News X World midday wrap-up: Merz acknowledges that Russia is in Europe!

Today’s interview with the Indian global broadcaster NewsX World was in two parts. I appear in minute 3.17

The first segment dealt with the Kremlin’s positive evaluation of latest statements by several European leaders that it is time to initiate direct talks with Putin. The second part dealt with Viktor Orban’s decision to distribute a ‘petition’ among Hungarian voters calling for refusal to participate in any further EU funding for Ukraine.

As I point out, in the past few days French President Macron, Italian Prime Minister Meloni and German Chancellor Merz have all said that direct contact should be made with Vladimir Putin. In the case of Macron, who is ever playing the chameleon and changing his political stance on Russia from warm to cold and back again, these latest statements are meaningless. Meloni is also not a particularly serious person at the international level. But Merz’s decision to reach out to Putin is entirely another matter and worthy of attention. A day ago, the Chancellor remarked that Russia is part of Europe and relations with Russia should be recalibrated. So, apparently, he has finally consulted a map!

What these statements suggest is that Trump has finally broken the solidarity in Europe behind foolish and self-destructive policies vis-à-vis Russia. Probably the biggest factor is their realization that NATO may well collapse if Trump proceeds to annex Greenland by force, which is entirely possible and could happen at any moment. If NATO collapses, then Europe will be entirely defenseless against the Russian bear whom they have been poking and provoking ceaselessly for three years and more. Under those circumstances, it is prudent to establish lines of communication here and now beforehand. It is also no longer clear in Berlin, Rome and Paris who is the more fearsome big bad wolf: Washington or Moscow.

The decision by Viktor Orban to solicit the opinion of Hungarian voters on whether to continue or to stop funding to the Kiev regime is a rare instance when real, meaning ‘direct’ democracy is put into practice by an EU Member State. In general, all that we have is ‘representative democracy,’ which, as we know, exists in the particular context of electoral laws that reserve seats in parliament for parties or movements backed by tiny minorities of the population and so deprive the most popular parties of a majority in parliament. All of that progressive electoral engineering results in most European countries having power-sharing coalition governments that are answerable to no one.

Virtually the only country in Europe that regularly practices direct democracy is Switzerland. And so, I salute Orban for asking Hungarian citizens to sign a petition on this key question of war or peace. If only other Member States would do the same, funding for the Zelensky regime would stop forthwith and this damned war would be over.

That being said, I note that there may be some quirks when they tally the ‘petitions’ in Budapest. This afternoon I had a chat with one of the receptionists at my sports club who happens to be a dual national – Belgian and Hungarian. I asked if he knew about Orban’s referendum and he sure did: he told me that Budapest is distributing the petitions by email and he already received three. He sent all three of these ballots back with his signature! As they say in the USA: vote early and vote often.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

NewsX World hourly morning news wrap-up, 13 January

In this morning’s news bulletin, I come on for two segments beginning at minute 14. These deal firstly with the latest Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, where further destruction to the energy infrastructure has been inflicted. As I say here, repeating what the Russians themselves are saying about these attacks: the destruction of energy production and distribution is taking a page from the American playbook of their 1999 bombing campaign against Belgrade, though here the Russians have an ulterior objective of driving the population to flee to Europe, thereby reducing Ukraine’s economy while overwhelming social services in Germany and elsewhere by the refugee influx so that Europe sues for peace. Secondly, we spoke about the massive demonstration of French farmers in Paris protesting the terms of the Mercosur trade deal that has been concluded with the EU over objections from European farmers who claim there will be unfair trading that undercuts their markets. The problem is not unfair trading but the much greater efficiency and production costs in a very large market like Brazil versus France. I expect the treaty will be ratified and come into effect nonetheless, though with added provisions for review and modification of certain terms relating to agriculture after a year or two to avoid doing excessive harm to European farmers.

For those who may think that the almost daily commentary that this broadcaster requests of me puts them in the Alternative News category, I urge that you listen to the interview just prior to my appearance, where you will hear an account of the brutal repression of demonstrators by the Iranian authorities that could just as easily be shown on the BBC or Euronews. For the truth about Iran, you would do well to go to Glenn Diesen’s interview yesterday with Iranian professor Seyed Marandi – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRO4bXzEQw&t=696s

This morning’s NewsX World hourly round-up: Trump cancels ‘international law’

I appear in this multi-segment broadcast at minute 19.26

The issue that I highlight in the title above is one of two or three highly topical issues which are widely discussed in media today but as I insist here are devoid of substance. The relevance of international law to allegations of Russian aggression in initiating its invasion of Ukraine is nil. The notion of double standards in applying international law to the case of Russia’s supposed aggression in Ukraine when it is not applied to the American invasion of Venezuela is also empty now that Donald Trump publicly canceling international law as a restraint in an interview with The New York Times a couple of days ago.

Another empty bit of ‘breaking news’ that we discussed is the invitation extended by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Bessent to India and Australia to attend the upcoming G7 meeting for talk about finding new sources of rare earth metals outside of China. This is a PR exercise and nothing more, because any increase in mining and processing of these metals will come years from now and the crisis is here and now, when China has full leverage over the rest of the world in the growing confrontation with the West.

Similarly one does not have to spend more a minute considering how the U.S. seizure of a Russian tanker will affect the peace negotiations over Ukraine. The answer is very simple: there will be no peace negotiations or if they take place the guarantied outcome will be zero, and the war will continue until Russia gets what it wants, leaving Ukraine as a failed state.

I do not mean to suggest that there is no news worth reading or watching today. Such news, of course, exists, but it is not being covered by Mainstream while they fill their on air minutes and their news columns with the irrelevancies cited above.

A very Indian panel discussion for your perusal on News X

Trump Greenlights ‘Russia Sanctions Bill’ | More Tariff Trouble For India?

I was honored yesterday evening to participate in a very Indian panel discussion which opens with Indian advertising that you will certainly not find on BBC, CNN or other global broadcasters. As for the discussion itself, note that I appear to be the only non-Indian expert.

The topic was one of great concern to the Indian government and business community, namely the bill presently before the U.S. Senate granting the President the powers to impose secondary tariffs of up to 500% on countries which continue to buy Russian oil. This bill enjoys bipartisan support and is sponsored by the viciously anti-Russian Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and his Democratic peer and fellow Russia-hater Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut. I add parenthetically that I take special interest in these sponsors because Blumenthal just happens to be a classmate of mine from Harvard College, 1967.

We each had just a few minutes to make present our evaluations of the likely fall-out from the 500% tariffs when the bill comes into law, as it inevitably will given that 82 of the Senators have previously expressed their support, making it veto-proof. The subject became news when President Trump came out yesterday saying he will sign the bill, which is a concession to the realities of politics on The Hill.

You will see that all the Indian experts were figuring the angles for India and for the USA coming out of the new tariffs: how this would add greatly to inflation for American consumers on the one hand and how it would harm Indian exports in areas until now not affected by Trump’s tariffs like pharmaceuticals. Regrettably, I limited my remarks to how the new tariffs would founder on the rocks of Chinese opposition. After all, Trump’s early attempts to impose 150% tariffs on China months ago fell through when the Chinese struck back and said they would freeze all sales of rare earth metals to the USA, in effect bringing US industrial production, especially in electronics and military hardware to an abrupt halt. Trump backed down and the imposition of high tariffs on China so far is in a suspended state, which is where it will likely remain to the end of Trump’s term in office.

Regrettably, what I did not broach is the question of how such tariffs would affect Russia and change dramatically how the war in Ukraine is being conducted.

If indeed, Washington succeeds in forcing Russia’s major export markets to stop buying Russian oil and does great harm to Russia’s economy, we will not have to wait to see this damage impair the war effort. On the contrary, we may anticipate that Russia will proceed to do in Ukraine what some argue it should have done a couple of years ago, namely to smash Kiev and Lvov to bits, putting a dramatic end to the statehood of Ukraine and ending the war here and now. I can add based on today’s latest news, which I discussed with News X World this morning, that the message of such an escalatory path has just been given by Moscow to Kiev, London, Paris, Berlin and Washington by the use of an Oreshnik hypersonic missile in a midnight attack on Kiev. I await further news on this very important development to see what destruction actually resulted from the Oreshnik attack, which is only the second use of this missile in the Ukrainian campaign after an initial experimental strike on a hardened underground military production site in Dnipro in 2024.

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 7 January 2026: Trump’s Maduro “Kidnapping” Is an Impeachable Crime

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 7 January 2026: Trump’s Maduro “Kidnapping” Is an Impeachable Crime

This session with Judge Andrew Napolitano was a sad start to the New Year, as he stated at both the beginning and end of our conversation. We are in a new world order created by what I call here Trump’s latest deal with the devil to raise his sagging popularity ratings at this critical time when the USA enters the season of midterm elections.

Whereas at the very start of his new term a year ago Trump made some very promising, even daring appointments, as for example Tulsi Gabbard to Director of National Intelligence, and whereas there were some wonderful actions to curb the Deep State, as for example, the virtual shut-down of US AID, the agency which had directed illicit funds to local NGOs and other actors engaging in regime change abroad, it appears that Trump has reversed course and has agreed to work with the power ministries for the sake of pumping up his political capital. Nota bene, that this political capital was surely depleted not just by Trump’s failure to achieve a genuine peace in Gaza, not to mention still less success in ending the Russia-Ukraine War, but most recently depleted when he issued the new National Security Strategy document that upended all of US foreign policy priorities since 1949 and must have raised a hullaballoo on Capitol Hill and within the Republican Party establishment.

The net result is that the CIA, State Department and War Department are now once again running the show, setting the targets for foreign and military policy and executing that policy in ways that are simply astonishing and take your breath away, as happened this past weekend in the U.S. attack on Caracas and kidnapping of President Maduro. What we see again is the hubristic behavior of American officials that we have seen without end since Bush Jr. invaded Iraq in 2003. These people, like Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, are overconfident in U.S. capability to ‘run Venezuela’ not to mention run the world.

The only thing that can stop this juggernaut is the other two world superpowers, Russia and China. So far both are silent, which does not inspire confidence in where the world is headed.

NewsX World multi-segment interview today

This interview opens with a discussion of the Coalition of the Willing summit in Paris, which has gathered 35 countries. Host Emmanuel Macron appears to be very satisfied, though surely the value of the exercise is nil. This gathering of losers is negotiating among themselves and have reached consensus on what is essentially a demand for Russian capitulation. Their insistence on a foreign peacekeeping force numbering perhaps 100,000 is an absolute nonstarter with the Russians. But then none of the participants wants the war to end.

Another segment dealt briefly with the latest Israeli violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon that have caused the deaths of hundreds.

We spoke briefly about House Speaker Johnson’s saying that the Trump intervention in Venezuela is NOT an act of regime change, just a measure to correct the behavior of the Venezuelan leadership. This play on words will fool no one and it only shows that American hubris is back with us. The, shall we say, naïve belief that the Venezuelans will accept American overlordship without any resistance will be shattered before long and then all hell will break loose, as it did in Iraq after the capture of Saddam Hussein.

The best segment, in my view, came last when we discussed the treatment of Maduro when he came to the courthouse hearing in chains and was paraded before reporters. As I pointed out, the US has plenty of experience with this particular kind of political theater. I trust the Community will enjoy my comparing Maduro’s court appearance to the way France’s leading candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was dramatically taken off a flight departing NYC for Paris and taken in handcuffs to a Manhattan court, shown off to the reporters on the way, to ensure that his political fortunes were destroyed, all over a phony allegation of sexually abusing a hotel maid. The CIA and FBI staff have lively imaginations for mischief. The removal of Strauss-Kahn resulted in the election of the nitwit Francois Hollande and five wasted years for France.

Who is Hitler and who is Chamberlain today?

For the last 50 years at least, American hawks have time and again brought up a lesson from the past to justify their foreign and military policy predilections that amounted to war-mongering.

Every attempt to find accommodation, détente with America’s ideological adversaries was systematically denounced as “appeasement” in the tradition of Chamberlain seeking ‘peace in our time’ when dealing with the German Fuehrer, whose ambition was absolute political, economic, military domination in Europe.

Donald Trump’s absolutely shocking act of aggression this past weekend compels us to face a new reality: that the President of the United States is today the incarnation of Hitler with ambition on a world-wide scale.

I am not repeating here the cheap and empty political posturing of the Trump haters in America who have called him a fascist because he opposes their Green agenda, opposes their LGBTQ+ Rainbow parades and support for sex change operations among adolescents, and opposes other extreme Liberal values that amount to the destruction of the foundations of society in pursuit of I, Me, Me, I.

No, those complainers about Trump are abusing the notion of fascism to serve their own selfish hunger for political power at any price.

I am speaking about the notion of fascism writ large, as a program to destroy all those nations which do or could stand in the way of American global hegemony.

Trump has trampled on the sovereignty of Venezuela and makes no secret of plans to ‘run’ the country and extract enormous wealth for American corporations by setting them free to exploit Venezuelan oil. He has just renewed his claims to take possession of Greenland. He has threatened Iran with military intervention over the suppression of political disturbances that are a direct result of the country’s economic hardships under crippling U.S. sanctions that go back twenty years or more. Surely Cuba is also in his sights.

The operation in Caracas this past weekend is the template for what is to come. No big invasions, just a very carefully researched and executed decapitation strike that removes to American prisons the leaders of the countries on the Trump check-list.

And why bother adding to the prison detainees? In the past week the CIA targeted Vladimir Putin’s countryside residence with intent to murder. Minister of War Pete Hegseth in the past few days has threatened Putin with “we’re coming for you”.

*****

Given all of the foregoing, I am shocked that some colleagues continue to praise the moderation shown thus far by Russia and China in response to what Trump has done and said this past weekend. We are told that they appreciate the volatility, the narcissism, the oncoming dementia of the man in the Oval Office and are making their highest priority avoidance of a nuclear war by handling The Donald with kid gloves.

Dear friends, you are arguing the case for Chamberlain! And was not Hitler in 1938-39 understood to be mentally unbalanced, a madman if I may cut to the quick? The only argument that one might have made in defense of Chamberlain’s appeasement was the lack of preparedness for war of his country and its allies on the Continent. But that is manifestly not the case today, when we all understand that Russia’s conventional forces are more than a match for NATO in its shambolic present conditions, and that Russia’s nuclear triad, its strategic arsenal is years ahead of the USA at this moment. That will likely not be true 5 years from now, but it is true today. Accordingly, there is no logic to Russian pusillanimity, to its not threatening the USA with total destruction here and now if Washington does not pull in its horns and behave in accordance with the UN Charter.

Going back 5 years, I argued in an essay that Khrushchev was right to bang his shoe on the desk in the UN General Assembly. He was right to issue his famous threat to the capitalist world: “we will bury you.”

Khrushchev may have been boorish, but he was brave and he was ready to fight to the death if the U.S. side did not come to its senses. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a test of courage on both sides the like of which I do not see today. The annihilation of tens of millions of people was a possibility, to be sure, but it was offset by readiness to enter into serious and decisive negotiations going to the root causes of the confrontation. After all, in the end, not only did the Russians pull their nuclear tipped missiles out of Cuba but the USA pulled into missiles out of Turkey and Italy.

*****

‘Progressive humanity’ is today reporting on the demonstrations being held in capitals around the world to protest against the imprisonment of Maduro and U.S. aggression.

Regrettably, the net result of these demos will be nil. The only powers on earth that can stop the insane Hitler-like course of the Trump administration today are China and Russia. If they twiddle their thumbs now then you can be sure that the possible war today will be replaced by a certain civilization ending war in five years’ time.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

Time to impeach Trump

The attack on Venezuela and snatching of President Maduro puts an end to my flirtation with Trump. He has just trampled on the National Security Strategy that he rolled out 3 weeks ago. He has proven that the Neocons control the government and he is nothing more than a figurehead.

I call for his impeachment so as to install JD Vance and give him two-three years to do what has to be done, namely to purge the Pentagon, the CIA, State of the Neocons who constitute the decision makers and implementers in the ‘power ministries’. This accomplished, Vance could then hope to carry out the NSS and position the USA as a major world power among peers, rather than a hegemon and Cold Warrior.

For those in the Community who may be puzzled by my turning against Trump, I recommend that they read the first chapter in my 2019 collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs: “Time to Impeach Trump,” dated 21 September 2017, pp. 1-4. You may have overlooked this book because its title was explained only in the Foreword, p. xiii: the ‘Belgian’ in question was not a collective part of this small nation that one could disregard until its Prime Minister Bart De Wever stood up to Ursula von der Leyen and Chancellor Friedrich Merz a couple of weeks ago and saved the global financial markets from the catastrophe that would have followed confiscation of Russian state assets held in Belgium. The word ‘Belgian’ in the title stood for one person, me, who had become a naturalized Belgian. My call for impeachment was precipitated by Trump’s barbaric declarations before the UN General Assembly threatening to annihilate North Korea, a nation of 22 million people.

My coddling of Trump’s vile activities in some global hotspots since taking office again, in January 2025, in particular his enabling the Israeli genocide in Gaza, was based on the reasonable assumption that that was the price to pay for him to enjoy the political capital in the heavily pro-Zionist Congress and in the foreign policy establishment in Washington necessary to pass his domestic and foreign policy programs. The same logic persuaded me to remain silent about his attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities and his enabling Israeli strikes on Teheran and other purely civilian targets in their 12-day war.

But the recent months of Trump’s superintending so-called peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine have shown that at best his efforts are incompetent and so are condemned to failure. Holding separate talks with each of the warring parties and agreeing with each side to their entirely contradictory peace plans shows that he is posturing and that nothing of use can come out of these talks. Moreover, no peace agreement that met the Russian demands of resolving the underlying reasons for the war, namely turning back NATO expansion to Russia’s borders and getting Washington to consider revising the security architecture in Europe, will get approval in Congress now that everyone has read about Trump’s hopes to overturn 76 years of American foreign policy priorities by the language of his NSS document.

Accordingly, I view without prejudice and on their merits Trump’s attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife to face trumped up charges of drug trafficking in the USA. And on their merits Trump has egregiously violated international law. Sad to say, he has not set a precedent, but is following a pattern of ‘rogue state’ behavior established by President George H.W. Bush when he invaded Panama in December 1989 and seized president Manuel Noriega. Noriega then spent years in U.S. detention and died there.

Let us remember that ‘rogue state behavior’ was precisely what one of the chief popularizers of Neocon ideology, Robert Kagan, husband of the notorious Victoria Nuland, urged upon the United States in books and speeches. That is to say, scorn for all legal constraints on how foreign policy is conducted for the sake of maintaining U.S. global domination.

The difference between what H.W. Bush did in 1989 and what Trump has just down now in Venezuela must be called out. Bush was just ‘kicking ass,’ as they say in the States. Trump is implementing a farther- reaching geopolitical objective of driving all foreign powers out of the Western Hemisphere, which he seeks to maintain as Washington’s exclusive hunting preserve. To be more specific, Trump has attacked not just Venezuela. He has attacked China which is a main export market for Venezuela; conversely, China is highly dependent on Venezuelan oil and an American take-over would surely cause economic harm to Beijing. In this regard, the warm-up exercise to yesterday’s snatch operation was the U.S. capture of two Venezuelan oil tankers, one of which was carrying oil destined for and already paid for by China.

Going back still further, this American attack on Venezuela is a continuation of the attack on China’s commercial activities in Latin America that we saw still earlier in 2025 when Trump brought pressure on Panama to remove the Chinese from their control over the Canal.

*****

What lessons can the world’s two other superpowers draw from Trump’s outrageous attack on Venezuela?

As for Russia, the message should be crystal clear to President Vladimir Putin that he does not and cannot have a partner in Donald Trump. Russia must proceed on its own path to resolve the Ukraine war, and as I have been saying in recent months, the sooner the war is ended, whether by a decapitation strike on Kiev and other decision-making centers, or by storming Kiev with ground forces, the better. Russia now has a window of opportunity that it should exploit without hesitation. If President Putin is unable to act decisively in this sense, then he should resign and pass the torch to someone in a younger generation who is level-headed, has proven experience at high levels of the government and is decisive, not wishy-washy.

As for China, this attack on Venezuela is de facto an attack on China. Generally, Chairman Xi is more decisive and has more resources to threaten the USA than does Putin and Russia. If ever there were a moment for China to resolve the Taiwan issue it is here and now. The Americans have just stolen Chinese oil and are attacking a major supplier to China. Xi will not straighten out relations with Washington now by remaining silent and failing to respond appropriately. Such reticence will only encourage further provocations and give Washington time to better prepare for armed conflict.

Press TV (Iran): Ukraine signals readiness to scale back Eastern forces

In this interview recorded in the morning, we discussed Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest proposal that both sides create buffer zones on their sides of the present battle lines, meaning ‘demilitarization’ of the part of Donetsk still in Ukrainian hands and a similar ‘demilitarization’ of as many kilometers to the east of the battle lines by Russia.

As I remark, this is purely a propaganda initiative by Kiev. They know perfectly well that the proposal is completely unacceptable to the Russians for several reasons that are easy to see. First, this buffer zone on the Ukrainian side would remain under Ukrainian administration, meaning that the Russian speaking population would remain subject to the brutal repression which touched off their resistance to the newly installed ultra-nationalist government in Kiev in February 2014 and continued for eight years, prompting the Russians to launch their Special Military Operation.

Zelensky’s ‘demilitarization’ would mean removal of heavy military equipment. That sounds good, but in fact the war has evolved into a drone war and it is easy to envision that the Ukrainians would continue to launch drones against Russian positions to the East, while Russian responses would be condemned as violation of the peace justifying the entry of European “peacekeepers.”

If we look further afield, the Zelensky proposal does not address the root causes of the war that the Russians insist must be resolved if there is to be a durable peace. This means the neutrality of Ukraine, the ensured absence of any foreign troops or military installations. Though the Russians are not saying this aloud, they seek regime change in Kiev as part of any settlement. The extreme nationalists who have controlled the Kiev government since 2014 must be removed.

For all of the above reasons, the latest Zelensky proposal is dead on arrival in Moscow, even if the Kremlin is saying now politely that they will study it closely.

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/135508

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 24 December: The Totalitarian EU

In today’s conversation with Judge Andrew Napolitano, we discuss the terrible sanctions recently imposed by the European Council on retired Swiss military intelligence expert Jacques Baud for what is said to be his pro-Russian disinformation (an outrageous defamation) and the precedents for such extrajudicial violations of citizens’ rights to free speech, to property rights and more. As I say here this goes straight back to the seizure of assets of Russian oligarchs early in 2024 after the start of the Special Military Operations on charges of their ‘being friends of Putin’ and other nonsense that would never be accepted in a court of law. The problem may be said to go still further back to the breach of international law when the U.S. seized embassy and consular properties of the Russian Federation during the Obama administration in December 2016 to hand a poisoned chalice to the incoming Team Trump.

My point is that rule of law works for all of us only when it is defended against each and every violator. Failure to bring legal action and/or high-level lobbying against violators can only lead to escalation and spread of abuses over time. That is how we have reached a situation where none of us in the Alternative Media today can feel safe in the European Union, although as I say here, it is highly unlikely that any American will be put on EU sanctions lists for fear of enraging Trump and putting in jeopardy America’s nuclear umbrella and NATO support for Europe. But if you are a Swiss or some other third country national: watch out!

We also delve into the deeper problem that makes cases like Baud’s so intractable: the absence of any system of checks and balances, of division of powers whereby an independent judiciary could review cases of abuse like this and compel the offending executive to back down. This fundamental problem must be put at the door of the Left-leaning highly intellectual caviar socialists who played a very important role in writing the foundation documents of the EU, and who assumed that their successors would be equally well-intentioned and tolerant of others’ views. Well read, they may have been but they did not pay due attention to the 19^th century political scientists who reasoned that men can be overbearing, oppressive and must be held in check by limitations on the power written into the constitution. In this regard, it should come as no surprise that the EU institutions today lend themselves to totalitarianism. Elon Musk is right: the EU must be deconstructed and rebuilt in a way that better protects democracy and specifically protects all human rights of its citizens, starting with freedom of expression, which is now being trampled upon.