Nate Bear Do Not Panic

Finland, often known as the happiest country in the world, now has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, demand for food aid has exploded by more than 70%, and homelessness, which had been declining for more than ten years, has increased 34% in just two years. Conditions in the country are so bad that almost 20% of Finland’s population is now considered at risk of poverty,

Once considered the standard bearer for the good life, for competent governance and a strong social state, Finland is unravelling at warp speed. What has gone wrong so quickly?

In three words, NATO, austerity and Russophobia.

All are linked. Finland is slashing its social state to the bone to meet NATO’s 5% GDP military spending target, a target which became necessary after the country abandoned neutrality and swapped the welfare state for the warfare state after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The speed of the collapse has been stunning.

In 2019, the at-risk of poverty rate was 11% and by 2022 the country was on course to hit record low unemployment.

Everything changed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the country’s hysterical over-reaction to an imagined threat. This is not just my judgement. A number of Finnish academics, including Heikki Patomäki, professor of world politics at the University of Helsinki, have said that the conditions simply did not warrant Finland joining NATO, cutting off its economically valuable links to Russia and militarising its border.

The facts support this.

At the time of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia had just a couple of thousand troops spread out across various bases on its 1,340 km border with Finland. The bases were home to handful of missile defence batteries and a few dozen tanks. Many of the troops and much of the equipment was subsequently deployed to Ukraine, leaving the bases empty. There was obviously no invasion threat, and Putin in May 2022 emphasised this in a phone call to Finland’s then-president Sauli Niinistö.

But by this point, the Russophobia and hysteria for NATO membership had begun to take on a life of its own. Sanna Marin, Finland’s young female prime minister at the time, and a liberal media darling, was a particularly effective saleswoman. Despite claiming in the days following Russia’s invasion that there was no threat, her tone became decidedly more hawkish in the months that followed. She said Russia “poses a threat to all of us” and began talking like a war-time leader, saying in September 2022 that “Russia may challenge Finland, blackmail us and threaten us, but we will not give in.” Bear in mind, Russia at this point had practically zero troops and equipment on its western border with Finland. The Russian threat she was invoking was entirely imagined, an hallucination.

Nevertheless, in April 2023, Finland joined NATO, just days after Marin was defeated by the right and far-right in an election where the policy choice on Russia was one of uniformity, with the conservatives, the ethno-nationalists and Marin’s social democrats all singing the same tune.

After her defeat, Marin scuttled off to work for Tony Blair, while the new conservative-nationalist government set about decimating Finland’s welfare state to pay for the privilege of NATO membership.

The Finnish government is now a substantial way through its programme to cut €9 billion of public spending by 2027, including large reductions to social security (including housing, child, and unemployment benefits) healthcare, education, and municipal funding budgets, while it also increasing taxes on average earners. Cuts to healthcare provision have been particularly brutal, including a large reduction in hospital staff numbers, elderly care and disability services while redefining “minimum service obligations” to justify providing patients with lower quality care. The government has also slashed funding for organisations working on peace and initiatives which would address the new cold war-style relations with Russia.

In addition, the new government fully closed all the border crossings with Russia that Marin’s Social Democrats had partially closed, and began building large sections of a border fence, securitised with troops, night vision cameras and motion detectors.

And while the entire country is now suffering as a result of the pro-war paranoia that has gripped Finland’s leaders, its border towns have taken a particular beating.

Before the war, Russians routinely crossed to shop, eat, stay in hotels and visit holiday properties they owned in the towns and villages along the border. That has all gone away. One estimate cited in a recent Finnish study puts the loss of Russian tourism in the border region of South Karelia at as much as €1 million per day. Unemployment in some border regions is now approaching 20%.

The border also used to be an important commercial gateway between the EU and Russia, but its closure eliminated much of the road freight and transit business. The OECD says eastern Finland has gone from being an “economic gateway” to a “security barrier,” a transformation which of course it praises rather than mourns, claiming that confronting Russia is important not only for Finland but for Europe as a whole.

Then there are the commodities like gas and timber.

In 2021 Russia accounted for about 92% of Finland’s gas imports. Finland has replaced all of that with a mix of sources, including far more expensive LNG from the US, meaning that Finland, after having some of the lowest gas prices in Europe, now has the highest gas prices in Europe.

As for timber, in 2021, 70% of Finland’s wood imports came from Russia, and this wood supplied approximately 10% of all the raw wood used by Finnish industry. Pulp mills in Finland subsequently went bust and the industry faced shortages which persist to this day after the EU, with Finland’s support, banned countries from buying wood from Russia.

Finland’s decisions, both independently and collectively through the EU, have immiserated many millions of Finnish citizens. Yet at the same time as the country is slashing the social state, it is spending more money than ever, around $8.1 billion in 2025, on weapons of war to fight a threat that previously didn’t exist. A threat that Finland has made real by its new-found anti-Russia NATO militancy, with Putin promising to respond to Finland’s border build-up.

And among the beneficiaries of a new tooled-up and aggressive Finland are the arms dealers of the Israeli apartheid-genocide complex, which in 2024 sold Finland its questionably functional “David’s Sling” air defence system for €316 million. Finland has also bought tank and ship missiles from the Israeli company Rafael which supplied most of the weapons and equipment used to commit the genocide of Gaza. The Finnish government said Israel’s genocide of Gaza would not stop it buying weapons from the country, a position which is par for the course among the morally bankrupt leaders of Europe.

Finland is also spending €10 billion on US fighter jets, and a few billion euros on missiles and glide bombs to fire from those jets, as well as giving Ukraine €2.3 billion in direct military aid over three years.

It’s all utterly deranged, but completely unsurprising given the Russophobia which pervades all European halls of power and has become embedded on the continent.

Finland has effectively taken a scythe to all the things that made it, in the eyes of many, the envy of the world. The country has trashed the model which delivered such a high standard of living, a model which included neutrality and good relations with Russia.

Instead the country has enacted a self-imposed structural adjustment programme to pay for membership of a military alliance it didn’t need, with that membership creating an enemy that didn’t exist, an enemy which happens to be a nuclear superpower with which it shares a huge border.

The price has been, and will continue to be a steep one, and it is a price ordinary Finns will be paying for a long time.

But it is not just in Finland.

We are watching, across Europe, the shameful replacement of the welfare state with the warfare state while the merchants of genocide and death laugh all the way to the bank.

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We can only hope that these lead to an epidemic of ICE goons accidentally burning their own dicks off.

"With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars." That makes it hard for victims to sue.

"In today's society, you know, everybody's filming everything, everybody has a cell phone," Glueck said. If an officer punches someone on camera, that can go viral in an instant; even a standard taser leaves puncture wounds. But "the glove is low optic, and it looks better on camera, and it looks better to those witnesses. With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars."

The gloves, manufactured by a company called Compliant Technologies, have been used by police, sheriffs, jail wardens, and even school resource officers for years. They've been described by groups like Amnesty International as "readily misused for torture." And this week, ICE published a plan to order $20 million worth of them. [...]

But local police across the country are still eagerly buying the gloves -- in large part so that they can harm people and avoid being sued for it. It's been successful "from the patrolmen to the jailers," Lumpkin County Sheriff Stacy Jarrard said in a Compliant Technologies promotional video. "It's been a great tool as far as mitigating liability," according to Nelson County Jailer Justin Hall. Bob Couey of the Floyd County Sheriff's Department sung the GLOVE's praises, too: "I highly recommend these gloves to anybody that's looking for a utility they can use that is conducive to not leading to lawsuits."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Nate Bear Do Not Panic

I’ve held back on writing about the Russia-Ukraine war, and this article probably won’t win me many fans. But for better or worse, I always try to tell it how I, at least, see it. And I’m tired. Tired of the liberal delusion, the hypocrisy, the childish analysis, and outright bloodthirstiness over Ukraine.

I’m tired of the pretence that a proxy war which has now lasted longer that the first world war is a righteous battle against evil for the soul of the world.

I’m tired of the fact that wanting an end to a war which has killed hundreds of thousands of young men, and thousands of civilians, is seen by some as an outrageous, morally deplorable position.

I’m tired of the fact that rational analysis and context is so often labelled as pro-Putin apologia, and how it is almost impossible to get good information on the war that isn’t polluted by an anti-Russia agenda. And even good information and analysis which recognises that Russia isn’t losing, that Ukraine is suffering, still too often suggests that the west must wage this war for many more years. This otherwise rational analysis, while detailing all the ways in which Ukraine is definitely not winning the war, nevertheless concludes that it must be fought for many more years to avoid “a bad peace.”

Time and again we see the same conclusion. That to give Russia what it wants, namely Crimea, the four annexed oblasts and a neutral Ukraine, would be a “bad peace” that rewards aggression. But few politicians or journalists when selling this story ever spell out explicitly what a “good peace” is and what it would require. But we don’t have to guess. Zelensky has on many occasions. And he has maintained the only way the war can end is if Russia returns to Ukraine not just the four oblasts annexed in 2022, but also Crimea, and he also wants security guarantees which would amount to the effective integration of Ukraine into NATO.

This is a delusional position that guarantees never peace and a forever war. And forever war isn’t an abstract. It means forever death. Forever destruction. It means European societies becoming securitised and militarised, with the Russian foe a ready-made excuse for a Palantir-powered surveillance state. And this position rests atop a childish assertion repeated ad nauseum that grants the war its legitimacy: that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked.”

Nothing is ever unprovoked. You can agree or disagree with whether the provocation warranted the reaction. But unprovoked is not an analysis, it is an emotional appeal, and in the case of Russia-Ukraine, it is propaganda designed to obscure the long history which led to Russia’s invasion.

It is, in many ways, not dissimilar to the propaganda that October 7th was an unprovoked attack on Israel. Or that Pearl Harbour was an unprovoked attack on the United States.

Narratives which strip out cause and effect and proclaim that a bad thing just happened without any preceding events, that good people were then drawn reluctantly into war to defend themselves against bad people, is the oldest trick in the war propaganda book designed to shut down critical intellectual inquiry.

So, briefly (for more detail read this by John Mearsheimer), the events preceding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine include a 1990 promise made by the US Secretary of State James Baker that if post-Soviet Russia allowed a unified Germany to remained in NATO, “NATO would not shift one inch eastward.” It was a promise made with an understanding that Russia was a legitimate country with legitimate security interests. That promise of course was repeatedly broken until NATO stretched to Russia’s borders. The preceding events also include the NATO-backed remilitarisation of Ukraine following the ousting of Victor Yanukovych in 2014, the Russian annexation of Crimea in response and Ukraine’s bombing of the Donbass which killed hundreds of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. It includes an acute understanding among the Russian leadership that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed Ukraine to invade Russia itself.

You don’t have to think that Russia was right to invade Ukraine to try and understand why it invaded Ukraine, a consideration we are never prompted to investigate in a discourse dominated by normative moral judgements viewed exclusively through the lens of western imperialism. The shape of post-2014 Ukraine made Russia fearful that the country could once again be the launchpad for an invasion. And it wasn’t as if Putin hid this fact. He repeatedly warned, into late 2021 and early 2022, that the further militarisation of Ukraine was a red line and if Ukraine and the west refused diplomacy, Russia would act. He hadn’t been that bothered about Ukraine before 2014, there was no war talk, because it wasn’t the threat then that he perceived it became.

Again, this is not a defence of Putin, it is a question of cause and effect, and of the western arrogance and hubris that believes only its red lines on geostrategic issues are valid. Would the US have allowed a military alliance led by China to be built up through South America, reaching Mexico without a response? Would western media have dismissed American concerns about Chinese militarism as paranoid nonsense if Chinese military bases were dotted throughout South America? Of course not! The media would have demanded war and sold us war. But when the roles are reversed, American militarism becomes mere Russian paranoia.

And now the war that NATO expansionism threatened is not just here but is in danger of become a permanent fixture of our lives, with European economies embracing the bloodshed and building war economies. And to build these war economies, the liberal class is demanding more cuts to a welfare state already disseminated, in many places, by two decades of austerity. This week the Financial Times ran this article, demonstrating the brazenness with which anti-working class, hyper-capitalist, hyper-imperialist prescriptions are now presented as sensible opinion.

A “warfare state” all to fight a mythical Russia that, as Mearsheimer laid out in this video, didn’t invade Ukraine with anything like a force sufficient to conquer the country, but as a final gambit to force Ukraine to the negotiating table. Of course it failed. The liberal media and political class, however, continue to insist that Russia’s goal is full conquest, with more to follow, in order to legitimise the creation of war economies. That the liberal class would build a warfare state that decimates the welfare state to confront Russia, rather than seek diplomacy and partnership with a country which is home to huge volumes of minerals needed to build, for example, a cleaner energy system, is a demonstration of utter failure.

And who would these “warfare state” economies be powered by? In part, Israel, which has agreed a $4 billion deal with Greece to supply an air defence system, supplied a similar system to Germany for the same price last year, and handed over a half billion dollar missile system to Slovakia.

Israel is a part of the Ukraine-Russia war story in other very important ways, some of which now look decidedly self-defeating for Ukraine and Zelensky.

When the Iran war started, Zelensky enthusiastically embraced it and regurgitated all the classics, saying that the US-Israeli assault was a good thing because it would “rid the Iranian people of a terrorist regime.” In March, with the war on Iran raging, he urged Netanyahu to work with him, saying “he has what I need and I have what he needs.” But now Ukraine is out of interceptor missiles because they’ve all been used in the war on Iran, with Kiev defenceless against Russian missile attacks. Yesterday, every missile launched at Kiev hit its target, with zero interceptors launched. And now, after embracing the war on Iran, Zelensky is complaining about the lack of interceptors, a direct consequence of the war he supported. He hitched himself to empire, yet because of the over-stretching imperial adventurism he himself relies on, that empire has found itself unable to defend his country. It reveals a man who has no plan, beyond hoping that the weapons keep flowing.

Liberals appear reluctant to make the connection between the two imperial wars, preferring the dissonance that comes with an empire state of mind.

This dissonance has also been on display elsewhere, with pro-Ukraine war influencers demanding the west sends more weapons to Ukraine and incredulous at North Korea sending weapons to Russia, seemingly unable to follow their own logic on third-party countries sending weapons to principal conflict belligerents. Empire brains blinded to their own raging hypocrisy.

But as I’m writing, I can hear a criticism, and can even form one against myself. Why, Nate, when you are so morally strident on Israel and Palestine, are you decrying “normative moral judgements” on Ukraine and Russia?

Because the two situations could not be more different.

Ukraine is a state with a standing army supported by empire fighting another state with a standing army. Palestine has been denied statehood despite the 1947 UN two-state partition agreement (putting aside whatever one thinks about the legitimacy of that agreement), has no standing army to defend itself and Palestinians are fighting a colonial occupation armed by empire. If anything, Ukraine is far more similar to Israel than it is to Palestine. Indeed, in 2024 Zelensky proclaimed Israel as the ideal model for Ukraine, saying he wanted Ukraine to be a “big Israel.”

Both Ukraine and Israel are proxies at the tip of the imperial spear, one in Europe and one in the Middle East. You don’t have to be the invader to be a tool of imperialism. Sometimes being the invaded is more useful as it imparts a moral surety that helps shield your imperial role from critical analysis. I would argue this is exactly what has happened in the case of Ukraine.

None of this is to say I don’t have sympathy with ordinary Ukrainians. I do. I think they’ve been sold down the river, by both Europe and their own leaders, and have been coerced into fighting a war a majority now want to end with negotiations. The average Ukrainian is quite different to the average genocide-supporting Israeli who upholds apartheid.

Yet despite the wishes of a majority of Ukrainians, Europe and Zelensky refuse diplomacy and continue to fight, incurring enormous costs on Ukraine and ordinary Ukrainians. Of course, enormous costs are being inflicted on Russia too, but these costs have not been, and will not be sufficient for a “good peace.” And any costs that would really bite risk an uncontrolled, catastrophic escalation.

The final irony is that despite the war being marketed to westerners as totalitarianism versus democracy, Ukrainians can’t even elect a leader who would enact their wish to see a negotiated end to the war since Zelensky, whose term officially expired in 2024, introduced martial law and cancelled elections.

So, as I said, for better or worse, this is my perspective on Russia-Ukraine.

A war which advances only imperialist interests, interests which run counter to European security and prosperity. A war which threatens, at worst, to go nuclear. A war which wasn’t unprovoked. A war which, with their minds empty and hearts lacking true solidarity, consciousness or justice, has become a necessary intellectual organising principle for the liberal media and political class.

I’ve probably not made many fans, but I’d be delighted if I have.

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These days it seems all quiet on the West Asian front. Just the quiet, ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and the usual affronts. However, if you look at a map, the White Empire is getting choked out, and if you look at their markets, it's starting to hurt.

The Empire has lost control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran and now the Bab el-Mandeb to Yemen. This is America's equivalent of Britain's Suez Crisis, it marks the nadir of their power and their collapse as an imperial power. You can already see the imps cowering and running for cover. The South Korean stock market has collapsed and the Japanese yen has to be stabilized with euros. None of this will hold, none of this can hold, without holding onto the trade routes, which the Empire cannot hold. America is returning to its natural position, 10,000 kilometers away, with nothing to do with it. It's taking time, but look, it's already begun. The quiet is the storm.

Bab el-Mandeb

The Strait of Hormuz is where a lot of stuff comes from, but through the Bab el-Mandeb is where even more stuff must go. Iran took the Strait of Hormuz months ago and has imposed a new security architecture on the region, which they marked by breaking the siege on Yemen, imposed by the American proxy, the Saudis. The Saudis harried the civilian planes Iran was sending, and in response to that Yemen retaliated in force.

Yemen has imposed a maritime blockade on the Saudis since July 22nd. As of August 5th, they have targeted eight tankers and turned back 29 (see Yayha Saree, who's never lied to me). Saree has called this 'a blockade for a blockade' and a 'siege for a siege'. After decades of starving and attacking Yemen, you can't say that the Saudis don't deserve it. And now the pressure on the White Empire behind them has been doubled.

Yemen hit Aramco facilities in Jazan and Yanbu, taking Jazan (and 400,000 barrels per day) offline entirely. The Saudis say they're going to 'tentatively' reopen by August 15th, with Oil Price saying "Tentatively is doing some fairly heroic work there." Saudis, of course, are anything but heroic and are trying to blame (and bomb Iraq) to save face. Meanwhile, they're using proxies on the ground to attack Yemen, which is not going well. Saree reports "the death and injury of hundreds of Saudi mercenaries."

When your proxy needs a proxy, and they get sent back in boxes, things are not going well. Things are not going well for the White Empire here. After losing the Persian Gulf, they have retreated to the Red Sea, where Yemen already defeated them. The Empire has been surviving by the grace of China, really, and also by pipelines and shipping through the Red Sea. But now Yemen has cut off their retreat.

The Persian Gulf

What are they retreating from? The Persian Gulf, where they took a beating and lost all their bases. Before the war they started, the United States controlled the Persian Gulf by default. They always knew that their Gulf bases were indefensible in the case of hot war with Iran, but the status quo held as long as America didn't go to war with Iran. But that's over now, as is their control of the Persian Gulf. We are witnessing a process that Amerikanets calls 'debasification'. Distant America held the water of Hormuz because they held land tribute from satraps like Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait, but now that's all gone.

The US Fifth Fleet was based in Bahrain, but they withdrew all vessels in February and, chaotically, at least 1,500 colonizers shortly afterwards. Now they're back in Tampa, Florida where they belong (until land back, inshallah). This debasification has happened all across the region. As American state media reports, "there have been evacuations at other U.S. military bases in the region, though the exact details are unknown at this point." What is, increasingly, known is the satellite footage. These bases are blown.

As predicted in their own report, called the 'tyranny of geography', Iran is just too powerful in Iran. The indefensible White line across the Persian Gulf has been rolled back, and even their retreat to Jordan and Saudi has been cut off. None of these bases are safe, and Iran is increasingly targeting troop barracks to make the message plain. As Nasrallah said, when American troops enter vertically and horizontally, the Americans will leave the region, and then they may not even have to take Jerusalem, inshallah.

I return to the geographical point, which is that the United States is 10,000 kilometers away on another continent and has no business in the Middle East, or even in America, honestly. America can only stand athwart geography yelling 'stop!' if it has a foothold, and now it does not. Just two feet in the ass, showing it the way out.

The Map

Let's look at the map again, but differently. This is a Spilhaus projection which is fun because it turns the world into a Mediterranean world. You can see the world as one big ocean with land on the sides, which is kinda true, especially if you're a boat. As a boat sees it, the ocean is really one big road going from Panama to Malacca, with a toll booth in the middle (east).

As Port Economics, Management and Policy puts it, "the configuration of the global maritime shipping system is relatively simple. The central axis is a circum-equatorial corridor linking North America, Europe, and Pacific Asia through the Suez Canal, the Strait of Malacca, and the Panama Canal."

The Suez Canal is the choke point that broke the British Empire and the Bab el-Mandeb/Strait of Hormuz is the same choke point moved over. This is what breaks the American Empire now (it's all one White Empire to us on the bottom). 'Americans' will be like 'we don't need the Middle East, we've got our own genocided continent, we're just genociding abroad recreationally.' Which is true. America can survive without this shipping lane, but American Empire cannot. And in that Empire is where they're feeling the pain.

The Imps of Imperialism

White Empire has always been a financial proposition, the wallet is the only place they feel anything. After World War II, America inherited the empire from Britain, with occupied Europe and Japan as spoils of war. It still holds European euros and Japanese yen on its books as, effectively, stabilizers.

But now we are describing the point described by Marx in relation to Britain/India, but it applies as well to America and its conquered territory in Europe and Japan. He said, "These systems have in common the relinquishment, by the native States of the right to self-defence [NATO], of maintaining diplomatic relations, and of settling the disputes among themselves without the interference of the Governor-General. All of them have to pay a tribute, either in hard cash, or in a contigent of armed forces, commanded by British officers." Does this not describe the situation of Europe, Japan, and South Korea? It's the same phenomenon, it's one White Empire, as I keep going on and on. As Marx said,"'It was,' says an English writer, 'a system of fattening allies, as we fatten oxen, till they were worthy of being devoured.'"

That is what's happening now. As pressure from the choking in the Middle East builds up, 'America's' is using its colonies to delay consequences. The US Treasury is selling euros to buy yen. But they cannot avoid consequences, only delay them. They're robbing Peter to pay Paul.

America is doing a 'joint intervention' in the yen, pretending both that Japan is a real country and that this isn't just market manipulation. They're doing this because Japan would otherwise sell US Treasuries and impact them. So they're dumping euros instead. They're jumping from one colonial foot to another, while the ground is shifting beneath them.

The man doing this certainly knows something about currency manipulation. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was George Soros's hatchet man, tanking various currencies, from Asia to Great Britain. Putting him in charge is like appointing an Al-Qaeda guy as a flight attendant, I don't think he can help himself. He might pretend to fly for a while, but he's going to crash the whole thing. Bessent described the recent joint manipulation, saying,

Intervention is a signaling mechanism. And the US wanted to signal that we have confidence in the Japanese policies so we will need to see follow through from the Japanese policies. But I do believe that part of the inflation uptick in Japan was a result of the weak yen and also the energy prices. I think we will get to the other side of the Iranian conflict, energy will come down, and then as we no longer have excess yen weakness, that that will also contribute to inflation coming down and that Japan and the yen can go into a virtuous cycle.

The yen, of course, has only been trending upwards, the country is, on average, 400 years old and has -3 children, there is no virtuous economic cycle incoming. And Japan, of course, has no real policy control. It's a colony, America made them seppuku their economy in the Plaza Accords. There was nothing they could do about it then and there's nothing they're going to do now. Japan is just downstream of America's misadventures in the Middle East and they'll be first to drown. The crash has already come to South Korea, their stock market is down over a third, but it's the same imperial bubble.

Bessent talks about this being a temporary intervention like Trump talked about Iran being a temporary war. It's nothing of the sort. There is no 'other side' of the Iranian conflict in sight and the pressure building up will hit the imperial core soon. For many people, it has hit them already. A lot of signals are flashing like 1929, and a Greatest Depression is incoming. You can look at the relative quiet on the homefront and think that they have somehow avoided consequences but the quiet is the storm. They have lost the map, they are losing the markets and soon – though not soon enough for the people of Palestine – they will reap the whirlwind.

Many years ago, my old university was hosting a “film and philosophy” conference. Not having the interest or intellectual clout to submit a paper to deliver, I was nevertheless roped in to guide the guests around, operate the lights during lectures, and (in one memorable instance, a mere week after having passed my driving test) … Continue reading "(The Curse of) Queen Kelly (1929; US; Erich von Stroheim)"

Nate Bear Do Not Panic

Israel is home to thousands of international criminals accused or found guilty in a second country for committing a wide-variety of crimes.

Many of the individuals are dual-nationals who have taken advantage of their ability to move seamlessly between Israel and their second country of citizenship to commit crimes and, in some cases, evade justice.

The scale of the criminality, and the volume of cases (relative to the population of Israel), is astonishing.

I was prompted to look into this after finding out that Timur Mindich, the ultimate financial beneficiary of the Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point, fled to Israel last year just days before being charged as the mastermind behind a $100 million embezzlement scheme involving Ukraine’s state nuclear power company. Mindich also happens to be the co-owner of Kvartal 95 Studio, the production company founded by Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mindich, like many in this article, has taken advantage of Israel’s controversial Law of Return which allows any Jew in the world to claim Israeli citizenship without having to renounce their home country passport.

Some of those accused and charged have made minor or international headlines, some haven’t, but the scale of the issue was such that I thought it would be useful to document my research here.

In some cases, Israel has refused to extradite the wanted person despite requests from the country in which the crimes were committed.

Staying on Ukraine and refused extradition requests, we have Oleksandr Dubilet, the former Chairman of the Board of Ukraine’s PrivatBank. Dubilet is currently a fugitive in Israel and the subject of multiple criminal investigations and extradition requests for his role in embezzling at least $100 million dollars following the 2016 privatisation of PrivatBank. To date, Israel has refused to extradite him.

Israel as a bolthole for financial fraudsters is a common theme. One of the most significant SEC fraud cases in recent years involved over 150 Israelis (some with dual US-Israeli nationality, others not), wanted for their role in conducting binary options fraud worth upwards of $100 billion.

Binary options are a type of financial bet where the outcome is essentially all-or-nothing. Instead of buying a stock or currency, you bet on whether the price of a stock or currency will be above or below a certain level at a specific time. While not illegal, the Israeli companies were accused of rigging and manipulating prices and expiry times and using fake identities.

For a decade until 2017, Israel was the global centre for the online binary-options industry. The Israeli police failed to investigate, so hundreds of cases were filed in Israeli courts by people from dozens of countries who had been defrauded.

One of the most notorious fraudsters was Lee Elbaz, the CEO of Yukom Communications, a dual US-Israeli national. She was arrested in 2017 when on holiday in New York and eventually convicted of wire fraud and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Other prime Israeli movers in the binary options fraud business were Yossi Herzog and Yakov Cohen, both connected with Yukom and other binary options front companies. They were charged with $140 million fraud in 2019 but despite being under a DOJ criminal investigation the US choose not to pursue their extradition, while other Israeli co-conspirators in the Yukom case have joined Elbaz in serving jail sentences.

Other Israeli kingpins in the binary options sector include Ran Amiran and Malhaz Patarkazishvili, also known as Pini Peter. They were charged with $100 million fraud by the SEC for their role managing the fraudulent options trader Spot Option. Because it was a civil case and the DOJ wasn’t involved they weren’t eligible for extradition from Israel and continue to reside in Israel. It was reported in 2021 that Amiran had reached a financial settlement for the damages with the SEC, likely so that he could once again travel to the US. Peter, a friend of Netanyahu’s, remains unrepentant, despite being ordered to pay the US government $87 million, a judgement he has appealed against.

There are hundreds of other Israel-linked individuals charged with binary options fraud identified on the SEC website, including joint German-Israel nationals Gil and Raz Beserglik who ran binary options call centres out of Germany to scam people.

Another hotbed of Israeli fraud is the moving industry, where companies pose as legitimate household goods movers only to steal belongings or withhold items unless additional payment is made. One of the largest “hostage load” prosecutions was of Advanced Moving Systems, an Israeli-run company which lured customers with artificially low moving estimates and then extorted them by holding their household goods hostage until they paid fraudulently inflated prices. Many of the dozens of people behind the scam remain wanted, with their current location unknown. Dozens of other Israelis connected with fraudulent moving companies also remain on the run, and have likely fled to Israel. (Incidentally, the Israelis arrested by the FBI on September 11th and quickly released were working for a Mossad counterintelligence operation using a moving company as cover. But that’s another story).

Penny stock fraud is another rich seam for Israeli crooks. This type of fraud is when the stocks of small companies trading under $5 a share are marketed to people, often older and uniformed, using high pressure sales marketing tactics with the caller promising guaranteed returns, often claiming to have inside information. One of the largest in recent years saw dual US-Israeli citizen Sharone “Barry” Perlstein and numerous Israeli co-conspirators charged with creating at least 15 fraudulent public shell companies to sell millions of dollars worth of penny stocks using fraudulent tactics. Previous penny stock fraud cases had also implicated Israeli nationals.

The diamond industry has also attracted a fair share of Israeli swindlers. One of the most well-known is Mordechai “Moti” Ferder, a California-based luxury jeweller at the centre of one of the largest fraud scandals in the American jewellery industry. Ferder was accused of juicing his company’s accounts to boost the valuation before selling to an investment company, while in reality he was racking up liabilities worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2025, with an FBI investigation underway, Ferder fled California for Tel Aviv.

Then there is Gery Shalon the Georgia-born Israeli responsible for hacking JP Morgan and carrying out the largest theft of customer data from an American financial institution in history.

Outside the fraud cases, Israel also attracts politicians attempting to shield themselves from justice in their home countries. One of the most notorious and ongoing cases is that of Tomás Zerón, the former director of the Criminal Investigation Agency of Mexico. Zerón is accused by Mexican authorities of having direct involvement in the kidnap, torture, and likely murder of dozens of university students. Often known as the Iguala mass kidnapping and considered one of Mexico’s most heinous human rights abuse cases, in 2014 forty-three leftist students were kidnapped on their way to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. Zerón is said to have known or ordered the students to be handed over to a cartel group to be murdered and their remains disposed of. Zerón fled to Israel and despite an extradition order, an Interpol red notice and numerous requests from Mexico to hand him over, Israel has refused, reportedly as punishment for Mexico’s criticism of Israel at the UN.

Another Mexican diplomat who fled to Israel is Andrés Roemer. Formerly Mexico’s Ambassador to UNESCO based in Paris, and Consul General of Mexico in San Francisco, Roemer fled to Israel in 2021 after being accused by 61 women of rape and sexual assault. Mexico has demanded his extradition, but he remains in Israel.

Roemer is not alone. Israel is a haven for Jewish sex criminals and paedophiles to hide from justice, with the phenomena so prevalent that even CBS News has written about it. Probably the most famous names associated with fleeing to Israel after being accused of sex crimes are the Hollywood directors Brett Rattner and Bryan Singer. Rush Hour director Rattner, a good friend of Netanyahu’s, fled to Israel in 2023 after being accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct and assault on set.

Singer, director of two X-Men films and 90s hit The Usual Suspects, fled to Israel around 2020 after being accused of sexual abuse, including abuse of children.

Israel is a magnet for criminals of all flavours, and this brief compendium is the mere tip of an iceberg. The Law of Return, known to be policed very lightly, is a gateway allowing Jews to use their dual nationality to commit crimes and then swerve justice under an ethno-supremacist legal regime set up to protect them. Some succeed in avoiding justice, some don’t.

Of course one of the biggest ironies in seeing Israelis prosecuted by the US legal system for financial crimes is that the biggest Israeli criminals of all, those charged with committing the highest crimes possible, are not pursued by the US justice system. Netanyahu is free to visit the US, as he did last week, without fear of arrest for his role in ordering the genocide of Gaza and the systematic destruction of life. Destruction that continues to this day, with more children slaughtered just yesterday.

While Netanyahu’s treatment by US legal authorities might be different to the treatment meted out to a binary options trader, a country that acts with a smug, lawless arrogance raises and attracts those very same people.

Impunity begets impunity. A place founded on thievery draws thieves to it naturally.

As I have written about before, for a future where justice is pre-eminent, where morality means something and our collective humanity is restored, we must de-Zionise the world and dismantle Israel.

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