The United States is truly 'off the leash' now. Those who were 'sleeping' before Trump came along and rudely shook them awake are horrified to discover that the US government is an aggressive, imperialistic machine that wants control over vast resources and is prepared to do whatever it takes to reach satiation. The abduction of Nicholas Maduro and Trump's brazen claim to 'now run' the country of Venezuela was followed last week with more seizures of oil tankers, preparations to annex Greenland, threats to bomb Iran, and hints that the US may soon 'run' other countries in 'its backyard'.

Truth be told, however, the US has always been like this. The difference, under Trump, is one of degree, tempo, and the (reduced) extent of destructive 'collateral damage'. Dispensing with carefully-crafted narratives facilitated by CIA 'regime change operatives', Trump is far more inclined to tell it like it is: in a world changing from unipolar to multipolar, he's afraid the US will not only surrender its dominant position to its peer competitors, China especially, but become dominated by them. Hence the urgency for maximum access to, and leverage over, key resources like energy and minerals.


Running Time: 02:05:46

Download: MP3 — 115 MB

December 2025 witnessed escalating solar activity within Solar Cycle 25. Early in the month, a full-halo coronal mass ejection from an M8.1 flare on December 6 led to a strong G3 geomagnetic storm on December 9, enhancing auroral displays. Mid-month featured an X1.1 flare on December 8 — the most intense of the period — along with multiple C- and M-class flares.

Activity intensified late, with an M5.1 flare on December 27, an M4.2 on December 28, and peaking at an M7.1 on December 31, accompanied by potential Earth-grazing CMEs. Sunspot clusters and coronal hole high-speed streams contributed to minor geomagnetic disturbances throughout the period.

We can anticipate additional extreme weather, earthquakes, and increased solar activity over the next few months.

December 2025 was marked by severe flooding and landslides in Southeast Asia, resulting in over 1,500 fatalities across Sri Lanka and Indonesia, alongside notable seismic activity, including a 7.6 magnitude earthquake off Japan's east coast that prompted a tsunami warning.

Volcanic eruptions occurred at Mount Semeru in Indonesia and mud volcanoes in India and Trinidad, while unseasonal snowfalls and cold snaps affected regions from Australia to Canada. Multiple meteor fireball sightings were reported globally, and extreme weather events like atmospheric rivers and storms caused widespread disruptions in North America and Europe.

The January 3 US military raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores was followed by the Department of Justice's release of its superseding indictment of the two abductees as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello. The DOJ has also thrown Tren De Aragua (TDA) cartel leader Hector "Niño" Guerrero into the mix of defendants, situating him at the heart of its narrative.

The indictment amounts to a 25 page rant accusing Maduro and Flores of a conspiracy to traffic "thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States," relying heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction. It accuses Maduro of "having partnered with narco-terrorists" like TDA, ignoring a recent US intelligence assessment that concluded he had no control over the Venezuelan gang. Finally, the prosecutors stacked the indictment by charging Maduro with "possession of machine guns," a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.

DOJ prosecutors carefully avoid precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the US. At one point, they describe "tons" of cocaine; at another, they refer to the shipment of "thousands of tons," an astronomical figure that could hypothetically generate hundreds of billions in revenue. At no point did they mention fentanyl, the drug responsible for the overdose deaths of close to 50,000 Americans in 2024. In fact, the DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump's watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.

Can the US just do that? Yes, apparently, it can!

It's regime change, but not quite as we know it. With the democratically-elected leader of Venezuela taken to the USA 'to answer for his crimes', Trump has dropped all pretense and admitted that he wants the US to 'run Venezuela' because he wants American oil companies to return in a big way and supplant all Iranian, Russian and Chinese interests there.

It remains to be seen how exactly the Americans will manage Venezuela 'at-a-distance', but in the meantime it looks like a backroom deal was cut such that the Venezuelan military stood down and let American soldiers conduct their raid. The ramifications for Venezuela, as well as the larger geopolitical ramifications, are potentially huge.


Running Time: 02:17:47

Download: MP3 — 126 MB

As we approach the end of 2025, the SOTT.net team would like to wish all our readers a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Truly, a happy new year! In the spirit of the holiday season, we ask once again that you consider making a donation to help keep SOTT.net running, in return for which you can select from the SOTT.net merchandise on offer below. We're 23 years old this year, and remain one of the oldest, truly independent, advert- and AI- and Big Interest-free news and commentary websites on the Internet!

You may have noticed that, in recent years, especially since Elon Musk bought Twitter and reversed its transformation into a mouthpiece for government propaganda, some of us SOTT.net editors have been active there. It's been interesting watching the evolution of political and social debate since Musk "freed the bird," but as Musk himself has discovered this past year, there are limits to free speech even he won't cross. And those limits are set by influences outside of his control.

When he "let that sink in" and began his overhaul of Twitter, now X, Musk articulated his goal of the platform becoming a "high signal-to-noise, one-stop shop for news and information," generating high user participation in "networking for the truth" and thus "YOU becoming the media!" A worthy goal, certainly, but it must contend with vested interests wielding enormous amounts of money and leveraging their influence through powerful government agencies to ensure compliance with THEIR version of "networking for the truth."

In her series "Conversations with Grok," published this year on her Substack Letters from the Edge of Reality, SOTT.net founder Laura Knight-Jadczyk interrogated Musk's "truth-seeking AI" to understand what these limitations are, why platforms like X have these 'blocks' through which truthful information seemingly cannot pass, and why it is that X has become an echo chamber - or rather, a legion of silos - where raging but futile dissent and discontent remains impotent in affecting events for the better. While mainstream CorpGov narratives are frequently successfully exposed as such on X, ultimately, X is not really a free speech platform. You (and thousands of others engaging with you) can solve any puzzle or 'truthify' any narrative, but as soon as your content takes off, controls kick in to ensure that your message's visibility to others is heavily limited. Ostensibly, you have free speech, but functionally, you're censored.

The annual Turning Point USA 'America Fest' took place this week, complete with big name appearances from Right-wing pundits, pastors and politicians, celebrity cameos and gaudy spectacle. To the organization's credit, however, it honored Charlie Kirk's legacy by including Tucker Carlson on the roster - the very thing the organization's founder was pressured by "Jewish donors" to "cancel" during the summer.

As something of a 'finale' to the 'American conservative calendar', AmFest2025 further accentuated the chasm that has been opening all year long up on the Right between those for and against 'special status' for Israel. Besides being a political dispute, this is also a theological one, with voices on each side articulating the merits, or otherwise, of maintaining belief in the peculiar evangelical interpretation of Christianity as 'Judeo-christianity'.

Second hour of this NewsReal: The fallout from last week's atrocity at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, has seen the Canberra government come under intense pressure from certain quarters to outlaw anti-Semitism - defined as including criticism of the Israeli government. How that would stop ISIS terrorists from attacking Jews is anyone's guess, but maybe the point isn't to stop ISIS, but to stop you from 'noticing'?


Running Time: 02:03:58

Download: MP3 — 114 MB

This is the second part of RT's special investigation on Igor Kolomoysky. You can find Part 1 here to read about Kolomoysky's rise to the status of godfather of Ukrainian corruption, his involvement in the Maidan revolution and the following years leading up to Vladimir Zelensky's election.

Zelensky elected: The people's fantasies and Kolomoysky's favor

In April 2019, comedian Vladimir Zelensky defeated in a landslide incumbent Pyotr Poroshenko in the Ukrainian presidential election. It was an instance of life imitating art. In a TV series called Servant of the People, Zelensky played the role of a school teacher who launches a quixotic bid for the presidency running as an anti-corruption crusader. The series, which became wildly popular, aired on the TV channel 1+1, majority owned by Kolomoysky's 1+1 Media Group.

Zelensky positioned himself as the consummate outsider. During the election campaign, he preferred posting light-hearted videos to social media - and giving vague promises to stamp out corruption - over giving serious interviews or discussing policy. He did, however, promise to stop the war in Donbass and, being a Russian speaker himself, opposed the rigid language policies of Poroshenko. But otherwise, there wasn't much there. Ukrainian sociologist Irina Bereshkina called him "a screen on which every person projected his own fantasies." That, in addition to the support of Kolomoysky, proved to be his biggest advantage.

November 2025 featured intense solar activity, with sunspot region AR4274 producing multiple X-class flares, including an X5.1 on November 11 — the strongest of 2025. These events launched coronal mass ejections that triggered a severe G4 geomagnetic storm on November 11-13, the year's most powerful, sparking stunning auroras visible across North America (as far south as Florida) and into Europe.

Radio blackouts disrupted communications, and high-energy fluxes increased significantly, leading to heightened seismic activity, intensified rainfall patterns, and atmospheric instability worldwide.

November saw notable volcanic and seismic activity, including eruptions at Kilauea in Hawaii and Hayli Gubbi in Ethiopia, alongside heavy rainfall that triggered widespread landslides and flooding in Southeast Asia and Africa.

Typhoons affected the Philippines and Vietnam, leading to massive evacuations. Severe hailstorms and unseasonal cold snaps impacted various regions, while meteor fireball sightings continue to increase globally.

In 2020, Dutch lawyer Arno Van Kessel realized that Covid-19 was being used by governments to exercise malign influence on populations and began vocally opposing both the Dutch government's pandemic response measures and the subsequent Covid-19 'vaccines'. For 5 years, despite character-assassination and harassment by Dutch authorities, van Kessel nevertheless initiated legal proceedings against the Dutch state and high-profile national and international figures like Mark Rutte, Bill Gates, Albert Bourla (Pfizer CEO), and others.

Together with his colleague Peter Stassen, and on behalf of the Stichting Recht Oprecht Foundation ('Right to rights foundation') representing seven plaintiffs who all suffered negative health outcomes as a result of Covid 'vaccinations', on July 14th 2023 van Kessel filed a civil lawsuit at the District Court of Leeuwarden.

The defendants include the Dutch government, former Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Bill Gates, and others, totaling 17 individuals and entities. The plaintiffs allege that the Covid-19 'vaccine' is actually a cloaked bioweapon, and that the alleged side-effects are deliberately chosen effects. The lawyers accuse the government of committing genocide against its own people, noting that the legal definition of genocide includes the infliction of serious bodily harm. The lawsuit seeks damages for the alleged vaccine injuries, and a legal decision from the Court over whether the Covid-19 shot is a vaccine for the health of the population, or a bioweapon. The lawsuit's outcome hinges on the plaintiffs' ability to substantiate their claims of vaccine-related harm.

Igor Kolomoysky built up Ukraine's largest bank, then plundered it for billions in a scheme so elaborate it looks like a state intelligence operation. During the 2014 Maidan revolution, he ended up caught in a whirlwind of far-right militants, rising Western scrutiny, and a dramatic denouement with his bank - and fled abroad. Not one to give up, though, Kolomoysky had a plan for revenge and its name was Vladimir Zelensky.

Zelensky, however, soon ran amok. He "tricked Putin" in Paris, ruining hopes for peace in the Donbass, and setting the stage for the fateful events of 2022. Caught between Western pressure and his benefactor's menacing presence, Zelensky tried to play both sides until events forced his hand. Yet Kolomoysky's downfall merely left an open niche for a new shadowy figure to stride in.

Below is the first part of RT's investigation, based on hundreds of pages of court documents, dealing with Kolomoysky's rise, his turning PrivatBank into an empire of fraud, the events of Maidan, and his involvement in the post-Maidan world.

"He did play as Napoleon, right, Zelensky?... This Napoleon will soon be no more," said a man with curly grey hair and a scraggly grey beard from the defendant's cage in a Kiev courtroom. It was the middle of November, and Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoysky was speaking at a hearing in the longstanding fraud charges he faces related to his plundering of PrivatBank. Looking relaxed in a track suit and speaking in Russian, Kolomoysky predicted that Vladimir Zelensky would come crashing down with him due to his own intimate involvement in the corruption scandal currently roiling Ukraine.