The week brought a presidential pardon for a (very guilty) narco-tyrant, naval drones ripping through Russia’s shadow fleet, and a "pampered princess" luring her countrymen to die in foreign trenches.

The Global Fight for Freedom

1. Trump Pardons Honduran Narco-Tyrant
2. Mayday! Russia's Shadow Fleet Pummeled
3. Dictators' Delight? Trump Targets Brotherhood
4. "Pampered Princess" Betrays Her Nation
5. The Chill Over Taiwan's "Hellscape"

Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking.

Vessels from the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group prowl miles from Venezuela's coast. The CIA operates inside its borders. Pieces of more than 80 suspected Venezuelan narco-traffickers lie beneath Caribbean waters—Trump's bloody campaign against the drug trade.
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Yet Friday, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández—convicted in a U.S. court of trafficking 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S. during his 2014 to 2022 term.
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Trump justified the pardon claiming Hernández was "treated very harshly and unfairly" and endorsed his National Party's candidate Nasry Asfura—a coordinated announcement designed to influence Sunday's election.
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Valid arguments can be made for the strikes and the endorsement. The pardon is despicable.
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U.S. prosecutors proved Hernández—who handpicked Asfura as his successor—ran Honduras as a narco-state, accepting millions in Sinaloa Cartel bribes, including $1 million from El Chapo himself. Testimony included ledgers of cartel payments, photographs of Hernández meeting drug lords at the World Cup, and his vow to stuff drugs “right up the noses of the gringos.”
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Asfura, a former mayor of Tegucigalpa, is a pro-growth pragmatist promising to revive U.S. ties and restore diplomatic relations with Taiwan—a freedom-friendly agenda. Yet he and his National Party face accusations of patronage networks, corruption, and cartel ties—still preferable to Libre candidate Rixi Moncada, who embraces neighborhood tyrants Nicolás Maduro and Miguel Díaz-Canel and has vowed to reject yesterday's election results should she lose. Trump would be justified in withholding aid to a Moncada regime.
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But Trump's pardon substitutes his own judgment for an American jury's unanimous verdict—a flagrant assault on the rule of law. His false choice between American justice and American security corrupts both. And his repeated failure to distinguish principled conservatism from right-wing tyranny reveals either moral blindness or deliberate indifference.
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​Note: As this edition went to press, Asfura had an extremely narrow lead in Sunday’s tightly contested election.

The call went out over the Black Sea in Turkish waters: "This is VIRAT. Help needed! Drone attack! Mayday!"
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The Russian oil tanker had been hit for the second time in two days by "Sea Baby" naval drones, launched by Ukrainian security services from an undisclosed location. Twenty miles away, the Kairos blazed in the darkness, its crew evacuated as drones ripped through Putin's shadow fleet of tankers smuggling sanctioned oil. Both vessels sustained critical damage.
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The strikes severed oil transport worth nearly $70 million.
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As the world holds its breath wondering whether Trump's Florida negotiations will produce peace or capitulation, Ukraine strikes with newly granted permission. On November 18th, four American ATACMS missiles screamed toward the Voronezh training ground, where Russian forces massed for deployment. The strike targeted an airbase and troop concentrations—the first strike deep inside Russia under Trump's presidency.
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Biden had finally authorized ATACMS strikes in his final weeks, only to have Trump block them through bureaucratic review— restrictions that starved Ukraine of advanced weaponry. Now that stranglehold has loosened.
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Yet grim realities shadow these victories. Russia advances across the Donbas, gaining 169 square miles in recent weeks. Moscow's Rubicon division deploys fiber-optic drones immune to jamming, outnumbering Ukrainian drones 10 to 1 near Pokrovsk. Russia now strikes Ukrainian supply routes 30 miles behind front lines, collapsing the "drone wall" that once protected logistics.
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Ukraine fights with fists unbound—but faces both an adaptive enemy and an American administration lurching between appeasement and escalation.

Egypt's 2011 Arab Spring briefly flickered with promise. By 2012, Mohamed Morsi won the presidency—Egypt's first democratic election. Then came the power grabs: granting himself unchecked authority, ramming through an Islamist constitution, and attacking secular institutions while economic conditions collapsed. In 2013, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seized power. Six weeks later, his forces massacred at least 900 Brotherhood supporters in Rabaa Square—armored bulldozers closing escape routes while snipers fired from rooftops.
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Last week, Trump signed an executive order directing officials to designate Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, citing their Hamas support. The designation criminalizes Brotherhood support, freezes U.S. assets, and bars members from America.
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Al-Sisi, whom Trump once called "my favorite dictator," has lobbied for the designation since 2019 to crush the Brotherhood’s political opposition. Saudi Crown Prince MBS wants the same. Meanwhile, Qatar—whose royal family swore spiritual oaths to the Brotherhood—and Turkey's Erdogan, who shelters Brotherhood leaders, both secured exemptions through strategic Trump relationships.
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The designation confronts genuine complexities. FTO status requires groups "engage in terrorist activity" threatening U.S. security. Some chapters may qualify—Treasury-sanctioned Brotherhood entities funding Hamas and the Jordanian chapter providing material support. Others operate charities and contest free elections. Trump's first-term designation attempt failed because the Brotherhood's decentralized structure makes prosecution treacherous.
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Yet the Brotherhood embraced violence for decades, spawned Hamas and inspired al-Qaeda, and runs vast media networks spreading extreme Islamist doctrine. Jordan—less oppressive than Egypt—banned the Brotherhood after uncovering sabotage plots. Brotherhood-aligned factions in Sudan fuel a civil war that's killed 150,000.
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Some Brotherhood chapters provide genuine social services, but Morsi demonstrated the Brotherhood's vision for governance. I remain skeptical these specific chapters pose immediate U.S. security threats. But the Brotherhood is no friend of global freedom.

Last week, South African families received desperate messages from loved ones trapped in Ukraine's Donbas. Young men—many who idolized former President Jacob Zuma—sent videos and voice messages after being lured by promises of high-paying security jobs in MK, Zuma's political party. Some received 80,000 Rand stipends with promises of 1 million annually—five times average wages.
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Zuma's daughter, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, had traveled to Russia to welcome them, assuring them she would train too. A day later, she vanished—as the men learned they were bound for Ukraine. The "pampered princess," as an MK colleague called her, already faces terrorism charges for inciting 2021 riots that killed 350. "Azishe," she posted—"let it burn."
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Friday, she resigned her MP post, claiming deception.
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Her mother, Kate Mantsho—the second of six Zuma wives—killed herself in 2000, leaving a suicide note claiming marriage to Zuma was "24 years of hell." She barred him from her funeral. Yet Duduzile remains devoted.
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Between 2009 and 2018, Zuma and allies looted South Africa. Cabinet positions were offered for 600 million Rand bribes while Zuma waited nearby. Ministers who refused were fired. At the state railway, appointees handed billions to favored companies, bypassing rules. Commuter trains fell into ruin. Thousands of tax collectors were purged to hide malfeasance. Forced to resign in 2018, Zuma formed MK—an ANC offshoot—and ran again.
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The ANC's rot predates Zuma but accelerates. Since 2016, six presidents have cycled through amid corruption. In 2022, the Zondo Commission recommended criminal charges against more than 200 officials.
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Yet MK won 14.6% in May's elections through Zulu identity politics and anger at ANC corruption. Millions watching the ANC devour their country still turn to the dynasty that set the table.

Thousands of kamikaze drones darken the Taiwan Strait. GPS signals vanish. Chinese assault craft lumber toward beaches as autonomous missiles streak toward their hulls—sinking ships faster than Beijing can replace them. Admiral Sam Paparo calls it "an unmanned hellscape," buying 30 days for American forces.
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That's the vision Paparo unveiled last year as U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander. Whether Trump would supply the weapons to make it real remained uncertain.
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Last week brought welcome news: Trump's first Taiwan arms sale of his second term. The $330 million package delivers fighter jet parts—modest, but vital. Rumors had spread Trump was withholding weapons to court Xi. Instead, the Administration signaled it won't abandon deterrence.
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Yet the hellscape demands more. Ukraine burns 10,000 drones monthly. Taiwan's 1,000-drone purchase would last days. China's factories produce one million drones yearly for Russia and Ukraine—100,000 monthly for its own invasion, indefinitely.
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Then came Trump's call with Xi. Days after Japan's Prime Minister warned a Taiwan attack might trigger Japanese response, Xi spent half an hour hammering China's Taiwan claim. That same day, Trump phoned Tokyo, advising against provoking Beijing. He didn't pressure retraction, and Japan denied the report.
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But the call was significant, bending toward the leader threatening invasion. His primary motivation? Soybeans. Trump's trade war has caused real pain for farmers. He needs Xi to buy before 2026 elections.
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“Strategic ambiguity”—or capitulation for a hill of beans?

Freedom Fighter of the Week: Andrzej Poczobut

According to friends, Andrzej Poczobut is slowly dying. Deprived of needed medications, he suffers from a heart ailment, hypertension, skin ulcers, and vision problems—while held in isolation in one of the harshest maximum-security penal colonies in Belarus, imprisoned for nearly five years.
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Yet he refuses to plead guilty to "damaging national security" or ask Belarusian tyrant Alexander Lukashenko for a pardon.
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"Freedom is not a place but is within a person," he recently wrote from prison.
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For decades, the 52-year-old Polish journalist documented the persecution of Belarus's 300,000 ethnic Poles and exposed Lukashenko's brutality. Arrested more than a dozen times since 2011 for "libeling the president,” he refuses to yield.
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After Lukashenko rigged the 2020 presidential election, 65,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten by police, and tens of thousands fled abroad. But Poczobut stayed—documenting the carnage and mass protests that erupted. His reporting on the stolen election and the regime's savage crackdown sealed his fate.
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Security forces smashed into his apartment in 2021, seizing everything. After 460 days in pretrial detention, a closed trial convicted him of "inciting hatred" and "sowing discord." He had labelled the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland as “an act of aggression.” Prosecutors used that to prove his guilt—eight years in a penal colony.
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Now he's denied visits from his wife and children and held in solitary confinement for refusing work he could not physically perform.
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In October, he was awarded the (Andrei) Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought—named after the physicist who helped develop the Soviet hydrogen bomb before becoming one of the USSR's fiercest human rights advocates.
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Lukashenko has pardoned over 225 political prisoners since July, trading their freedom for sanctions relief. Yet Poczobut refuses the bargain, suffering torture rather than begging a tyrant for mercy.
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Lukashenko can imprison his body, but he cannot touch what lives within.

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