizations, including the leading Israeli group B’Tselem, have said Israel’s campaign in Gaza has amounted to genocide.

December 10, 2025 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump says Ukraine should hold elections

Sometimes, if only by accident, Trump says something sensible

by Julia Manchester – 12/09/25, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5640123-trump-says-ukraine-should-hold-elections/

President Trump said in a new interview that Ukraine should hold elections despite being locked in war with Russia. 

“They’re using war not to hold an election. I would think the Ukrainian people should have that choice,” Trump told Politico. “They talk about having a democracy but it gets to the point where it’s not a democracy anymore.” 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has come under political pressure in recent weeks over a corruption scandal that implicated top Ukrainian officials. After the country’s watchdogs concluded that $100 million had been embezzled from the energy sector through kickbacks paid by contractors, Zelensky fired two top officials and slapped sanctions on close associates. 

Zelensky has not been accused of any wrongdoing but his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, resigned following an anti-corruption raid on his home last month. 

Additionally, Zelensky has found himself and Ukraine on defense as Russia seeks to make advances on Ukrainian territory and Trump administration officials struggle to broker a peace deal between the two countries. 

Trump aired his frustrations over Zelensky on Sunday, saying the Ukrainian leader had not read the latest version of the peace proposals that came out of talks between U.S. officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.

Zelensky said Ukraine would not budge from its longstanding opposition to ceding land to Russia after he met with European leaders on Monday. 

Trump said in the Politico interview published Tuesday that he believes Russia is in a stronger negotiating position than Ukraine. 

“[Zelensky] is going to have to get on the ball and start accepting things,” he said, adding that they are “losing.” 

December 10, 2025 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

‘Genocide is not an Oakland value:’ inside Oakland’s grassroots campaign to end military shipments to Israel

Oakland International Airport has become a key hub for transporting military cargo to Israel during the Gaza genocide. Now, over 30 groups and thousands of Oakland residents have come together in the Oakland People’s Arms Embargo to stop it.

Mondoweiss, By Joseph Mogul  December 8, 2025

Talia Rose starts their shift at Oakland International Airport (OAK) at 3:00 a.m., unloading same-day packages from UPS planes. Across the tarmac, they watch FedEx planes come and go. “I never had any idea what the hell is on those planes besides big metal containers that carry packages,” Rose said. 

But that would change in August, when Rose attended a local organizing forum where a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) presented a soon-to-be-public report titled “Exposing Oakland’s Military Cargo Shipments to Israel.”

The report—published by PYM, Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), and U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)—details FedEx’s routine shipments of F-35 Lockheed Martin fighter jet components to Israel’s Nevatim Airbase. The report describes OAK as a “dependable conduit for critical military technologies,” concluding “beyond a reasonable doubt that military cargo being shipped out of OAK has been used by the Israeli Air Force to carry out airstrikes and commit genocide in Gaza.”

Learning about OAK’s role in facilitating genocide disturbed Rose. “After reading the report, knowing there’s a minimum of three [shipments] a week going through the airport that have F-35 parts, it’s a feeling of overwhelming anxiety,” they said. “I’m right there, you know? I’m across a tarmac from it.
It feels like I should be able to do something.” 

With the launch of the Oakland People’s Arms Embargo campaign, Rose and thousands of Oaklanders would find what they could do. 

The campaign was launched shortly before the People’s Conference for Palestine, a weekend-long event aimed at strengthening the movement, where PYM called for a shift towards local arms embargoes. Their theory was that a strong campaign would need the trifecta of a mass local base, organized workers, and progressive elected officials. Oakland has all three.

A central node of the weapons supply chain

Voulette Mansour, a PYM-Bay Area organizer whose grandparents were displaced during the 1948 Nakba, attended the People’s Conference. Behind the scenes, Mansour and PYM had been preparing for the campaign launch for months, eagerly anticipating this moment. “We had been doing a lot of background work on the research and preparing to launch the report,” Mansour said. 

Through research infrastructure developed by PYM’s Mask off Maersk campaign—which targeted the largest maritime carrier of U.S. military cargo (including F-35 components) to Israel—PYM uncovered OAK’s role in the F-35 supply chain. “We were shocked that Oakland popped up on the map, not just as a blip, but as a central node,” said Mansour, “When we found this out, we were disgusted that this was happening in our city, but we also saw it as an opportunity.”

The “Exposing Oakland’s Military Cargo Shipments to Israel” report confirmed multiple shipments every week for over a year, making OAK the second most important logistical hub in the U.S. F-35 supply chain to Israel, behind Fort Worth.

The F-35 fighter jet is considered the crown jewel of the Israeli Air Force; Israel has its own modified version, called the F-35I, which is retrofitted specifically for Israeli weapons systems. Each jet costs around $100 million (subsidized by U.S. taxpayers in the form of federal weapons contracts) and can carry up to 18,000 pounds of munitions. Lockheed Martin is the primary manufacturer of the F-35, but over 1,900 contractors are involved in supplying various components, creating a vast and intricate global supply chain that the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) is responsible for coordinating. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

That wave is swelling. On November 22, PYM launched a new global campaign, the People’s Embargo for Palestine, by creating an international arms embargo ecosystem through the coordination of research and strategies across local campaigns.

This is the next phase of our struggle,” said Mansour. “We raise the ceiling of our struggle through pushing for an arms embargo.” https://mondoweiss.net/2025/12/genocide-is-not-an-oakland-value-inside-oaklands-grassroots-campaign-to-end-military-shipments-to-israel/

December 10, 2025 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

U.S. Nuclear Fusion Industry Asks for Federal Help

By Irina Slav – Dec 09, 2025, https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Fusion-Industry-Asks-for-Federal-Help.html

The nascent nuclear fusion industry in the United States has asked the Trump administration for billions in financial support in order to advance the technology, which is seen as one of the most promising for the future—but also one of the most challenging.

“Now is the time for the U.S. to make a significant investment, and that means over a billion dollars per year in annual appropriations and a one-time infrastructure investment,” the chief executive of the Fusion Industry Association, Andrew Holland, said this week, as quoted by Reuters. “If they ask for it, we are confident Congress would pass it,” he added, following a meeting between industry representatives and officials from the Department of Energy.

Reuters noted in its report that the Trump administration had just canceled several billion dollars in subsidies for the wind and solar industries. Presumably, some of that money could be redirected towards nuclear fusion. The Department of Energy even set up an Office of Fusion earlier this year as it shut down the wind and solar offices.

Nuclear fusion has long been considered the answer to zero-emission by-product-free energy generation. However, no one has cracked the nuclear fusion code yet because of the challenges associated with the environment in which the process could take place.

Nuclear fusion research and development have gained momentum in recent years after several momentous breakthroughs and achievements. The global race to overcome the engineering challenges to achieving zero-emission power from a nuclear reaction without risking disaster and radiation has heated up.

Earlier this year, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a multinational endeavor to build a system to experiment with nuclear fusion, completed the world’s most powerful electromagnetic system in a landmark moment for fusion research.

There is still a long way to go before nuclear fusion becomes commercially viable; One of the main challenges remains the ratio between input energy and output energy, with the former currently exceeding the latter.

December 10, 2025 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

South Carolina’s abandoned nuclear plants could be revived as company offers $2.7 billion

 South Carolina´s stalled nuclear power project could finally finish
construction as a private company has offered to pay $2.7 billion to the
state-owned utility and a small share of the power if they can reach an
agreement to get the two reactors up and running. The half-built reactors
ended up so far behind schedule that the project was abandoned in 2017.


However, the potential deal is a long way from complete. There will be up
to two years of negotiations between utility Santee Cooper and Brookfield
Asset Management on the thousands and thousands of details. The deal would also let Brookfield keep at least 75% of the power generated by the new plant that they could mostly sell to whom they want, such as
energy-gobbling data centers. The exact amount of the rest that Santee
Cooper receives would be determined on how much the private company has to spend to get the reactors running.

 Daily Mail 9th Dec 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-15368257/South-Carolinas-abandoned-nuclear-plants-revived-company-offers-2-7-billion.html

December 10, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

How Israeli-Linked Operatives and Firms Are Embedded in U.S. Cyber Systems.

 December 5, 2025 , By: Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/05/how-israeli-linked-operatives-and-firms-are-embedded-in-u-s-cyber-systems/

The Substack report, “Former Israeli Spies Now Overseeing US Government Cybersecurity” by Nate Bear (¡Do Not Panic!), is well worth reading. It uncovers that a firm with deep roots in Israeli military intelligence is now managing critical cybersecurity infrastructure for more than 70 U.S. federal agencies — including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Treasury, Transportation, Energy, Agriculture and Health.

The company, Axonius, was founded by former operatives from Israel’s intelligence unit Unit 8200. Its platform centralizes data from all IT tools used by agencies — giving “visibility and control over all types and number of devices.” This means administrators in Tel Aviv can theoretically track device usage, logins, website access, and can even disable devices or accounts for millions of U.S. federal employees.

While Axonius pitches itself as a tool to unify and strengthen federal cybersecurity, the investigation argues that the massive scale of its deployment — combined with its leadership’s intelligence background — raises serious national security and privacy concerns.

Because much of the company’s engineering and software development is run out of Tel Aviv — and many of its employees are former Israeli spies — critics say the United States has, in effect, outsourced federal level cybersecurity to a foreign intelligence‑linked firm.

Whether Axonius has acted, or plans to act, maliciously remains unclear. But the story highlights how deeply embedded Israeli‑linked cyber intelligence infrastructure may now be across U.S. government systems — something many see as a troubling precedent.

While dystopian in nature, it is a must-read and a must-deal-with report, as we have been exposing what is happening in Gaza. The relentless nature of Israeli surveillance is an unbearable nightmare. You should also read Gaza journalist Mohammed R. Mhawish’s 16-month investigation — “Watched, Tracked, and Targeted in Gaza” — into what is happening in Gaza now, focusing on the surveillance state. Both are must-reads.

This is not a new development. Obviously, thanks to the work of these journalists, I was inspired and did a basic search to find out about the relationship between Israel and United States spy connections, and I found this from 12 years ago, with The Guardian reporting: “The National Security Agency (NSA) has a secret agreement with the Israeli intelligence agency Israeli Sigint National Unit (ISNU) — established in principle in March 2009 — that allows the NSA to share raw, unfiltered intercepted communications with Israel,” and “The sharing of raw, pre‑minimization intelligence contradicts previous government assurances of ‘robust safeguards’ to protect Americans’ privacy.”

So needless to say, this isn’t the first — or the last — time these countries have worked together. What’s striking is how public it seems now, and it’s clear their privacy concerns for Americans aren’t what they once were.

However, as we will see, the relationship is also riddled with a double‑dealing, spy‑vs‑spy aspect that bears remembering. This is also covered in Nate’s Substack report and in a clip below with former CIA agent John Kiriakou, both discussing the distrust Mossad has for our intelligence agencies — and the ongoing issue of stealing technology and spying on the United States.

That distrust has played out a number of times, with Israel being accused or caught spying on the United States. One time was during the Obama Iran talks, with the Wall Street Journal’s shocking report about Israel spying, quoting a senior U.S. official: “It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy.”

Or being accused of planting devices by the White House in 2019 to spy on Donald Trump, or now just hanging out and having secret meetings — like U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee did when he met convicted spy Jonathan Pollard at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July of this year.

For those who forget Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer, he was sentenced to life in prison for stealing classified U.S. material and sharing it with Israel. He served 30 years before being granted parole under President Obama in 2015 and moved to Israel in 2020.

But as Kiriakou says in the clip, they don’t trust that we give them the best of our technology. So they work both sides and always in their own interest. After Nate’s report, they might not need to steal it anymore. But based on their pattern already in our history, they won’t stop their spy‑vs‑spy activities.

See below the Kirakou video [on original] for another video about the Mike Huckabee story with The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss the scandalous—and still unpunished—secret meeting between U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and one of the most notorious Israeli spies, Jonathan Pollard, who handed vast troves of U.S. secrets to his handlers in Tel Aviv and now proudly identifies as an “Israel Firster.”

December 7, 2025 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

MAGA media scramble to defend Pete Hegseth. 

Scrounging for a Hegseth defense, right-wing commentators seize on NY Times report

Hegseth’s supporters split hairs over his culpability

 by Matt Gertz, Research contributions from Rob Savillo, 12/02/25, https://www.mediamatters.org/pete-hegseth/scrounging-hegseth-defense-right-wing-commentators-seize-ny-times-report

Right-wing commentators have seized upon a New York Times report on the U.S. military’s September 2 extrajudicial killing of 11 people on board a boat the Trump administration alleged was carrying drugs in the Caribbean, claiming that the article “DEBUNKED” a previous Washington Post report that triggered congressional scrutiny over potential war crimes. But the Times actually confirmed, rather than undermined, the Post’s account.

The Post reported Friday that according to its sources, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order “to kill everybody” on board the boat before the attack, and that after confirming that the first strike left two survivors, the Navy special operations commander overseeing the action, Adm. Frank Bradley, “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions,” killing them. Lawmakers of both parties quickly vowed to aggressively scrutinize the attack, which legal experts argued would constitute, “at best, a war crime under federal law.”

Hegseth, in his prior career as co-host of Fox News’ Fox & Friends Weekend, championed U.S. service members accused or convicted of war crimes. In one 2019 segment discussing a soldier charged over the extrajudicial killing of an Afghan man accused of making bombs for the Taliban, Hegseth said, “If he committed premeditated murder … then I did as well. What do you think you do in war?”

Top Trump administration officials over the weekend denounced the “fake news” Post’s “entire narrative” as “fabricated” with “NO FACTS.” But at Monday’s briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt effectively confirmed — and defended — the actions the Post had reported, including the second strike.

This confusion left President Donald Trump’s most zealous propagandists with few clear pathways to defend the administration’s actions. But after the Times published its own account of the attack on Monday, “plenty of conservatives are now declaring this case closed,” as Politico reported. Indeed, right-wing commentators have claimed that the Times “quietly DEBUNKED” the Post’s “hoax hit piece,” which they said has been exposed as “a genuinely vile slander of both Hegseth and Bradley.”

“Disgrace to journalism that [Post reporters] @AlexHortonTX and @nakashimae got so many details of this story wrong just to smear @PeteHegseth,” posted RedState’s R.C. Maxwell, a member of the new Pentagon press corps composed of MAGA shills.

Fox News, Hegseth’s former employer, had devoted 53 minutes of airtime to the story across the four days from Friday through Monday. The bulk of that coverage came from purported “news side” shows; Jesse Watters was the only prime-time host to address the story, while the defense secretary’s old program ignored it altogether. Coverage picked up on Tuesday morning, however: Apparently armed with new marching orders at last, Fox & Friends finally found an angle and reported on how the “New York Times report backs Trump admin’s account of strike on suspected drug boat.”

In reality, the timeline of the September 2 attack laid out in the Times article matches the one provided by the Post.

First, after U.S. intelligence operatives determined that the boat was carrying drugs, Hegseth issued his order to destroy it and kill those onboard.

From The Washington Post: 

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

From The New York Times: 

According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs.
 

In interviews on Monday, two U.S. officials — both of whom were supportive of the administration’s boat strikes — described a meeting before the attack at which Mr. Hegseth had briefed Special Operations Forces commanders on his execute order to engage the boat with lethal force.

Then, the Navy launched an initial strike, which left two survivors, who were killed after Bradley ordered further strikes.

From The Washington Post:

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

From The New York Times: 

Admiral Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat.

The Times account stresses that Hegseth’s “order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast,” and that the defense secretary “did not give any further orders” to Bradley following the first strike — but the Post’s account does not say otherwise. 

It is unclear whether the Post’s reporting that Hegseth issued a “spoken directive” to kill those onboard the boat is describing something different from the Times’ reporting that Hegseth briefed commanders on his order to “engage the boat with lethal force.” But both agree that Bradley ordered a second U.S. strike which killed shipwrecked survivors.

That second strike, experts say, constitutes “at best” a textbook war crime (if you accept the administration’s dubious claims that this constitutes a lawful conflict in the first place; otherwise, both strikes are simply murder). Trump said Sunday he “wouldn’t have wanted … a second strike,” though Leavitt defended Bradley ordering one on Monday. 

The right-wing complaints amount to hair-splitting over the exact extent of MAGA favorite Hegseth’s responsibility for the allegedly unlawful killings — and it’s based on two reports that paint a consistent picture. Did Hegseth cause the second strike with his initial order, or did he merely watch Bradley order it in real time with no apparent qualms about it, then promote Bradley, give a speech urging military leaders to “untie the hands of our warfighters” to ensure “maximum lethality,” and then defend the attack and mock its critics?

Either way, the Times article doesn’t vindicate him.

December 7, 2025 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

The Israel lobby is melting down before our eyes

The American Jewish community is in open crisis over its support for Israel after two years of genocide in Gaza. A key issue in this crisis is a topic once considered too taboo to criticize: the Israel lobby.

By Philip Weiss  December 2, 2025 , https://mondoweiss.net/2025/12/the-israel-lobby-is-melting-down-before-our-eyes/

Last month, a top staffer at the Jewish organization J Street who had worked for Obama and Harris explained that Congress’s tradition of backing Israel “no matter what” was imposed by a “well-funded group of… Jews.” 

“A small, organized and well-funded group of American Jews treated the issue as a threshold question in elections, and most candidates decided it wasn’t worth antagonizing them,” Ilan Goldenberg wrote.  

Not long ago, such attacks on the Israel lobby (including my own) were dismissed as antisemitic conspiracy theories. Now, a leading Jewish organization publishes them. 

That’s because the American Jewish community is today in open crisis over its historic support for Israel. Prominent Jews are finally attacking the lobby, a political structure created 60 years ago by leading Jewish groups to make sure there was no daylight between the Israeli and U.S. governments.  

The crisis was catalyzed by the insurgent victory of New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who broke a rule of American politics. You can’t be an anti-Zionist and be taken seriously in American politics. 

The Israel lobby spent tens of millions to defeat Mamdani, led by Bill Ackman and Mike Bloomberg, yet Mamdani still beat Andrew Cuomo twice. After the general election last month, the Jewish establishment spoke with fearful force. Mamdani’s election is “grim” and “ominous,” the Conference of Presidents said. 

“Zohran Mamdani’s elevation to Gracie Mansion reminds us that antisemitism remains a clear and present danger.” 

The ADL announced a “Mamdani-tracker” on the idea that Mamdani will promote antisemitic violence—a claim based on Mamdani’s criticisms of Israel. “Mamdani has promoted antisemitic narratives… and demonstrated intense animosity toward the Jewish state that is counter to the views of the overwhelming majority of Jewish New Yorkers.”

If the lobby thought it was knocking Mamdani down, it failed. Two weeks after the election, Mamdani went to the White House and spoke of Israeli “genocide,” and Trump did nothing to contradict him. It’s about time we heard that word in the White House. 

Mamdani’s courage set off the new Israel-critical discourse, but it has been enabled by a broader social movement. Young Americans are turning against Israel over its anti-Palestinian policies of genocide and apartheid. 

Rahm Emanuel brought the sad news to the largest Jewish organization, the Jewish Federations, last month. Noting that Obama toured Israel before he announced his presidential campaign in 2007, Emanuel, who is running for president, said that in 2028, no Democratic candidate will dare follow the traditional playbook.  

“Nobody is leaving America to travel to Jerusalem. That’s the politics.”

And not only Democrats. Emanuel said that all young people, left and right, are turning on Israel. 

“Look where Israel stands in America with people under 30,” he said. “Forget party. It is a political risk today to take a [pro-Israel] position. Israel is extremely unpopular—I want to drive this point home for all of us who support a Jewish state– today, Israel for a generation under 30, the last two years will be as seminal a definition as what the Six Day War was for [an earlier] generation. But we have to be honest about the task we have here.”

The Israel lobby is melting down before our eyes. At that same conference, Eric Fingerhut, a former Congress member who leads the Federations, said Israel’s bad image was the result of an international conspiracy:

“We have experienced a planned and coordinated attack on Israel’s standing in North America and on the Jewish community that supports Israel. Fueled by billions of dollars in dark money…. [from ] Iran and Qatar and China and Russia and more. Spread by the most advanced communications tools ever invented…”

The conference was devoted to restoring Israel’s good place in the American discourse– “a major long-term rehabilitation of the narrative of what Israel means.”

But it failed, spectacularly. Coverage of the event focused on another meltdown — author Sarah Hurwitz, a former Obama speechwriter, who’s lamented that talking to young people about Israel today means trying to get through a “wall of dead children.” 

The dead children are even getting to American Jews, Hurwitz said: 

“You have tiktok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza. This is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything we try to say to them they’re hearing through this wall of carnage. I want to give data, information, facts They’re hearing it through this wall of carnage.” 

Hurwitz said that Holocaust education had failed with young Jews. It caused them to see heavily armed Israelis as Nazis and their emaciated Palestinian targets as the objects of sympathy.   

Hurwitz was savaged on social media for these comments. But she is a hero to the official Jewish community in her insistence that those who deny the right of Jews to a Jewish state are antisemites. 

Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East is inherent in Jewish religion, Hurwitz says, and Israel’s military strength is the necessary response to a 2000-year story of Jewish hatred. By denying these truths, anti-Zionists show that they hate Jews. 

These ideas are wrong and dangerous. The reason that young Americans hate Israel is that it has killed Palestinian civilians indiscriminately and destroyed their means of life for two years in Gaza, with the underwriting of the American government and the Israel lobby. 

The children’s media star Ms. Rachel voiced the moral dimensions of Gaza in November when she welcomed a traumatized girl named Qamar to New York: 

“I’m so sorry to Qamar that the world stood by as her camp was bombed, she was denied medical care for 20 days, and they had to amputate her leg, and she lived in a ripped, flooded, cold tent.”

It is no wonder that Ms. Rachel has emerged as a leader in the Palestinian solidarity discourse within the U.S., due to her clarity, simplicity, and sense of responsibility. 

The mainstream media are today doing all they can to deny this movement. They deny that attitudes on Palestine had anything to do with Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024. They deny that they were an important factor in Mamdani’s victory in New York. 

Even as insurgent candidates who are running against Israel are sprouting up in Democratic primaries across the country. 

This political upheaval is now a Jewish crisis, as it should be. The Jewish community is fracturing over its official support for genocide. 

Jews who denounce Israel’s actions were key to Mamdani’s coalition. Some were liberal Zionists. But liberal Zionism is itself in disarray, ditching old dogmas—like, BDS is antisemitic — to align itself with young Jews. 

While Sarah Hurwitz and Eric Fingerhut, and Jonathan Greenblatt are leading the Jewish establishment into a fringe position. Hurwitz’s ultimate argument is exceptionalist. Jews have a special role to play in the world– and that’s why people hate us. 

She’s in a long tradition: The lobby has foisted one lie after another on our political discourse. The refugees have no right to return to their homes. Moving 700,000 settlers into occupied territory is fine. There is no apartheid. There is no genocide.  

Israel’s wars against its neighbors are in the U.S. interest. 

These lies are now failing. Whatever ideals Zionism embraced at its origin as a European liberation movement, it solidified into bigotry in the face of Palestinian resistance. The official Jewish community promoted that bigotry. 

The Israel lobby’s lies were once a taboo subject in America. Today its crisis brings that discussion into the public square. 

December 7, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA, USA election 2024 | Leave a comment

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