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Swiss Authorities Silent As EU Sanctions One Of World’s Most Respected Military Analysts

When German journalists Röper and Lipp were sanctioned, no one in Switzerland reacted—now one of the world’s most respected military analysts is being sanctioned—a Swiss citizen. Weltwoche is waking up, Switzerland is fast asleep.

Introduction

Terrorizing journalists with sanctions in order to suppress the truth is nothing new for the EU.

On May 20, 2025, the EU sanctioned two German journalists for the first time—Alina Lipp and Thomas Röper. At the time, we reported in detail on this case, “EU sanctions German journalists,” and also analyzed the case from a legal perspective.

The result was clear: punishment without crime or trial, disenfranchisement and expropriation without a hearing.

The EU is dangerously close to the Nazi regime of 1936, when Thomas Mann was expatriated.

Following the same pattern, action is now being taken against a Swiss citizen for the first time.

Jacques Baud – You Can’t Be More Objective Than He Is

Jacques Baud is one of the most objective and respected military analysts around. He is highly regarded and respected not only throughout Europe, but also in the US.

His work is not limited to analysis on the most prestigious YouTube platforms; he has also written numerous excellent books. His style is unique in that he does not concern himself with politics, but only with the analysis of warfare, in a calm and dispassionate manner. His analyses have never been anti-Ukrainian or pro-Russian, but objective.

He has long seen a NATO defeat on the horizon, not based on his wishes, but on the facts on the long front and the war strategy and tactics of the various parties.

This did not fit in at all with the Russophobic war cries of the EU, which still dreams of ultimate victory today, just like Adolf Hitler did in the spring of 1945.

The latest example comes from Friedrich Merz, whose lucidity must now seriously be called into question. To justify the theft of Russian assets, he said the following before the German Bundestag on December 15, 2025:

“To be very clear and very explicit here: we are not doing this to prolong the war. On the contrary, we are doing this to end this war as quickly as possible, ladies and gentlemen. Because this sends a clear signal to Moscow that continuing this war is pointless for Moscow.”

Friedrich Merz, December 15, 2025

Jacques Baud’s crime was therefore that his analyses were correct – no more and no less.

Die Weltwoche Stands up— Finally

When Alina Lipp and Thomas Röper were sanctioned, Weltwoche contented itself with an indifferent, lukewarm article and did not stand up for its colleagues – we were shocked.

It seems that the opportunistic Mr. Köppel has felt the heat from Ms. Kaja Kallas a little too closely for his liking: Köppel is finally standing up, because he could be next, and, as Martin Niemöller said, when it’s your turn, you’re wide awake.

“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

Now Weltwoche is also reflecting on the lack of a fair hearing and politically motivated persecution, not in as much detail as in our article of May 25, 2025, but still.

“Opportunism is costing a 70-year-old military analyst his quality of life”

Weltwoche has published half a dozen articles on Jacque Baud, and Köppel is playing the Joan of Arc of journalists, styling himself in his own way as the Winkelried of his guild. It’s rather late in the day. Had Köppel reacted with the same force in May, the men and women in Brussels would probably have thought twice about sanctioning a Swiss citizen. Opportunism is costing a 70-year-old military analyst his quality of life.

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EU is Broke & Rejects Peace Since They Would Have to Return Russian Money

I have been getting emails asking if the EU robbing Russia is the prelude to the Great Taking. Let’s make this very clear – there is NO GREAT TAKING – that is sophistry. You might as well add that they will default on all pensions, medicare, and Social Security while at it. Not even the army would defend such actions.

Without the army, the government fails just as the 1991 coup in Russia collapsed when the army did not fire on the people. They know that such a “Great Taking” would be revolution. We will all be singing the Revolution song from Les Misérables.

The EU is on the verge of absolute collapse. Not only economically are they still in love with Marxism, but they are floundering and they are losing the support of member states all thanks to their stupid migrant policies, excessively high taxation, over-regulation, and now their desperate attempt to shut down free speech in a cynical effort to retain power. As I warned, the EU will sabotage any effort by Trump to end the war Ukraine. This is about the conquest of Russia for money.

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The Surveillance State Is Making a Naughty List—and You’re On It

The Surveillance State is making a naughty list, and we’re all on it.

Unlike Santa’s naughty list, however, the consequences of landing on the government’s “naughty list” are far more severe than a stocking full of coal. They can include heightened surveillance, loss of privacy, travel restrictions, financial scrutiny, police encounters, or being flagged as a potential threat—often without notice, explanation, or recourse.

What was once dismissed as a joke—“Santa is watching”—has morphed into a chilling reality. Instead of elves, the watchers are data brokers, intelligence agencies, predictive algorithms, and fusion centers. Instead of a naughty-or-nice list, Americans are sorted into databases, risk profiles, and threat assessments—lists that never disappear.

The shift is subtle but profound.

Innocence is no longer presumed.

Everyone is watched. Everyone is scored. Everyone is a potential suspect.

This is the surveillance state in action.

Today’s surveillance state doesn’t require suspicion, a warrant, or probable cause. It is omnipresent, omniscient, and inescapable.

Your smartphone tracks your location. Your car records your movements. License plate readers log when and where you drive. Retail purchases create detailed consumer profiles. Smart speakers listen to everything you say. Home security cameras observe not just your property, but your neighbors, delivery drivers, and anyone who passes by.

In a dramatic expansion of surveillance reach, the Transportation Security Administration now shares airline passenger lists with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, enabling ICE to identify and arrest travelers at airports based on immigration status.

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Trump-Appointed Judge Threatens Government With Contempt After ICE Detains Illegal Immigrant in Filthy Long Island Facility

A federal judge appointed by President Trump has delivered a blistering condemnation of U.S. immigration authorities, going so far as to threaten the government with contempt of court.

U.S. District Judge Gary Brown, appointed to the bench by Trump in 2019, issued a 24-page ruling excoriating the Department of Homeland Security for what he described as “putrid and cramped” conditions under which Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained an illegal immigrant on Long Island.

Brown warned that ICE could face contempt of court after repeatedly ignoring judicial orders and holding a detainee overnight in a cramped, filthy holding cell never designed for long-term confinement.

The case centers on Erron Anthony Clarke, a Jamaican national, who entered the United States legally in 2018 on an H-2B work visa. After overstaying the visa, which is illegal, Clarke married a U.S. citizen in 2023 and applied for permanent residency earlier this year.

Clarke was detained by ICE on December 5, along with eight other men, who were confined for days at a time in a small “hold room” at the Central Islip Federal Courthouse.

That cell, Judge Brown noted, was designed to hold one person briefly, not to warehouse nine men for days on end.

The conditions described were:

  • No beds, bunks, or mattresses
  • Detainees forced to sleep on a filthy concrete floor
  • An open toilet in the center of the room with no privacy
  • No showers, soap, toothbrushes, or clean clothing
  • Lights left on 24 hours a day
  • Freezing temperatures at night, with outside lows near 21 degrees

Judge Brown noted that the facility was explicitly barred by deed from housing detainees overnight. On December 11, Brown ruled Clarke’s detention violated due process and ordered his immediate release.

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Trump’s Expanded Drug War Will Make Overdose Crisis Worse, Experts Say

As President Donald Trump exploits fear about fentanyl to justify military aggression in Latin America, experts warn that his administration’s choice to slash federal support for public health programs threatens to erode progress in reducing fatal overdoses linked to synthetic opioids.

Trump issued an executive order on Monday declaring fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction” that could be weaponized for “concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries.” Experts say fentanyl is not used as a weapon and dismissed the order as a public relations ploy as the administration struggles to explain its legal justification for waging a deadly international drug war without approval from Congress.

The order is the latest line in a series of massive escalations in Trump’s drug war. Trump and his “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth are engaged military adventurism in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, building up significant U.S. naval forces near Venezuela and blowing up boats the administration accuses of ferrying drugs in a campaign experts have classified as extrajudicial killings. Trump has ordered a naval blockade around Venezuela while threatening to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

The administration has spent months attempting to tie Maduro, and Venezuelans more broadly, to drug crimes in the U.S. while labeling such crimes as terrorism. After taking office, Trump declared the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua a “foreign terrorist organization” and called Maduro a “narco-terrorist” while rounding up Venezuelan immigrants and removing them to a notorious El Salvadoran prison. Most had no criminal convictions.

U.S. airstrikes have sunk at least 28 boats and killed more than 100 people since September, according to reports and to Zeteo’s strike tracker. The administration claims the boats are engaged in “narco-terrorist” activity, but the White House and Pentagon have not publicly released evidence that the victims are drug traffickers. The family of one man killed in a September 15 strike has said that the U.S. illegally murdered a law-abiding fisherman from Colombia, not a drug smuggler.

If any of the boats destroyed from the sky were ferrying drugs, it would most likely be cocaine, which is primarily produced in northwestern South America. Overdoses often involve multiple substances, but the overdose crisis is generally fueled by powerful synthetic stimulants, opioids, and tranquilizers — not cocaine, which is derived from the coca plant and is used by only a fragment of the population. Cocaine is typically more expensive than synthetics.

Maritza Perez Medina, director of federal affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, said bullying Venezuela and attacking small boats will do nothing to prevent people from using fentanyl in the U.S. and could make the overdose crisis worse.

“This administration is not thinking in terms of solutions,” Medina said in an interview. “They are clearly using people’s fear of fentanyl as a pretext for implementing the president’s agenda, which includes taking away our civil liberties and actually putting us in more danger by potentially creating conflicts in other parts of the world.”

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Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna Announce Plans to Bring Inherent Contempt Charges Against Attorney General Pam Bondi Over Epstein Files – “We’re Building a Bipartisan Coalition”

During a joint Sunday appearance on Face the Nation, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), the authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law by President Trump last month, announced their intention to bring charges for inherent contempt against Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

Under the rarely used congressional power, “the House or Senate has its Sergeant-At-Arms, or deputy, take a person into custody for proceedings to be held in Congress,” according to the National Constitution Center. However, it is unclear how effective this would be in the face of legal challenges and the executive branch’s power.

This is the latest in an escalating saga of threats, with Massie and Khanna claiming the DOJ has not complied fully with the law due to redactions in the files and not releasing every document available.

Khanna told CNN on Friday that he and Massie are currently drafting articles of impeachment or inherent contempt against Attorney General Pam Bondi, The Gateway Pundit reported.

“Massey and I aren’t going to just do something for the show of it, but my sense is, just looking at the initial reactions from people in MAGA, from survivors, is that this release is going to cause as much grief for Pam Bondi as the earlier releases,” Khanna told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in reference to Bondi’s dumpsterfire release with MAGA influencers earlier this year. “The issue for her is not are there going to be 212 Democrats who would support it. The issue for her is how many Republicans and MAGA supporters would support it?”

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning, where he dared Massie and Khanna to “bring it on,” maintaining that the DOJ is simply following the law and taking the necessary time to make redactions before releasing all of the files.

Blanche told NBC’s Kristen Welker that ensuring victim information is redacted “very much Trumps some deadline in the statute,” and he dared Khanna and Massie to file Articles of Impeachment. “We are complying with the statute, we will continue to comply with the statute, and if by complying with the statute, we don’t produce everything on Friday, we produce things next week, and the week after, that’s still compliance with the statute,” Blanche added.

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Dave Chappelle Mocks People Comparing Charlie Kirk to MLK Jr: ‘That’s a Reach’

Comedian Dave Chappelle has addressed the September murder of the Turning Point USA founder and conservative media personality Charlie Kirk in his new stand-up comedy special, The Unstoppable, saying “that’s a reach” to any comparison between the fate of Kirk and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

The performer specifically took umbrage at the move by some to call Kirk, “this generation’s Martin Luther King.”

“If you talk for a living and see Charlie Kirk get murdered that way, Imma be honest, n—-: I was shook,” Chappelle said in the Netflix stand-up show. “I mean, Charlie Kirk was the wholesome white guy. And they killed this motherf—er? I said, ‘These whites…never seen ’em like this. They’re playing for keeps!’”

The comedian outlined he doesn’t know what to make of Kirk’s death. “I’m not making light of Charlie Kirk dying, but I’m not sure what it means, and I’m not sure I believe what they say it means,” he said on the special.

“I’ll tell you what I don’t believe, and the whites were quick to say this. They said, ‘Charlie Kirk is this generation’s Martin Luther King [Jr.]’ No, he’s not! Yeah, that’s a reach.”

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WHOA! Dave Chappelle SLAMS Bill Maher and Israel in Defense of Saudi Arabia Comedy Show: “F*ck That Guy”

Comedian Dave Chappelle came out guns blazing against critics of his appearance at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, in late September and early October, explicitly calling out Bill Maher and taking a shot at Israel. 

The strongly worded set was featured during his Netflix comedy special, “The Unstoppable,” which premiered on December 19.

Maher had criticized Chapelle last month for claiming that he is freer to make jokes in Saudi Arabia. “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America,”  Chapelle told an audience during a late September appearance. It can be recalled that Chapelle was nearly murdered for his jokes about trans people.

“Dave Chapelle was in the press today, saying that you can speak more freely over here than in America,” to which Louis C.K. responded, “I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Oh, it’s not true. Do your honk on Mohammed, Dave.”

Chapelle responded during the show, saying, “I didn’t tell them to put this in the paper. I just said it on stage. I said, ‘It’s easier to talk in Saudi Arabia for me than it is in America,’”

“I’ve known Bill since I was like 18/19, years old, and I’ve never said this publicly, but f*ck that guy,” Chappelle said. “I’m so f*cking tired of his little smug cracker ass commentary. These motherf*ckers act like because I did a comedy festival in Saudi Arabia, I somehow betrayed my principles.”

“They said, well, Saudi Arabia killed a journalist. And rest in peace, Jamal Khashoggi. I’m sorry that he got murdered in such a heinous fashion,” he continued in a nod to Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed by Saudi agents in Istanbul.

“I mean, look, bro, Israel’s killed 240 journalists in the last three months, so I didn’t know y’all was still counting.”

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How Washington’s Syrian Caper Debunks the Case for Empire

Sometimes a microcosm sheds a powerful light on large-scale macro issues. That was surely the case with respect to last weekend’s news that five US military personnel were involved in an ambush in Syria, which resulted in three deaths and three wounded. The incident apparently was caused by a member of the Syrian security forces, according to the Syrian Interior Ministry, who opened fire on a joint US-Syrian military patrol near the ancient ruins of Palmyra in central Syria (about 134 miles northeast of Damascus).

Needless to say, this news ignited a chorus of WTFs among the non-drinkers of the Deep State Kool Aid who post on X and elsewhere. After all, what other response was there when it became clear that these five servicemen were among more than 2,000 acknowledged US military personnel operating in the no count cipher of Syria; and that there are likely hundreds more covert forces working for the CIA and other US black operations there, as well.

And, yes, we do mean a spec of a country. After all, the tiny orange dot below is the essentially land-locked location of Syria on a representation of the global map. Relatively speaking, it has no economy, no technology, no military, no nukes, no oil, no minerals and, well, no nuthin’ that could possibly bear on the Homeland Security of America, way over here 6,000 miles away on the far side of the Atlantic.

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The Day PETA Looked Right, and Heads Exploded

Something happens every once in a while that makes you stop mid-sip and stare at the wall. Not because you’re stifling a burp; it’s not anything dramatic or historical. You need that second for your brain to catch up.

For me, that moment arrived when PETA praised work tied to RFK Jr. that aimed to end certain forms of monkey testing and limit the importation of primates for laboratory use.

Yes, that PETA.

The same group better known for shouting at people passing by, while wearing costumes, and drifting so far into odd territory that parody stopped trying to keep pace.

For a brief moment, reality tilted.

A Group Known for Noise

For years, PETA made noise and loud protests, sharing extreme claims, statements that felt designed to shock rather than persuade. Somewhere along the way, insects entered the conversation, and public patience quietly showed itself.

The organization that the legendary El Rushbo called “four people and a fax machine” — people of a certain age, do an internet search for “fax machine” — trained people to expect outrage on demand, where agreement never felt possible. People assumed punchlines when PETA supported something.

Which made praise tied to a Trump administration effort feel like discovering your smoke detector offers calm life advice — for free!

What Actually Drew Praise

What Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy pushed was an initiative to reduce reliance on primate testing by limiting imports and encouraging agencies to adopt alternative research methods.

Science, computer modeling, simulation, and non-animal testing have moved forward, already handling many tasks once assigned to live subjects.

Modern approaches promise less-to-no suffering, better data, and lower costs, which improve research and ethics and make red tape-loving bureaucrats lose ground. That proved to be a combination strong enough to break through any political reflex.

When Politics Trips Over Results

In this case, the humor sits in the source, not the policy, where PETA cheering a Trump-era move feels like cats endorsing vacuum cleaners, and somewhere in the distance, a megaphone hits the floor.

Once the dust settled, nothing collapsed, nobody combusted, and the planet kept spinning. Results mattered more than labels.

This moment feels so rare because modern politics trains people to react first and think later, where support follows teams, and opposition becomes a habit.

It’s a case where breaking that pattern seems awfully suspicious.

Regardless, outcomes don’t care who signs the paperwork.

Why Heads Really Exploded

PETA isn’t changing; there’s no grand shift taking place. The group simply approved something that aligned with its stated goals, even with an inconvenient source.

That moment alone shocked people; agreement, however brief, cut against years of predictable behavior.

Under all the settled dust, an uncomfortable truth was revealed: Good ideas survive bad company. Ethical progress doesn’t need perfect messengers. Sometimes it sneaks through cracks nobody expects.

That was a realization that unsettled people more than the policy itself.

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