[Time] Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump hailed a “historic” peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Yet there was no public handshake at the summit in Washington between DRC President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, and the violence has continued ever since President Trump began mediating the conflict in April.
The two nations have often been at odds over the past 30 years, but the conflict sharply escalated in January after Rwanda-backed M23 rebels seized large parts of mineral-rich eastern DRC in an offensive that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
Given the grim reality of the conflict, President Trump’s mediation efforts should be welcomed. But if President Trump wants to truly realize his vision for regional peace and prosperity, he must now build on the summit with sustained high-level engagement and increase pressure on both nations to abide by their commitments.
The task is urgent. M23 has launched several new offensives in the last two weeks, making significant advances for the first time since March. The surge in fighting is unsurprising. The previous months, M23 was waging smaller offensives to set conditions to take key positions in the eastern DRC that it is now capitalizing on, while the Congolese military was conducting an airstrike campaign against M23-held areas. Both sides had heavily reinforced the front lines with thousands of new forces and increasingly advanced materiel.
The Washington Accords—the DRC-Rwanda peace deal—alone will not change this reality. It hardly addresses the role of militias, particularly the M23, who are involved in the vast majority of the fighting. That issue is being discussed in the parallel Qatar-led Doha peace process. While the DRC and M23 signed a framework agreement on Nov. 15 as a prerequisite to the Washington Accords, it is non-binding and both sides have already violated the cease-fire.
Rwanda continues to provide covert support to M23, while publicly denying it backs the rebels. M23 itself likely sees no reason to agree to a political settlement or disarmament, especially while it faces no external military threat to its control and is busy building an extensive parallel state. The Congolese government does not face a direct military threat from M23, enabling the government to repeatedly issue hardline demands in the talks that it does not have the military leverage to enforce as it conducts airstrikes and equips rival militias.
The Australien Government has made an ad about the Social Media Ban for Under-16s, and it's surprisingly honest and informative. #auspolpic.twitter.com/QwcVOHptLs
[YouTube] The U.S. economy has been "artificially propped up" for the last two years, and the floor is about to fall out. Former BlackRock Manager and Founder of Phinance Technologies, Ed Dowd, joins Jeremy Szafron on Kitco News to expose why recent GDP data was a "hallucination" driven by government spending on mass migration.
In this deep dive, Dowd warns that the "floor has been removed" from the housing market, predicting a tumultuous crash in 2026 as inventory spikes and demand vanishes. He also breaks down why the AI boom is a "bull trap" similar to the Dotcom bubble—forecasting an 80% crash for market darlings like Nvidia—and explains why Basel III has re-monetized gold, setting the stage for a $10,000 price target.
#1
Two years? The entire fed reporting system has been compromised for several decades. Federal payment programs are tied to inflation and they can't report real numbers for the effect on what they would have to pay out. What you put in your shopping basket isn't covered in their bean counting. The unemployment metric has been manipulated for pure political propaganda and graft.
#2
...I think the only one he may have accurately called will be the housing market - prices are far, far too high, and this one won't be a 'correction' as much as an 'execution'.
#5
Given two million illegals have already left that we’re aware of, that is heading toward meaningful occupancy, mostly at the lower price points, both rented and owned.
Something like what happened in 2002-2003 after President Bush ordered all 18+ Moslem males to register, and an unknown number walked away, some to Canada, others back to India and Pakistan, leaving a bunch of 7/11s deserted. As I recall, it was thought most had overstayed student and tourist visas rather than crossed the border illegally. Unlike the current lot, many of whom are single males, at that time most had married and had families — there was a great deal of fuss then about the anticipated suffering of their Americanized kids who knew nothing about living in the Olde Countrie, though I don’t recall concern that an MS-13 situation would develop.
Europe doesn't have "a problem". It has THREE problems: 3 European nations are suffering from a severe "post-imperial hangover".
First, there is the United Kingdom, a nation that voted for Brexit to "take back control" only to realize it has completely forgotten how to drive.… pic.twitter.com/9kEkIyCLlS
Europe doesn't have "a problem". It has THREE problems: 3 European nations are suffering from a severe "post-imperial hangover".
First, there is the United Kingdom, a nation that voted for Brexit to "take back control" only to realize it has completely forgotten how to drive.
The British identity crisis is like watching a retired lion try to adopt a vegan diet. They traded imperial confidence for an HR department’s sensitivity training. The land of Churchill is now governed by a sprawling "nanny state" bureaucracy that is more terrified of offending someone on X than it is of actual decline. The British police, once the envy of the world, now seem to spend more resources investigating "non-crime hate incidents" and painting their patrol cars in rainbow colors than solving burglaries. It is a nation desperately clinging to the aesthetics of tradition—the Royals, the pomp, the tea—while its institutions have been hollowed out by a progressive rot that makes a California university campus look conservative. They want the swagger of the 19th century but are paralyzed by the emotional fragility of the 21st.
Then there is France, the angry, chain-smoking aunt of Europe who refuses to admit she’s been unemployed for decades.
France’s hangover manifests as a permanent state of insurrection masquerading as "civic engagement." Their identity is split between a delusional elite who still think Paris is the capital of the universe and a populace that expresses its "joie de vivre" by burning down bus stops every Thursday. The French suffer from a Napoleonic complex without a Napoleon; they demand the living standards of a conquering empire while working a 35-hour week and retiring at an age when most Americans are just hitting their stride. They preach "Republican values" and aggressive secularism, yet the state has lost control over vast swathes of its own suburbs. France is essentially a beautiful, open-air museum where the curators are on strike, the guards are afraid of the visitors, and the management is busy lecturing the rest of the world on "grandeur" while the electricity bill goes unpaid.
Finally, we have Germany, the neurotic giant that has decided the only way to atone for its history is to commit slow-motion industrial suicide.
Germany’s post-imperial hangover is a moral autoimmune disease: the country is so terrified of its own shadow that it has replaced national pride with aggressive self-flagellation and recycling regulations. Their identity is built on being the "Moral Superpower," which practically translates to shutting down their perfectly functional nuclear power plants to burn dirty coal, all while lecturing their neighbors on carbon footprints. It is a nation of engineers who have engineered a society that doesn't work. The German spirit, once defined by efficiency and discipline, has mutated into a paralyzed bureaucracy where filling out the correct form is more important than the outcome. They are so desperate to avoid being "threatening" that they’ve become essentially a large NGO with an army that has broomsticks for rifles, terrified that showing any backbone might be interpreted as a relapse.
#2
It's like they can't think of anything but war to shake themselves out of their stupors. It's really, really sad.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/10/2025 12:46 Comments ||
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#3
An example of this, the most recent EU proposal to fund the next two years with seized Russian assets is an intentional incendiary threat. They know Putin will not/cannot allow it and they count on NATO Article V to force the US back into the mix to avoid an almost certain wider European war. A direct confrontation with Trump and a risky play counting on domestic U.S. democrat political/lawfare resurgence in the mid-terms to blunt Trumps ability to push back from the table.
That they are willing to jeopardize declining American commitment to NATO by war-risking blackmail created the almost certain breakup of NATO that would follow such an act and is proof positive of how feckless and near-sighted Europe’s “leaders” have become. Truly the end-time evolution of the formerly robust US-European relationship approaches and turning inward to our own hemisphere in greater focus is both needed and inevitable. The residual high-water marks of the 20th century western civilization becomes clearer on both sides of the Atlantic.
[RichardPollack] I know traditionally this is the time of year when we seek a quieter time of life and hope for a warm, loving family holiday. We try to capture good cheer in the air.
That’s why it is so disconcerting for me to write this column. Through multiple interviews over the past month, I’ve learned that counter terror experts are privately and publicly expressing alarm that major terror attacks are being prepared throughout the United States.
J. Michael Waller, who I’ve known for two decades last week told me that, the risk of terror attacks in the United States "is by far the most grave in our history."
Officially, Waller is a senior analyst for Strategy at the Century for Security Policy. But he’s also a highly regarded analyst in military and counter terror affairs. He has been an instructor with the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, and at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg. He also has been a guest lecturer at the FBI Academy. He is a soft-spoken man who rarely is an alarmist.
But Waller told me that "our detection and enforcement systems are overwhelmed. We’re not just talking about individual Lions of Islam and jihadists, but organized terror networks and their legal support systems, and state-sponsored covert intelligence networks whose cadres are professionally trained and strategically deployed."
His grave assessment is shared by John Guandolo, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, who recently reached out to me. He’s also a Marine Corps combat veteran from the first Gulf War and most importantly, was a counter terrorism expert as an FBI Special Agent beginning right after the 9/11 attacks.
He told me, "Al Qaeda cells have embedded themselves across major urban centers in the US. This has been confirmed by intercepted communications, financial tracking, and human intelligence. The attack strategy by Al Qaeda is designed to sow confusion and cripple emergency response."
Sara Adams concurs. She’s a former CIA targeting officer and analyst with extensive experience in the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia. She warns that "A war is coming to the U.S. homeland—whether you like it or not."
She claims the U.S. faces new suicide kabooms along with "a Mumbai-style hostage/assault in Washington, D.C., and mass-casualty urban attacks where you live, work and play targeting churches, hospitals, malls, transit, and first responders."
She adds, "A terrorist plot of this scale has never been set into motion here, with al-Qaeda leading on one front and ISIS on another."
Aligned with these warnings is an official warning by the Joint Counterterrorism Assessment Team (JCAT) at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The warning was to state and local officials of "Al-Qa’ida’s resurgence of calls for attacks in the homeland." They cited the "persistent and enduring threats" of al-Qa’ida and its Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... -based affiliate, al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
I hope these experts are wrong. But now there also is mounting evidence that individual Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... is are ramping up inside the United States.
In the last five weeks alone, there have been an unusual number of federal arrests of radicalized Moslems who allegedly were planning terror attacks. Here is what we know:
On October 31, according to the Justice Department, five Moslems "were charged for having firearms that would be used in a conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS. The federal complaint sets forth grievous allegations of a radical Islamic terror plot involving AR-style rifles, shotguns, handguns, and other tools for a tactical assault."
The arrests, three from the Moslem-dominated city of Dearborn, Michigan didn’t make much news. Two more were later arrested in New Jersey.
Then there is Mohammad Dawood Alokozay, 30, of Fort Worth, Texas. He was arrested on November 23 and has been federally charged with threatening to build a bomb, conducting a suicide kaboom and kill Americans. As alleged, Alokozay, a former Afghan citizen, threatened to conduct a suicide attack on the other participants as well as "infidels," a common term for Westerners.
The next day, on November 24, University of Delaware student Luqmaan Khan, age 25, was arrested with a with a huge cache of guns, body armor and a notebook filled with plans to shoot up his school. Khan told FBI Sherlocks that martyrdom is "one of the greatest things you can do" and "a goal," according to court filings.
And, as we all know, two days later, on November 26, Rahmanullah Lakanwal 29 of Belleville, Washington bumped off two National Guardsmen in the nation’s capital, killing one. Lakanwal told relatives "I am living with Tablighi." Tablighi is an Arabic word that means to "inform" or "convey" and it refers today to Tablighi Jamaat A peaceful group of itinerant Deobandi preachers who form one of al-Qaeda's recruiting arms... , a global Islamic missionary movement.
Guandolo claims, "We also know Al Qaeda brought at least 1000 soldiers into the U.S. in the last year to execute their latest operation which we expect between now and end of February. This will be a series of widescale nationwide attacks in at least 5 states. No local or state police, nor the FBI are prepared for what is coming."
Chantry also submitted this piece, commenting “I really hope the author is wrong.
I also think that any country or organization involved is seriously misjudging this country's reaction if the article's premise comes true. I expect the country's anger to drastically eclipse the anger felt after 9/11.”
#4
I think it is just a matter of time, even if it doesn't fall within the window the author stated. Too many organizations angry with the U.S. and too much money involved. They will be in for a brutal awakening when this country gets angry after an attack the author predicts.
As for open carry, I agree with the people who say that the open carriers will just be the first ones shot. Moot point for me and a lot of other who live in a state where open carry is banned.
#5
So basically every hour of FBI time spent building cases against 80-year old J6'ers was an hour that should have been spent reducing the terrorist threat. But that would have made too much sense.
Posted by: Matt ||
12/10/2025 9:23 Comments ||
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#6
Other than the DC incident, the terrorists go for easy targets, low hanging fruit. They seem rather shy in avoiding when open carry police and other security personnel are around.
#9
Yes, the same terrorist groups in the Middle East as well as some South American dictators hosting drug gangs are going to be in for a very unpleasant surprise.
[IsraelTimes] Impasses remain in key points, such as Hamas disarmament, postwar governance of the Strip, funding reconstruction, and a path to Palestinian statehood
With the remains of one hostage still in Gaza, the first phase of the US-brokered ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas is nearly complete, after a two-month process plagued by delays and finger-pointing.
Now, the key players — including Israel, the Palestinian terror group Hamas, the United States, and a diverse list of international parties — are to move to a far more complicated second phase that could reshape the Middle East.
US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan — which was approved by the UN Security Council — lays out an ambitious vision for ending Hamas’s rule of Gaza. If successful, it would see the rebuilding of a demilitarized Gaza under international supervision, normalized relations between Israel and the Arab world, and a possible pathway to Palestinian independence.
But if the deal stalls, Gaza could be trapped in an unstable limbo for years to come, with the Hamas terror group remaining in control of parts of the territory, Israel’s army enforcing an open-ended occupation, and its residents stuck homeless, unemployed, unable to travel abroad and dependent on international aid to stay alive.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the prime minister of Qatar and a key mediator, said over the weekend that the ceasefire is at a critical point, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to travel to the White House this month to discuss the next steps.
Here is a closer look at the next stages of the ceasefire and the potential pitfalls.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A peaceful group of itinerant Deobandi preachers who form one of al-Qaeda's recruiting arms...
