Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Nov 10 – Ukraine – Zelenski Friend Accused In Energy Sector Corruption Case
  Related:
  – Bags of cash and a gold toilet: the corruption crisis engulfing Zelenskyy’s government (archived) – Financial Times
  – Russia Tried to Cut Ukraine’s Lights. Now It’s Aiming for the Heat. (archived) – NY Times
  – Impressions from the field research trip to Ukraine – October 2025 – Rochan Consulting
  – Russia to produce 120,000 glide bombs and 70,000 drones this year – Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence – Ukrainska Pravda

• Nov 11 – How To Start War With Russia – A British Think Tank Has Ideas
  Related:
  – Lavrov: Russia ready to offer non-aggression guarantee to NATO, EU – Yahoo
  – The new Russian arsenal that can deter wars – Bhadrakumar / New Indian Express
  – Responses by Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, to questions from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which the newspaper refused to publish in full without cuts or censorship, Moscow, November 13, 2025 – Mid.ru

• Nov 13 – Justice Department Office Which Justified Torture Now Argues For Killing
  Related:
  – Secret U.S. Memo Authorizing Drug-Boat Strikes Cites Chemical Weapon Threat (archived) – WSJ
  – Memo Blessing Boat Strikes Is Said to Rely on Trump’s Claims About Cartels (archived) – NY Times
  – Trump’s Killings at Sea Escalate the US’s Forever Drug War – Jacobin
  – Family of Fisherman Killed in U.S. Military Strike Says It Wants Justice (archived) – NY Times
  – Trump weighs Venezuela strikes as U.S. forces prepare for attack order (archived) – NY Times

• Nov 14 – Thoughts On The Shutdown
  Related:
  – Letter: By capitulating on the shutdown, Democrats showed their true colors – Salt Lake Tribune
  – ‘Epstein Hoax’ Got Legs? – Meaning in History
  – Jeffrey Epstein Was a Warlord. We Have to Talk About It. – Nation
  – A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers – Wired
  – Is This When Trump Became a Lame Duck? – American Conservative
  – Trump Is Falling Into the Same Trap That Ensnared Biden – Bulwark
  Republicans learned nothing from how badly Dems bungled inflation.
  – Trump, like Biden before him, finds there’s no quick fix on inflation – AP

—
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-266

What was the point of the government shutdown?

Caveat – I have not followed the issue in depth. My understanding is that the Democrats blocked the funding of the government because they wanted additional money for one of their healthcare programs.

Trump used the time of the shutdown to further his politics.

Six weeks later, just as the public was turning against the Republicans, the Democrats caved in:

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history came to an end Wednesday after the House approved the Senate-passed funding package, and President Trump signed the bill into law.

The legislation extends funding for most agencies until Jan. 30 and includes three bills that fund other parts of the government through September 2026.

The Senate approved the legislation on Monday, when seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with Democrats joined Republicans to end the standoff in the upper chamber. Six House Democrats crossed the aisle and voted to reopen the government.

The only thing that the Democrats have ‘won’ was a promise to put the additional healthcare money to a separate vote:

Eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to reach a deal with Republicans to end the shutdown, dashing the party’s effort to win an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits in return for their vote to reopen the government. ..

As part of the deal, Democrats secured a promise to hold a vote next month on the tax credits, which help millions of Americans pay for health insurance premiums for plans purchased on state exchanges.

The Republicans will of course reject that measure.

By the way: Why were the tax credits, part of Obama’s health care reforms, time limited in the first place?

To hide their utter defeat the Democrats released a slew of Epstein emails with the hope to plant new sensational rumors about Trump.  I have found nothing remarkable in that stack.

If this looks like a second Russiagate its because it is similar bullshit.

Instead of being a real opposition to Trump’s wars and miserable programs the Democrats’ are pushing performative nonsense.

Do they expect to get votes for that?

In 2003 the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council (OLC) issued a memo which declared the use of torture in ‘authorized military interrogations’ as legal when done under the ‘president’s constitutional authority to direct a war’.

The memo was widely condemned. The Obama administration withdrew it but refrained from prosecuting the torturers which had used it as cover.

The Trump administration now issued a comparable OLC memo to justify its wanton killing of alleged drug smugglers at sea.

Starting in September the Trump administration announced 19 strikes on boats in the Caribbean which have killed at least 76 seafarers. Most of them were random poor people:

One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet. And a fourth was a down-on-his-luck bus driver.

The men had little in common beyond their Venezuelan seaside hometowns and the fact all four were among the more than 60 people killed since early September when the U.S. military began attacking boats that the Trump administration alleges were smuggling drugs.

The argument of the new OLC memo is even more frivolous (archived) than the torturous reasoning of the former one:

The opinion, which runs nearly 50 pages, also argues that the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” waged under the president’s Article II authorities, a core element to the analysis that the strikes are permissible under domestic law.

The armed-conflict argument, which was also made in a notice to Congress from the administration last month, is fleshed out in more detail by the OLC. The opinion also states that drug cartels are selling drugs to finance a campaign of violence and extortion, according to four people.

That assertion, which runs counter to the conventional wisdom that traffickers use violence to protect their drug business, appears to be part of the effort to shoehorn the fight against cartels into a law-of-war framework, analysts said.

The true purpose of drug cartels is obviously to make money. There is no evidence that any drug cartel ever has been or is in business because it wanted to create violence.

Cont. reading: Justice Department Office Which Justified Torture Now Argues For Killing

Once a while the writers at RUSI, the British Ministry of Defense think tank, produce some valuable research. Mostly though they are out to push war mongering nonsense. A recent piece in Foreign Affairs by Jack Waitling is of the later kind.

Ukraine’s Hardest Winter – Foreign Affairs, Nov 11 2025
With the Donbas in Peril, Europe Must Pressure Russia Now

I’ll leave the dozens of outright lies, false assertions and delusions therein for others to mock.

Waitling’s main thesis is that more (economic) pressure on Russia will somehow press it towards a ceasefire without concessions from the Ukrainian side. But his suggestions on how to do that are all designed to drag Europe into an even more direct battle with Russia.

To support the Ukrainian campaign against Russia’s oil industry the Europeans should close the Strait of Denmark:

For Ukraine’s international partners, the question is whether they are prepared to match Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s oil infrastructure with comparable real rather than performative pressure on Russia’s economy. Above all, this means targeting Russia’s shadow fleet: the hundreds of decrepit tankers, operating under flags of convenience, often without insurance or trained crew, to move its oil to India and China. This will require denying the 80 percent of Russian seaborne oil exports that pass through the Strait of Denmark and threatening secondary sanctions against the ports where shadow fleet vessels unload.
…
Some European governments—including Denmark—have cited the 1857 Treaty of Copenhagen, an international agreement that established tariff-free transit of commercial shipping through Danish waters, as a legal barrier to action. But this is an excuse rather than a real obstacle. The countries that have a Baltic coastline today, excluding Russia, could agree to a new treaty requiring ships to meet certain standards of insurance and certification to be allowed to navigate the Baltic—for example, on grounds of ecological protection. Since the aging vessels of the shadow fleet do not meet these requirements, such a treaty would deny them entry into the straits. This would not impinge on the principle of tariff-free transit for commercial shipping through Danish waters.

Nice idea. But would enforce such nonsense and how?

Cont. reading: How To Start War With Russia – A British Think Tank Has Ideas

There has been a severe power struggle going on in Ukraine which the circle around acting president Vladimir Zelenski fighting against the former president Petro Poroshenko and his clique.

Today the power struggle went into a new round with fresh corruption accusation raise against intimate allies of Zelenski.

Zelenski has control over the ruthless Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The group around Poroshenko is allied with ‘grant structures’ previously close to the US Democratic Party.

‘Grant structures’ are the ‘civil society’ and the ‘anti-corruption’ parallel government organizations in Ukraine which were, until recently, financed by U.S. funds and controlled by Democrats. After Trump had blocked the funding for those groups Poroshenko jumped in with financing and the European Union took over.

The fight has been ongoing since 2022 when the war in Ukraine started for real. During the mid of this year the fight went public:

An intense information operation has been launched to remove Ukraine’s (former) President Vladimir Zelenski from office. Behind it are a cabal of Ukrainian opposition figures in coordination which western media and parts of the Trump administration.

The current campaign follows a earlier one which was directed against Zelenski’s main advisor and head of the office of the president Andrei Yermak.

Several pieces in major western outlets were launched against Zelenski and his clan. They were the preparatory fire for a wider attack which would accuse people around Zelenski, and finally himself, of large scale corruption schemes.

Zelenski tried to preempt the attack. On July 22 he put the whole anti-corruption vertical, including the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, under his control. That move caused open protest in Kiev by various non-government organization. The EU pushed back and Zelenski had to concede defeat. The Anti-Corruption vertical was released from supervision:

Cont. reading: Ukraine – Zelenski Friend Accused In Energy Sector Corruption Case

Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Nov 3 – Trump’s Nuclear Weapon Tests Won’t Include Nuke Explosions
  Related:
  – Nuclear testing: It’s the pits – Asia Times
  – Trump Has an Out on Nuclear Testing. He Should Take It. – Carnegie Endowment
  – The new nuclear arms race (archived) – Financial Times

• Nov 3 – Belorussian ‘Regime Changer’ Roman Protasevich Was An Intelligence Asset
  Related:
  – Key Kremlin ally reveals KGB spy helped Russia hijack Ryanair flight in 2021 – Express
  – Ryanair ‘hijacking’ twist: Putin’s friend says detainee was undercover spy – Dagens
  – Leaks expose collapse of EU/US-backed Belarusian ‘opposition’ – Grayzone
  – U.S. lifts all sanctions from Belarusian airline Belavia – MSN

• Nov 4 – Dick ‘Darth Vader’ Cheney Is Dead
  Related:
  – Remembering Dick Cheney, ‘Polarizing’ War Criminal – FAIR
  – The Tragedy of Dick Cheney (archived) – Ron Suskind / NY Times

• Nov 5 – Zohran Mamdani Wins New York City Mayor’s Election
  Related:
  – The Zohran Mamdani Psyop: How The Establishment Manufactures Its Own Brand of “Radicals”. – Fiorella Isabel
  – Buckle Up, America. The Zohran Era is Here – Matt Taibbi
  – Zohran Mamdani drops the mask (unhinged editorial) (archived) – Washington Post
  The mayor-elect divides New Yorkers into two groups: the oppressed and their oppressors.

• Nov 7 – This Ukraine War Report Is One Of A Kind
  Related:
  – Zelenskyy reports 314 Russian soldiers in Pokrovsk, Ukrainian forces say Russians waiting for reinforcements – Pravda.ua
  – John Mearsheimer: Fall of Pokrovsk – The Turning Point of the End of the Ukraine War is Near (video)
  – Why Ukraine’s troops are facing an amputation crisis – Telegraph
  – “Energy generation now at zero”: Russia delivers heaviest strike on Ukrainian thermal power plants – Ukrainska Pravda
  – EU and Belgium reportedly fail to agree on use of frozen Russian assets – Yahoo

—
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-260

This frontline report and the maps it presents are one of a kind:

Frontline report: Ukrainian drones with loudspeakers broadcast surrender instructions as Pokrovsk counterattack succeeds – Euromaidan, Nov 7 2025

General Oleksandr Syrskyi launched a focused Ukrainian counterattack near Dobropillia to divert Russian attention from the brutal push on Pokrovsk. Using drone-mounted loudspeakers to broadcast surrender instructions and exploiting autumn mud, Ukrainian forces cleared encircled Russian pockets and forced mass surrenders, while Russian reinforcements became bogged down trying to respond.

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The report claims that the Russian front that did envelope Pokrovsk and Myrnograd from the north has been broken up by a counteroffensive. Resupply of the Ukrainian forces in the two cities seems to be again possible.

The report is one of a kind because no one else is reporting such nonsense.

The Ukrainian counterattack north of Pokrovsk, which was launched a week ago, has failed. The pocket is closed. Pokorvsk is to 90% under Russian control. Ukrainian forces left in Myrnograd have no way out.

That is at least what other observers of the conflict, including western media, are claiming:

Cont. reading: This Ukraine War Report Is One Of A Kind

Yesterday the Democrats had a better day than they deserve. Their candidates did win in New Jersey, Virginia and New York City:

Zohran Mamdani, a young democratic socialist who shot to stardom and shook up Democratic politics, will be the next mayor of New York City.

Less than 40 minutes after the polls closed at 9 p.m. on Nov. 4, the Associated Press and CNN called the race for Mamdani, the Democratic nominee. With 91% of the vote counted, Mamdani had 50.4% of the vote, 9 points of his next closest opponent, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo with 41.6%. Cuomo ran as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary.

Mamdani, 34, will be the first Muslim mayor and first Asian American mayor of the nation’s largest city. The state lawmaker won after a contentious campaign defined by Democratic infighting over his ambitious proposals and past criticisms of Israel and the NYPD. Billionaires such as former Mayor Mike Bloomberg spent millions on efforts to defeat him.

It was remarkable that Zohran Mamdani did not pledge fealty to the Zionists (yet). It is somewhat uplifting that this likely enabled him to win.

But the hype around reminds me of the hype around one Barack Obama shortly before he became a bloody and bad president. It makes me suspicious of his verbalized aims and opinions.

There is also this:

Alex Soros @AlexanderSoros – 3:05 utc · Nov 5, 2025

So proud to be a New Yorker! The American dream continues!
Congrats, Mayor @ZohranKMamdani
pic

Hmm …

Marx Engels Lenin Stalin Mao Institute @MarxEngelsLnin – 12:40 utc · Nov 5, 2025

If you think the Soros family endorses actual socialists then I have several bridges and a miracle cure to sell you.

—

Michael Tracey @mtracey – 12:56 utc · Nov 5, 2025

Who wants to bet that within six months Zohran will be considered centrist/establishment by much of the Left

That bet looks like a sure win.

I am not in the mood to write about the death of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Alan has caught the gist of what needs to be said of it.

Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod – 12:20 utc · Nov 4, 2025

The only thing sad about Dick Cheney’s death is that it did not happen inside an Iraqi prison.

Over the years there have been a few MoA post on Cheney:

• The VP – Why is Cheney so full of hate?,  Nov 22, 2005
• Cheney Fails Again,  Feb 12, 2006
• Cheney Administration Expresses Self-knowledge,  May 27, 2007
• Cheney and Friends – by Antifa,  Jun 21, 2008
• Chimera – Chemera – Chenera – Chener – Cheney,   Sep 6, 2008

The one written by Antifa is probably the best of them. The last one is also of current interest.

This blog had diligently followed the case of the Belorussian regime changer Roman Protasevich and his Ryanair flight to Minsk. Last week the case reappeared but the quite sensational news of it caught little attention.

To recap a summary of the case as published here in May 2023:

Two years ago a Ryanair flight from Athens to Lithuania was diverted after the Belorussian flight control informed the pilot that it had received an email which said that the plane carried a bomb and would explode during landing in Lithuania.

The plane diverted to Minsk. All passengers stepped off board and where bused to the terminal. When they passed through passport control the immigration officers found that two of the passengers had outstanding arrest warrants against them. These were one Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend and co-worker Sofia Sapega.

The ‘western’ media and politicians were up in arms over the ‘unprecedented’ incident. But the event was far from unprecedented.

Western media also failed to report that Roman Protasevich had been a western government financed neo-nazi who had fought with the fascist Ukrainian Azov battalion before working for U.S. sponsored regime change media in Poland. He was one of the persons who had directed the failed 2020 color-revolution in Belarus.

Belarus had handled the airplane incident by the book. During the following days claims were made that Belarus received the terror threat email after the plane was informed – i.e. the whole thing was a setup. However, Belarus has claimed that it received the threat email twice, once before it notified the pilots and another copy later.

Moon of Alabama has followed the case throughout. Those interested in the details of the original incident can find them in our June 2 2021 post. For a wider political view of the ‘color revolution’ business in east Europe see this piece by Kit Klarenberg. Links to all MoA posts about the case are listed at the end of this piece.

A week after the incident, during a long TV interview, Protasevich spilled the beans about the whole regime operation. He also says that he has come to believe that one of his regime changer colleagues had sent the bomb threat email to get him arrested.

A few weeks later Roman Protasevich and Sofia Sapega were released and put under house arrest. A trial followed and, in early May of this year, he was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Only a week or two after receiving his prison sentence Roman Protasevich was pardoned. A few days later his girl friend and partner in crime Sofia Sapega was also released. Little was heard of either of them since.

Until on October 31 the President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko let the cat out of the bag. He said that Protasevich had all along been a spy for his country.

As TASS summarizes:
Cont. reading: Belorussian ‘Regime Changer’ Roman Protasevich Was An Intelligence Asset