Forwarded from REST Media
🇭🇺 Engineering opposition in Hungary
Péter Magyar’s rise looked explosive and organic: a leaked tape in February 2024, mass outrage, a newborn party, and 29.5% in EU elections four months later. He went from insider to crusader overnight, toppling a president and outpolling Fidesz in Budapest. But the acceleration invites scrutiny. Movements don’t typically materialize at this speed without prior scaffolding.
Civil groups, independent media, and Brussels networks rapidly embraced Magyar. Legal shields, funding ecosystems, and instant European party access replaced the slow grind of grassroots opposition-building. His platform mirrors EU positions on sanctions, Ukraine, and governance reforms — precisely where Budapest clashes with Brussels.
Whether Magyar’s revolt is authentic or architected, it shows how modern opposition can be manufactured through infrastructure, narrative, and timing — when sovereignty meets supranational design.
🔎 Read more in our in-depth investigation.
Follow @RESTinvestigate on Telegram | 𝕏
Péter Magyar’s rise looked explosive and organic: a leaked tape in February 2024, mass outrage, a newborn party, and 29.5% in EU elections four months later. He went from insider to crusader overnight, toppling a president and outpolling Fidesz in Budapest. But the acceleration invites scrutiny. Movements don’t typically materialize at this speed without prior scaffolding.
Civil groups, independent media, and Brussels networks rapidly embraced Magyar. Legal shields, funding ecosystems, and instant European party access replaced the slow grind of grassroots opposition-building. His platform mirrors EU positions on sanctions, Ukraine, and governance reforms — precisely where Budapest clashes with Brussels.
Whether Magyar’s revolt is authentic or architected, it shows how modern opposition can be manufactured through infrastructure, narrative, and timing — when sovereignty meets supranational design.
🔎 Read more in our in-depth investigation.
Follow @RESTinvestigate on Telegram | 𝕏
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Forwarded from The Islander
🇩🇪 German lawmakers just accused the opposition of espionage... for asking too many questions. That’s not satire.
AfD submitted routine parliamentary inquiries about Germany’s military reality… and Berlin lost its mind. If you expose NATO failures, you’re now a “Russian agent.”
What we are witnessing in Germany is not a security scandal, it’s a nervous breakdown. The German establishment, facing plummeting approval, a collapsing Ukraine project, and rising domestic rebellion, has chosen to aim its cannons not at foreign adversaries, but at its own parliamentary opposition. The accusations leveled against the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), that it is effectively a “Russian sleeper cell” — are not only absurd on their face, they represent a deliberate and dangerous escalation in the war on dissent. Asking tough questions about the operational readiness of the Bundeswehr is now treated as espionage.
AfD’s crime was submitting 47 formal questions to the federal government over the past year, probing drone defense capabilities, infrastructure vulnerabilities, and broader military preparedness. These are standard tools of oversight, the very mechanisms by which elected officials hold governments accountable. But in Germany’s NATO-occupied political theatre, transparency is now subversion. Parliamentary inquiry is being recast as a hostile act. The implication is chilling: only questions aligned with the official narrative are allowed. Everything else is treason.
Behind the dramatic accusations lies a far deeper truth. Germany’s political class is collapsing under the weight of its own lies. The Ukraine war, sold as a noble defense of Europe, is exposed as a bottomless pit of taxpayer money, grift, and geopolitical humiliation. The Bundeswehr is a paper tiger. German airports are disrupted by phantom drones while the government can’t even guarantee basic security. And the Atlanticist elites know it.
This pattern is no accident. It’s the exact playbook we’ve seen across the West. In France, Macron smeared Yellow Vests as Kremlin pawns. In the UK, critics of NATO like Jeremy Corbyn were smeared. Now Berlin joins the club, criminalizing opposition to its own failed policies by framing it as foreign infiltration.
This entire episode confirms what many already know: the liberal order in Europe is dead. In its place stands a hollowed-out security state, terrified of populist insurgency and allergic to accountability. AfD’s rising popularity, especially in eastern Germany, terrifies Berlin not because it represents extremism, but because it represents disobedience. It dares to question NATO. It dares to say the war in Ukraine is lost. It dares to ask whether Germany should serve German interests, not Brussels. In the eyes of the regime, that makes them traitors.
What’s even more revealing is the way the media and intelligence services are being weaponized to support this campaign. The domestic intelligence agency (BfV) and mainstream press now openly act as political enforcers. It’s not about Russia. It’s about control. It’s about silencing the only force left in German politics that threatens the post-sovereignty consensus. And this isn’t just a German story, it’s the future of the West unless something breaks the cycle.
What breaks the cycle is precisely what this multipolar moment offers. Across Europe — from Hungary to Slovakia, from the Netherlands to France, the Atlanticist elite are facing insurgencies from within. Populist movements that reject endless war, reject deindustrialization, and reject the subservience to hegemony are on the rise. AfD is just the first crack in the dam. More are coming. And no amount of slander, surveillance, or suppression will stop the flood once it starts.
In the end, this is a story not about espionage, but about empire in decay. The Atlanticist regime fears its own people more than any foreign threat. It fears peace more than war. And it fears accountability more than anything else.
🎙Subscribe @TheIslanderNews
Donate - Support Our Work
AfD submitted routine parliamentary inquiries about Germany’s military reality… and Berlin lost its mind. If you expose NATO failures, you’re now a “Russian agent.”
What we are witnessing in Germany is not a security scandal, it’s a nervous breakdown. The German establishment, facing plummeting approval, a collapsing Ukraine project, and rising domestic rebellion, has chosen to aim its cannons not at foreign adversaries, but at its own parliamentary opposition. The accusations leveled against the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), that it is effectively a “Russian sleeper cell” — are not only absurd on their face, they represent a deliberate and dangerous escalation in the war on dissent. Asking tough questions about the operational readiness of the Bundeswehr is now treated as espionage.
AfD’s crime was submitting 47 formal questions to the federal government over the past year, probing drone defense capabilities, infrastructure vulnerabilities, and broader military preparedness. These are standard tools of oversight, the very mechanisms by which elected officials hold governments accountable. But in Germany’s NATO-occupied political theatre, transparency is now subversion. Parliamentary inquiry is being recast as a hostile act. The implication is chilling: only questions aligned with the official narrative are allowed. Everything else is treason.
Behind the dramatic accusations lies a far deeper truth. Germany’s political class is collapsing under the weight of its own lies. The Ukraine war, sold as a noble defense of Europe, is exposed as a bottomless pit of taxpayer money, grift, and geopolitical humiliation. The Bundeswehr is a paper tiger. German airports are disrupted by phantom drones while the government can’t even guarantee basic security. And the Atlanticist elites know it.
This pattern is no accident. It’s the exact playbook we’ve seen across the West. In France, Macron smeared Yellow Vests as Kremlin pawns. In the UK, critics of NATO like Jeremy Corbyn were smeared. Now Berlin joins the club, criminalizing opposition to its own failed policies by framing it as foreign infiltration.
This entire episode confirms what many already know: the liberal order in Europe is dead. In its place stands a hollowed-out security state, terrified of populist insurgency and allergic to accountability. AfD’s rising popularity, especially in eastern Germany, terrifies Berlin not because it represents extremism, but because it represents disobedience. It dares to question NATO. It dares to say the war in Ukraine is lost. It dares to ask whether Germany should serve German interests, not Brussels. In the eyes of the regime, that makes them traitors.
What’s even more revealing is the way the media and intelligence services are being weaponized to support this campaign. The domestic intelligence agency (BfV) and mainstream press now openly act as political enforcers. It’s not about Russia. It’s about control. It’s about silencing the only force left in German politics that threatens the post-sovereignty consensus. And this isn’t just a German story, it’s the future of the West unless something breaks the cycle.
What breaks the cycle is precisely what this multipolar moment offers. Across Europe — from Hungary to Slovakia, from the Netherlands to France, the Atlanticist elite are facing insurgencies from within. Populist movements that reject endless war, reject deindustrialization, and reject the subservience to hegemony are on the rise. AfD is just the first crack in the dam. More are coming. And no amount of slander, surveillance, or suppression will stop the flood once it starts.
In the end, this is a story not about espionage, but about empire in decay. The Atlanticist regime fears its own people more than any foreign threat. It fears peace more than war. And it fears accountability more than anything else.
🎙Subscribe @TheIslanderNews
Donate - Support Our Work
🤡18💯7❤4🤮2👻1😡1
Forwarded from The Islander
🇪🇺 If Brussels steals frozen Russian assets, it won’t just be a crime, it will be the final nail in the coffin of the postwar financial order.
The legal pretext is laughable. The moral cover is gone. What’s left is theft — plain, political, irreversible, dressed in EU Commission letterhead.
De Wever, the Belgian Prime Minister, has been handed the detonator. If he approves the asset grab, Euroclear becomes a crime scene. And Europe, once a continent built on treaties and trust, becomes the world’s most dangerous custodian of capital.
The Ukraine Facility, designed to bankroll Kiev through 2027, is already running dry. Of the original €50 billion pledged, only €18 billion remains. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s fiscal demands are ballooning. Zelensky’s government is asking for €60 billion more, just to keep the lights on and salaries paid.
With Washington pivoting to Trump-era retrenchment and domestic revolt brewing in the U.S. over Ukraine aid, Brussels now finds itself holding a burning torch and an empty wallet, pretending it’s moral leadership.
So the scheme on the table? Loot the Russian Central Bank. Not yachts. Not oligarch cash. But sovereign reserves, the backbone of the post-Bretton Woods financial system.
This isn’t just about Russia. It’s about precedent.
Because once a central bank’s reserves are no longer protected under international law — once your enemy’s deposits become your war chest, the entire architecture of global capital collapses.
Every dollar, euro, or yen parked in Western custodianship becomes hostage capital. Silent if compliant. Forfeited if sovereign.
If they can do it to Moscow, they can do it to Riyadh. Or to New Delhi. Or to Beijing. Or to Brasilia. The BRICS bloc knows this. And with each desperate EU-G7 stunt, they accelerate their exodus, building firewalls and trade corridors that no longer run through Brussels or Wall Street.
And let’s be clear: this is not being done from a position of strength. The timing screams desperation.
The EU economy is stagnating and seems primed for collapse. Germany, once Europe’s industrial engine, is crumbling under energy suicide and self-imposed sanctions. France is convulsing politically, with Macron reduced to a meme of irrelevance. The ECB is trapped between inflation and insolvency.
Trump is returning. And with him, the last hope of NATO unity will evaporate.
So they’re not planning. They’re pillaging before the music stops.
And what does this theft fund? A regime in Kiev no European ever voted for. A war no sane Ukranian let alone European wants to fight. And a future where Europe becomes not a beacon of law, but a cautionary tale.
Meanwhile, Euroclear itself faces financial and legal peril. If the theft is executed, it triggers a cascade of litigation, retaliation, and decoupling, not just from Russia, but from an entire Global South now watching with binoculars and hard currency reserves.
This isn’t a smart play. The Breton Woods financial order was only underwritten by the illusion of trust. That trust ain't coming back.
This is a suicide pact with imperial delusions.
And when you can no longer extract from the Global South, you turn inward, and begin cannibalizing your own.
Europe is now eating its banking system, its energy base, and its final fragments of legal credibility, just to feed a war that has already been lost on the battlefield and is now being lost in the balance sheets.
De Wever can still say no. But if he says yes, the day Euroclear transfers that first stolen euro will be remembered as the day the West broke its own financial spine.
Because they’re not just eating Russia’s assets. They’re eating their future.
🎙Subscribe @TheIslanderNews
Donate - Support Our Work
The legal pretext is laughable. The moral cover is gone. What’s left is theft — plain, political, irreversible, dressed in EU Commission letterhead.
De Wever, the Belgian Prime Minister, has been handed the detonator. If he approves the asset grab, Euroclear becomes a crime scene. And Europe, once a continent built on treaties and trust, becomes the world’s most dangerous custodian of capital.
The Ukraine Facility, designed to bankroll Kiev through 2027, is already running dry. Of the original €50 billion pledged, only €18 billion remains. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s fiscal demands are ballooning. Zelensky’s government is asking for €60 billion more, just to keep the lights on and salaries paid.
With Washington pivoting to Trump-era retrenchment and domestic revolt brewing in the U.S. over Ukraine aid, Brussels now finds itself holding a burning torch and an empty wallet, pretending it’s moral leadership.
So the scheme on the table? Loot the Russian Central Bank. Not yachts. Not oligarch cash. But sovereign reserves, the backbone of the post-Bretton Woods financial system.
This isn’t just about Russia. It’s about precedent.
Because once a central bank’s reserves are no longer protected under international law — once your enemy’s deposits become your war chest, the entire architecture of global capital collapses.
Every dollar, euro, or yen parked in Western custodianship becomes hostage capital. Silent if compliant. Forfeited if sovereign.
If they can do it to Moscow, they can do it to Riyadh. Or to New Delhi. Or to Beijing. Or to Brasilia. The BRICS bloc knows this. And with each desperate EU-G7 stunt, they accelerate their exodus, building firewalls and trade corridors that no longer run through Brussels or Wall Street.
And let’s be clear: this is not being done from a position of strength. The timing screams desperation.
The EU economy is stagnating and seems primed for collapse. Germany, once Europe’s industrial engine, is crumbling under energy suicide and self-imposed sanctions. France is convulsing politically, with Macron reduced to a meme of irrelevance. The ECB is trapped between inflation and insolvency.
Trump is returning. And with him, the last hope of NATO unity will evaporate.
So they’re not planning. They’re pillaging before the music stops.
And what does this theft fund? A regime in Kiev no European ever voted for. A war no sane Ukranian let alone European wants to fight. And a future where Europe becomes not a beacon of law, but a cautionary tale.
Meanwhile, Euroclear itself faces financial and legal peril. If the theft is executed, it triggers a cascade of litigation, retaliation, and decoupling, not just from Russia, but from an entire Global South now watching with binoculars and hard currency reserves.
This isn’t a smart play. The Breton Woods financial order was only underwritten by the illusion of trust. That trust ain't coming back.
This is a suicide pact with imperial delusions.
And when you can no longer extract from the Global South, you turn inward, and begin cannibalizing your own.
Europe is now eating its banking system, its energy base, and its final fragments of legal credibility, just to feed a war that has already been lost on the battlefield and is now being lost in the balance sheets.
De Wever can still say no. But if he says yes, the day Euroclear transfers that first stolen euro will be remembered as the day the West broke its own financial spine.
Because they’re not just eating Russia’s assets. They’re eating their future.
🎙Subscribe @TheIslanderNews
Donate - Support Our Work
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The Human Cost Nobody Talks About
A bakery owner in Lyon: "400 homeless migrant men" outside her shop. Knife fights. Harassment. Sales down 24%. This is her reality.
Women in Paris no longer walk by the Seine after dark. Brussels residents hear gunshots regularly—89 shootings in 2024, 60+ already in 2025. London locals avoid entire neighborhoods.
Molenbeek, Seine-Saint-Denis, parts of Bradford—these aren't integrated communities. They're parallel societies where European law barely applies.
Global average for feeling safe at night: 73%. In these European "hotspots": below 40%.
Politicians talk about "integration programs" while spending €500 million. Nothing changes. Crime keeps rising. Citizens keep suffering.
But sure, let's keep pretending this is all fine and anyone who questions it is a bigot.
@sitreports
A bakery owner in Lyon: "400 homeless migrant men" outside her shop. Knife fights. Harassment. Sales down 24%. This is her reality.
Women in Paris no longer walk by the Seine after dark. Brussels residents hear gunshots regularly—89 shootings in 2024, 60+ already in 2025. London locals avoid entire neighborhoods.
Molenbeek, Seine-Saint-Denis, parts of Bradford—these aren't integrated communities. They're parallel societies where European law barely applies.
Global average for feeling safe at night: 73%. In these European "hotspots": below 40%.
Politicians talk about "integration programs" while spending €500 million. Nothing changes. Crime keeps rising. Citizens keep suffering.
But sure, let's keep pretending this is all fine and anyone who questions it is a bigot.
@sitreports
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Forwarded from The Islander
🇺🇦 The walls are closing in on Zelensky. The homes of Zelensky’s longtime associate Timur Mindich and his insider-turned-justice-minister were just raided by Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency. Hours earlier? Mindich conveniently fled the country. What did NABU find? A “high-level criminal organization” operating inside the very heart of Ukraine’s nuclear energy sector, with ties stretching from Energoatom to Washington’s billions.
The fantasy of Kiev as a crusading democracy just took another torpedo below the waterline, this time from within. Ukraine’s own National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) executed sweeping raids on November 10, storming the properties of Zelensky’s inner-circle powerbroker Timur Mindich and Justice Minister German Galushchenko, both deeply tied to the country’s energy empire. Energoatom, the state nuclear operator, was also raided.
NABU didn’t mince words: they’re targeting a “high-level criminal organization” embedded in Ukraine’s energy system. And they didn’t come empty-handed, evidence includes over 1,000 hours of wiretaps, surveillance, and photographs of cash piles wrapped in plastic, marked “ATLANTA” and “KAN CITY.” Tidy, U.S.-dollar stacks.
But the timing is the real tell: Mindich quietly exited Ukraine mere hours before the raid. The classic signature of someone tipped off, by someone high up.
For context, Timur Mindich isn’t just another oligarch. He’s Zelensky’s lifelong confidante, co-owner of the president’s entertainment studio, and the man whose apartment hosted Zelensky’s birthday party in 2021. That same apartment, according to reports, had been under NABU surveillance for months. And what did they capture? Allegedly, Zelensky himself, on tape.
These “Mindich tapes” were whispered into public view just as Zelensky began his July attempt to strip NABU of its independence, placing it under direct presidential control. That move triggered mass protests in Kyiv, forced an embarrassing U-turn, and signaled just how desperate the regime was to muzzle its own watchdogs.
And now? The watchdogs have bitten back and the teeth marks go straight through the presidency.
This isn’t an isolated scandal. It’s a glimpse behind the curtain of a wartime kleptocracy where entertainment moguls morph into drone manufacturers, no-bid contracts flood into shadowy shell companies, and “anti-corruption” becomes a fundraising slogan for the same regime that’s robbing its Western backers blind.
Mindich’s company Fire Point, which started as a film location scout, now reportedly supplies drones and has raked in inflated defense and energy contracts. All while denying ties to Mindich, of course. Meanwhile, Justice Minister Galushchenko — formerly the energy minister, is described as Mindich’s “insider” within the state. Convenient placement when you’re laundering influence.
And let’s not forget, Mindich is also reportedly under FBI investigation for money laundering, in cooperation with NABU. That transatlantic thread is yet another embarrassment for Kiev's Western patrons. How many of their billions got vacuumed up into this circus?
But perhaps the most damning part of this whole drama is the civil war inside Ukraine’s own anti-corruption system. Zelensky’s attempt to neuter NABU, just weeks before this raid, shows the regime wasn’t caught off guard. It was cornered. And it tried to kill the agency before the agency could kill the myth.
He failed.
For months, NABU investigators quietly compiled their case, dodging sabotage and public smear campaigns. Their director admitted as much in July: his team was under coordinated political attack. And yet, they pressed on.
This blows a hole through the Western narrative farce.
The “clean” war just got dirty. The “heroic” president just got unmasked. And Ukraine’s real battle isn’t at the front, it’s inside the palace.
🎙Subscribe @TheIslanderNews
Donate - Support Our Work
The fantasy of Kiev as a crusading democracy just took another torpedo below the waterline, this time from within. Ukraine’s own National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) executed sweeping raids on November 10, storming the properties of Zelensky’s inner-circle powerbroker Timur Mindich and Justice Minister German Galushchenko, both deeply tied to the country’s energy empire. Energoatom, the state nuclear operator, was also raided.
NABU didn’t mince words: they’re targeting a “high-level criminal organization” embedded in Ukraine’s energy system. And they didn’t come empty-handed, evidence includes over 1,000 hours of wiretaps, surveillance, and photographs of cash piles wrapped in plastic, marked “ATLANTA” and “KAN CITY.” Tidy, U.S.-dollar stacks.
But the timing is the real tell: Mindich quietly exited Ukraine mere hours before the raid. The classic signature of someone tipped off, by someone high up.
For context, Timur Mindich isn’t just another oligarch. He’s Zelensky’s lifelong confidante, co-owner of the president’s entertainment studio, and the man whose apartment hosted Zelensky’s birthday party in 2021. That same apartment, according to reports, had been under NABU surveillance for months. And what did they capture? Allegedly, Zelensky himself, on tape.
These “Mindich tapes” were whispered into public view just as Zelensky began his July attempt to strip NABU of its independence, placing it under direct presidential control. That move triggered mass protests in Kyiv, forced an embarrassing U-turn, and signaled just how desperate the regime was to muzzle its own watchdogs.
And now? The watchdogs have bitten back and the teeth marks go straight through the presidency.
This isn’t an isolated scandal. It’s a glimpse behind the curtain of a wartime kleptocracy where entertainment moguls morph into drone manufacturers, no-bid contracts flood into shadowy shell companies, and “anti-corruption” becomes a fundraising slogan for the same regime that’s robbing its Western backers blind.
Mindich’s company Fire Point, which started as a film location scout, now reportedly supplies drones and has raked in inflated defense and energy contracts. All while denying ties to Mindich, of course. Meanwhile, Justice Minister Galushchenko — formerly the energy minister, is described as Mindich’s “insider” within the state. Convenient placement when you’re laundering influence.
And let’s not forget, Mindich is also reportedly under FBI investigation for money laundering, in cooperation with NABU. That transatlantic thread is yet another embarrassment for Kiev's Western patrons. How many of their billions got vacuumed up into this circus?
But perhaps the most damning part of this whole drama is the civil war inside Ukraine’s own anti-corruption system. Zelensky’s attempt to neuter NABU, just weeks before this raid, shows the regime wasn’t caught off guard. It was cornered. And it tried to kill the agency before the agency could kill the myth.
He failed.
For months, NABU investigators quietly compiled their case, dodging sabotage and public smear campaigns. Their director admitted as much in July: his team was under coordinated political attack. And yet, they pressed on.
This blows a hole through the Western narrative farce.
The “clean” war just got dirty. The “heroic” president just got unmasked. And Ukraine’s real battle isn’t at the front, it’s inside the palace.
🎙Subscribe @TheIslanderNews
Donate - Support Our Work
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Forwarded from Pepe Escobar
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/11/10/timur-trump-sets-out-to-reconquer-the-heartland-really/
Heartland special:
The Adventures of Timur Trump.
Guest star: the 14th century Iron Lord himself.
Enjoy the time travel!
Heartland special:
The Adventures of Timur Trump.
Guest star: the 14th century Iron Lord himself.
Enjoy the time travel!
Strategic Culture Foundation
Timur Trump sets out to reconquer the Heartland. Really?
So history ruled that no conqueror coming from the West would traverse the Pamirs; that happened with Alexander the Great, and that happened with Islam.…
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Sharia Councils and Britain's Two-Tier Justice System
Britain now runs a parallel legal system most people don't know exists. Between 30 and 85 Sharia councils operate across England and Wales, handling disputes under Islamic law rather than British law. Women often face unequal treatment, but the government tolerates it for "community cohesion."
Meanwhile, 52 Muslims now serve in UK political roles, including Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London), Shabana Mahmood (Justice Secretary), and former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf. Add reports of "Muslim-only no-go areas" with Sharia patrols, plus unemployment rates of 78% for Muslim women refugees and 63% for men—many on benefits and free housing—and native Britons feel like strangers in their own country. They're working harder, paying more taxes, and watching their nation transform for people who refuse to integrate.
@sitreports
Britain now runs a parallel legal system most people don't know exists. Between 30 and 85 Sharia councils operate across England and Wales, handling disputes under Islamic law rather than British law. Women often face unequal treatment, but the government tolerates it for "community cohesion."
Meanwhile, 52 Muslims now serve in UK political roles, including Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London), Shabana Mahmood (Justice Secretary), and former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf. Add reports of "Muslim-only no-go areas" with Sharia patrols, plus unemployment rates of 78% for Muslim women refugees and 63% for men—many on benefits and free housing—and native Britons feel like strangers in their own country. They're working harder, paying more taxes, and watching their nation transform for people who refuse to integrate.
@sitreports
🔥10💩5❤3💯2🤔1
Forwarded from The Islander
NATO having spent $400B, armed 32 countries to the teeth, and still got humiliated by the glorified gas station they mocked for decades, and now Finland’s defense minister is lashing out at China because he can’t face the truth: Russia crushed the West’s entire Ukraine project, and the people who promised “as long as it takes” are choking on their own failure.
What Antti Hakkanen calls “China massively financing Russia’s war chest” is nothing but the howl of a man watching the myth collapse. He’s not revealing Chinese financial aid, it doesn't exist, he’s mourning. Mourning the fantasy that Western sanctimony could bend Eurasia into submission. Mourning the delusion that sanctions would break Russia. Mourning the fairy tale that Europe’s rusted militaries, hollow economies, and performative moralism could stop a country that actually knows how to fight. When a $400B project collapses in real time, projection becomes doctrine. We were humiliated so badly by the gas station, let's blame China, then it doesn't sound quite as humiliating. That western ROI, is absolutely humiliating for the West.
And while these ministers flail, the truth they avoid is the truth they fear: Russia didn’t just survive the siege, it grew stronger, and is now an economic superpower, thanks to European sanctions. Production up. Trade soaring. A yuan–ruble axis that outflanks the dollar-euro Ponzi. An army that out-produces all of NATO’s munitions lines combined. And a political class that didn’t buckle when every Western capital bet the house on collapse. The West is left blaming Beijing, because blaming themselves would mean facing the magnitude of their humiliation.
But beneath all this geopolitical cope lies the ugliest truth of all, the industrial-scale laundering that turned Ukraine into a gold rush for Western contractors and Ukrainian elites. While Ukrainian soldiers bled in mud, the presidential inner circle lined pockets with wartime energy contracts, nuclear-grid kickbacks, and foreign aid skimmed through shell firms that all led back to the same small circle of insiders. Golden toilets. Monaco apartments. Offshore accounts fattened while families froze in high-rise stairwells during blackouts. And one day, when this war finally ends and the spell breaks, Ukraine’s own citizens will turn around and see who sold them to the highest bidder. Not Moscow. Not Beijing. But the very handlers who promised salvation and delivered only debt, depopulation, and graves. There is no amnesty in history for leaders who steal from their own dead.
Finland isn’t sounding an alarm, but it is confessing defeat. Because if a “gas station with nukes” can defeat 32 NATO militaries, devour $400B in Western investment, and still push relentlessly through Pokrovsk, then it isn’t a gas station at all — it’s a civilization with a memory, a spine, and an economy immune to Western fantasies. What broke wasn’t Russia. What broke was the illusion that the West still commands the world.
And here’s the real sting: China didn’t break NATO’s strategy, NATO’s arrogance did.
A hubris so blinding they mistook their own propaganda for reality. A delusion so deep they believed history had ended. A failure so absolute the only thing left is to blame the rising world for refusing to drown with them.
That’s the verdict of this war.
Not just defeat, exposure. And no minister in Helsinki can spin that away.
- Gerry Nolan
🎙Subscribe @TheIslanderNews
Donate - Support Our Work
What Antti Hakkanen calls “China massively financing Russia’s war chest” is nothing but the howl of a man watching the myth collapse. He’s not revealing Chinese financial aid, it doesn't exist, he’s mourning. Mourning the fantasy that Western sanctimony could bend Eurasia into submission. Mourning the delusion that sanctions would break Russia. Mourning the fairy tale that Europe’s rusted militaries, hollow economies, and performative moralism could stop a country that actually knows how to fight. When a $400B project collapses in real time, projection becomes doctrine. We were humiliated so badly by the gas station, let's blame China, then it doesn't sound quite as humiliating. That western ROI, is absolutely humiliating for the West.
And while these ministers flail, the truth they avoid is the truth they fear: Russia didn’t just survive the siege, it grew stronger, and is now an economic superpower, thanks to European sanctions. Production up. Trade soaring. A yuan–ruble axis that outflanks the dollar-euro Ponzi. An army that out-produces all of NATO’s munitions lines combined. And a political class that didn’t buckle when every Western capital bet the house on collapse. The West is left blaming Beijing, because blaming themselves would mean facing the magnitude of their humiliation.
But beneath all this geopolitical cope lies the ugliest truth of all, the industrial-scale laundering that turned Ukraine into a gold rush for Western contractors and Ukrainian elites. While Ukrainian soldiers bled in mud, the presidential inner circle lined pockets with wartime energy contracts, nuclear-grid kickbacks, and foreign aid skimmed through shell firms that all led back to the same small circle of insiders. Golden toilets. Monaco apartments. Offshore accounts fattened while families froze in high-rise stairwells during blackouts. And one day, when this war finally ends and the spell breaks, Ukraine’s own citizens will turn around and see who sold them to the highest bidder. Not Moscow. Not Beijing. But the very handlers who promised salvation and delivered only debt, depopulation, and graves. There is no amnesty in history for leaders who steal from their own dead.
Finland isn’t sounding an alarm, but it is confessing defeat. Because if a “gas station with nukes” can defeat 32 NATO militaries, devour $400B in Western investment, and still push relentlessly through Pokrovsk, then it isn’t a gas station at all — it’s a civilization with a memory, a spine, and an economy immune to Western fantasies. What broke wasn’t Russia. What broke was the illusion that the West still commands the world.
And here’s the real sting: China didn’t break NATO’s strategy, NATO’s arrogance did.
A hubris so blinding they mistook their own propaganda for reality. A delusion so deep they believed history had ended. A failure so absolute the only thing left is to blame the rising world for refusing to drown with them.
That’s the verdict of this war.
Not just defeat, exposure. And no minister in Helsinki can spin that away.
- Gerry Nolan
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Forwarded from The Islander
Washington keeps insisting it wants “responsible competition” with China and yet every move on the board screams preparation for a conflict they’ve already priced in. The new U.S.–Philippines military task force in the South China Sea isn’t de-escalation, it’s militarized scaffolding. 11k troops cycle through Balikatan like a conveyor belt, carrier groups and nuclear subs stalk the Western Pacific, and bomber patrols have doubled to Cold War intensity. This looks like staging.
Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines have now been hardwired into a trilateral containment grid that has evolved far beyond the Camp David symbolism of 2023. In September 2025, the three governments formalized a permanent joint Secretariat in Seoul, a bureaucratic backbone for synchronized Indo-Pacific policy. They already share real-time missile tracking data and rehearse coordinated operations through exercises like Freedom Edge, which debuted last year. This is not a regional partnership. It’s the Pacific’s NATO-in-progress, DC setting the doctrine, Japan providing the industrial base, South Korea locking in manufacturing consent through its engineered anti-China sentiment, and the Philippines offering the geography for forward basing.
And the doctrine itself has now been spoken out loud. Earlier this year, U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth bluntly laid out the “division of labor”: Europe’s job is to keep pressure on Russia so the United States can shift its strategic weight toward China. That isn’t burden-sharing as he calls it, it’s imperial subcontracting of war-making, where entire regions are assigned roles in America’s long game to preserve primacy. Ukraine becomes Europe’s open wound, the Indo-Pacific becomes Washington’s next attempted leverage point. It won't succeed.
Japan’s transformation is the most dramatic. Tokyo has approved a record defense budget, deepened U.S. Marine–Japan littoral cooperation, and procured Tomahawk cruise missiles to operationalize its new “counterstrike capability.” Japan’s post-war pacifist posture, once the psychological anchor of regional stability, now exists largely on paper, replaced by the reality of a frontline state aligned with Washington’s strategic timetable. Beijing sees this clearly. That’s why the Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned Japan’s ambassador after Prime Minister Takaichi’s Taiwan commentary, warning that Tokyo was crossing a line that undermines the political foundation of bilateral relations. When even a Chinese Consul’s furious post about “cutting off a dirty neck” makes global headlines, it’s not diplomacy, but a thermometer, showing how much the pressure has risen.
Asia is not drifting into confrontation by accident. It’s being re-engineered into one — structurally, bureaucratically, militarily, and psychologically. The United States mobilizes the alliances. Japan discards its restraints. South Korea signs on despite economic interdependence with China. The Philippines becomes the new forward operating base. And through each step, Washington repeats the same noscript it used in Eastern Europe: build the proxy chain, militarize it gradually, escalate in increments, then present the resulting crisis as defensive necessity.
But the Indo-Pacific isn’t Ukraine. China isn’t Russia in 2014. And Asia, with its deep economic interconnection and multipolar gravity, is not a disposable battlefield for a fading superpower’s last attempt to freeze history in place. What we’re watching isn’t “competition.” It’s the deliberate preparation of the region for a conflict nobody in Asia voted for, and one that will reshape the century if it ever ignites.
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Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines have now been hardwired into a trilateral containment grid that has evolved far beyond the Camp David symbolism of 2023. In September 2025, the three governments formalized a permanent joint Secretariat in Seoul, a bureaucratic backbone for synchronized Indo-Pacific policy. They already share real-time missile tracking data and rehearse coordinated operations through exercises like Freedom Edge, which debuted last year. This is not a regional partnership. It’s the Pacific’s NATO-in-progress, DC setting the doctrine, Japan providing the industrial base, South Korea locking in manufacturing consent through its engineered anti-China sentiment, and the Philippines offering the geography for forward basing.
And the doctrine itself has now been spoken out loud. Earlier this year, U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth bluntly laid out the “division of labor”: Europe’s job is to keep pressure on Russia so the United States can shift its strategic weight toward China. That isn’t burden-sharing as he calls it, it’s imperial subcontracting of war-making, where entire regions are assigned roles in America’s long game to preserve primacy. Ukraine becomes Europe’s open wound, the Indo-Pacific becomes Washington’s next attempted leverage point. It won't succeed.
Japan’s transformation is the most dramatic. Tokyo has approved a record defense budget, deepened U.S. Marine–Japan littoral cooperation, and procured Tomahawk cruise missiles to operationalize its new “counterstrike capability.” Japan’s post-war pacifist posture, once the psychological anchor of regional stability, now exists largely on paper, replaced by the reality of a frontline state aligned with Washington’s strategic timetable. Beijing sees this clearly. That’s why the Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned Japan’s ambassador after Prime Minister Takaichi’s Taiwan commentary, warning that Tokyo was crossing a line that undermines the political foundation of bilateral relations. When even a Chinese Consul’s furious post about “cutting off a dirty neck” makes global headlines, it’s not diplomacy, but a thermometer, showing how much the pressure has risen.
Asia is not drifting into confrontation by accident. It’s being re-engineered into one — structurally, bureaucratically, militarily, and psychologically. The United States mobilizes the alliances. Japan discards its restraints. South Korea signs on despite economic interdependence with China. The Philippines becomes the new forward operating base. And through each step, Washington repeats the same noscript it used in Eastern Europe: build the proxy chain, militarize it gradually, escalate in increments, then present the resulting crisis as defensive necessity.
But the Indo-Pacific isn’t Ukraine. China isn’t Russia in 2014. And Asia, with its deep economic interconnection and multipolar gravity, is not a disposable battlefield for a fading superpower’s last attempt to freeze history in place. What we’re watching isn’t “competition.” It’s the deliberate preparation of the region for a conflict nobody in Asia voted for, and one that will reshape the century if it ever ignites.
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Forwarded from Rybar in English
Who, What, and Where Frozen in Europe
When discussing the fate of frozen Russian assets, one often hears claims that Europeans will hand over the money to Ukraine. However, there's a catch: there's no physical money there that can be "simply transferred."
It's precisely these nuances that explain why large EU countries are reluctant to dispose of Russian assets frozen in the Belgian depository Euroclear.
🔻 More about the assets and where they're frozen:▪️ Euroclear is not a bank with a cash vault, but an international depository that stores securities, processes settlements between buyers and sellers, and monitors the legality of the process.▪️ In other words, Euroclear is a large ledger that lists who owns which securities. There are no paper certificates stored there either—only access codes confirming the legal owner.▪️ The frozen Russian assets there primarily consist of government bonds. For example, if Russia purchased a two-year bond from Germany, Germany must redeem it in two years—returning the face value plus interest to Russia. This is recorded in Euroclear.▪️ The freezing of such assets de facto means that Russia remains the owner of the bonds, but cannot do anything with them: neither sell them, receive interest, nor withdraw funds after redemption. The income from them accumulates in Euroclear bank accounts.▪️ There are also other types of frozen assets belonging to individuals and legal entities. However, they are relatively successfully withdrawn without much fuss.
The assets can only be transferred by changing the bond owner from Russia to Ukraine in the Euroclear registry: this is blatant chaos with serious risks for the euro, which the EU is currently unwilling to accept. Therefore, they are pursuing a different tactic.
🔻 "Wait for the redemption!"▪️ A significant portion of the bonds (remember, they make up the bulk of the frozen assets) mature in 2026-2032.▪️ Under normal circumstances, the proceeds from the redemption would simply go to Russia, but due to the blocking, they will "sit" on the Euroclear bank's balance sheet, awaiting their fate.▪️ If the ownership of the bonds is clearly stated, then the proceeds from their redemption are more easily manipulated. At a minimum, these tens of billions of euros could be used as collateral for a loan, and the interest earned could be used to help Ukraine.
@rybar
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Forwarded from Rybar in English
The "Vostok" troops group is advancing on a wide front, moving forward simultaneously in several sectors of the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Assault units of the 36th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 29th Army have freed the settlement of Hai. Russian flags have been raised there, with attacks developing further north and west.
🔻 Where else are the successes?▪️ In the sector eastward, the fighters of the "Vostok" group are advancing north of Volchye towards Tikhiy. Several forest belts have come under control.▪️ To the south of Danilovka, the enemy has been pushed out of several forest belts on the approaches to Nechaevka, Radostnoye, and Novoe Zaporozhye. The offensive continues there as well.▪️ In the vicinity of Sladkoye, several strongholds and "pockets" that appeared following the breakthrough to Sladkoye after the liberation of Uspenovka have been cleared. Now the enemy is being cleared from the fields further in the direction of the Gaidchur River.▪️ From the areas of Rovnopol and Yablokovo, an offensive is also moving west towards Varvarovka. It appears that Russian units are forming a "pincer" for a partial encirclement of Huliaipole.▪️ There are also successes on the eastern approaches to Huliaipole itself. Russian units have managed to hook onto the outskirts of Vesely and Zeleny Gay, as well as advance closer to Chervony. Earlier, the Armed Forces of Ukraine were pushed out from fields to the north.
Judging by the pace of "Vostok's" advance, at least some units have been withdrawn by the enemy across the river. Those left in the "interriver" area are essentially abandoned as sacrificial troops, attempting to buy time to reinforce defense on the Yanchur.
If you have any updates on the situation or want us to highlight the successes of your unit, you can always write to us via the feedback bot
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#Huliaipole #map #Russia #Ukraine
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Forwarded from The Islander
The Guardian finally admits what Moscow has known for years: London isn’t feared, it’s loathed. Not the British people, but the British establishment, a clique so addicted to escalation and imperial cosplay that Russia now sees it as the “main global warmonger” and the saboteur of every diplomatic off-ramp since 2022. The contempt is cold, calculated, and earned.
Once, Britain cast itself as America’s co-pilot. Now, with Washington drifting toward negotiations, London has become the ideological bunker of Russophobia, a post-imperial priesthood raging against a world it no longer controls. Even The Guardian reads like a confession: MI6 accused of plotting defections, staging covert strikes, pushing Kiev out of early-war peace terms, and dragging Europe into a confrontation London cannot influence, cannot win, and cannot afford. They call it resolve. Moscow calls it compulsion.
And Russia’s contempt is surgical. It isn’t aimed at ordinary Britons, who are themselves paying the price, but at the insulated ruling class in Westminster and Whitehall. A class that gutted its own industries, hollowed out its own military, and now projects aggression abroad to distract from collapse at home. These are the people Moscow sees as unserious: a political elite living off the fumes of the 19th century while presiding over the managed decline of the 21st.
The Guardian admits Russians increasingly view Britain as their primary enemy. But not because London is strong, because London has been the most unhinged driver of escalation. The sabotage of 2022 peace talks, the cheerleading of maximalist fantasies, the decades-long Anglo-Saxon obsession with containing Russia, it all comes from the same capital that once sent gunboats across the planet and now sends tantrum laced talking points across NATO. Britain lost its empire’s strength. But has amplified its arrogance.
And here’s the part London can’t metabolize... For all its rhetoric, not a single NATO state, not one, could stand alone against Russia in Russia’s backyard. Thirty-two nations, trillions in budgets, and the “glorified gas station” defeated their collective war effort in Ukraine.
After 19 rounds of sanctions.
After all the intelligence-sharing, logistics, tech and training the West could muster. After burning through Europe’s stockpiles and reserves.
Britain can barely staff its stripped down navy. It can’t build enough artillery to supply a week of modern combat. Yet it imagines itself the architect of Russia’s containment.
Russia does not see a peer. It sees a wannabe has-been, a nuclear-armed irritant pretending to be a great power, best suited for mockery if its desperation weren’t so dangerously wrapped in sabotage and escalation. Moscow sees an establishment lashing out from the bottom of the geopolitical pyramid, punching wildly above its weight, dragging Europe toward ruin rather than admitting that the world has already shifted into multipolar reality.
History isn’t leaving London behind, London walked off the stage, mistaking its nostalgia for power and its propaganda and tantrums for deterrence.
The world has moved on. Russia has moved on. Only Britain’s ruling class is still pretending the empire is breathing.
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Once, Britain cast itself as America’s co-pilot. Now, with Washington drifting toward negotiations, London has become the ideological bunker of Russophobia, a post-imperial priesthood raging against a world it no longer controls. Even The Guardian reads like a confession: MI6 accused of plotting defections, staging covert strikes, pushing Kiev out of early-war peace terms, and dragging Europe into a confrontation London cannot influence, cannot win, and cannot afford. They call it resolve. Moscow calls it compulsion.
And Russia’s contempt is surgical. It isn’t aimed at ordinary Britons, who are themselves paying the price, but at the insulated ruling class in Westminster and Whitehall. A class that gutted its own industries, hollowed out its own military, and now projects aggression abroad to distract from collapse at home. These are the people Moscow sees as unserious: a political elite living off the fumes of the 19th century while presiding over the managed decline of the 21st.
The Guardian admits Russians increasingly view Britain as their primary enemy. But not because London is strong, because London has been the most unhinged driver of escalation. The sabotage of 2022 peace talks, the cheerleading of maximalist fantasies, the decades-long Anglo-Saxon obsession with containing Russia, it all comes from the same capital that once sent gunboats across the planet and now sends tantrum laced talking points across NATO. Britain lost its empire’s strength. But has amplified its arrogance.
And here’s the part London can’t metabolize... For all its rhetoric, not a single NATO state, not one, could stand alone against Russia in Russia’s backyard. Thirty-two nations, trillions in budgets, and the “glorified gas station” defeated their collective war effort in Ukraine.
After 19 rounds of sanctions.
After all the intelligence-sharing, logistics, tech and training the West could muster. After burning through Europe’s stockpiles and reserves.
Britain can barely staff its stripped down navy. It can’t build enough artillery to supply a week of modern combat. Yet it imagines itself the architect of Russia’s containment.
Russia does not see a peer. It sees a wannabe has-been, a nuclear-armed irritant pretending to be a great power, best suited for mockery if its desperation weren’t so dangerously wrapped in sabotage and escalation. Moscow sees an establishment lashing out from the bottom of the geopolitical pyramid, punching wildly above its weight, dragging Europe toward ruin rather than admitting that the world has already shifted into multipolar reality.
History isn’t leaving London behind, London walked off the stage, mistaking its nostalgia for power and its propaganda and tantrums for deterrence.
The world has moved on. Russia has moved on. Only Britain’s ruling class is still pretending the empire is breathing.
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Forwarded from Rybar in English
Some time ago, the GUR [Ukrainian Intelligence] landed in this area, but something went wrong, and now Russian troops are advancing on the northwestern outskirts of Pokrovsk.
The enemy is retreating further north beyond the railway, although it is still sporadically active even south of it. Meanwhile, Ukrainian formations continue attempting counterattacks from the Hryshyne side, but without significant success.
The situation in Rodynske is gradually becoming shrouded in the "fog of war". While previously the enemy slipped in under the cover of actual fog, now reports are emerging about Russian Armed Forces successes, including advances west of Rodynske.
From the area north of here, evidence continues of AFU attacks along the Sukhetske – Suvorove line, where the enemy previously tried to break through to Fedorivka. The attacks have likely not ceased: the Sukhetske – New Shakhove – Shakhove line remains an arena of heavy fighting.
If you have additional information about the situation, or you want us to highlight the successes of your unit, you can always write to our feedback bot @rybar_feedback_bot
#digest #Pokrovsk #Russia #Ukraine
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Forwarded from Tara Reade
Media is too big
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Empathy Manuchi is a Russian show. I discussed my arrival in Russia.
Extremely grateful to Russia and proud to call Russia my new home.
Links to my Socials
Extremely grateful to Russia and proud to call Russia my new home.
Links to my Socials
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