The U.S.-led NATO alliance held its first NATO-Ukraine Council meeting this week in Brussels. As usual, the cliched promises of supporting the Kiev regime to the end were trotted out by all and sundry.

In truth, these NATO events for Ukraine, and more generally, are becoming yawn fests.

The whole sordid charade is only postponing the reality that the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is a debacle for the Western powers. This is not something to gloat over. It is a tragedy and an abomination.

Up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, as well as tens of thousands of Russian military personnel. Total casualty figures are no doubt in the millions. In addition, millions of civilians have been displaced as refugees in Russia and throughout Europe. Hundreds of billions of dollars and euros have been raided from Western taxpayers to fund this bloody fiasco. Not only that but international tensions have been heightened between nuclear powers at a perilous pitch not seen since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 at the depth of the Cold War.

Washington needs to come to its senses and negotiate a peaceful settlement on Moscow's terms. It's as simple and as blunt as that. This is what could have been achieved before the conflict erupted in February 2022 when Moscow was offering a negotiable security treaty. The West rejected those terms out of hand back then. Now it will have to accept. Primarily, the conditions are that there will be no further NATO enlargement around Russia's borders and in particular there will be no inclusion of Ukraine in the American-led bellicose military bloc.

Attending the NATO summit this week was U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken along with Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and the foreign ministers of the other 30 NATO member states. Kuleba declared with delusional disconnect: "We are pretty much becoming a de facto NATO army." He may be somewhat correct that Ukraine has been used as a proxy force for NATO, but it is a spent and decimated one.

Blinken seemed to be concerned with papering over cracks appearing in various media reports indicating that the U.S. is surreptitiously telling the Kiev regime to cut its losses and make a sort of peace deal with Russia. Blinken's bravado rhetoric is akin to empty U.S. promises previously made to Afghanistan and countless other proxy regimes over the decades before Washington ignominiously pulls the plug and does a runner.

Berlin is abandoning its own national interests in order to satisfy the whims of its "allies," the Russian president has said

Germany is being bossed by its Western partners because it lacks sovereignty, and its policymakers demonstrate poor leadership skills, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at a meeting with young Russian scientists on Wednesday.

Putin weighed on the EU's push to wean itself off Russian energy following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, arguing that by implementing the measure, Germany was only hurting itself.

The president noted that either European countries are turning their backs on cheap energy on their own accord, or the decision-making is being "done by their allies from the United States due to political reasons."

An adviser to the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked many on Saturday after posting a violent rant on social media in which she fantasised about torturing to death residents of Gaza she said were involved in last weekend's killings in southern Israel.

Tzipi Navon, a close adviser to and office manager for Netanyahu's wife, Sara, posted incendiary remarks on Facebook saying it was not enough to "flatten Gaza".


"It won't calm the storm of emotions, it won't dull the intensity of the rage and pain that can't find an outlet for them," Navon wrote.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged during a meeting with university students in the city of Nikolaev on Wednesday that his country may never join NATO.

Originally elected on an anti-war pledge and now promising another wave of conscription, Zelensky was replying to a question about the future of Ukraine's national security. The Ukrainian president explained that he didn't know whether Ukraine would be able to join the US-led bloc.

"We don't know how it will turn out... No one will be able to answer that for sure. Either we will be in NATO, or we won't be in NATO. We want to, but..." the Ukrainian president responded.

On Wednesday in Brussels, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reaffirmed that Ukraine can become a member of the bloc, "when allies agree and conditions are met." He added that "Ukraine is well on the path of NATO, as well as to the European Union, with the accession process, uh, beginning."

There is one way in which regional war against Israel can be waged by the Arab states, Turkey, Iran, Russia, even China to which Israel and the US are vulnerable; against which they cannot achieve a quick and conclusive end to Hamas and prevent a multi-front, long and ruinous war for Israel; and against which the Israelis and Americans cannot fight by a firepower escalation against the major states when Israel's survival chances are far lower than the US will risk.

This is proxy war by swarm.

The Houthis have been practising this on a sub-swarm scale with modest drone and missile salvos aimed at Israel's southern coastline, Eilat port, and vessel movement up and down the Red Sea, as well as one Israeli-owned vessel capture on November 19.

This week Houthi missiles have also targeted a US Navy (USN) destroyer in the Gulf of Aden. "Nov. 27 Sanaa time, two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi controlled areas in Yemen toward the general location of the USS MASON (DDG 87) and M/V CENTRAL PARK," CENTCOM said. "The missiles landed in the Gulf of Aden approximately ten nautical miles from the ships." This alleged Houthi attack followed an abortive takeover the day before, aimed at the Israeli-owned tanker Central Park. The ship attackers were Somali pirates, not Houthi forces, the USN has told the US press.

Against proxy war by swarm the US is currently monitoring Hezbollah along the Lebanon coast by long-range Northrop Grumman drones launched from the US airbase at Sigonella, Italy. At the same time, for safety sake, the USS Gerald Ford and its escorts have withdrawn more than a thousand kilometres westward, out of Hezbollah missile range. The Ford squadron is now reported to be under way in the central Ionian Sea continuing westward.

Israel's military has made no secret of the intensity of its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. In the early days of the offensive, the head of its air force spoke of relentless, "around the clock" airstrikes. His forces, he said, were only striking military targets, but he added: "We are not being surgical."

There has, however, been relatively little attention paid to the methods used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to select targets in Gaza, and to the role artificial intelligence has played in their bombing campaign.

As Israel resumes its offensive after a seven-day ceasefire, there are mounting concernsabout the IDF's targeting approach in a war against Hamas that, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, has so far killed more than 15,000 people in the territory.

The IDF has long burnished its reputation for technical prowess and has previously made bold but unverifiable claims about harnessing new technology. After the 11-day war in Gaza in May 2021, officials said Israel had fought its "first AI war" using machine learning and advanced computing.

The latest Israel-Hamas war has provided an unprecedented opportunity for the IDF to use such tools in a much wider theatre of operations and, in particular, to deploy an AI target-creation platform called "the Gospel", which has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets that officials have compared to a "factory".

An extraordinary email uncovered by a Dutch researcher under freedom of information laws confirms what many have long charged: Bellingcat, the "open source" collective widely cited by mainstream journalists and loved by the CIA, collaborates directly with Western intelligence agencies.

An email sent on November 12, 2020 by an officer within Amsterdam's National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) shows a Bellingcat investigation was intentionally shared with the agency prior to publication, so as to assist the Dutch spooks in shaping media strategies and messaging following its release. The revealing communication is irrefutable proof of the cozy relationship the self-styled "independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists" enjoys with Western intelligence services.

In the message, marked "high importance," the undisclosed author explained that Bellingcat would soon publish research amounting to a deeply libelous attack on independent journalists and researchers, who challenged the mainstream narrative surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

The Biden administration needs an Israeli victory in Gaza in order to undermine BRICS and other economic integration initiatives led by Russia and China, veteran geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar told the New Rules podcast.

"This is an American diversionist tactic to once again go against BRICS multipolarity, especially given the fact that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates now have a very graphic, tangible opportunity to link themselves to the birth of the new Eurasia when they become members of BRICS."

Escobar noted that during the G20 summit in New Delhi in September, the United States and Israel unveiled the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) initiative. The project, Escobar explained, seeks to bypass China's Belt and Road Initiative and transform Israel into a key energy and logistical hub.

Deutsche Bank might have just blown up Letitia James's civil fraud case against President Trump.

Radical Marxist New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $250 million in 'damages' when there is no victim in this fraud case and she is also seeking to ban Trump and his sons from operating any businesses in New York. She accused Trump of inflating his assets and defrauding lenders and insurance companies.

A Deutsche Bank executive who worked to approve at least one of Trump's loans testified on Tuesday:

"It is atypical, but not entirely unusual" to reduce a client's asset values and still approve a loan. This type of lending is typical in high net-worth, high-profile clients like Donald Trump.

"Anyone with basic knowledge of banking, lending, portfolio and credit risk management knows this."

Bloomberg reported:

"A Deutsche Bank AG executive gave testimony that could bolster Donald Trump's defense in his civil fraud trial, telling a New York judge that prospective clients can get loans even after reporting a net worth far higher than the lender's own calculations. David Williams, who worked on at least one of three loans Deutsche Bank made to Trump in the years before he was elected president, testified Tuesday that it's "atypical, but not entirely unusual" for the bank to cut a client's stated asset value by 50% and approve a loan anyway, as it did with Trump."

Williams testified:

"It's just a difference of opinion. A difference of opinion in asset values does not disqualify the potential borrower from a loan."

Palestinian militants followed the blueprint "with shocking precision," the newspaper reported

Israeli officials were warned about detailed plans for a major attack by Hamas more than one year before the militant group's October 7 raid, which claimed around 1,200 lives, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Despite the warning, officials are said to have dismissed the threat as implausible.

The report by the US newspaper is based on analysis of an attack blueprint code-named 'Jericho Wall' by Israeli Intelligence officials, numbering around 40 pages, as well as emails and interviews.