RT, 12/12/25

On Friday, Russia’s central bank announced it is filing a lawsuit in a Moscow Arbitration Court against Belgian-based clearinghouse Euroclear, the custodian of around €185 billion ($220 billion) in frozen Russian assets.

The announcement was made in a brief press release with no commentary. But the timing is no accident. The move comes as the EU’s contentious plan to tap the assets for a massive zero-interest loan to Ukraine is headed for some sort of denouement.

The move by the central bank – a mere legal step with no accompanying fanfare – is typical for Moscow, which tends not to front-run complicated policy endeavors over social media or through provocative public statements. Russian officials have so far also tended to hew to bland statements.

“We [the government], including the central bank, are doing everything to protect our assets,” Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak told RT. “Illegal confiscations are absolutely unacceptable.”

While Western observers – accustomed to the acrimonious and very public nature of policy implementation in their own countries – may be puzzled by Russian officials’ reluctance to spell out the potential implications, the signal is clear.

Russia has now moved to the realm of action with regard to protecting its interests. The threat of Russian retaliation has hung over the entire EU-led asset-theft episode like the Sword of Damocles, but now an opening salvo has been fired.

At face value, of course, a lawsuit against Euroclear in Moscow means little: the Russian central bank will almost certainly win the suit, and Euroclear will probably not even mount a defense in a Russian jurisdiction. Russia’s legal case is widely seen as strong even disregarding the home-field advantage.

For both Euroclear and the EU, the risk is clearly far greater – but more amorphous – than whatever amount they could be on the hook for in light of a potential Russian court ruling. If Russia’s legal case spills into other jurisdictions, messy and protracted litigation could be extremely damaging for the company, not to mention for the EU’s reputation globally and its investment climate.

Many advocates of the seizure plan rightly point out that Russia could hardly be expected to win a lawsuit in an EU jurisdiction. But the battleground is elsewhere.

If Russia is able to secure an injunction in a neutral country where Euroclear operates, it could create logistical difficulties and tremendous reputational risks for Europe.

Euroclear, by its own admission, still holds client assets amounting to around €16 billion in Russia. These funds are already frozen, but a worse fate could await them if Russia were to retaliate. Friday’s announcement of a lawsuit made no mention of those funds and whether further action could be taken with regard to them. But the announcement didn’t need to: the implication is clear.

Cashing in on war: Why stealing Russia’s assets actually makes things worse for the EUREAD MORE: Cashing in on war: Why stealing Russia’s assets actually makes things worse for the EU

Euroclear CEO Valerie Urbain has also made reference to those funds, admitting that she fears that Russia will move against them. She has generally been outspoken in her opposition to the loan scheme and even warned that her company could face bankruptcy if sanctions against Russia are lifted, but Europe has already allocated the money elsewhere. Of course, given Euroclear’s central role in the financial system, the EU would be forced to step in.

It is true the EU has invoked an emergency clause – Article 122 – which keeps the Russian funds immobilized indefinitely and hedges against a sudden removal of sanctions.

But this hardly alleviates the risk that a broad agreement to end the war won’t facilitate a lifting of the freeze on the Russian assets, even if the funds being returned to their rightful owner may not be straightforward (the US has proposed allowing American companies to tap the funds, for example).

For both Euroclear and the EU, this becomes much more than a question of tallying numbers on spreadsheets. A clearinghouse is not a physical asset that can withstand poor management and remain intact to be passed on to new owners. It lives by the trust investors place in it to be a reliable custodian of their assets. History has shown how quickly financial institutions can find themselves in peril once that trust is broken.

Russia’s lawsuit in Moscow is hardly a decisive move, but it has pushed matters into a very uncomfortable realm for those eyeing Russia’s funds.

By Yasha Levine, website, 12/6/25

A lot of people out there (myself included) have been scratching their heads wondering why European countries are so intent on waging war on Russia — not just through Ukraine on the battlefield but through sanctions and embargoes in the economic realm. Why would Germany point the gun at its own economy in this way, cutting itself off from the cheap Russian gas that underwrote its industrial base? Why would it turn a blind eye while the United States blew up its Nord Stream pipeline — an act of terrorism coming from its own ally — and pretend it didn’t happen? What’s the ideology driving it? What’s the game plan? What’s the thinking? Is there any? What do the technocrats running policy in Germany (the most powerful state in the EU) think they are doing? It seems so irrational and pointless.

Well, I think I have an easy explanation: These technocrats have no choice. They are not really in control. See, the collapse of the USSR didn’t just take out the Soviet block. It also sent Europe and the entire European project into a tailspin. The entire reason for a post-WWII unified, socialism-lite Europe to exist was to counter the Soviet Union — all under protective imperial wing of the United States. When the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed and broke apart and started reverting back to the 19th century, a unified Europe had no reason to exist. There was no external counter-ideology holding it together anymore. No external foe that you could lean your entire structure on. So the more that the unified European project wobbled, the shakier it got, the more cracks developed (I’m thinking here of the Greek austerity crisis of 2009, where a Europe unified to completely fuck the Greek people, their European brothers and sisters), the more that Europe had to turn to the only thing that had unified it in the past: militarism and the Cold War. It had to recreate the enemy and it tried and tried so hard that ultimately it succeeded in actually creating one.

That’s why the seemly baffling attachment to Ukraine. That’s why European technocrats have bet everything on that conflict…why it’s so important to them. They have no positive post-Cold War vision for their beloved European Union anymore beyond a washed [out] neoliberalism that their own people hate. They have nothing. Ukraine is their answer. Their prayer. Their hope. It’s the only that’s keeping them together. But it’s not enough. It can’t stop the collapse. In fact, it’s speeding up the collapse.

PS: This process is similar to something that Evgenia and I talk about all the time with respect to America. The collapse of the Soviet Union also caused a crisis in the United States. As I wrote before, “Americans think they won the Cold War, and that they defeated communism. That’s true. But it’s not clear that Americans have come out as on top of that conflict as they were led to believe. See the truth is that the USA and the USSR were connected — and the USSR and its people propped up America in ways that Americans did not understand. Now that the USSR has been replaced by a pre-revolutionary Russian society, both the former USSR and the USA are going through similar reversions to the 19th century. The processes are linked…they’re mutually reinforcing.”

By Benjamin S. Dunham, ACURA, 12/5/25

In June 2024 President Putin insisted that Ukrainian troops be completely withdrawn from the territories of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, which he claimed as Russian territory. 

President Zelensky was firm: “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier. We will not reward Russia for what it has perpetrated.” 

It’s the very definition of a sticking point. After the flurry of negotiations over the Thanksgiving weekend, everyone seemed to agree on only one point: the greatest problem was territorial. But what if the item on the table was the creation of a new country, East Ukraine, which the international community could help shape with the input of both Ukraine and Russia? 

The history of the 20th century itemizes many such splits to solve irreconcilable national divisions—think South Sudan, South Korea, East Timor, Northern Ireland, even India and Pakistan (and Bangladesh from Pakistan). Each of these national bifurcations had its own reasons for coming into being—religion, language, culture, geography, and colonial disruption among them—and some of them have yet to prove themselves as totally successful solutions. But all of them have been useful in calming deadly conflicts, and isn’t that what the current negotiations are trying to achieve?

Throughout its existence, the region of Ukraine has been confronted with left-bank-right-bank issues, using different stretches of the Dniepro River as a dividing line, usually with only temporary success, if even that. At the end of the 19th century, the idea of an autonomous or quasi-independent southeastern region of the Russian Empire was popular among Russian industrialists, and something similar was advocated briefly in 1918 as the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, a territorial carve-out whose borders closely follow the possible outline of East Ukraine (see https://tinyurl.com/2mh5zrce).

Another example comes from the history of the Lemkos, a population of Carpatho-Rusyn mountain Slavs in what is now southern Poland who have sometimes been grouped with the greater Ukrainian community. After WWI, one of goals of the short-lived Lemko Republic in 1918-20 was not to be included in the newly established West Ukrainian People’s Republic (see Wikipedia: “The Lemko Republic”). This is of interest for its own sake but also because it suggests that even then there was an awareness of an eastern Ukraine, distinct from the fractious Galician experience. 

If Ukraine is unwilling to cede territory defended by its forces directly to Russia, and Russia is unwilling to give up territory won by its forces from Ukraine, shouldn’t negotiators entertain a settlement calling for the creation of a country to the right of the lower stretch of the Dniepro River, incorporating at least the five oblasts claimed by Russia and perhaps even the whole territory that voted in the majority for ViktorYanukovych in 2010? This was the population arguably disenfranchised by the US-supported Maidan Revolution, which caused the resistance of separatists in the Donbas oblasts and the need for Russia to protect its warm-water port in Crimea. (Of course, there are many other issues that also have to be addressed, and in this both the US 28-point proposal and the revised 19-point proposal would be instructive.)

It is true that President Zelensky along with many Western leaders might initially object, but Russia’s acceptance of East Ukraine’s creation would give the lie to arguments that Russia had its eye on an eventual territorial takeover of Europe. This perceived threat has motivated some European leaders to commit their countries to a built-up defense posture against Russia and been cited as a reason to hold fast to an “as-long-as-it-takes” support for an intact Ukraine. 

At a press conference concluding President Putin’s late-November visit to Kyrgyzstan, he dismissed claims that Russia intends to invade Europe as “complete nonsense…. The truth is: We never intended to do that. But if they want to hear it from us, well, then we’ll document it. No question.”

One step toward proving this would be for President Putin to contribute claimed Russian territory to a new eastern state. And that, of course, is the reason why Russia might agree; it’s a way of confirming Russia’s sincerity as a neighborly and not antagonistic country. Yes, this state would naturally be within Russia’s sphere of influence, but then, a rump western state would naturally be in Europe’s sphere of influence. That is the truth about Ukraine and always has been since the era of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. We should be prepared to acknowledge it.

And President Zelensky might have his own reasons for warming to the idea of East Ukraine. Unless an ultra-nationalist fills the gap in the Office of the President created by the resignation of Andriy Yermak as its Head, Zelensky might feel free to relax some of  his maximalist goals. Surely, he would prefer not to be administering a potentially unwelcome takeover of the Donbas and enforcing the Verkhovna Rada’s ban on the Russian language in educational and official usage and its ongoing repression of Russian culture and religion. 

Creating East Ukraine would also open up other compromises the government of Ukraine might agree to. For instance, it has never accepted any responsibility for attacking Ukrainian separatists in the Donbas region after the Maidan protests caused the resignation of elected president Yanukovych. But agreeing that Russia’s frozen funds could be contributed to a sovereign wealth fund whose proceeds would be devoted to restoring the damage done in the Donbas in the years before and after Russia’s invasion would be a nod in that direction.

While from a Western point of view the prospect of East Ukraine might seem too accommodating, the idea might at least deflect negotiations from the current irresolvable standoff. This proposal would respond in a positive manner both to Ukraine’s unwillingness to cede territory to Russia and to Russia’s stated goal: a neutral buffer state free of ultra-right Ukrainian nationalism and where Russian language, culture, and religion would be respected. Both Ukraine and Russia would be asked to cede territory, but not to each other. 

Structuring a neutral, non-aligned East Ukraine (without neo-Nazi elements and NATO/CIA involvement, etc.) could take months or even years, but might be the kind of project that Russia would risk a ceasefire to pursue (thereby addressing Ukraine’s unwillingness to proceed further without a ceasefire). Drawing borders, writing a new constitution, working out security issues, nominating leadership—the required tasks are almost innumerable and would require the cooperation of the best experts from all sources. Obviously, in creating a new country out of the scarred and shattered remnants of a multi-year war, there would much to occupy the proposed international committee led by President Trump, with its many transactional commercial and trade concerns, and this would be all to the good. The artillery and bombing would be stopped and the drones defused. Only the arms suppliers could object! But if so, the world would benefit from seeing their self-interested motives fully revealed.

Without some new bone like East Ukraine to chew on, would anyone bet in favor of the parties overcoming their current entrenched positions? If not, all that is left is Prof. John Mearsheimer’s stark conclusion that the conflict will only be settled on the battlefield. That way leads to further dangerous escalation, and nuclear warfare, tactical or total, would be staring us in the face.

Copyright © December 2025 Benjamin S. Dunham. The author is a retired arts administrator and journalist who writes occasionally on subjects of music, history, and politics.

By Alan MacLeod, Consortium News, 12/4/25

Trump loyalist and C.I.A. contractor Larry Ellison’s purchase of CNN appears imminent, and marks the latest venture into media for the world’s second-richest individual.

But Ellison is not alone.

Indeed, the world’s seven richest individuals are all now powerful media barons, controlling what the world sees, reads, and hears, marking a new chapter in oligarchical control over society and striking another blow at a free, independent press and diversity of opinion.

Media Monopoly

Paramount Skydance — an Ellison-owned company — is in pole position to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery, a conglomerate that controls gigantic film and television studios, streaming services like HBO Max and Discovery+, franchises like DC Comics, and TV networks such as HBO, TNT, Discovery Channel, TLC, Food Network, and CNN.

This lead is largely due to Ellison’s proximity to President Donald Trump, who will ultimately have to sign off on such a deal.

Ellison has already spoken to senior White House officials about axing CNN hosts and content that Trump is said to dislike, including anchors, Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar.

It is this willingness to completely re-orientate the network’s political direction that has made him the White House’s preferred purchaser of Warner Brothers Discovery. He is reportedly so wealthy that he can afford to pay in cash.

Ellison, whose net worth stands at a staggering $278 billion, has been on a media spending spree of late. Earlier this year, he provided the funds for Skydance to purchase Paramount Global, another gigantic conglomerate that controls such products as CBS, BET, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Paramount Streaming and Showtime.

Immediately upon being appointed CEO of CBS News, Larry’s son, David, began drastically re-orientating the network’s political outlook, firing staff, pushing it to become pro-Trump, and appointing self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss as its editor-in-chief.

The Ellison family, however, is far from finished. In September, President Trump signed an executive order approving a proposal to force through the sale of social media platform TikTok to an American consortium led by Ellison-owned tech company, Oracle.

Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the platform’s security and operations, giving the world’s second-richest man effective control over the platform that more than 60 percent of Americans under 30 years of age use for news and entertainment.

Trump himself stated that he was extremely pleased that Oracle would be controlling the platform. “It’s owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans,” he said.

The Ellison family’s sudden venture into the realm of media and communications has shocked many, with senior media figures sounding the alarm.

Longtime CBS News anchor, Dan Rather, warned that “we all have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.”

“It is a particularly tough time for anybody working at CBS News,” he stated, citing pressure to change coverage to be more pro-Trump. “I think if [the Ellisons] were to buy CNN, it would change CNN forever, and it might be another very serious wound to CBS News,” he concluded.

Billionaire Capture

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump on Nov. 16, 2024. (Office of Speaker Mike Johnson, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Rather is correct. No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class – a fact that raises tough questions about freedom of speech and diversity of opinion.

Today, the world’s seven richest individuals are all major media barons, giving them extraordinary control over our media and public square, allowing them to set agendas, and suppress forms of speech they do not approve of.

This includes criticisms of them and their holdings, the economic system we live under, and the actions of the United States and Israeli governments.

Sitting on a fortune of over $480 billion, Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in world history, and is projected to, within the next decade, become the planet’s first trillionaire.

In 2022, Musk purchased Twitter, in a deal worth around $44 billion. The South-African born tech magnate quickly set about turning the platform into a vehicle for advancing his own far-right politics.

In 2024, for example, he was a key figure in promoting an attempt to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, spreading misinformation about the country’s election and even threatening Maduro with a future in the notorious Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

He has also very publicly rewritten his generative AI chatbot, Grok, on multiple occasions, so it would produce more conservative responses to users’ questions. One result of this was that Grok began to praise Adolf Hitler.

Musk overtook Jeff Bezos last year to become the world’s richest man. And like Musk, the Amazon founder and CEO has made several moves into the world of media.

In 2013, Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million, and quickly began exerting his influence on the newspaper, firing anti-establishment writers and hiring pro-war columnists. This came just months after he bought a minority stake in Business Insider (now rebranded to Insider).

One year later, in 2014, Amazon paid nearly a billion dollars to purchase Twitch, a streaming platform which hosts around 7 million monthly broadcasters. Amazon also owns a wide range of other media ventures, including movie studio MGM, audiobook platform, Audible, and movie database website, IMDB.

French billionaire, Bernard Arnault, meanwhile, has been buying up large swaths of his country’s media outlets. The chairman of luxury conglomerate, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) and the world’s seventh-richest man now sits on a media empire that includes daily newspapers such as Le Parisien and Les Echoes, magazines such as Paris Match and Challenges, as well as Radio Classique.

Bernard Arnault in 2017. (Jérémy Barande, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The remaining three individuals rounding out the top seven list all owe their wealth primarily to their media empires.

Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are collectively worth over half a trillion dollars. Google has become the dominant force in today’s hi-tech economy, and is also a major player in social media, having bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion.

Thirty-five percent of Americans use the video platform as a primary source of news.

From left, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, 2008. (Joi Ito /Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0)

Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, owes his $203 billion fortune to his social media and tech ventures, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Like YouTube, Zuckerberg’s companies are major players in the modern news landscape, with 38 percent, 20 percent and 5 percent of Americans relying on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for their news and views.

MAGA Mouthpieces

Many of these wealthy individuals have joined forces with President Trump in an effort to support Republican policies and push a conservative worldview. Chief among these is the Ellison family, who quickly announced significant changes as CBS News, promising “unbiased” coverage and more “varied ideological perspectives” — widely understood as a shift towards right-wing, pro-Trump coverage.

Larry Ellison holds deeply conservative views, and became a top donor and fundraiser for the Republican Party, and a close Trump confident. Indeed, one Trump insider, noting his influence, went so far as to call Ellison the “shadow president of the United States.”

Musk, of course, very publicly turned Twitter into a conservative-dominated platform, and was an unofficial member of Trump’s cabinet, becoming de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Zuckerberg has also taken a number of steps to align his platforms with the MAGA movement, including firing his fact-checking team (widely associated with liberal politics) and prioritizing what he calls “free speech.” Content moderation teams, the Meta CEO said, would be moved from California to Texas, “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.”

Zuckerberg replaced Meta’s president of global affairs, the former Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom, Nick Clegg, with prominent Republican Joel Kaplan, who was George W. Bush’s chief of staff.

He also appointed Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close Trump ally, to Meta’s board, despite his complete lack of relevant experience.

Many of these moves were likely made in response to Trump’s threat to imprison Zuckerberg “for the rest of his life” if he did anything to “cheat” him out of a 2024 presidential election victory. Zuckerberg subsequently met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and, alongside Bezos and other tech moguls, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

 Trump with Zuckerberg in the White House in September 2019. (White House, Joiyce N. Boghosian)

Bezos, meanwhile, pursued similar measures at The Washington Post, announcing that the newspaper would no longer publish opinions skeptical of capitalism.

“We are going to be writing every day in support of defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote, noting that readers wishing to see alternative viewpoints can find them on “the internet.”

The decision was widely seen as a major shakeup, and provoked public opposition from Post employees. “Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today,” said the newspaper’s lead economics journalist Jeff Stein. “[It] makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there.”

The move was quite the reversal for Bezos, who had once called Trump a “threat to democracy.” Yet, by January 2025, he was sitting with Zuckerberg, Musk and Arnault in prominent positions behind Trump at his inauguration.

Considering his nationality, Arnault has a surprisingly close relationship with Trump. In 2019, the French billionaire opened a new Louis Vuitton factory in Alvarado, Texas, a move that some have suggested was an attempt to please the president.

Trump attended the facility’s opening, calling Arnault an “artist” and a “visionary.”  Due to their relationship with the Trumps, the Arnault family have become unofficial intermediaries between the French and U.S. governments.

They were hosted by the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago in 2023, and, during an escalating trade war earlier this year, Bernard visited the White House to dampen down tensions between the U.S. and France.

Pentagon Contractors

A key factor in the rise of many of the world’s top seven richest individuals is their proximity to the U.S. national security state, with many of their companies growing wealthy in part due to feeding from the trough of Pentagon contracts.

Today’s wars and espionage rely as much on hi-tech computing equipment as tanks and guns, and in 2022, the Department of Defense awarded Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle a $9 billion cloud computing contract.

Bezos’ Amazon has long enjoyed a close relationship with the C.I.A., having signed a $600 million contract with the agency in 2014. Yet both Google and Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, have been intertwined with Langley since their inception.

Bezos, on right, visiting the Los Angeles Air Force base, Space and Missile Systems center to speak at Gordon Conference Center, Oct. 25, 2017. (Los Angeles Air Force Base Space and Missile System Center/Flickr/Public Domain)

The C.I.A. bankrolled and oversaw Brin’s PhD research at Stanford University, work which would later form the basis of Google. As one investigation noted, “senior U.S. intelligence representatives including a C.I.A. official oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded.”

As late as 2005, In-Q-Tel, the C.I.A.’s venture capitalist arm, was a major shareholder in Google. These shares were a result of Google’s acquisition of Keyhole, Inc., a C.I.A.-backed surveillance firm whose software eventually became Google Earth.

By 2007, the government was using enhanced versions of Google Earth to surveil and target enemies in Iraq and beyond, according to The Washington Post. By this time, the Post also notes, Google was partnering with Lockheed Martin to produce futuristic technology for the military.

There also exists a revolving door of employment between Google and various branches of federal government.

It would be no stretch, meanwhile, to state that Elon Musk owes his largesse in no small part to his intimate relationship with the C.I.A.

In-Q-Tel chief Mike Griffin helped birth SpaceX, providing support and advice from the beginning, and even accompanied Musk to Russia in 2002, where the pair attempted to purchase cheap intercontinental ballistic missiles to start the company.

Griffin repeatedly championed Musk at the C.I.A., describing him as the “Henry Ford” of the space industry, and worthy of the government’s full support.

Still, by 2008, SpaceX was in dire straits, with Musk unable to make payroll and believing both SpaceX and Tesla Motors would be liquidated. But he was saved by an unexpected $1.6 billion NASA contract that Griffin had helped secure.

Today, SpaceX is a powerhouse. But its primary customers continue to be U.S. government agencies, such as the Air Force, Space Development Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. And recently, the Pentagon has recruited him to help it win a nuclear war.

A new SpaceX spinoff company, Castelion, is working on building a network of armed satellites circling North America, designed to shoot down enemy nuclear missiles.

A successful operation would give the United States an impervious shield, and allow it to act as it wants around the world, without threat of retaliation, effectively ending the era of mutually assured destruction, and plunging the planet into a dangerous new epoch.

Six of the seven members of Castelion’s leadership team and two of its four senior advisors are ex-Space X employees. The other two advisors are former high officials from the C.I.A., including Griffin himself. Elon named his oldest child Griffin Musk. Another of his sons, X Æ A-12, is named after a C.I.A. spy plane.

No billionaire, however, is more intimately connected to the C.I.A. than Larry Ellison. Ellison began his career by working with the C.I.A. on a database system called Project Oracle. In 1977, he would co-found tech giant Oracle (named after his previous project).

The C.I.A. was Oracle’s only customer for some time, before Ellison branched out and began to win contracts with other branches of the national security state, including Navy Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence and the NSA.

That close partnership continues to this day. In 2020, the company won a 15-year contract with the C.I.A. and 16 other U.S. intelligence agencies worth tens of billions of dollars.

And today, its upper ranks are filled with former C.I.A. executives. One example of this is Leon Panetta, former C.I.A. director and secretary of defense, who sits on its board of directors.

Arming & Supporting Israel

Another key attribute that many of the world’s richest individuals share is their passionate support for Israel and its expansionist project.

Nowhere is this more evident than with Ellison, who has made it his life’s goal to advance the Jewish State’s interests, both at home and abroad. Ellison is an enthusiastic supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he vacationed on his private island in Hawaii.

So impressed was he with the embattled prime minister that he offered him a seat on Oracle’s board, replete with a yearly salary of $450,000.

Ellison is the largest single donor to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In 2017 alone, he pledged $16.6 million to build a new training facility for IDF soldiers, whom he described as defending “our home.” At a fundraiser, he explained that:

“Through all of the perilous times since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home. In my mind, there is no greater honor than supporting some of the bravest people in the world, and I thank Friends of the IDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.”

David Ellison is no less ardent a Zionist, and even met with a top Israeli general in order to aid a project spying on American citizens, according to an investigation by The Grayzone.

The scheme was aimed at attacking American citizens participating in pro-Palestine activism in the face of Israel’s attack on Gaza. The documents also mention Brin’s name as a potential collaborator in the plan.

Oracle’s Israeli CEO, Safra Catz, is also a close friend of Netanyahu’s, and describes the corporation as on a “mission” to support Israel. Together, Catz and Ellison have enforced a strict pro-Israel stance across the company.

In the wake of the October 2023 violence, Catz instructed that the words “Oracle stands with Israel” must be printed on company screens across the world in more than 180 countries.

Unsurprisingly, the support and collaboration with Israel has led to significant pushback among employees. Catz’s response to their concerns was blunt. “We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none,” she said, adding:

“This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.”

It has been widely reported, even in the corporate media, that the Ellison family’s foray into the world of media was triggered by their desire to help Israel in its public relations battle, something Tel Aviv is keenly aware that they are losing.

As Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League said, “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem,” explaining that young people around the world are being exposed daily to videos of Israeli aggression, leading to a PR disaster.

Former congressman Mike Gallagher, a leader in the attempts to ban TikTok, explained how his bill had failed, but, after Oct. 7, 2023, and the worldwide outrage at Israeli actions, it found new life on Capitol Hill, and was passed into law, forcing its imminent sale to a consortium led by Oracle.

This pro-Israel sea change has already occurred at CBS News, with the hiring of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. Weiss first came to public attention while still at college, founding an organization that attempted to have Muslim and Arab professors fired for their pro-Palestine views.

As the Financial Times noted, “Weiss has won over Ellison partly by taking a pro-Israel stance, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Last week, at the Jewish Leadership Conference, she stated that she sees her mission at CBS as “redraw[ing] the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in America by sidelining voices like Hassan Piker and Tucker Carlson, and elevate “charismatic” leaders like Alan Dershowitz, who represents “the vast majority of Americans.”

Zuckerberg’s platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – have displayed a no less concerted bias in favor of Israel. As far back as 2016, Facebook was collaborating with the Israeli government on matters of censorship, with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked revealing that the social media platform complied with 95 percent of her requests for pro-Palestine content to be removed.

The Facebook/Israel partnership was deepened in 2020 when the company appointed Emi Palmor, the former director general of the Ministry of Justice of Israel and an ex-spy with IDF intelligence group Unit 8200, to its oversight board, a 21-person committee ultimately in charge of the political direction of the site.

Zuckerberg’s platforms have long shut down Palestinian voices on dubious “hate speech” grounds. However, the censorship was drastically increased after the Oct. 7 attacks.

Human Rights Watch released a report detailing the “systemic censorship of Palestinian content on Instagram and Facebook,” noting how they reviewed 1050 cases of censorship of Palestinian voices, including those documenting human rights abuses against themselves.

The study concluded that 1049 of them were entirely peaceful utterances of support for Palestine, and did not break any of Meta’s terms of service.

In 2023, Instagram also inserted the word “terrorist” into the bios of thousands of users who mentioned they were Palestinian. When challenged on this, they claimed it was an auto-translation bug.

Internally, Meta staff have complained about systematic suppression of their voices and the creation of a “hostile and unsafe work environment” for Palestinian and Muslim employees.

WhatsApp, meanwhile, is a battleground in more than one sense. The Israeli military is using Palestinians’ WhatsApp data in order to track and target tens of thousands of people in Gaza. It is unclear how or whether Meta is collaborating with the Israeli military in this endeavor.

However, it has been suggested that some of the dozens of former Israeli spies now working in top jobs at Meta could be producing backdoors in the software, or simply passing the data onto their former colleagues.

A 2022 MintPress investigation found hundreds of former Unit 8200 operatives working at Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Zuckerberg himself is known to be a strong supporter of Israel, and has numerous familial connections to the state. After the October 2023 attacks, he released a statement denouncing Hamas and other resistance forces as “pure evil,” an action that earned him an official thank you from the State of Israel.

Musk has also put himself and his vehicles in the service of Israel. In November 2023, he traveled to Israel to meet with both Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog and offer his unqualified support to their attack on Gaza.

Describing Hamas as “evil” and “revel[ing] in the joy of killing civilians,” Musk attempted to publicly whitewash Israeli violence, stating unequivocally that the IDF goes out of its way “to avoid killing civilians.” At the time of his visit, Israeli strikes had killed at least 20,000 people in four weeks of bombings.

Netanyahu has stated that Twitter is among Israel’s “most important weapons” in the war, and defended Musk from accusations of fascism, after he gave a Nazi salute at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

During his visit, Musk also signed a deal with the government of Israel, giving the latter effective control and oversight over Starlink communications portals operating in Israel and Gaza.

Google and Amazon, too, are key players facilitating the hi-tech genocide in Gaza. In 2021, the pair signed a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to provide cloud computing and AI infrastructure to the IDF — technology that has been used to target the civilian population of the densely-populated strip.

The deal has sparked a rebellion among employees, who organized sit-ins and other protests against their collaboration.

Many other Google employees, however, are intimately linked with the State of Israel. There are at least 99 former Unit 8200 spies working in key positions at the Silicon Valley giant.

One prominent example is Gavriel Goidel, who was a longtime commander and head of learning at Unit 8200, before being hired by Google to become the company’s head of strategy and operations.

Google has also collaborated in disseminating Israeli government propaganda to tens of millions of Europeans, despite the content breaking its own terms of service.

Part of this may be down to the disposition of Brin himself. Normally avoiding the limelight and refraining from making political statements, the Russian-born magnate bitterly condemned the United Nations as “transparently antisemitic” after it released a report detailing his company’s participation in the Gaza genocide.

“Throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides,” he added.

Arnault has remained quiet on Gaza. He has, however, invested heavily in Israel. Diamonds and other precious stones are a mainstay of the Israeli economy, and the Frenchman’s luxury brands disseminate the stones globally.

Activists have called for Israeli diamonds to be labeled conflict minerals and boycotted by ethical consumers. He also invested in Israeli tech and security firm, Wiz, a company recently purchased by Google for $32 billion.

Earlier this month, LVMH signed a $55 million deal with Israeli actress and former IDF soldier, Gal Gadot, making her the face of their brand.

We are living in an era of unprecedented global inequality. Together, these seven individuals —  Musk, Ellison, Page, Brin, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Arnault — control more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of humanity (over 4 billion people) combined. Sitting on heretofore unimaginable fortunes, they have begun buying up assets, including media outlets, at record pace.

For billionaires, the utility of capturing the press is threefold: firstly, it shields them and their class from press scrutiny and criticism.

Second, it gives them a mouthpiece to push the public debate towards even more business-friendly laws and regulations. And third, they can use their outlets to champion any causes and promote any other agendas they have.

We have seen all three play out here, as, collectively, our press is rapidly moving towards more conservative, pro-Trump, pro-Israel positions, shutting out any dissenting voices from their ranks.

The effect on democracy, a free society, and the public’s right to a diversity of opinions has been highly deleterious. When it comes to media, we already suffered from an illusion of choice.

However, the supercharged concentration of ownership of American and global media in the hands of just a handful of individuals has only exacerbated this problem.

There once was a time that individuals looking for alternative viewpoints would simply go online to find them. But with censorship of dissenting opinions — particularly on Israel/Palestine — growing, this is becoming increasingly unviable.

In short, then, what the planet’s mega-rich capture of our media system shows is that billionaires are not only a serious drain on resources, but an existential threat to an open society and the free flow of information.

Alan MacLeod is senior staff writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod.

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Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

By Kautilya The Contemplator, Substack, 12/5/25

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s high-profile visit to India has become one of the most consequential diplomatic moments of the year, not only for the scale of agreements unveiled, but also for the unmistakable symbolism that accompanied it. At a time when New Delhi faces unprecedented tariff pressure from Washington and Moscow remains under expansive Western sanctions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to personally receive Putin at Delhi’s Palam airport dominated Indian media. This was not routine protocol. It was a clear geopolitical signal. Traditionally, foreign heads of state are received by a junior minister or, exceptionally, the Minister of External Affairs. Modi’s appearance on the tarmac, accompanied by a warm embrace and a shared car ride, constitutes the highest level of diplomatic courtesy India accords any leader.

Media Optics and the Symbolism of Modi’s Welcome

Indian television channels and newspapers treated the moment as a landmark event. Mainstream outlets like NDTV, India Today, Hindustan Times and DD India ran continuous minute-to-minute coverage, framing the welcome as “rare,” “symbolic,” and an expression of India’s sovereign agency. The visual narrative of Modi breaking protocol, flags lining Rajpath and Putin receiving a tri-services Guard of Honor and a 21-gun salute at Rashtrapati Bhavan, projected a partnership unshaken by Western pressure.

This symbolism carries added significance in 2025. The United States, under the Trump Administration, has imposed a punitive 50% tariff wall on key Indian exports, explicitly linking the additional 25% penalty to India’s continued purchase of discounted Russian oil. Western governments have simultaneously pressured India to scale back its defense and energy ties with Moscow. Against this backdrop, India’s elaborate welcome for Putin was both a reassurance to Moscow and a message to the world that India’s strategic autonomy is not negotiable.

Groundbreaking Economic and Strategic Agreements

In total, the two sides finalized ten inter-governmental agreements and fifteen commercial contracts, inaugurating what both leaders have called a “new economic architecture” for the partnership.

Economic Cooperation Program to 2030

The centerpiece is the Economic Cooperation Program to 2030, which, for the first time, sets explicit, measurable targets, including $100 billion in bilateral trade by 2030. Earlier Modi–Putin summits spoke about expanding trade in general terms. This roadmap introduces hard timelines and structural reforms. Crucially, it aims to rebalance a trade profile skewed by India’s heavy imports of Russian crude. The framework seeks to boost Indian exports across pharmaceuticals, machinery, agriculture, IT services and manufactured goods.

Uralchem Fertilizer Joint Venture

A landmark component is the Uralchem fertilizer joint venture, under which Indian public-sector firms will co-invest in a major gas-based urea plant in Russia dedicated to long-term Indian demand. This moves the partnership beyond a buyer–seller relationship toward shared industrial capacity, a strategic hedge for India, whose food security depends on stable fertilizer supplies. For Russia, it guarantees a secure and long-term downstream market.

Oil Supplies

In energy, Putin publicly pledged “uninterrupted oil supplies” to India, a direct counter to Western attempts to restrict Russian crude flows. This assurance, combined with expanded rupee–rouble settlement systems and mechanisms to channel surplus rupees into Indian assets, marks a major step toward a sanctions-resilient energy and financial corridor.

Pharmaceuticals, Shipbuilding and Arctic Exploration

Beyond fertilizers and oil, the summit significantly advanced cooperation in shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals and Arctic exploration. For India, shipbuilding is strategically crucial. As it becomes a great power and seeks to carry a much larger share of its own trade, it needs a vastly expanded merchant navy. Yet, today Indian yards account for well under 1% of global shipbuilding output, underscoring why access to Russian technology and commercial shipbuilding expertise matters so much. As such, India and Russia agreed to deepen collaboration in civil shipbuilding, including technology transfer, vessel maintenance and greater Indian use of Russian shipyards, an area strategically relevant to India’s Indo-Pacific maritime ambitions.

In pharmaceuticals, Russia committed to supporting Indian companies expanding production and distribution in the Russian market, positioning India as a key supplier at a moment when Western pharmaceutical presence in Russia is shrinking. The leaders also highlighted intensified cooperation in the Russian Arctic and Far East, ranging from hydrocarbon and mineral projects to new shipping routes where India’s investment and manpower are expected to play an increasingly central role in Russia’s pivot to Asia.

Labor Mobility and Tourism Facilitation

The summit also broke new ground in labour mobility. India and Russia are establishing structured pathways for skilled Indian workers, particularly in IT, engineering, construction and healthcare, to take up employment in Russia, while India’s introduction of free e-visas for Russian tourists aims to widen people-to-people ties. This is the first concrete institutional mechanism addressing Russia’s labour shortages and India’s demographic strengths.

Defense Cooperation

Defense cooperation, long the backbone of the partnership, received renewed focus. The leaders accelerated arrangements for S-400 air defense system support, discussed upgrades to legacy platforms and emphasized joint production and localization under India’s “Atmanirbhar Bharat” initiative, a key shift in the defense cooperation framework. This marks a subtle but important development. Rather than diluting defense ties, as many Western analysts had expected, India is converting them into joint industrial capability, thereby strengthening sovereignty in defense manufacturing.

How This Summit Differs from Earlier Modi-Putin Meetings

Compared with earlier bilateral summits, from Delhi 2014 to Moscow 2024, the 2025 summit represents a qualitative shift. Previous meetings largely operated within the established frameworks of arms sales, nuclear power, hydrocarbons and diplomatic coordination. They reinforced the legacy of India–Russia ties but did not fundamentally update the underlying economic or technological architecture.

This summit does precisely that. It transforms the partnership from a collection of sectoral engagements into a strategically diversified, interdependent ecosystem built for today’s era of economic coercion, sanctions warfare and supply-chain vulnerabilities. It also expands cooperation in areas other than defense and energy.

Strategic Autonomy in a Shifting Global Order

The geopolitical context amplifies the significance of these agreements. India today is balancing a complex triad that involves a defense and technology partnership with the United States, a sanctions-stricken but indispensable energy and defense partner in Russia and a Europe aligned with Washington’s sanctions architecture. The 50% US tariff wall, linked explicitly to India’s refusal to reduce Russian oil imports, represents one of the sharpest episodes of economic coercion India has faced from a major partner.

Against this backdrop, Modi’s airport welcome and the sweeping summit outcomes amount to a declaration of strategic autonomy in practice, not rhetoric. India is signaling that it will simultaneously negotiate with the US, deepen cooperation with Russia and maintain its independent geopolitical trajectory.

The 2025 visit thus stands out as a pivotal moment. It reasserts the longevity and adaptability of India–Russia ties, produces a new economic and industrial architecture resilient to external shocks and demonstrates India’s willingness to act as a sovereign pole, not a subordinate, in a rapidly polarizing world.

In short, this was not just another annual summit. It was the unveiling of a new strategic framework for the next decade of India–Russia cooperation, one built to withstand sanctions, tariffs and geopolitical turbulence. India and Russia have responded by tightening, not loosening, their alignment. In doing so, they have reshaped the trajectory of one of the world’s most durable strategic partnerships.