Hello Reader,
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When concrete and steel crushed sixteen lives in Novi Sad, 100,000 marched in protest. A year later, the Trump family has added fuel to their fury. Elsewhere, corpses pile in morgues as a president claims 98% of the vote, and a Communist victory paradoxically marks a socialist defeat.

The Global Fight for Freedom

1. Western Fear Drives Putin Forward
2. A Communist Victory Worth Celebrating
3. Trump Tower, Built on Serbia's "Humiliation"
4. Corpses Pile High in Tanzania
5. China Threatens to Cut Japan's "Dirty Neck"

Note: No Dispatches over Thanksgiving weekend. The next episode drops one week from today. Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking.

Russian forces are tightening a noose around Pokrovsk, the industrial rail hub anchoring Ukraine's eastern defenses. Moscow has concentrated over 150,000 troops for the assault. Roughly 400 have infiltrated the city. Yet Ukraine's elite "Skala" regiment just cleared Russian forces from the railway station and city center, killing nearly 400 Russians since early November.
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Ukrainian commanders insist they still hold the city and have cleared a supply route, but they remain largely encircled. 21 months of fighting have left Pokrovsk on the edge of collapse.
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Meanwhile, Europe quibbles. Brussels—Europe's Capital of Capitulation—won't unlock $162 billion in Russian assets frozen by Belgium's Euroclear. They cite litigation risk and the impact on foreign investment, but Moscow's threats drive them. Now Europe scrambles to protect Belgium from consequences—as Putin pushes forward.
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This despite Russia's covert war on Europe's doorstep: Serbian nationals arrested last week for sabotage; Poland's discovery of rail line sabotage—bolts loosened, wiring sliced, accelerants soaked into gravel. Putin is terrorizing European populations to test red lines and break their leaders' resolve.
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Yet the entire West refuses to apply its leverage. Europe won't offer Ukraine security guarantees beyond the vague promises of 2024, fearing provocation. Meanwhile, Trump's oil sanctions are finally biting: Russia's flagship grade trades at 17% discounts. 240 million barrels are stranded at sea. This week, Washington forced Gazprom to sell its majority stake in Serbian gas giant NIS, costing Moscow billions.
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But half of Russia's exports still flow to China, and Trump won't apply his sanction authority to Beijing amid a trade détente—and China's rare-earth mineral leverage.
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Enter Trump’s 28-point peace plan, which looks like it was drafted by a mock U.N.—in a Moscow high school. Ukraine must surrender territory Russia doesn't control, cap its military, and never join NATO.
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Now Zelenskyy faces “one of the most difficult moments in our history": lose U.S. support or keep fighting. With so much power left unwielded, the question remains—why?

On November 16th, a Communist won the first round of the Chilean presidential election, capturing 27% of the vote.
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I was thrilled.
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That’s because Jeannette Jara faced no opposition from the left, while pro-market forces splintered across multiple candidates—making her plurality victory a resounding defeat for Chile’s four-year experiment with socialism. The combined right-wing vote exceeded 70%, marking the weakest performance for Chile's far left since democracy returned in 1990.
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Conservative José Antonio Kast placed second with 24% of the vote. Mainstream media brands him "far-right"—the media’s favorite designation to reject all conservatives. But this time, they have a point.
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Kast promises hundreds of kilometers of ditches and walls to halt the flood of migrants, as nearly 500,000 Venezuela migrants strain national resources. Yet his hardline stance extends beyond immigration. The devout Catholic father of nine fiercely opposes same-sex marriage and divorce, embracing ultraconservative social positions that alienate many voters.
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Yet his free-market credentials shine. Kast vows to slash $6 billion in spending from the bloated budget, eliminate wasteful ministries, and cut corporate taxes—adding fuel to Latin America's burgeoning free-market revolution. Bolivia just elected centrist Rodrigo Paz after socialist rule collapsed. Libertarian Johannes Kaiser captured 14% of the Chilean vote. After the vote, Kaiser and conservative Evelyn Matthei immediately endorsed Kast, making him the heavy favorite in December's decisive battle.
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Whether he'll match Javier Milei's economic success remains unclear. Kast’s enthusiasm for Bukele's imprisonment of 80,000 Salvadorans without trial raises valid fears. But his 24% showing demands moderation— and at least Chile won't be run by a communist.

It was midday on an ordinary Friday at the railway station in Serbia's second-largest city, Novi Sad. Travelers passed through the entrance with their luggage while others sat on benches outside—as the steel tension rods holding the canopy above began to fray.
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When they snapped, the front window shattered, sending glass shards raining onto the crowd below. Then 300 tons of concrete and steel collapsed. Fourteen people died instantly—the youngest was six years old. Two more would die from their wounds.
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The tragedy revealed corruption's deadly cost. Serbian officials took bribes to greenlight shoddy work by Chinese contractors, who slashed costs and ignored engineering standards.
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The following month, 100,000 marched in Belgrade, demanding an end to President Aleksandar Vučić's 13-year reign. On November 1st, the tragedy’s first anniversary, 100,000 filled the streets again.
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Students across the country have sustained the rebellion. Now their fury has fresh fuel: Vučić is handing a protected monument—Yugoslavia's former defense ministry, bombed hollow by NATO jets in 1999—to Jared Kushner's firm for Trump Towers Belgrade. The deal includes zero upfront payment, a generous 99-year lease, and demolition of the ruins for just 22.5% equity. The government designated the project "national priority," bypassing regulations. Prosecutors are investigating whether documents were forged to strip heritage protections.
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Vučić is courting influence. He knows the fight over Kosovo's independence is won in Washington, and greasing Trump's family may advance Belgrade’s claim.
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Savo Manojlović, leader of opposition party Kreni-Promeni, called the deal "a symbol of legal violations, corruption, and national humiliation."
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With all due respect, Mr. Manojlović, the humiliation is ours.

As police advance, a woman carrying a stick flees, her back to the jostling camera. Slow motion replay reveals a hole suddenly appearing in the fabric of her lavender blouse. She drops instantly. Blood spreads—first around her stomach, then across her back. Another woman bends to reach her: "Mama, mama, stand,” she pleads.
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It’s too late. The woman in lavender was three months pregnant.
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Nearby, a protester shouts "f**k you" at officers. Seconds later, another young man in a red t-shirt collapses in a pool of blood—shot in the head. The man filming the scene screams “Oh my God, this is our Tanzania!”
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CNN analysis confirmed the shots in the shocking footage were fired by Tanzanian security forces over 300 feet away. The woman and man may have held stones, but they posed no immediate threat. They were killed for protesting Tanzania’s October 29^th election, in which President Samia Suluhu Hassan claimed victory with 98% of the vote.
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In Mwanza, images captured 10 bodies piled on a stretcher outside a hospital. In Dar es Salaam, footage showed dozens of corpses stacked in a morgue, their families unable to find them. Satellite imagery revealed freshly dug soil at Kondo cemetery—likely mass graves. Chadema—Tanzania’s main opposition party—claims 2,000 have been killed.
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Hassan has transformed into a monster. After jailing opposition hero Tundu Lissu on treason charges, she barred Chadema from the ballot. After protests erupted, she shut down the internet for six days—suppressing videos that would expose the massacre. Hassan’s CCM party, in power since 1961, tolerates no opposition.
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Lissu remains defiant from his cell. Now thousands more have joined his rebellion. Hassan's bullets cannot kill what they've awakened.

On November 10^th on X, a mid-level Chinese diplomat threatened to "cut off" the "dirty neck" of the woman who just became Japan's first female prime minister.
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Sanae Takaichi—who once drove a motorcycle and played drums in a heavy metal band—triggered Beijing's fury by boldly announcing that a Chinese push to seize Taiwan would threaten Japan's survival. Under Japan's largely pacifist constitution, such a threat would justify mobilizing defense forces.
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It was perhaps the most forceful defense of Taiwan by a Prime Minister in Japan’s history.
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In July, China surged 66 warplanes across the Taiwan Strait median line, its largest breach since 2022. In September, the PLA rehearsed "joint blockade operations" around Taiwan's major ports. In October, Beijing deployed new amphibious assault ships to the Eastern Theater Command and began round-the-clock drone sorties over Taiwan's offshore islands—open assault preparation.
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On Sunday, China responded more formally. Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused Takaichi of "crossing a red line" while calling on all countries to "prevent the resurgence of Japanese militarism"—apparently convinced the ghost of Hirohito still haunts East Asia.
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But Japan's rocker-turned-politician shows no signs of backing down. Since taking office, she has raised defense spending to 2% of GDP, ramped up Japan's defense posture in the Nansei Islands, backed arms exports and defense industry upgrades, and tilted decisively toward the U.S.
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Japan's era of self-imposed military impotence is over, and the world is better for it. Rock on, Ms. Prime Minister. Rock on.

Freedom Fighter of the Week: Boniface Mwangi

Teargas turned Nairobi into choking fog on July 7th as armored vehicles crushed barricades and police opened fire. Inside that chaos, Boniface Mwangi pulled the wounded to safety. By nightfall, 31 protesters lay dead across the country—Kenya's bloodiest single day since Gen Z erupted 13 months earlier.
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Within two weeks, they came for him.
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The raid was inevitable. For 20 years, Kenya's most fearless activist has waged war against the ruling cartel—capturing images of the 2007 massacres that killed 1,100, founding PAWA254 as a resistance hub, naming corrupt ministers in broadcasts, and marching against extrajudicial killings that have now claimed over 120 Kenyans. When politicians demanded raises in 2013, he released blood-drenched pigs at Parliament. When police murdered protesters last year, he carried their coffins through the streets. Even his enemies quote him: "corruption kills."
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Defiance has a price. In May, Tanzanian forces detained, blindfolded, and tortured Mwangi after he traveled to support opposition leader Tundu Lissu's treason trial—East Africa's authoritarian wave now crushing dissent across borders.
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This summer's protests—triggered by blogger Albert Ojwang's death in custody and crushing youth unemployment—pushed the nation to combustion. June 25th brought thousands marking the anniversary of parliament's storming. 19 died.
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Police raided Mwangi's home on July 19th, charging him with "terrorism" and money laundering for allegedly organizing June's protests—fabricated evidence, planted ammunition. Outside the courthouse, wrists still bruised, he told reporters what Ruto fears most: "Our leaders must fear the people."
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Prosecutors dropped the terrorism and money laundering charges—too absurd even for Kenya's courts—downgrading to ammunition possession. But the message landed. One man, standing in the open, can terrify a government armed to the teeth.

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