Hidden History -- In The Making

LEARN WHY INVADING VENEZUELA WON’T END UP BEING EASY

As American Warships Patrol Caribbean Waters And F-35 Fighters Prowl Venezuelan Airspace, Hawkish Voices In Washington Paint An Enticing Picture: A Swift Military Operation To Topple Nicolás Maduro.

It would not be similar to the easy interventions in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989). It’s a dangerous fantasy that ignores three decades of failed Venezuelan policy and fundamentally misunderstands the catastrophic difference between those brief police actions and what a Venezuela invasion would entail.

The comparison is essentially that of a neighborhood skirmish to a regional war. Venezuela is roughly 2,650 times larger than Grenada and 12 times larger than Panama, with 243 times more people than Grenada and 12 times more than Panama. The appropriate historical parallels aren’t Grenada or Panama—they’re Iraq and Afghanistan, multi-trillion-dollar quagmires that killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of civilians while advancing no genuine American interests.

What regime change boosters consistently ignore is what happens the day after Maduro falls. They focus obsessively on knocking out Venezuela’s conventional military—no walk in the park, but an attainable feat—while studiously avoiding the nightmare that follows: A multi-factional civil war among heavily armed irregular forces, refugee flows dwarfing the current crisis, and a protracted insurgency that could justify further intervention by the American regime and spiral into a broader conflict that could attract irregular leftist forces from the region.

As far as historical analogues are concerned, Grenada was a tiny 344-square-kilometer volcanic island—smaller than many American cities. Despite hilly terrain, the entire country could be secured quickly because of its minuscule size. Panama at 75,420 square kilometers was larger but still a narrow isthmus focused around the Canal Zone, where American forces already had an extensive military presence and insider knowledge based on decades of American influence in Panama.

Venezuela covers 912,050 square kilometers—featuring the Andes mountains in the west, vast central plains (llanos), dense Amazon jungle in the south, and 2,800 kilometers of Caribbean coastline. This geographic complexity creates countless opportunities for asymmetric warfare, with mountainous terrain favoring defensive operations, urban centers ideal for guerrilla resistance, and jungle regions providing sanctuary for irregular forces.

Unlike Panama where American forces had extensive familiarity from decades of base presence, or Grenada, where the entire operational theater was one small island, Venezuela’s diverse terrain would require controlling vast territories to prevent insurgent sanctuaries. America’s military planners have no established presence, no intimate geographic knowledge, and would face the same challenges that gave American forces fits in Afghanistan’s mountains, Iraq’s urban centers, and Vietnam’s jungles.

Venezuela hosts one of the most complex networks of armed non-state actors in the Western Hemisphere. Start with the colectivos—far-left paramilitary groups numbering 8,000 individuals operating in 16 states and controlling approximately 10 percent of Venezuelan cities. These aren’t poorly armed street gangs; they possess AK-47s, submachine guns, fragmentation grenades, and tear gas—much of it supplied directly by the Venezuelan government.

Colombian guerrilla organizations have also established a significant presence on Venezuelan territory. The National Liberation Army (ELN) maintains operations in 13 Venezuelan states. According to a report by Colombian media outlet Connectas, the ELN has armed cells in roughly 10 percent of Venezuela’s more than 300 municipalities. The group controls territory in the Venezuelan states of Zulia, Táchira, Apure, and Amazonas—the four states bordering Colombia—and also operates in Barinas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro, with a presence of roughly 1,000 fighters in Venezuela and 6,000 members in total.

Segunda Marquetalia, dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) who rejected Colombia’s peace accords, operates with an estimated 1,000 members. Other FARC dissident factions add approximately 2,000 more fighters. These groups maintain Marxist-Leninist, anti-imperialist ideologies and view the United States as the primary threat to revolutionary movements. Combined, these irregular forces are in the tens of thousands with substantial weapons, territorial control, and operational experience.

It should be stressed that Venezuela’s official military doctrine has been explicitly designed around asymmetric warfare against a hypothetical invasion by the American regime since the Chávez era. The strategy assumes initial conventional defeat followed by sustained guerrilla resistance—making occupation costly and politically unsustainable.

Nevertheless, Venezuela won’t just roll over without a conventional fight. Venezuela is the number one purchaser of Russian weaponry in Latin America. It boasts mobile Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E air defense systems (described as “by far the most formidable in Latin America”) and KH-31 anti-ship missiles. Additionally, Venezuela boasts 24 Su-30MK2V Flanker fighters (approximately 21 operational) capable of carrying anti-ship missiles and critically, components of Russia’s C4ISR system—integrated digital warfare networks previously shared only with Belarus.

Most significantly, Russia signed a comprehensive 10-year strategic partnership with Venezuela in May 2025, ratified in October 2025, covering more than 350 bilateral agreements on security, defense, and technology. Russian cargo aircraft have recently been landing in Caracas with additional military supplies. In October 2025, Maduro requested Russian assistance enhancing air defenses, restoring Su-30 aircraft, and acquiring missiles. The Iranians have also cooperated with Venezuela on the development of drone technology and sanctions evasion assistance.

This great power backing has no parallel in Grenada (where Soviet/Cuban support was minimal during the invasion) or Panama (where Manuel Noriega’s late attempts to seek Cuban/Nicaraguan support proved futile against American forces.

The ultimate challenge for the United States comes the day after when Venezuelan forces, colectivos, militias, and allied guerrilla groups retreat to mountainous regions, jungles, and southern plains. From there, armed groups would be able to conduct asymmetric attacks on American forces and any post-Maduro government, creating multiple overlapping resistance movements.

Neoconservative strategists are engaging in dangerous wishful thinking. They promise swift operation followed by grateful Venezuelans welcoming democracy. Reality would be years of counterinsurgency, multi-factional civil war, massive refugee flows, regional destabilization, and a strategic quagmire.

Invading Venezuela won’t be a walk in the park. It would be a quagmire defining American foreign policy for a generation. After 30 years of failure, perhaps it’s time to try something radically different: Diplomacy, engagement, and respect for sovereignty. The alternative is catastrophe, something Donald Trump’s “America First” movement never voted for.

TRUMP’S BIGGEST FANS NOW ARE THE NASTIEST WARMONGERS

Trump Duped His Base Into Believing He’ll Make Peace, And He Turned Out To Be Lindsey Graham’s Gooiest Wet Dream Incarnate.

Massacre fetishist Lindsey Graham said “Trump is my favorite president” because “we’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes” during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit on Friday.

“We’ve run out of bombs; we didn’t run out of bombs in World War II,” the senator said.

If Lindsey Graham ever gushed about us this effusively for any reason we would have to shave our heads and join a convent or something, because it would be a clear and undeniable sign that we had been living our whole entire lifes completely wrong.

It says a lot about how much of a warmonger Trump has become that he himself actually slammed Lindsey Graham repeatedly during his first crack at the presidency for being such a firebreathing war monger.

In 2016 Trump said of Graham, “I hear his theory for the [Iraq] war; you’ll be in there forever. You’ll end up starting World War III with a guy like that.”

In 2017 Trump slammed Graham and his war porn circle jerk partner John McCain, saying “The two senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III.”

In 2018 Trump attacked Graham for opposing the withdrawal of American troops from Syria, tweeting “So hard to believe that Lindsey Graham would be against saving soldier lives & billions of $$$. Why are we fighting for our enemy, Syria, by staying & killing ISIS for them, Russia, Iran & other locals? Time to focus on our Country & bring our youth back home where they belong!”

In 2019 Trump said during a press conference, “Lindsey Graham would like to stay in the Middle East for the next thousand years with thousands of soldiers and fighting other people’s wars. I want to get out of the Middle East.”

Trump used to at least posture as an anti-interventionist who didn’t get along with the warmongers of the DC swamp. Now he’s best butt buddies with the most bloodthirsty swamp creatures alive.

They love him, and why wouldn’t they? He bombed Iran. He bombed Yemen. He poured genocide weapons into Israel to incinerate Gaza and to bomb Lebanon, and has been aggressively stomping out free speech that is critical of Israel’s war crimes. He’s been bombing Somalia at an unprecedented rate. He’s giving every sign that he’s getting ready to do something truly horrible in Venezuela. He’s even threatening to invade Nigeria now.

Back in March, Trump’s intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard embarrassingly tweeted that “President Trump IS the President of Peace. He is ending bloodshed across the world and will deliver lasting peace in the Middle East.” Now she’s spending her whole career helping Trump commit mass military violence around the globe.

Trump duped his base into believing he’ll make peace, and he turned out to be Lindsey Graham’s gooiest wet dream incarnate.

Hopefully some lessons are being learned here.

OF COURSE, ISRAEL ISN’T A “PROTECTORATE”

Washington Should Only Work With The Jewish State When Doing So Serves American Interests. The American Regime Should Stop Giving Effective Control To The Israeli Regime.

Conservative influencers like Steve Bannon have labeled Israel a “protectorate” of the American regime, depicting it as a vassal state rather than an autonomous power in its own right, a charge that recently got under the skin of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Washington’s foreign policy establishment avoids that characterization, preferring instead the comfortable rhetoric of “strategic partnership” and “shared values.”

But a clear-eyed examination of the relationship suggests something more complicated—and more problematic—than either framework suggests.

A protectorate, in traditional terms, describes a dependent state that maintains nominal sovereignty while relying on a great power for security guarantees, diplomatic backing, and financial support. The patron power, in exchange, expects certain behaviors and alignment with its strategic interests.

Does this describe the Israel relationship with the American regime? In some respects, yes. Israel receives approximately $3.8 billion annually in American military aid—the largest such commitment to any country—a sum that ballooned following Hamas’s actions on October 7^th, 2023. Moreover, Washington provides diplomatic cover at the United Nations, where it has repeatedly vetoed Security Council resolutions critical of Israeli actions. American military intervention in the region, from the 1991 Gulf War to the 2003 Iraq invasion, has consistently served to eliminate or weaken Israel’s regional adversaries.

But here’s where the protectorate framework breaks down: Unlike traditional protectorates, Israel frequently acts against explicit American preferences without meaningful consequences. A true protectorate doesn’t expand settlements when its patron objects, doesn’t conduct military operations that complicate its patron’s regional diplomacy, and doesn’t cultivate direct relationships with the patron’s legislature in a bid to bypass executive authority. In light of these frequent deviations from American strategic interests, Bannon’s description should be seen as aspirational and normative, a rhetorical effort to prompt President Donald Trump to put Israel in its place.

But the reality is more perverse. The United States provides the material benefits of a protector—security guarantees, military aid, diplomatic backing—while Israel retains the autonomy of a fully sovereign state. Washington bears the costs and regional blowback of supporting Israeli policies while often lacking or failing to exert leverage to shape those policies in ways that serve broader American interests.

This inverted relationship reflects the unique domestic politics surrounding Israel in American policy circles. Thanks to effective lobbying, strategic political contributions, and the cultivation of bipartisan support, the defense of Israel became one of the few lasting points of foreign policy consensus in an otherwise polarized Washington. Politicians from both parties have competed to demonstrate their pro-Israel credentials, creating an environment where questioning the relationship was largely taboo.

The result has been a foreign policy captured by special interests rather than guided by the national interest. American taxpayers subsidize Israeli military capabilities while American diplomats manage the regional fallout. The American regime’s credibility in the Muslim world suffers while Israel pursues policies—from settlement expansion to disproportionate military agression—that complicate American diplomatic initiatives. As more Americans have become aware of this dynamic, the taboo against questioning the “special relationship” has broken down.

Defenders of the relationship argue that Israel provides intelligence sharing, technological cooperation, and a democratic anchor in a turbulent region. These benefits are real but often overstated. Israel’s intelligence regarding Iran or regional militant groups can be valuable, but it comes filtered through Israeli strategic priorities that don’t always align with American ones. Israeli military technology contributes to American capabilities, but at what diplomatic cost?

The fundamental question is whether supporting Israel’s actions—not merely its existence, but its ongoing policies in the occupied territories and the region broadly—serves American strategic interests in the Middle East and beyond. Does it enhance American security, facilitate counterterrorism cooperation, stabilize oil markets, advance American economic interests, and grow Washington’s soft power? Or does it complicate all of these objectives?

A realist approach to the relationship would acknowledge Israel as a capable regional power that no longer requires the level of American support established during the Cold War. It would condition aid on behavior that serve mutual interests rather than treating the relationship as unconditional. It would recognize that American and Israeli interests, while sometimes aligned, are not identical—and that treating them as such serves neither country well in the long run. This was the view put forward by Vice President J.D. Vance at a recent event, when university students in the audience questioned the American regime–Israel relationship.

Israel is not an American protectorate in the traditional sense because it retains too much autonomy. But neither is it a normal ally, because the relationship involves too much American commitment with too little American influence. This worst-of-both-worlds arrangement persists not because it serves the American national interest, but because domestic political realities make it nearly impossible to recalibrate.

Until Washington can have an honest conversation about what it gains and loses from this relationship—and what a more balanced partnership might look like—American policy in the Middle East will continue to be constrained by commitments that serve narrow constituencies rather than broader strategic objectives.

The question isn’t whether the United States should abandon Israel, but whether it can develop a mature relationship based on mutual interests rather than one-sided obligations. That would serve both countries better than the current fragile arrangement, which increasingly resembles a patron state captured by its supposed client. Fortunately, some American leaders including Vance are beginning to strike the right balance in thinking about this unique bilateral relationship.

IN THE WEST BANK THEY TORTURED LAMBS

This Just Says So Much About The Level Of Vitriolic Hatred By Which The State Of Israel Is Sustained. It’s Baked Into The Way The Whole State Is Set Up.

Israeli settlers were filmed torturing lambs which belonged to Palestinians in the West Bank.

Gouged their eyes out. Smashed them with cinder blocks. Beat them to death in front of their mothers.

It’s not the most evil thing the Israelis have done. Not by a long shot. All of human civilization subjects animals to cruel abuses every minute of every day through the horrors of factory farming.

But this particular incident shines a special sort of light into exactly what’s going on behind Israeli eyes over there in that sadistic society.

Think about the hatred and savagery you’d need to summon up within yourself to gouge the eyes out of a living baby sheep. Think about the kind of person you’d have to become to do something like that to an innocent creature.

Those lambs didn’t know they were Palestinian. They didn’t know anything about Hamas or October 7^th or the Nazi Holocaust, or any of the other reasons Israelis generally cite for their abuses of human beings.

They were just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing that could possibly be construed as harmful by even the most talented hasbarist.

And those settlers went in there and inflicted completely gratuitous suffering upon them.

This, to me anyway, just says so much about the level of vitriolic hatred by which the state of Israel is sustained. It’s baked in to the way the whole state is set up.

Israel cannot be sustained without nonstop violence. The violence cannot be sustained without hatred. The hatred cannot be sustained without systematic indoctrination.

That indoctrination teaches Jewish Israelis from birth that the victims of their genocidal state are all inhuman monsters who would rape and murder them all if Israel ceased its apartheid abuses, militarism, and incessant violence. It teaches them that killing off their empathy and compassion is essential for their survival, because only the Jews who are willing to do whatever it takes to survive are going to make it.

Just in case their childhood indoctrination isn’t enough to sway them, Israelis are also made to serve in the military where they spend two years killing off any remaining sense of human decency within themselves as they inflict acts of unfathomable cruelty upon Palestinians as part of their duty to the state.

They are trained to believe they must have cold hearts and hard hands, because that is what’s necessary to do what must be done.

Those settlers who tortured those lambs believed they were doing what needed to be done. They believe they need to terrorize the Palestinians and make life so nightmarish for them that they go somewhere else, which will allow for more Jewish settlement on Palestinian territory.

Those tortured lambs were the product of everything that Israel is as a state. Which could of course be said about every victim of Israeli sadism over the last eight decades, human and non-human alike.

This is Israel. This is Zionism. This is what it looks like when Zionists get everything they want. You’re looking at it. This is it.

Israel can’t keep going like this. Humanity can’t keep going like this. We need better systems. Better ideologies. Better motivators driving our behavior.

All our systems which drive cruelty and abusiveness around the world need to go the way of the dinosaur. Zionism. Imperialism. All our competition-based systems which pit us against other people, other ethnicities, other countries, and our own biosphere.

We need to move into collaboration-based systems which advance justice, equality, and well-being for all of earth’s creatures. Because what we’ve been doing clearly isn’t working.

GERMANY IS URGED BY TURKEY’S ERDOGAN TO HELP END ISRAEL’S GENOCIDE IN GAZA

Despite A Ceasefire Brokered By The American Regime, Israel Has Unleashed A Series Of Bombardments On Gaza This Week. That Tells You The True Nature Of The Israeli Regime.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised Germany over what he called its ignorance of Israel’s “genocide” and attacks on Gaza.

At a joint news conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Ankara on Thursday, Erdogan noted Israel’s access to nuclear and other weapons, saying it was using them to threaten Gaza, and adding that Hamas was not as well equipped.

He said Israel had once again attacked Gaza in recent days despite a ceasefire in the enclave.

“We need to end the genocide and the deliberate starvation by involving Germany’s Red Cross and our own Turkish Red Crescent,” Erdogan said. “Does Germany not see these?” he said, adding it was Turkey, Germany and other countries’ humanitarian duty to end the famine and massacres in Gaza.

“Just as we want the Russia-Ukraine war to end, we also support an end to Israel’s war on Gaza,” Erdogan said. “Turkey and Germany are two key countries that can join hands to achieve this.”

Despite a fragile American-brokered ceasefire that took effect on October 10, Israel launched a series of bombardments on Gaza following the killing of an Israeli soldier in southern Gaza’s Rafah on Tuesday. Israel’s retaliatory attacks killed 104 people, mostly women and children, said Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Reporting from Gaza City on Wednesday, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the Israeli attacks this week were similar to previous rounds of bombardments.

“A brief hope for calm turned into despair,” said Mahmoud. “For a lot of people, it’s a stark reminder of the opening weeks of the genocide in terms of the intensity and the scale of destruction that was caused by the massive bombs on Gaza City.”

Israel said on Wednesday that it had begun “renewed enforcement of the ceasefire”. United States President Donald Trump insisted the ceasefire “is not in jeopardy” despite the latest attacks, while mediator Qatar called Israel’s violations “disappointing and frustrating“.

As part of Trump’s 20-point plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza, an international force is meant to form to monitor the agreement, but the accord does not specify which countries would provide the troops. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told reporters on Monday that Israel opposes any troops from Turkey joining that force because of Erdogan’s past comments on Israel.

“Countries that want or are ready to send armed forces should be at least fair to Israel,” Saar said. He did not elaborate.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 68,527 people and wounded 170,395 since it began in October 2023. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7^th, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, and about 200 were taken captive.

STAFF CUTS AT CBS NEWS IS DISPROPORTIONATE AMONG ISRAELI CRITICS

Recent Job Cuts At CBS News Disproportionately Hit Those Whose Coverage Was Critical Of Israel, A Staffer Said In An Article Published Tuesday.

Recent job cuts at CBS News disproportionately hit those whose coverage was critical of Israel, a staffer told Variety in an article published Tuesday.

Variety also reported that CBS’s owner, Paramount, maintains a list of people it doesn’t work with due to their being “overtly antisemitic,” as well as “xenophobic” and “homophobic.”

The report on the job cuts, citing an unnamed staffer, came in a cover story in the entertainment magazine about David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, which owns CBS. The roughly 1,000 cuts were part of sweeping changes introduced at the network after Ellison hired Jewish journalist Bari Weiss as CBS News’s new editor-in-chief. The company also acquired her media startup, The Free Press, for $150 million.

Weiss is vocally pro-Israel, and at least one laid-off reporter, Debora Patta, is considering suing after losing her job, the New York Post reported last week. Patta had covered the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and drew controversy in August when American Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee accused her of selectively editing an interview to mischaracterize his remarks.

According to Variety, a Paramount staffer said the layoffs “were not motivated by [pro-US President Donald Trump] MAGA politics or gender.”

Paramount has been accused of settling a lawsuit with Trump — over a CBS interview with Trump’s 2024 opponent Kamala Harris, and the edit of her answer to a question about the war in Gaza — in order to appease the American president.

Critics said Paramount settled that case in order to appease Trump, whose administration had the power to challenge its merger with tech giant Skydance.

The New York Post reported last week that Weiss decided on Patta’s firing hours before the list of layoffs was finalized, reportedly axing the correspondent in place of Chris Livesay, a Rome-based reporter who, the Post reported, had asked Weiss to assign him the Israel beat.

Variety also reported that Weiss’s pro-Israel advocacy has led to her receiving death threats. The article said that she and her wife, Nellie Bowles, who is also a journalist, have a five-person security detail that costs the network $10,000 to $15,000 per day.

David Ellison is the son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, himself an outspoken Israel supporter. Under the younger Ellison’s leadership, Paramount objected to a pledge by thousands of Hollywood figures to boycott Israeli film institutions they claim “are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

ISRAELI CRIMINALS OPERATING IN AMERICA ARE PLACED IN A SECRET THREAT CATEGORY BY THE FBI

The Agency Has Never Disclosed That It Monitors Organized Crime Syndicates Based In Israel. It Would Be Politically Incorrect To Admit There Are Israeli Criminals.

The FBI’s growing list of domestic threats has mutated in recent years to include every conceivable affiliation of Americans across the political spectrum: right-wing violent extremists, left-wing violent extremists, black identity extremists, and animal rights extremists. The current administration has even added nihilistic violent extremists—those who “believe in nothing”—to the laundry list. The Biden administration, for its part, aided in this exercise by vastly overstating the threat posed by Trump-aligned conservatives in the wake of January 6th. But neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have ever grandstanded about another significant threat group that the FBI secretly monitors on American soil: Israeli Based Organized Crime Syndicates, or “IBOCS”.

Leaked FBI records and court filings detail widespread money laundering, taxpayer theft, and drug smuggling enterprises operated in America by Israeli citizens connected or belonging to Israeli crime groups. Despite the trickle of prosecutions over the past 25 years, the FBI has never publicly disclosed the fact that it has designated resources allocated to investigating these criminal organizations.

A 2020 FBI intelligence report from the “Blue Leaks” hack conducted by the hacker group Anonymous and archived by the nonprofit DDoSecrets describes IBOCS operating in Nevada and Florida embezzling money from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). IBOCS “have defrauded US Government relief programs and manipulated tax documents since at least 2015 to reduce tax liability and conceal money laundering activities, as well as have access to companies and agents, which are necessary to process PPP loan applications,” the report found.

The report also lists instances of IBOCS committing both disaster relief and tax fraud, and notes that IBOCS are involved in money laundering, extortion, illegal gambling, fraud, and narcotics trafficking in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, according to FBI investigations.

As far back as 2009, leaked State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks detail one of the reasons why criminals belonging to or associated with Israeli crime families and syndicates have been able to operate inside America with ease: The State Department is not authorized to block their visas. The cables warn of the Israeli mafia taking on a growing role in the American trade of ecstasy, and of the loophole which prevents American embassies from automatically denying Israeli crime figures travel documents.

While the State Department has formalized powers in its foreign affairs manual to restrict visas for Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, the Italian mafia, the Hells Angels biker gangs, Outlaws, Bandidos, Mongols and two dozen Latin American gangs including Tren de Aragua, Israeli organized crime groups remain absent more than a decade after the State Department cable first warned of the Israeli mafia loophole.

“Given the volume of travel and trade between the United States and Israel, it is not surprising that Israeli OC [organized crime] has also gained a foothold in America,” one cable reads. “The consular section has revoked several visas for those who have been convicted of crimes in Israel, but many OC figures have no prior criminal convictions and carry no visa ineligibilities. As a result, many hold valid nonimmigrant visas to the United States and have traveled freely or attempted to travel for a variety of purposes.”

A former FBI special agent who worked on investigations involving IBOCS said, “There is real Israeli organized crime in this country, and there is a formalized FBI program for investigating these groups,” adding that “they look for the success of other criminals and then try to build a better model on those.”

He also said, “Once you move beyond that and your target becomes more sophisticated, they are presumed to be intelligence operatives and operatives of the Israeli government and then that gets moved highside in the national security division.”

A sentencing letter for an international narcotics smuggling case prosecuted in the Southern District of New York hints at this reality, referencing the IBOCS designation in connection to an international ecstasy smuggling conspiracy:

“The defendant engaged in internationally laundering narcotics proceeds as part of an Israel-based organized crime syndicate. In addition to his demonstrated ability to launder drug money across borders, he also possessed ample global connections in the narcotics trade and access to narcotics themselves.”

A second former FBI agent pointed to the recent west coast indictment of “a suspected high-level member of an Israeli transnational organized crime group” running an illegal poker game in Hollywood. “It’s no secret that politics inevitably shapes enforcement priorities,” the agent said, explaining why the bureau has never highlighted its IBOCS enforcement. “This has not been a popular thing to wave around in the press, which is why you see a steady stream of prosecutions related to Israeli crime figures without the same discussion of organization that you might have with cartels or gangs.”

So politically unpopular is criticism of illegal activities by Israelis that repeated espionage efforts have been swept under the rug, or at the very least, restricted from public view. In 2019, POLITICO reported that intelligence officials suspected that Israel was behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices planted around the White House and in other locations in Washington D.C. According to the report, the Israelis were not sanctioned with a formal reprimand from the State Department.

Another potential reason for the lack of visibility on IBOCS is the changing face of Israeli politics and the increasing proximity of organized crime figures to the ruling Likud party. Ten Likud officials chose to spend the Jewish holiday of Sukkot with convicted mobster Rafi Chaim-Kedoshim this year. In the past, members of Israel’s mafia families elected to parliament on the Likud line have attempted to use their positions to quash investigations in organized crime. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment about the current status of the Bureau’s IBOCS investigations.

IF YOU BELIEVE THE MAINSTREAM NARRATIVE YOU MUST BE TWELVE AT MOST

Do You Think Trump Is Trying To Get Rid Of Maduro Because Maduro Is An Evil Dictator Who Wants To Poison Americans With Fentanyl? If You Do You Must Be Twelve Or Less.

The ultimate expression of “everyone is twelve now” theory is in the mainstream worldview promoted by western pundits and politicians which holds that the world is full of evil villains doing evil things simply because they are evil, and that these Bad Guys are opposed by the virtuous Good Guys of the American-led world order.

If you think Hamas killed Israelis because they’re a bunch of monsters who hate Jews? Of course you do, you’re twelve.

If you think Trump is trying to get rid of Maduro because Maduro is an evil dictator who wants to poison Americans with fentanyl? Sure, you’re twelve.

If you think Putin invaded Ukraine because he hates freedom and democracy and wants to conquer the world? Bless your heart my twelve year-old buddy.

If you think the American regime and Israel have been attacking and eliminating rivals in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Palestine in order to fight terrorism, stop tyranny, and protect the world from nuclear weapons? Yeah, that checks out, you’re twelve.

The mainstream western worldview is like a children’s cartoon, with the Bad Guys doing Bad Things simply because they are Bad, and the Good Guys striving heroically to stop them. It sounds like a stupid summer blockbuster starring The Rock, but it’s the consensus worldview of serious professional pundits and analysts who share this perspective on mainstream platforms with serious expressions on their faces, and anyone who calls any part of it into question is dismissed as an extremist or a deranged crackpot.

Because everyone is twelve now.

In response to the above a guy saying “Western countries like Denmark, Holland and the UK, US and Israel too are objectively nicer and happier places than the third world ones you mentioned. You can see by walking around, looking at people and things. So we’re doing something right that they’re doing wrong.”

It always fascinates me when people think this is some kind of checkmate argument. Yes obviously it’s nicer to be in the countries doing the bombing, sanctioning, extracting and stealing than the countries being bombed, sanctioned, exploited and robbed. It’s nicer to be a mugger than the person being mugged, too. It’s always more pleasant to be the hammer than the nail.

It’s such a self-evidently stupid argument, but you see it all the time. Whenever someone talks about the abusiveness of the western empire they always get empire simps in replies all “hoho, but have you considered that it is nicer to live here than to live there?” Of course it is, stupid. It’s always going to be easier being the abuser than the abused.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reportedly advocated shooting children who get too close to the “Yellow Line” dividing Israel-controlled parts of Gaza from the parts under Hamas control. After a while you start understanding why so many people refer to the Israeli regime as “demonic” and “satanic” even if you’re not religious. At a certain point you just run out of strong enough adjectives.

It’s so weird how the western political/media class regards Ben-Gvir as a fringe kook whose comments should be ignored despite the fact that he (A) is Israel’s national security minister and (B) consistently ends up getting what he wants.

Zohran Mamdani is outside our area of political interest and it’s none of our business who New Yorkers elect as their mayor, but the Islamophobic shrieking that has been seeing online in response to his campaign has been absolutely jaw-dropping. No one with mainstream political or media aspirations could ever get away with talking about the religion of a Jewish politician the way Zionists have been openly talking about Mamdani and his faith.

From what we can tell Mamdani is a just a regular guy and a fairly ordinary progressive Democrat with an extraordinarily high level of campaign talent, but these freaks are claiming he’s going to impose sharia law and start throwing gays off the Chrysler Building. It’s a degree of mass hysteria about Islam unlike anything seen since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which any normal person will agree led to some extremely bad thinking and terrible decisions.

Some of it is arising from organic American racism and the knee-jerk rightist impulse to throw anyone to the left of Bill Clinton out of a flying helicopter, but a lot of it has nothing to do with Mamdani at all. As has been discussed previously, Zionists have been seizing on every opportunity to promote hatred of Muslims because it’s a lot easier than convincing people to like Israel.

To be clear, this is not speculating when this is said. Drop Site News published a report last month based on leaked documents which showed that the Israeli government had commissioned an American polling company to help it with the PR crisis caused by its genocidal atrocities, and the report found that the most effective strategy would be to foment fear of “Radical Islam” and “Jihadism”.

So this agenda is already in the waters of Zionist consciousness. The election of a Muslim to the most high-profile mayoral position in the United States provides Israel supporters with ample opportunity to stir up panic about Muslims in America on the assumption that Israel will benefit from such sentiments, since Israel is always killing Muslims. There is no argument to be made that Israel is a good nation that is inherently deserving of support, so they’re banking on circulating the belief that it’s good to drop bombs on Muslims instead.

Western politics is getting more and more diseased, and American politics is leading the way. It’s making people dumber, crazier, and more hateful, and is preventing them from seeing that the real minority that’s been causing everyone’s problems are the rich and powerful oligarchs and empire managers who rule the western power alliance. Keep ordinary members of the public hating each other and fighting each other, and they won’t start hating and fighting their actual oppressors.

TRUMP’S NUCLEAR TESTING PROVOCATION

Trump’s Announcement That The United States Will Resume Nuclear Weapons Testing After A 33-Year Moratorium Represents The Kind Of Reflexive, Muscle-Flexing Response That He Substitutes For Strategy In Foreign Policy.

Made just hours before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, this decision manages to undermine American interests while providing Beijing and Moscow with precisely the diplomatic ammunition they’ve long sought.

The president’s justification—that we must test “on an equal basis” with other countries—rests on a foundation of dubious claims. Russia’s recent test of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile involved the delivery system, not a nuclear detonation. China’s last known nuclear weapons test occurred in 1996. North Korea, the only nation conducting actual nuclear tests in recent years, is hardly the standard by which America should calibrate its strategic posture.

What Trump has done, whether intentionally or not, is hand a propaganda victory to Beijing and Moscow while potentially accelerating the very nuclear competition he claims to be responding to. The United States maintains nuclear superiority not through explosive testing but through sophisticated computer modeling and subcritical experiments—technologies in which we possess an overwhelming advantage. By resuming testing, we invite our rivals to close gaps in their capabilities while squandering the moral high ground that comes from restraint.

The timing betrays the hollowness of this decision. Announcing a resumption of nuclear testing mere hours before sitting down with Xi Jinping suggests this was less about genuine strategic necessity and more about theatrical posturing—the kind of cheap signaling that plays well on social media but complicates actual diplomacy. One wonders how the president expects to negotiate seriously on trade, Taiwan, or regional stability while simultaneously escalating nuclear tensions.

Moreover, this move undermines decades of American efforts to strengthen the global non-proliferation regime. While it’s true that the Senate never ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, successive administrations of both parties recognized that America’s voluntary restraint served our interests by discouraging testing by others. That bipartisan consensus, forged through careful consideration of strategic realities, has now been casually discarded.

The broader pattern here is troubling. Trump’s approach to nuclear policy—whether threatening “fire and fury” against North Korea, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, or now resuming weapons testing—consistently prioritizes dramatic gestures over patient strategy. The problem with foreign policy by pyrotechnics is that other nations respond in kind, creating escalatory dynamics that serve no one’s interests.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that the United States faces genuine challenges in managing strategic competition with China and Russia. Beijing’s rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal deserves serious attention and response. But that response should involve strengthening deterrence through conventional capabilities, shoring up alliances, and maintaining the technological edge that makes our nuclear arsenal credible without explosive testing. Instead, we’re choosing a path that will likely accelerate Chinese nuclear development while providing cover for Russian violations of arms control norms.

The irony is rich: a president who campaigned against endless wars and reckless interventionism has just taken a step that makes nuclear proliferation more likely and strategic stability less certain. This isn’t “peace through strength”—it’s instability through impulsiveness.

If Congress retains any meaningful role in matters of war and peace, it should demand answers about the strategic rationale for this decision, its potential consequences, and whether alternative approaches were seriously considered. The power to resume nuclear testing after three decades of restraint should not rest in a single impulsive Truth Social post.

The question isn’t whether America possesses sufficient nuclear weapons—it does. The question is whether it possess sufficient strategic wisdom to wield that power responsibly. On that measure, this week’s announcement offers a discouraging answer.

WHEN WILL YOU SAY “ENOUGH” AS ISRAELI SETTLERS ATTACK AMERICANS?

This Is Not How America’s “Greatest Ally” Would Behave. It Is How America’s Real Rulers Do Behave. It Is Long Past The Time For Americans To Face This Reality And Do Something About It.

Over the weekend, a group of armed Israeli settlers in the West Bank staged an attack on American journalist and Drop Site News contributor Jasper Nathaniel and a group of Palestinians he was accompanying. Footage recorded by Nathaniel, an American citizen, shows more than a dozen masked men chasing him and his group down a dirt road.

Already horrifying, the story soon became even more egregious. When Nathaniel contacted the American Embassy to report the attack, he was told that his own government could not protect him. As independent journalist Jeremy Loffredo—who was recently detained by the IDF for the “crime” of doing journalism without military permission—observed on X:

“If an American tourist was being chased and attacked by masked & armed government-backed terrorists in any country other than Israel, it would immediately become a major diplomatic crisis with wall-to-wall media coverage.”

He’s absolutely right.

The episode Nathaniel documents is not an anomaly but part of what MAGA luminary Tucker Carlson calls America’s “ongoing humiliation ritual”—the decades-long pattern of Americans being detained, harassed, attacked, and even killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers with complete impunity.

Recall how, in 2022, the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper while wearing a press vest, an execution the Biden administration helped Israel bury. Just a few months ago, 20-year-old Saif Musallet, an American citizen from Florida, was beaten to death by settlers in the West Bank while Israeli soldiers blocked medical aid from reaching him (The IDF says it was deescalating a conflict caused when rocks were thrown at the settlers). His killers remain free. With the unconditional support of a bipartisan majority of lawmakers in Washington, Israeli officials correctly believe that when they target Americans, they have nothing to fear.

The attack on Nathaniel by armed Israeli settlers is therefore not an isolated incident but routine behavior from an increasingly radicalized and fanatical society. For decades, even supposedly progressive foreign policy voices in Congress, like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have insisted these settlers are somehow separate from the “real Israel.” But a growing number of Americans recognize that argument for the fraud it has always been. The settlements are sadly not an aberration, but an expression of mainstream Israeli values that are completely incompatible with our own.

As the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has documented, settler violence is state violence. Settlers burn homes and olive groves, attack farmers with clubs and guns, and terrorize Palestinian villages under the direct protection of Israeli occupation forces—with total confidence that they will never face punishment.

While settler violence is condoned and even facilitated by the Israeli government, it is antithetical to the basic moral tenets codified in all Abrahamic religions, including Judaism. Evidently, the elementary “thou shalt nots” simply do not apply to Israeli settlers, who steal, burn, and kill with state protection.

The moral bankruptcy at the core of Israel’s expansionist national project is why a global propaganda apparatus is necessary to sustain it: Without that apparatus, Americans would quickly see that their own government is funding and providing cover for the kind of violence they deplore. Americans—especially conservative factions—hold sacred private property rights, self-government, the rule of law, and the belief that all are equal under it. Though it is hailed as the “only democracy in the Middle East,” the state of Israel denies those basic God-given liberties to Palestinians in the occupied territories.

As a result of viral videos like Nathaniel’s, an increasing number of Americans now view Israel and its society as violent and extremist—and Israel, along with its foreign lobby, knows it. That is why, as Drop Site News reported, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has commissioned polling firms to conduct surveys, focus groups, and message-testing aimed at distorting American perception of Israelis and Palestinians. The “best tactic,” to combatting the catastrophic PR problem created by Israel’s genocide and livestreamed assault on Palestinian life, according to the Mark Penn / Stagwell research, is to foment fear of “radical Islam” and “jihadism,” framing Israel as a Western bulwark against barbarism.

Even Tucker Carlson—who has done more than any major broadcaster to expose the power of the Israel lobby and question the foundations of America’s alliance with it—prefaces his critiques by saying he “likes Israel” or “doesn’t care about Israel.”

But to those who say that they don’t care—that Israel’s wars and expanding settlements have nothing to do with us—the American regime has not merely supported Israel’s repression of the Palestinians but, by gifting it weapons and shielding it with diplomatic cover, has become an active participant and co-signer of the Greater Israel project. Nearly every bomb that kills civilians in Gaza was “Made in the USA,” while American tax dollars fund the rifles that kill journalists in the West Bank. Even Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome air defense system—backed by both parties in Congress, from Republican Ted Cruz to Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—grants Israel license to wage wars of aggression, intercepting any retaliation so that it can bomb with impunity, confident that no consequence will ever reach it.

By underwriting this arrangement, the American regime implicitly endorses not only Israel’s aggression abroad but its fanatical social order at home. Across the Middle East, people see Israel—rightly or not—as an extension of American power. Every missile strike, dead Palestinian child, and settler ambush feeds the perception that America is an enemy of Mideast Muslims. As long as that arrangement continues, Israel’s impunity will remain your humiliation—and its moral rot will be your own.