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The Empire’s Mirror – How Western Imperialism has Alienated the Planet

The Democracy Perception Index 2026 is a global survey covering over ninety percent of the world’s population. It has produced results that confound nearly every assumption underlying the Western foreign-policy consensus. The United States, self-declared champion of the rules-based international order, now ranks among the most negatively perceived countries on earth. When the world is asked to choose sides in active geopolitical conflicts, it sides against Washington again and again – overwhelmingly with Palestine over Israel, and almost unanimously against American military bases on foreign soil. China is seen more favorably than the United States across most of the planet. And none of this, the study finds, reflects a turn against democracy itself – support for democratic governance remains strong globally. What the world is turning against is the behavior of the states that claim to lead it.

There is a moment in the history of empires when the internal logic of power becomes visible to everyone except those exercising it. That moment, documented with clinical precision in the ninth edition of the Democracy Perception Index (DPI), published in the spring of 2026 by Nira Data in collaboration with the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, has now arrived for the United States and its closest allies. The study – the largest annual survey of its kind, drawing on nationally representative interviews with more than 94,000 respondents across 98 countries representing over ninety percent of the global population – was designed, one suspects, to demonstrate the enduring appeal of the democratic model promoted from Washington and Brussels. What it demonstrates instead is a historic collapse of American prestige, a profound disenchantment with Western-led institutions, and a global public opinion that has quietly but unmistakably reordered its moral loyalties. The United States now ranks among the five most negatively perceived countries on earth, alongside North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran – and Israel, its closest military client. It loses three of the five geopolitical conflicts the survey puts to the world’s citizens. In 86 of 97 countries, majorities oppose hosting American military bases. For the first time in the survey’s history, the United States is seen slightly more negatively than Russia. China, meanwhile, is viewed more favorably than the United States in 63 of 83 surveyed countries, including across most of Europe.

The Alliance of Democracies Foundation, which co-publishes this index, was founded by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former NATO Secretary General and Danish Prime Minister, and exists explicitly to advance Western-style liberal democracy. Nira Data, the Danish firm that conducts the research, describes its mission as giving voice to the global public in service of democratic values. This is not a study produced by critics of the West. It is a study produced by its institutional advocates, and that fact lends the findings a peculiar authority: they arrive not as a verdict from outside but as an involuntary confession from within. Rasmussen’s own foreword acknowledges the data while reaching, almost desperately, for an explanation that absolves Western policy – blaming “threats” that Europeans are not perceiving clearly enough, urging democratic leaders to offer “a vision of optimism and hope.” What the study’s authors cannot bring themselves to say plainly, the numbers say for them: the world does not trust the West, and the reasons are not a mystery.

Unlike conventional democracy indices that rely on expert assessments of laws and institutions, the DPI asks citizens directly how they experience political life. It surveys eight dimensions – the impact of elections, freedom of speech, political pluralism, civic education, separation of powers, rule of law, government transparency, and peaceful transitions of power – then tracks how populations across the globe perceive the United States, China, Russia, and one another, and asks which side respondents support in five live or latent geopolitical conflicts. The result is a portrait of the world as billions of people actually see it, not as Western governments and their affiliated think tanks wish it to be seen.

What that portrait reveals, at its most fundamental level, is a global public that believes in democracy – across virtually every region and culture – but defines it in terms that diverge sharply from the definition promoted by Washington and its allies. More than two-thirds of people worldwide say it is extremely or very important for their country to be a democracy. The demand for self-governance, for fair institutions, for the peaceful transfer of power, is not in retreat. But when the survey asks what people consider democracy’s most important purpose, the answers reorder the priorities that Western leaders typically invoke. In 62 percent of countries surveyed, the top answer is improving living standards and well-being for everyone. Only 18 percent of countries prioritize promoting a fair and peaceful society, and a mere 9 percent – a figure that should give pause to every speechwriter who invokes “protecting individual rights and freedoms” as democracy’s defining purpose – place that goal first. Only in the United States itself, along with Germany, Italy, and Canada, does the protection of individual freedoms rise to the top.

This is not, as Western commentators tend to assume, evidence of authoritarian conditioning or political naivety among the global poor. It is evidence of rational prioritization. For billions of people across the Global South, in South Asia, in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Middle East and Latin America, the question of whether one can freely criticize the government on social media is less pressing than whether one’s children will have food, healthcare, and security from violence – including the violence that frequently arrives with Western “assistance.” The DPI data make this legible in a single, devastating comparison. The most positively perceived countries in the world are not the largest democracies or the most militarily powerful: they are Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Italy, and Norway – countries associated, in the global imagination, with neutrality and the absence of aggression, social provision, good education, health care and security. The least positively perceived, in descending order of loathing, are Israel, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, and the United States. What distinguishes the top from the bottom is not the presence or absence of elections. It is the presence or absence of violence.

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“Don’t Flock Me”: Massie Readies Bill To Yank Federal Cash From Cities And Police Departments Running Flock Cameras

On Saturday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced he’ll soon sponsor “a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments” that deploy Flock-style cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens. He attached a Gadsden flag parody: a coiled rattlesnake wrapped around an automated license plate reader on a pole, over the words “don’t flock me.”

Rather than regulating or litigating the cameras, Massie’s bill would cut off federal funding to every city and police department that installs them. Flock’s business model runs on local government contracts across roughly 6,000 communities, so a funding-withholding bill aims directly at its customer base.

Third Strike In A Week

Massie’s bill is the third Republican move against Flock in a matter of days.

On July 21, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) filed H.R. 9800, the Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act, which would bar federal agencies from purchasing, funding, or accessing automated license plate readers – Flock is named explicitly – along with biometric tracking tech covering fingerprints, iris, voice, and gait. Any data a federal agency obtained would have to be deleted within 30 days and would be inadmissible in court. Burchett’s pitch: “We gotta ban these dadgum things.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) tried to attach an amendment restricting the readers in committee. It failed, and Perry responded that the fight wasn’t over: “STOP THE FLOCK.”

In April, Massie teamed with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) on the Surveillance Accountability Act, which would require a probable-cause warrant before federal or local agencies surveil Americans, ban warrantless facial recognition in public spaces, block the government from buying its way around the Fourth Amendment via third-party data brokers, and make individual federal employees personally suable for violations. Boebert’s framing: the government is building a “digital footprint of your entire life” without a warrant or probable cause.

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Rotterdam Officially Creates A No-Go Zone — Dutch City Bans Nighttime Entry To De Esch Neighborhood After Years Of Migrant Gang Disorder

The city of Rotterdam has taken an extraordinary and, by its own admission, unprecedented step: imposing a nighttime exclusion zone on an entire residential neighborhood, making it a criminal offense to enter the De Esch district between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. without a demonstrable reason for being there. The order took effect Thursday evening and will run for three months before evaluation, according to Remix News and the Dutch public broadcaster NOS.

Under the new rule, anyone stopped in De Esch during nighttime hours who cannot explain their presence to police is liable for a fine and a criminal record. Residents, workers, visitors attending events or dining at local restaurants, and people visiting family homes are exempt. Everyone else — which in practice means the large groups of outsiders who have descended on the neighborhood after dark for nearly three years — is not.

The backstory is a familiar and depressing one across Dutch and Western European cities that have been slow to name what is happening. Locals told NOS and the regional broadcaster Rijnmond that since shortly after the Covid pandemic, outsiders — identified in Dutch press coverage as predominantly young men of migrant background — began gathering in De Esch on evenings and weekends in numbers that sometimes reached into the hundreds. Activities documented include street racing, drug use, horn honking, prostitution, intimidation of residents, littering, and aggressive responses to anyone who objected. One resident told Rijnmond she had stopped walking her dog alone at night because of the danger; her parents were nearly struck by cars being driven on the sidewalk.

Rotterdam Mayor Carola Schouten authorized the exclusion zone under existing public order powers. “Calm must return to De Esch, and residents must feel comfortable and safe. That is why I am using this power,” she said. Previous interventions — concrete barriers, increased police patrols, community outreach, direct talks with those causing the disruption — had all failed. The first night of the ban was described as immediately and dramatically quieter. “I slept wonderfully,” one resident told Rijnmond. “Now, the street is completely clean.”

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Georgia Cops Keep Getting Arrested And Fired For Illegally Using Flock Cameras To Stalk People, But Surely Those 17 Bad Apples Aren’t Representative Of The Entire Bunch

“Another Georgia cop accused of misusing Flock data in growing trend,” the USA Today headline reads. If you remember now-former Braselton police chief Michael Steffman’s arrest on stalking charges last year, it would be understandable if you assumed CBS News meant a second Georgia officer had been arrested for misusing Flock’s license plate data to stalk their victims. There couldn’t be that many bad cops getting arrested in one state, right? Well, that depends on whether your definition of “not that many” because USA Today reports that at least 17 Georgia cops have been accused of Flock-stalking in just the last couple of months. 

Former Sergeant Kabiru Salawu lost the job he’d held with the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office since 2009, after he was arrested over allegations that he engaged in “unauthorized use of the agency’s Flock Safety technology.” Salawu currently faces a felony charge for violating his oath of office, but in Georgia, misuse of license plate data is charged as a misdemeanor. For now, the sheriff’s office hasn’t released any information on how it caught Salawu, nor have they explained what he’s accused of using Flock’s system to do.

According to CBS News, Salawu’s arrest brings the total number of law enforcement officers accused of abusing their access to the private surveillance system that tracks everyone everywhere all the time, even if you don’t drive a car or have a license plate visible, to 10 “in recent weeks.” Not months or years. Weeks. As internal audits continue, don’t be surprised to see those numbers rise in the coming weeks, either. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire, and if internal audits turned up enough evidence to charge 17 officers over the last several months, it stands to reason that ongoing investigations will turn up evidence of even more abuses within the Georgia law enforcement community.

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The American Presidency and Perpetual War

One of the defining failures of modern American government has been the steady erosion of Congress’s constitutional authority over war. The Constitution grants Congress — not the president — the power to declare war. Congress decides to go to war. The president wages it.

Over the past several decades, presidents of both major parties have increasingly treated military intervention as an executive prerogative rather than a congressional requirement.

The last six presidents have not reflected distinct foreign policy doctrines but a uniparty continuum of executive overreach. While the particulars differ, each administration has initiated or significantly expanded military action without a formal declaration of war or without clear evidence that the targeted country posed an imminent threat to the United States.

President George H.W. Bush assembled an international coalition following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Congress ultimately authorized the use of military force. However, it was not a defensive war; it fostered the growing post-Cold War assumption that the United States should act as the world’s policeman.

President Bill Clinton likewise employed military force without declarations of war. The 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia during the Kosovo conflict proceeded despite Congress failing to authorize it in a clear and lasting manner. The administration argued humanitarian intervention justified military action. But even compelling humanitarian concerns do not erase the Constitution’s allocation of war powers.

President George W. Bush fundamentally reshaped American foreign policy after the Sept. 11 attacks. The invasion of Afghanistan initially enjoyed broad support and congressional authorization in response to al-Qaeda’s attacks. However, the 2003 invasion of Iraq remains one of the most controversial and catastrophic military actions in modern American history.

Congress did authorize force, but the constitutional process was undermined by intelligence failures and exaggerated claims about weapons of mass destruction and links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda that ultimately proved unfounded. We now know that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States warranting a preventive war. The conflict resulted in enormous human suffering, significant financial costs, regional instability and expanded executive authority that future presidents would inherit.

President Barack Obama accelerated executive war-making despite his early criticism of the Iraq War. His 2011 intervention in Libya stands as perhaps the clearest example. The United States joined NATO air operations that helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, yet Congress never authorized the intervention. The administration argued that the operation did not constitute “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution because American forces faced limited risk and most of the killing was done by U.S. intelligence assets.

President Joe Biden continued this pattern through military operations in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, strikes against Iranian-backed militias — and by funding Ukraine’s war against Russia. The administration justified these actions primarily as force protection, counterterrorism, responses to attacks on U.S. personnel, or defense of democracy and sovereignty. None of these rationales substitutes for congressional authorization.

Moreover, Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. are members of the United Nations. Like the U.N. or not, the U.N. Charter is a treaty written by U.S. officials and ratified by the Senate. Under the Constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the land along with the Constitution itself. The U.N. Charter prohibits all war except for immediate defensive purposes or when authorized by the U.N. Security Council; neither of which is the case with Ukraine.

President Donald Trump famously campaigned against “endless wars,” yet his administration launched missile strikes against Syria in 2017 and 2018 without congressional approval, assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in January 2020, commenced the current unlawful and meaningless war against Iran, now in its third stage of combat, and he has financed Israeli expansion — all without congressional authorization.

He has famously indicated that he rejects the constitutional role of treaties and the international laws written pursuant to them. He has even threatened to annihilate the Iranian/Persian civilization.

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Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

While Flock claims its system tracks vehicles, not people, the documented record of police chiefs stalking ex-partners through Flock shows otherwise. When the most experienced, highest-ranking officers in law enforcement, the people most responsible for enforcing the rules, demonstrate ongoing abuses, the answer is the same courts have given for each generation of powerful tracking technology: require a warrant first.

The police chief of Holiday Hills, Illinois, and a part-time officer at Prairie Grove Police Department, was arrested June 18, 2026, and charged with two counts of official misconduct, a Class 3 felony.

Prosecutors alleged he used Prairie Grove’s Flock license plate reader system and the Illinois State Police LEADS database to track six people he knew personally.

Three of those people were women the chief had been in romantic relationships with, according to prosecutors at his arraignment. He also tracked an ex-boyfriend of one of those women, running that man’s plate 140 times over several months, a figure the protective order petition put at 178, with 86 of those searches conducted while off duty.

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Russian Scientists Search for ‘Cosmic Matter’ Near Site of Tunguska Blast

Scientists in Russia are studying sediment from a Siberian lake in the hope of finding ‘cosmic matter’ which will confirm that the Tunguska explosion was caused by a meteor entering Earth’s atmosphere. While this hypothesis for the mysterious 1908 event, which saw an enormous blast flatten 80 million trees over an area of 830 square miles, has already been largely accepted by the scientific community, it remains unproven. Over the years, some rogue researchers have put forward alternative possibilities for what could have been behind the incident, including the fantastic suggestion that Nikola Tesla was somehow to blame for the event.

Now a new expedition reportedly featuring experts from four scientific organizations in Russia looks to put an end to the speculation. “The mystery of the Tunguska Catastrophe worries both the scientists and the public,” said Dr. Arthur Meidus, one of the researchers working on the project, “many of us still hope to unravel the scenario of 1908 disaster.” The focus of the study centers around sediment found at the depths of a remote lake located approximately 25 miles from what is believed to have been the epicenter of the blast. “Spring-autumn wastewaters and the Lakura River brought traces of the Tunguska catastrophe to this lake,” Meidus explained.

By determining which layer of sediment can be connected to the time frame of the Tunguska blast, the researchers hope to examine this material using what are described as “modern methods of microanalysis” using advanced scientific techniques. If the explosion were truly caused by a meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere, they say, then the study should find “microparticles of extraterrestrial origin” in the sand extracted from the lake. Such a discovery, the research team contends, would finally close the case once and for all. One can only hope that this attempt at solving a decades-old Russian mystery goes better than the reopened Dyatlov Pass investigation from last year that we’re still waiting to be resolved.

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‘I Almost Cried’: Unreleased Documentary Footage Shows Lindsey Graham Celebrating Start of Iran War

Footage from an unreleased documentary about the late Lindsey Graham shows the notoriously hawkish senator celebrating the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran just days after the bombing campaign started.

“Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried. How long have we been pushing this?” a laughing Graham is heard saying in the footage, released by Alex Holder, a filmmaker granted extensive access to the South Carolina senator in the years leading up to his death.

Graham goes on to say that he spoke with President Trump, who he said was also very happy about the war. “I talked to Trump this morning, he’s jacked, he said, ‘best thing I have ever done.’ He loves blowing stuff up,” he said.

Graham then appeared to take credit for helping convince Trump to launch the war. “There are a lot of people inside who didn’t want to do it, so I had my challenges,” he said, adding that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were like “Roosevelt and Churchill.”

Holder also released footage of a phone call between Graham and Netanyahu from early March, during which Graham said he was going to travel to Florida to meet with President Trump to convince him to join Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon, but Netanyahu talked him out of it.

“We’re concentrating right now on Iran,” Netanyahu told Graham. “If we tell Hezbollah that we’re going all the way, we threaten them, but if we actually do it, then they have no reason not to go all the way against us. And right now that’s not our interest.”

Graham had a close relationship with Netanyahu and spoke with him frequently and visited Israel often. Holder told The Wall Street Journal that he joined Graham in a trip to Israel and likened his treatment there to how a prime minister or a king would be treated.

Graham was also known as someone who could work with Democrats, and Holder released a call between him and Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security advisor.

According to the Journal, Sullivan asked Graham how long the war would last. “In three to four weeks, we’re going to have them in a spot where they start losing control of some cities,” Graham replied. “Get the Arabs more openly involved tomorrow, and then have almost irreversible momentum.”

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California Family Injured in Bloody Maui-Resort Alleged Anti-White Brawl

A California family’s vacation at a popular Maui resort took a horrifying turn when a group of local youths allegedly attacked them in an alleged racially motivated assault. One family member says the ringleader of the group threatened the family before the Friday-night assault, saying, “We’re going to beat up the haole boys,” a Hawaiian slang term commonly used to refer to a white person.

In a report by Hawaii News Now, relatives of the California family described the vicious attack that left one family member needing emergency medical treatment for a large gash in the head caused by one attacker striking the victim with a chair. The man was treated at a local hospital for the gruesome injury that required 13 staples to close.

The incident began Friday night at the Kaanapali Alii resort in West Maui and involved approximately 30 people, according to the Maui Police Department. The fight occurred at the resort’s barbecue area and resulted in at least six people suffering injuries that required medical attention. Police arrested a 20-year-old resident of Maui on suspicion of assault.

Family member Joseph Headfield described to Hawaii News Now how the fight began with verbal taunts from the group saying, “There were three females, one of which was the ringleader. She got up in people’s faces, said ‘We’re going to beat up your boys tonight. We’re going to beat up the haole boys.’”

Another family member moved children away from the group as tensions began to rise. Family members say the group of local youths was harassing visitors before the assault began. A witness described the assault, saying the family was being slapped, punched, and kicked by the group of youths, with the most serious injury resulting in the man who suffered the bloody gash to his head when struck by the chair.

The family believes the attack was racially motivated due to the threats made in the lead-up to the melee and should be investigated as a hate crime. Daniel, a family member who spoke to Hawaii News Now, said, “Our group consisted of ages from 85 to 11. We were just not expecting any of this. We were on a private resort property, and we were just overwhelmed, completely, totally overwhelmed.

According to the Maui Police Department, when officers arrived around 10:00 pm on Friday, they encountered approximately 15 people gathered near the pool at the resort. Seven members of a California family provided investigators with information about the alleged assault, saying the attackers had fled from the private resort before police arrived.

The incident remains under investigation.

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Dr. Fauci’s bizarre fame fixation as COVID deaths mounted revealed in newly released diaries

Dr. Anthony Fauci became increasingly fixated on his newfound fame as pandemic deaths soared, reveal the former White House COVID adviser’s newly released diary entries.

As early as April 2020, when more than 60,000 people had already died of COVID in the United States, the man in charge of America’s response to the pandemic was obsessing about his recent stardom, according to journals released by Kentucky Republican Sen. and long-term Fauci critic Rand Paul.

“Press still hot and heavy about me. Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me,” Fauci wrote in an entry dated April 7, 2020, amid intensifying media coverage around the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

On May 21, 2020, the top doc wrote that his “national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable,” adding it was “not hyperbole” to describe his celebrity in terms of global recognition, according to the diary.

By this point, nearly 98,000 Americans had died of COVID, and the 85-year-old doctor was involved in extensive task-force meetings.

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