Michael Hollister

Michael Hollister

  • Joined: 20. October 2025
  • Articles: 205

Insider Trading Before Caracas

Donald Trump admitted on live television that he had informed oil companies in advance of a planned military operation. A hedge fund billionaire had purchased a Venezuelan refinery group six weeks earlier at half its appraised value. A Special Forces soldier bet on Maduro's fall using classified knowledge - and was arrested. Three trails, one pattern: how foreign policy decisions and private wealth accumulation have merged into a single architecture in the United States.

Buying Time at Any Cost – Part 8

The United States still holds military superiority - but the window is closing. China is catching up, Russia is seeking allies, Europe is rearming. Is this historical coincidence or the architecture of a grand strategy? An analysis of the structural pressures driving Washington to manage multiple conflict zones simultaneously - and who ends up footing the bill.

The War Before the War – Part 7

Wars do not begin with the first shot. They begin with the removal of every obstacle that has so far prevented it. Treaties are terminated, infrastructure is adapted, industries are converted, language is shifted. Sixteen concrete changes between 2014 and 2026 have transformed Europe from a peace order into a state of war readiness - without any formal decision, without parliamentary approval, without the public grasping the whole. From the end of the INF Treaty through the "Military Schengen", the conversion to a war economy, and the dissolution of command chains, to the dismantling of international crisis communication: each step on its own plausible. All of them together, a pattern. An inventory of what has already happened before the word war is even spoken.

Israel: What the UN Committee against Torture Found – Part 2

On 22 December 2025, the UN Committee against Torture published its concluding observations on Israel's sixth periodic review. What they contain is stronger than most reports suggest: the Committee sees evidence pointing to a de facto state policy of organised and widespread torture - and references findings that name war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the actus reus of genocide.

Epstein: Money Laundering, Drugs, Redacted Names – and No Indictment

A 69-page DEA memo, buried for years and released heavily redacted in January 2026: from 2010 onward, Jeffrey Epstein was the target of a federal investigation at the level of transnational organized crime - for drug trafficking and money laundering, with bank accounts across four jurisdictions and 14 redacted co-targets. Not a single indictment followed. The prosecutors who charged Epstein with sex trafficking in 2018 knew nothing about it. Today, Senator Ron Wyden is fighting active resistance from the Justice Department to obtain the unredacted files - while two major banks reported billions in suspicious transactions only after Epstein's death. A trail through the money, the structures, and what did not happen.

Israel: The System Behind the Bars – Part 1

Torture in Israeli detention facilities is not a loss of control - it is the product of a legal and institutional framework that enables abuse, conceals it, and keeps it free from consequences. Three special-law instruments, three agencies, zero indictments in two years: A reconstruction of the detention architecture that has been systematically expanded since 7 October 2023.

EU-“War-Ready in Three Weeks” – Part 5

Europe never voted for an army – it quietly built one. Under the technocratic label PESCO, the EU has assembled a deployable military structure, operational within weeks. This article exposes how European war-fighting capability was constructed without public debate, democratic mandate, or formal declaration – and why only the trigger is still missing.

Georgia: The Mechanism Nobody Knows…

A mechanism invoked only 16 times in 35 years - its previous targets: Belarus, Chechnya, Turkmenistan. Now Georgia has been added to that list. An EU candidate country whose government has jailed opposition leaders, dismantled civil society through legislation, and allegedly sprayed protesters with a chemical agent abandoned after World War I. What the Moscow Mechanism is, why it is so rarely used - and what its activation against Georgia reveals about a country that just three years ago was celebrated as a post-Soviet success story.

INTRO – The Prepared War – 9 Parts

Wars don't come out of nowhere. They are prepared - in budget debates, treaty clauses, industry conferences, and legal documents almost no one reads. Michael Hollister has read them. Across nine parts, he reconstructs how Germany and Europe are being systematically converted for war: the war economy, the EU military architecture, the legal automatisms that require no vote. Every part is a piece. Only when you see them all does the mosaic emerge - and what might come next becomes visible.