https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ili3P-bLX0w

Col Doug Macgregor: Illusion Keeps Ukraine Russia War Going

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

by Francois Meylan 

The unprecedented case of sanctions against Swiss intelligence and strategic analysis expert Colonel Jacques Baud.

It's done. Jacques Baud, the bestselling author at Max Milo Éditions in Chevilly-Larue, France, has just been sanctioned by the highest authorities of the European Union (EU). Not for his ideas, but for his opinions. Hence the establishment of the "thought crime" that characterizes all dictatorships. It must be acknowledged that the European Commission, structured around unelected technocrats and lobbyists, functions like a dictatorship. A dictatorship that allocates hundreds of billions of euros—without consulting the taxpayers—to fuel the continuation of a war in Eastern Europe… right down to the last Ukrainian. Instead of building bridges and working for peace. 

Yet, Jacques Baud's opinions are the product of rigorous and richly documented analyses, most often thanks to open sources. Information describing the Kyiv regime's human rights abuses and the atrocities committed in the Donbas abounds. The challenge lies in having the intellectual honesty to look in the right direction.1,2,3 

In Baud's presentations, there is nothing fabricated or conspiratorial in nature. Those who follow him regularly know this all too well: Jacques Baud is the ultimate authority. But this colonel, a former executive of the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service (SRS), former consultant to the United Nations (UN), and former liaison officer at NATO—to name just a few of his roles—has been a thorn in the side of the European Commission's admittedly feverish but undeniably bellicose Atlanticist propaganda for far too long. The star guest of both French- and English-language alternative media draws a larger audience than the pro-Ukrainian and pro-war spin doctors of the mainstream media in a European Union (EU) that is clearly ailing. An EU that has exhausted itself by relentlessly propping up the oligarchs of Kyiv, both economically and through the imposition of a dualistic and deeply flawed narrative. The European Union, abandoned by Uncle Sam, is suffering from the plight of its middle class, which is becoming increasingly impoverished. European institutions are plagued by a constant stream of corruption scandals and other forms of interference.4

For Charles d'Anjou, founder of the investigative media outlet "Omerta", the European Commission, which continues to lose credibility in the eyes of the public, wanted to make an example. 

An escape planned as early as December 10th…

The announcement of the sanctions taken against Jacques Baud was officially made on Monday, December 15, 2025, with the publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.5 The information was already circulating online on Wednesday, December 10th.6 And on the social network X on Thursday, December 11, 2025, Dimitri Algret Minie and Ulrich Bounat—two complete unknowns and, according to their comments, rather frustrated—were celebrating at the top of their lungs. They, who presumably don't sell best-selling books and have no access to the limelight, seemed to have finally had their revenge. 

What exactly is Jacques Baud being accused of?

The Official Journal of the European Union of 15 December 2025, signed by the President of the Council of the European Union, K. Kallas, is entitled Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2568 of 15 December 2025 implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2642 concerning restrictive measures with regard to destabilizing activities carried out by Russia. The fourteen-page document is one of the annexes that formalizes the 19th package of sanctions against the Russian Federation. On page 11, it notifies Russia of its inclusion on the list of sanctioned individuals as follows: 

«Jacques Baud, a former colonel in the Swiss army and strategic analyst, is a regular guest on pro-Russian television and radio programs. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda and promotes conspiracy theories, for example, accusing Ukraine of having orchestrated its own invasion in order to join NATO. 

Therefore, Jacques Baud is responsible for implementing or supporting actions or policies attributable to the government of the Russian Federation that compromise or threaten the stability or security of a third country (Ukraine) through the manipulation of information and interference.». 

In other words, all of this doesn't amount to much... at least that's the humble opinion of your humble servant who has been following Jacques Baud assiduously for more than twenty years. 

For his part, Colonel Jacques Baud, contacted by the Swiss media The SassyHe asserts that he has never received a single cent from Russia. And he adds:Who is to blame: the one who warns of Ukraine's defeat and identifies the errors to be corrected, or the one who does nothing to prevent this defeat?»

What are the consequences for Mr. Baud? 

The impossibility of travelling within the European Union; his bank accounts and means of payment and credit will be blocked; the impossibility of collecting his royalties. 

“Switzerland – European Union” quo vadis? 

What the European Commission is currently doing is not only unprecedented but extremely serious. It is persecuting a Swiss citizen who has committed no crime or offense, based on the results of its investigations and analyses. 

How will the Swiss authorities react? If they react at all, of course. But, once again, this latest affair highlights the stupidity of the European Commission – with Karl Kallas at its head – in acting this way when, in a few months, the Swiss people will be called to the polls to vote on the various aspects of the new institutional agreement between Switzerland and the EU (what journalists are currently calling the Bilateral Agreement III). An agreement that is already quite controversial in Switzerland.

The current behavior of the European Commission is fascist – fascism being the totalitarian application of any dogma whatsoever, its origins dating back to ancient Greece. The Swiss people, who remain sovereign, culturally and traditionally condemn, with the utmost firmness, any form of fascism. To be continued…

https://en.reseauinternational.net/la-commission-europeenne-en-faillite-morale-et-belliciste-instaure-le-delit-dopinion/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

SANCTIONED: Col Jacques Baud Explains Being the EU's TARGET

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwNH3FLeZLA

 

Col Jacques Baud explains that on December 12 he learned via Radio Free Europe that his name would appear on an EU sanctions list. After contacting his embassy in Brussels (where he lives), he received no follow-up. On December 15 the EU formally published the sanctions, which served as the only notification. Since then, his bank accounts have been frozen and he is banned from traveling within the EU, preventing him from returning to his home country.

He says he is accused of spreading pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation, including allegedly promoting a conspiracy theory that Ukraine orchestrated its own invasion by Russia in 2022. He strongly denies this, stating that he merely quoted remarks made in 2019 by Oleksiy Arestovych, then an adviser to President Zelensky, about the risk of war if Ukraine pursued NATO membership. He emphasizes that quoting a Ukrainian official is being treated as evidence of acting as a Russian agent, despite his claim that he has no ties to Russia.

The speaker stresses that he was never warned, contacted, or given a chance to respond by EU, Belgian, or Swiss authorities before the sanctions were imposed. He argues the decision is political, not legal: there was no court ruling, no charges under any law, no right to defense, and no real avenue for appeal.

He further explains that he deliberately avoided appearing on Russian media, refused invitations from outlets like RT, and bases his work largely on Ukrainian and U.S. sources to maintain academic objectivity. He insists propaganda itself is not a crime under European law and says he has always tried to use precise, nuanced language in his analysis.

Overall, he presents his case as evidence of a serious erosion of democracy and free speech in Europe, arguing that objective analysis of the Russia–Ukraine war is being labeled “pro-Russian.” He describes the sanctions as effectively confiscating his livelihood without due process and says he is now struggling to meet basic needs, pending a possible humanitarian exemption to access limited funds for essentials like food.

 

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SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXq89FryYzo

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

The 59 individuals sanctioned by the EU are just the beginning. The eurocrats are only getting started with their campaign against internal dissent. Their unhinged nature is as much a function of the way they are losing the Ukraine proxy-war as also a direct result of 30 years of End-of-History megalomania in the West. Paired with the loss of the USA as a transatlantic parter, the Eurocrats are cornered. But instead of reversing course and correcting their anti-democratic actions, they are set to crack down even harder on dissent from within.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmoF5LSFUaQ

Rule by Decree of the Eurocrats: Democracy Has Ended.

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

 

Patrick Lawrence: Free Speech & Its Enemies

 

“We are just so shocked,” a German friend residing in Switzerland wrote the other day. “These cases affect us very much, as they will have consequences for us all.”

What cases would these be, you may wonder. What cases and what consequences? 

You may especially wonder about cases and consequences if you are an American reliant on corporate media: Europe is convulsing as the “centrist” authoritarians who purport to lead it impose what looks to me like an historically unprecedented regime of censorship and the suppression of speech, but none of the mainstream dailies or broadcasters in America have had a word to say about it — a point to which I will shortly return.

It was the case of Jacques Baud that prompted my German friend’s distress — or radically escalated it, better put, for she had had an other-than-sanguine view of Europe’s drift toward tyranny long before news of Baud’s fate broke. And so, to some particulars.

Jacques Baud is a Swiss citizen now residing in Brussels. He was formerly a colonel in the Swiss army and served for many years as an analyst in Swiss intelligence and in the Swiss Foreign Ministry. He has held senior positions at the United Nations and was more recently an adviser to NATO covering Ukrainian affairs.

Baud is now 70 and has for some years applied his exceptional expertise to analysis and commentary on war, peace, geopolitics, and affairs of state, work that has earned him a reputation for insight and integrity. 

His most recent books are The Russian Art of War: How the West Led Ukraine to Defeat and Operation Al–Aqsa Flood: The Defeat of the Vanquisher, which explains the events of Oct. 7, 2023 by way of Israel’s incessant breaches of international law over 75 years. Max Milo Editions, a small French house, brought out both books last year.

On Dec. 15, the European Union imposed sanctions on this distinguished man. He is now on the E.U. Sanctions Tracker, which lists the names and offenses of those the E.U. has summarily blacklisted. Here is Baud’s entry on this truly diabolic website:

“Jacques Baud, a former Swiss army colonel and strategic analyst, is a regular guest on pro–Russian television and radio programmes. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro–Russian propaganda and makes conspiracy theories, for example accusing Ukraine of orchestrating its own invasion in order to join NATO.”

Disinformers Denounce Disinformation 

We are now in the land wherein those who propagate disinformation assert that they are countering “disinformation,” and let us observe our quotation marks, for “disinformation,” in Baud’s case as in many others, means accurate information.

If you can follow.

To net this out, Jacques Baud has written thoughtfully and extensively on the war in Ukraine and its bearing on relations between Russia and the West. This includes a sound analysis of NATO’s advances to the Russian Federation’s borders, the U.S.–orchestrated coup in Kiev in 2014, the West’s subsequent betrayal of the Minsk Protocols, and the Biden regime’s purposeful provocation of the military intervention Russia began not quite four years ago.

Whether or not one agrees with Baud’s take on this or that question, his is well-supported work. And the E.U. has just comprehensively sanctioned him for it. 

Any European now risks the same if, to bring this home with an especially egregious example, he or she states perfectly discernible truths as to what prompted Moscow’s “special military operation” in February 2022. If invited to make this case on a Russian television station, the offender is yet further beyond the pale.

There are other aspects of the Baud case that have paying-attention Europeans in an uproar. Baud has not been charged with any criminal offense. There has been no investigation into his work, no evidence has been presented, there will be no judicial process, and he will have no opportunity to respond to the “case” — quotation marks again — the E.U. makes against him.

The sanctions he now faces were imposed in an exercise of extrajudicial — as in unlawful — power. As Costas Lapavitsas, a professor at S.O.A.S. (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), put it in a piece in Brave New Europe, published Christmas Eve, “An individual was punished by executive designation alone.”

“Baud has not been charged with any criminal offense. There has been no investigation into his work, no evidence has been presented, there will be no judicial process, and he will have no opportunity to respond to the ‘case’ … the E.U. makes against him.”

We have all read endlessly about sanctions and how much or little they matter, but in Baud’s case — and there are others facing this designation — they are grave. 

Baud’s assets are now frozen in the E.U. and he cannot travel. He cannot access his bank accounts and various sources of income are blocked. As of now it is a criminal offense to transact with him — to sell him a house or groceries, to take in his shirts, to repair his car. “Although the regulation allows minimal subsistence payments,” Lapavitsas writes, “the effect is to paralyse a person economically and professionally.”

The Baud case is horrific all by itself, and so I give it generous column inches, but it is horrific times ten when we consider its larger implications — its “consequences for us all,” as my German friend put it. 

Censorship and attacks on free speech are nothing new on either side of the Atlantic, to state the obvious. It is two years this coming spring since Germany refused entry to Yanis Varoufakis, the honorable Greek economist and activist, who was to attend a congress on Palestine in Berlin. 

The Biden regime was notable for its connivances with Silicon Valley and its assaults on free speech. These have worsened dramatically during the first year of Trump II.

It comes time to understand our moment for what it is — the circumstance now upon us.

The Western order is collapsing. This is no longer a matter of interpretation or hyperbole or a figure of speech or a commentator’s shorthand. It is the reality within which we have to live. 

The “centrist” regimes defending the gross disorder they insist is a “rules-based order” have tipped this past year toward a state of desperation. As Alastair Crooke put it in a piece published this past autumn, ours is “a new era of coerced dominance.” 

In a holiday note the other day, Chas Freeman referred to “our new Dark Age.” This already proves a perilous time. “Today it is war without limits — without rules, without law,” Crooke writes. “Ethical boundaries, more particularly, are dismissed in parts of the West as ‘weak.’”

Where does this place the front line for those committed to resisting this swift drift toward lawlessness and tyranny in the cause of a moral and just world? I think it must be in defense of free speech.

The cases in point accumulate like fallen leaves around us.

As I was considering the ramifications of Jacques Baud’s travails, the condition of those hunger-striking in behalf of Palestine Action worsened. At writing, eight of those striking are at risk of fatal organ failure for insisting with their bodies on the direct-action group’s right to protest without being proscribed as “terrorists.”

And then the case of Greta Thunberg, who was arrested in a London street just before Christmas for holding a placard that read simply, “I support the Palestine Action prisoners. I oppose genocide.” Thunberg is now out on bail until March, presumably to face charges under Britain’s preposterously antidemocratic Terrorism Act.

There is post–Bondi Beach Australia, where the New South Wales government now has the power to ban protests for up to three months — along with “hate speech” and “prohibited symbols.” 

This following may seem a small matter, but it is a daily occurrence in Germany now and so betokens an emergency: A day or two before Christmas an “X” account under the name Irlandarra posted a video of a young man sitting at a café in Berlin when German police yank him out of his seat and arrest him. His offense was wearing a T–shirt with a Palestinian flag on it while talking quietly with friends.

There is an argument that the Europeans, who have gone right off the rails in any number of directions, their obsessive Russophobia and their criminalization of any critique of Israeli terror merely two of them, are out front in their suppression of free speech.

Ursula von der Leyen recently gave a speech casting “information manipulation” as a virus and censorship as the required vaccine. “Prebunking” (as against debunking) is her term for this. O.K., the European authorities are using law to take the suppression of speech to an alarming extreme. But it is the same in America by other, less overt means.

You have read nothing in America’s mainstream press about the Jacques Baud case. Shockingly, there has been not a word about the hunger strikes or Greta Thunberg’s arrest or the increasingly aggressive conduct of the police in Britain, Germany, and elsewhere. 

There is a simple explanation for this: Americans are not to know or think about the advancing suppression of speech and the rise of popular resistance to this. It makes for an immense lump under the carpet, but let us not forget: Mainstream media in the United States have been vigorous supporters of censorship since the Russiagate years and, I will add, the emergence of independent media as a presence in public discourse. 

Independent media, to finish the thought, will be essential to any successful defense of free speech as increasingly assertive authoritarians across the West seek to extinguish it altogether.

The Jerusalem Post ran an interesting story on Christmas Day under the headline, “Georgetown University severs ties with U.N.’s Francesca Albanese over anti–Semitic remarks.” The special rapporteur for Palestine was a visiting scholar at Georgetown until the university purged her at the insistence of U.N. Watch, one of those disgusting Zionist groups dedicated to discrediting critics of Israeli terror. 

One of the United States’ most venerable universities now joins not only in suppressing the speech of a highly visible public servant but also in attacking a figure distinguished for her unceasing defense of international law. Speech, of course, has been Albanese’s instrument.

Trita Parsi, the executive v.–p. at the Qunicy Institute, posted a brilliantly pertinent comment on “X” in response to the Jerusalem Post piece: “They can’t win a single argument, so they rely on silencing people.” 

A more succinct summation of our moment I cannot think of. To resist silencing: This seems to me the first task of our time. As the year turns this responsibility presses itself upon us ever more urgently and personally. 

What Are the Consequences? 

What actually occurs when speech is suppressed? Conferences are canceled, as in the case of Yanis Varoufakis, and professors are suspended or fired or monitored. Newspapers, online journals, podcasts: These and other media are censored, siloed into algorithm ghettos, or forced to cease publication altogether. 

You are arrested for carrying a placard or for what is stenciled on your T–shirt. Instagram accounts and messages on “X” are blocked. Readers report that Facebook does not allow them to repost work published in Consortium News, where some of my work comes out.

All this is now common — not quite “normalized” but nearly. The other day the aforementioned Irlandarra posted an item on “X” quoting a basketball star named Dwight Howard:

 

I tweeted Free Palestine. Less than 10 minutes later, I got a call from the NBA. Commissioner, agents, people in my foundation, and even folks from Texas, telling me to take it down. I damn near got kicked out of the league for it. And I’m trying to figure out, Why?!

 

In one or another way, and in all such cases, the free use of language is forbidden. O.K., obvious enough. But what else happens?

As I considered this question and what more there is to it my mind went back to L.S. Vygotsky, the noted Soviet psychologist, who died in 1934 aged 37 (and whose works were suppressed until Stalin’s death in 1953). The brilliant Vygotsky developed his highly original argument in his most famous book, Thought and Language (sometimes Thinking and Speech in translation). 

The primary function of language is not speech, Vygotsky discovered in his researches: It is thought. Jean Piaget considered this question a little later, and more years later so did Chomsky. Speech as we think of it follows “inner speech,” our language when we talk silently to ourselves, and then egocentric speech, when, as Piaget had it, young children talk aloud in languages known only to them.

It followed in Vygotsky’s theory that words are actions, an idea often associated with the Russian scholarly tradition: As language gives form to thought, thought eventuates in behavior, what we do. And so we come to the true and grave import of the threatening assaults on speech that confront us across the Western world.

Most immediately, to suppress speech is to suppress action. This is manifestly the intent of the authoritarians in Europe, in the United States, in Australia. If there is no speaking of Israeli atrocities or the true causes of the war in Ukraine or the apparently imminent attack on Venezuela there will soon enough be no objection to these things.

This is key to the process of “normalization.” The daily brutalities in Gaza, to take the obvious example, fall off the front page, people speak of them no longer, and resistance to them weakens to the point of vanishing.

No thought, no speaking, no action — a process major media incessantly reinforce. So does a grotesque, morally bankrupt silence descend upon us.

More than this, the suppression of speech transforms the future into a desolate tundra. Censoring speech, we need to know and never forget, amounts to thought control at one short remove. 

When all alternative opinions and perspectives are effectively outlawed they survive only among the tenacious few and only underground — a term we ought to revive and get used to using. On the surface of life, where the orthodoxies reign, there are no alternative opinions or ways of seeing things.

To extend this thought, when authoritarian regimes posing as defenders of democratic rights ban free speech and, so, free thought, we are effectively confined like detainees in the prison of an eternal present — this the consequence when envisioning a different future is made a prohibition. Creativity, imagination, zones of possibility, and ultimately change — all are rendered beyond reach.

This is one of Huxley’s points in Brave New World. The “what-is,” as I call it, is all there is or will be. The administration of Soma, the state-provided drug that transports those who take it into an anaesthetized euphoria, becomes essential to social control. We should think of this as we consider the prevalent assaults on free expression. 

The New York Times or any like mass-circulation daily fill their pages with all the things you must have and all the romance novels you must read and all the casserole dishes and cocktails you must try. This is more than mere frivolity: They offer readers their daily dosages on Soma. Those who are supposed to stand tallest for free speech now numb their readers to its absence.

It is time: Let us determine vigorously to speak in the year to come while accepting what consequences speech may impose, and I will come to those in the piece to follow.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored. 

The Floutist wishes all its subscribers and readers the best for the New Year.

TO MY READERS. Independent publications and those who write for them reach a moment that is difficult and full of promise all at once. On one hand, we assume ever greater responsibilities in the face of mainstream media’s mounting derelictions. On the other, we have found no sustaining revenue model and so must turn directly to our readers for support. I am committed to independent journalism for the duration: I see no other future for American media. But the path grows steeper, and as it does I need your help. This grows urgent now. In  recognition of the commitment to independent journalism, please subscribe to The Floutist, or via my Patreon account.

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/12/30/patrick-lawrence-free-speech-its-enemies/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

SEE ALSO: powers....

 

 

Subject: Intervention by the FDFA (Federal Department of Foreign Affairs) on behalf of two Swiss nationals subject to sanctions on the EU sanctions list

Open letter to Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA)

 

Kyoto, 21 December 2025

Dear Federal Councillor Cassis,
Dear Federal Department of Foreign Affairs,

I take the liberty of sending you the following open letter on behalf of more than 300 Swiss citizens from the fields of diplomacy, academia, journalism, politics, and other concerned individuals.
  We urgently ask you to intervene in every appropriate manner on behalf of our fellow citizens Mr Jacques Baud and Ms Nathalie Yamb, and to protest in the strongest possible terms against their sanctioning by the European Union.
  The inclusion of the two individuals on an EU sanctions list is a politically motivated act of repression and is in no way compatible with the fundamental human right to freedom of expression, as provided for in Article 191 of the Charter of the United Nations.
  Although both individuals have the right to seek a review of the legality of these measures before the European Court of Justice, the sanctions have immediate and severe effects on their fundamental freedoms. This constitutes a case of administrative punishment without a court ruling.
  There is well-founded concern that further sanctions of this kind against unwelcome opinions held by Swiss citizens will follow. This act can only be challenged at the political level, and we ask you to do so. We need you and the strength of your Department of Foreign Affairs.
  With the highest respect,

Dr Pascal Lottaz
Associate Professor, University of Kyoto, Japan

https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2025/nr-26-9-dezember-2025-1/betreff-intervention-des-eda-zugunsten-zweier-sanktionierter-schweizer-staatsangehoeriger-auf-der-eu-sanktionsliste

 

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.