|
This week’s Dispatches include a corrupt finance minister stripped to his underwear fleeing into a river and over a hundred thousand flooding London's streets at the behest of a convicted fraudster. Plus, Israeli missiles rain down on Hamas leaders reviewing Trump’s peace proposal.
The Global Fight for Freedom
- Nepalese Corruption Triggers Gen Z Revolution
- 110,000 Rally Behind a UK Demagogue
- Israel Bombards America's Toxic Partner
- Putin's Polish Provocation Galvanizes NATO
- Press Freedom Suffers Global Beatdown
Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking. Note: source links are still omitted as my domain reputation recovers from a false spam flag.
Nepali Finance Minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel, stripped to his underwear and motorbike helmet, fled into a river as hundreds of young Nepalis gave chase hurling stones. The footage went viral, capturing a generation's vengeance on corrupt elites who have enriched themselves while 1 in 5 young people go jobless.
Digital outrage over "Nepo Kids"—children of the political elite flaunting designer handbags while ordinary Nepalis earned $1,300 per year—exploded into Nepal's most devastating youth uprising since democracy's 1990 restoration.
Nearly 900,000 youth had fled abroad in 2024 alone as youth unemployment surged, but when the government banned 26 social media platforms, protests turned violent.
Thousands of students converged on Kathmandu's Maitighar Mandala monument, galvanized by nonprofit Hami Nepal’s Discord network—a digital resistance now transforming a nation that has churned through 14 governments in the last 16 years.
After police killed 19 protesters using live ammunition against students carrying placards, Parliament was set ablaze. The Supreme Court burned. Then came Paudel's humiliation. Within hours, Communist Party leader and PM K.P. Sharma Oli resigned and fled to an army barracks.
Nepal’s Generation Z then took democracy into its own hands.
A Discord server exploded to 145,000 members in four days, becoming a new "national parliament” as the old one was dissolved. Proton VPN downloads surged 6,000% as citizens bypassed restrictions.
They rallied behind 73-year-old former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, who had been imprisoned for fighting to restore democracy in 1990. She later convicted sitting ministers for corruption, refusing to bow to political pressure.
On Friday, Karki became Nepal's first female Prime Minister. Fifty-one people died in the democratic revolution. When students tore down the hammer-and-sickle flag from Communist Party headquarters—yet another promise of worker liberation had fallen to the people it betrayed.
At fourteen, Sammy Woodhouse thought the man buying her gifts genuinely cared. He called her beautiful, bought her alcohol, and chauffeured her in his taxi. Then the grooming began. Arshid Hussain, leader of a child sex exploitation gang, would go on to assault, rape, and beat Woodhouse daily while threatening to kill her family.
Thousands of victims endured Sammy's nightmare over two decades as politically correct UK authorities deliberately ignored the carnage. When victims tried to tell police, they were dismissed as promiscuous. Social workers were warned not to "inflame community tensions." Labour MP Sarah Champion, who warned "Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping white girls," was forced to resign.
Forced silence became the fertile soil in which Tommy Robinson grew. The English Defence League founder built a massive following exposing grooming gangs—often through violent rhetoric.
On Saturday, that following exploded into Britain's largest free speech demonstration in decades. At least 110,000 people flooded the streets of London for Robinson's "Unite the Kingdom" rally, assaulting several of the 1,600 overwhelmed officers.
A convicted fraudster, Robinson has served multiple prison sentences for assault and mortgage fraud. He calls for mass deportations, describing Islam as an "infestation."
Yet many came not for Robinson, but because free speech itself is under siege. UK police now arrest over 30 people daily for social media posts while 90% of crimes go unsolved. The crackdown targets pro-Palestine and conservative activists alike.
None of this exonerates Robinson, but Saturday’s massive turnout exposes a grim reality—when freedom’s true champions are silenced, demagogues fill the void.
Note: In June, Sarah Champion’s relentless advocacy led to a commitment from Prime Minister Starmer for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
As infrared signatures blazed across American satellite screens, General Dan Caine scrambled to alert the White House—ballistic missiles were heading for Qatar. Within minutes, President Trump dispatched envoy Steve Witkoff with a frantic warning to the regime. He was ten minutes too late.
The missiles had already slammed into a quiet Doha neighborhood where Hamas political leaders had gathered to review Trump's ceasefire proposal. Israel's "Summit of Fire" had killed five low-ranking Hamas members and one Qatari security officer, infuriating Trump and deepening Israel's global isolation.
Israel's self-defeating strike reveals the shadowy web binding Washington to Qatar's authoritarian regime. This week, the Wall Street Journal exposed how for the past three presidential administrations, secret "Defense Cooperation Agreements" have operated beyond Senate oversight, likely containing clauses requiring U.S. personnel to obey local laws banning homosexuality and criticism of the monarchy. Trump's May visit secured a $1.2 trillion "economic exchange" whose terms remain hidden from Congress (plus a $400 million jet).
The toxicity of the U.S.-Qatari relationship runs deeper. The al-Thani monarchy plays all sides—hosting America's largest regional airbase while harboring an organization that murdered Americans.
The constitutional peril created when presidents use executive agreements to evade Senate oversight demonstrates why the Founders required two-thirds Senate consent for treaties—to ensure democratic scrutiny of foreign entanglements.
As the WSJ demonstrates, Congress has shown little curiosity about these classified deals despite its power to demand oversight and withhold funding.
Global security suffers from its fealty.
In the early hours of September 10th, nineteen Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace. For the first time in NATO's 76-year history, alliance fighter jets opened fire on hostile forces within member territory.
Polish F-16s scrambled to intercept while air defenses across the country roared to life. Warsaw's Chopin Airport—the nation's largest—went dark. Two more airports fell silent. Emergency alerts flooded Polish cell phones as citizens scrambled for shelter in scenes that hadn't played out since World War II.
When the threat was neutralized, debris from sixteen drones lay scattered across eleven Polish settlements. One fragment struck a military base. Polish prosecutors identified the wreckage: Russian-made drones
Prime Minister Donald Tusk's words cut through diplomatic niceties: "This situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II." Poland immediately invoked Article 4 of the NATO treaty—only the eighth time in alliance history that a member has demanded urgent consultations over threats to collective security.
NATO and American responses were resolute: both pledged to "defend every inch” of NATO territory, while Secretary-General Rutte announced "Operation Eastern Sentry"—a new multi-domain defensive umbrella stretching from the Baltic to Bulgaria.
Denmark pledged two F-16s, France committed three Rafale fighters, and Germany added four Eurofighters.
Instead of exposing NATO weakness, Putin’s drone incursion revealed its resolve—and triggered immediate reinforcements across freedom’s eastern frontier.
The numbers are staggering: 4.25 billion people—more than half of humanity—now live under regimes where press freedom is classified as “very serious,” marking the steepest decline in 50 years. Democracy has weakened in 94 countries over five years, with only one-third showing improvement.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s bombshell report exposes how autocrats worldwide have weaponized “disinformation” as pretext to crush independent media. Since 2019, 43 countries have seen measurable declines in press freedom—the sharpest drop since IDEA began tracking in 1975. Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, and Myanmar posted the biggest falls, but South Korea’s dramatic decline reveals how quickly democracies can turn: police raids on journalists’ homes and defamation suits preceded former president Yoon Suk Yeol’s removal.
Even in supposed media havens, collapse can come overnight. The shuttering of Newshub in New Zealand left nearly 80% of journalists working for just five companies, a corporate chokehold that stifles dissent as effectively as government censorship. Less than 8% of the world’s population now lives where press freedom is classified as “satisfactory.”
The United States fares far better than these authoritarian regimes but now ranks in the mid-range of press freedom. IDEA warns that America’s democratic backsliding—marked by polarization, ownership concentration, and executive overreach—matters because it accelerates authoritarian contagion worldwide.
The battlefield for liberty now runs through newsrooms, and the front lines are collapsing.
Freedom Fighter of the Week: Anina
"Don't tolerate being looked down on, or hit, or whatever they do because you're a woman. Fight back. If you get a slap, slap them back.”
No one dares slap 18-year-old Anina these days. Cradling an Indian rifle, her teddy bear tucked into her tactical vest, she has become one of the most lethal snipers in the Myanmar resistance.
"She was the best sniper in training," says her commander, Olivia Thawng Luai, a former national karate champion now fighting a regime that has murdered over 6,400 civilians and tortured 142 children since seizing power in 2021. Acting on her motherly instincts, Luai failed to convince her to quit.
In many ways, Anina is a typical teenager. She loves her boyfriend, cartoons and soccer. Until recently, TikTok dancing brightened her days. “Any kind of dancing,” she says. Her friends chose “Anina” as her nom de guerre because it sounds like “close by” in Burmese—they say they can always feel her presence.
Though fierce, Anina’s humble words reveal her enduring innocence: “I hate people boasting about how many they’ve killed,” she says. “I stopped counting after three.”
Anina has watched her friends fall one by one. "Because of them, I have lost many friends," she explains, pointing to the junta transport plane thundering past.
Now she hunts alone through Falam's mountains, the only woman among hundreds of fighters besieging the military's hilltop fortress. Chinese and Russian jets scream overhead. Artillery shells and rocket-propelled grenades crater the earth around her. She moves in deadly silence, shooting from 50 to 700 meters, never lingering—because hesitation means death.
She misses her parents dearly. “I want to go home sometimes,” she says. “But if I return, my parents won’t let me leave again. I’ll stay until we win.”
Despite her defiance, the cost of tyranny still echoes in her words: "These days, I don't feel like dancing so much."
Based entirely on reporting by The Guardian
Gaffes, Corrections, and Utter Humiliations
In last week’s global episode, I cited the 30,000 American cocaine-related deaths of 2023 as “part of the deadliest opioid epidemic in U.S. history.”
Cocaine is a stimulant, not an opioid. That said, many cocaine deaths now involve fentanyl contamination. Had I said “drug epidemic” instead, the piece would have been accurate.
Refer a Friend:
If you've enjoyed this episode of Dispatches from the Rebellion, please consider referring a friend. Forward this email and ask them to click on the "Subscribe" button below to sign up.
|