RANT: SILENCE! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

  

I DID A POST on 8 January, about Belgium-based ret. Colonel Jacques Baud* and how the EU is sanctioning him because his analysis and public posts contradicts and challenges government narratives and MSM (mainstream media) reporting. For his ‘crime’ he was “sanctioned” by the EU, and his life was put through the ringer when his bank accounts were frozen, his freedom of movement curtailed, his right to earn a living and pay his bills was throttled, and he was denied access to basic services from government or private companies. EU strictures allow only a modest stipend for personal needs, and for a time, he could not even buy a loaf of bread, unless he paid in cash. “Although the regulation allows minimal subsistence payments…the effect is to paralyse a person economically and professionally.” (The Bullet) Recently, there has been a campaign collecting over 4200 signatures from academics, analysts, journalists and political figures that has been presented to the European Commission demanding his name be removed from the sanctions list. As of this writing, those draconian penalties are still in place.

 

AND WHEN you’re whistling past a graveyard, giving thanks such a thing can’t happen over here, across ‘the pond’, well, think again.¹  Scott Ritter, a former US Marine who fought in the first Gulf War and afterwards became a United Nations Weapons Inspector in Iraq responsible for ensuring Saddam Hussein had no WMD (weapons of mass destruction) stockpiles or facilities to manufacture biological or nuclear materials. He was in Iraq, in this capacity, from 1991-98.  He is an author, a geopolitical analyst and political commentator who speaks truth to power and challenges Western governments’ standard talking points and mainstream media narratives with respect to Ukraine and other global hotspots. On 11 January 2026, Scott was “debanked”. His bank of twenty-three years closed his accounts, cancelled his credit and debit cards, and froze all his assets. He couldn’t buy gas for his car, pay his bills, or do anything which would involve using his chequing account. He couldn’t receive electronic payment for his journalism because he didn’t have a place to deposit the payment. IIRC Scott mentioned in a Judge Napolitano interview that the bank was supposed to be sending him a cashier’s cheque within two weeks. It’s unclear whether that has happened. Of course, that would mean finding another bank to deposit the cheque his former bank deigns send him, but who’s to say that wouldn’t happen at his new bank? In Scott’s case, a private corporation acts against him, crippling his livelihood, at least for a time.²  With Colonel Baud it is the EU Commission and its sanctioning regime.

 

    The emperor never did have any clothes

DIFFERENT AVENUES OF REPRESSION, but with the same goal—to cripple or destroy each "target’s" freedom of expression and to silence their voices. Both Scott and the Colonel are critics of the foreign policy of the United States and the EU. Both are critics of the wars in Ukraine and the Levant. Both challenge the rationales made by their governments for going to war or for sponsoring proxy wars of aggression. Both expose government lies, malfeasance and corruption, and lay bare the flaccid, foolish leadership we have throughout the West today. 

 

👉WE LIVE in increasingly dangerous times, and it is therefore of the utmost importance that clear-sighted critics be allowed to speak their minds and to make public those insights and evaluations people need to know in order for them to make informed choices.

  

CHEERS, JAKE.  _____________________________________

 

* “Jacques Baud, a former Swiss army colonel and strategic analyst, is a regular guest on pro-Russian television and radio programmes. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda and makes conspiracy theories, for example accusing Ukraine of orchestrating its own invasion in order to join NATO. Therefore, Jacques Baud is responsible for, implementing or supporting actions or policies attributable to the Government of the Russian Federation which undermine or threaten stability or security in a third country (Ukraine) by engaging in the use of information manipulation and interference.”— EU Charge sheet (Annex #57) for Colonel Baud published 15 December 2025, signed by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas.

 

1. And 2022's "Trucker Protests"? There's more where that came from (brought to you by the former Minister of Finance, Chrystina "Crissy" Freeland.) Don't get me started!

 

2. Scott goes into detail in his Substack article how his troubles have unfolded, and it's a safe bet that the FBI or another "three-letter" security agency whispered in the ear of some panjandrum at Citizens Bank's corporate headquarters to lean on Scott, eventually designating him a "high risk" customer and debanking him.

 

[Street art by FUKT]