I’m not overly optimistic about 2025 (to put it mildly), but let’s hope diplomacy, reason and common sense will prevail despite the rather gloomy odds.
Anyway, wishing all of you a happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year.
Cartoon by Roald Als. Translation by me.
This morning I had quite a weird experience as I was suddenly cut off from the Internet. I noticed that the small lights on my fibernet box had gone out and tried to switch it on and off a few times, but to no avail. I then called the internet provider to try and find out what might have happened. The conversation went something like this:
Hi, this is Sophia from the Customer Service. Can I help you?
Me: Yes please. My Internet connection is not working today, so I hope you can…
Sophia: Internet! Why you want the Internet?
Me: Well, I need it for many purposes. I wonder if you could send a technician to come and…
Sophia: Technician? I don’t know the word.
Me: Well then, just send somebody who can come and…
Sophia: Hmm, I don’t know of somebody. Was this helpful?
Me: Grrr! Not at all. Goodbye, you stupid bot!
Shortly after I talked to my neighbour who said she was having the same problem. Luckily, half an hour later the connection was back and life turned normal again 🙂
Original image via The Economist, resized and partly (the robots) colourised by me.
Just one week after Marine Le Pen precipitated the collapse of the French government, on Monday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in the German Parliament on Monday, a defeat that effectively ended the increasingly unpopular government he has led since 2021 and ushered in elections early next year.
The collapse of the government just nine months before elections had been scheduled was an extraordinary moment for Germany, once Europe’s powerhouse but now a laughingstock at the mercy of both China and Russia. This will be only the fourth snap election in the 75 years since the modern state was founded, and it reflected a new era of more fractious and unstable politics in a country long known for durable coalitions built on plodding consensus.
The confidence vote, in the same month that the French government fell, deepens a crisis of leadership in Europe at a time of mounting economic and security challenges. The war in Ukraine has reached a pivotal moment, with Russia set to make decisive territorial gains and perhaps even push on toward Kiev, while president-elect Donald J. Trump is set to take office in the United States. And now, Europe’s largest and second largest economies are in the hands of a caretaker governments, as the continent is sent reeling in a tailspin of chaos and revulsion to the status quo.
Scholz had little choice but to take the unusual step of calling for the confidence vote after his three-party coalition splintered in November, ending months of bitter internal squabbling and leaving him without a parliamentary majority to pass laws or a budget. And now, the political uncertainty could last for months. The elections are expected to be held on Feb. 23, but even if, as expected, his party does not finish first, Scholz would remain in place as a caretaker chancellor until weeks after that. He would step down only after a new coalition forms, which will probably not happen until April or May according to the NYT.
Meanwhile, the establishment EU partners are looking warily toward Russia, where Putin has escalated threats about the use of nuclear weapons amid Moscow’s war against Ukraine, and where states like Germany have been providing Kiev with long-range missiles to be used deep inside Russia, in the process ensuring that relations with Moscow are abysmal for years to come.
And in typical social-democrat fashion, the leading European politicians have also been vexed by their deteriorating economic relationship with China, which has grown into a formidable competitor for many of their most important industries but has not become the booming consumer market for European products that leaders long envisioned. Instead, China has promptly become the world’s biggest producer of cars, making a mockery of what was once Germany’s most important and profitable industry, and no lies in tatters.
Full story at Zero Hedge.
Header image via The New Federalist, resized and framed by me.
The picture above shows that more than one million Syrians rallied in Damascus in support of President Bashar al-Assad and his reform program on October 12, 2011. Photo taken from a helicopter by the Syrian Arab News Agency.
Below some snippets from this article: A Short History of the War on Syria (2006-2014)
In late 2006 the United States started to finance an external opposition to Syria’s ruling Baath party. Those exiles were largely members of the Muslim Brotherhood which had been evicted from Syria after their bloody uprising against the Syrian state between 1976 and 1982 had failed. In 2007 a plan for regime change in Syria was agreed upon between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The aim was to destroy the “resistance” alliance of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
By 2011 three years of drought, caused by global warming and Turkey’s upstream dams and irrigation projects, had weakened the Syrian economy. Large parts of the poor rural population lost their means of living and moved into the cities. They provided the fertile ground needed to launch an uprising against the Syrian state.
The U.S. part in the plan was to provide the media and “global opinion” cover for the insurgency. To that purpose it used the tool from its “color revolution” tool box. “Citizen journalists” were recruited, trained and provided with the video and communication equipment needed for media propagandizing. Others were trained in organizing “peaceful civil demonstrations”. The Saudis took care of the darker part of the plan. They financed and armed rebel groups, often related to the exiled Muslim Brotherhood, which had the task to instigate a wider insurgency by taking on government forces as well as the peaceful demonstrators.
A local disturbance in Deraa near the Jordanian border was used to launch the uprising. Peaceful demonstration were held but soon shots were fired towards the police as well as towards the demonstrators. Inevitably both sides escalated. Groups armed by the Saudis target the government forces. Having colleagues killed and wounded the government forces retaliated against the demonstrators. Some of those took up arms themselves and fought the government. “Citizen journalist” propagandized the victims on the “peaceful demonstrators” side but never mentioned those on the government side. “Western” media agencies followed that scheme.
It was soon visible that the planned for “color revolution” strategy did not work. The Syrian state was more resilient than had been perceived. The Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was more beloved and respected than the insurgency instigators ever expected. He also fulfilled many of the demands the serious protesters had. The constitution was rewritten, new parties were allowed, elections held and the most abusive security forces came under stricter control. The big cities, even though predominantly Sunni, did not support or join the increasing violent and sectarian fighters. Defections from the Syrian army and from political cadres were few and unimportant. For some time the Syrian economy held up quite well. The general population as well as the government rejected the scheme of a sectarian divide.
The enemies of Syria had to increase their commitment. Saudi Arabia and Qatar used all their capabilities to recruit foreign Jihadis willing to fight in Syria. The CIA, using Saudi money, brought in weapons and thousands of tons of ammunition from all over the world. Insurgency groups were provided with training and battlefield intelligence. A group of exiles was build up as external future government.
[…]
June 4, 2014: Bashar al-Assad wins a landslide victory in the Syrian presidential poll with 88.7 percent of the vote. This will secure him a third seven-year term in office amidst a bloody civil war. Voters turned out at an amazing 73.4% and there were two other candidates running against him. The other two candidates for the top post were Hassan Abdullah Nouri, from the National Initiative for Administration and Change in Syria, and Maher Abd Al-Hafiz Hajjar, formerly from the People’s Will Party. No violations have been reported, Syria’s Higher Judicial Committee for Elections said.
According to an internal NATO study, 70% of Syrians support President Bashar al-Assad, 20% adopt a neutral position and 10% support the so-called “moderate rebels.” Also watch this documentary:
Since Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan in the 80s, the Jihadists are auxiliaries of the West, for the enforcement of Western hegemony. They are usually wrecking havoc in the countries opposed to the US and its stooges. Their relationship is alternately flaming and cooling.
Cooling on September 11, 2001, or when the new Caliphate [a reference to the former Ottoman Caliphate, the new one is also called ISIS], a dissent from al Qaeda in 2013, started threatening Western interests. Cooling when France, one of the most hysterical support of the Islamist uprising against the secular government in Syria, underwent collateral damage on November 13, 2015, in Paris.
Muhammad al Julani was already an executive of the organization when Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State (ISI), Iraqi branch of al Qaeda, detached him in Syria as commander of Jabhat al Nusra [Front for the Conquest of the Levant], its subsidiary there, in the context of the Islamist uprising which had broken in 2011. Out of personal ambition, Baghdadi seceded from al Qaeda in 2013, was appointed leader of a new Caliphate (ISIS) in June 2014, a few weeks after an incredible victory in Mosul, Iraq. Julani did not follow him, remained stand alone leader of al Qaeda in Syria.
In collaboration with Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, Syria managed to defeat the Islamist uprising in 2020, but Turkey and NATO prevented the government from finishing the job. The Jihadists remained in Idlib pocket, under Western umbrella, when other defeated groups, settled in northern Syria, where they became auxiliaries of Recep Erdogan’s Neo-Ottoman Turkey.
Read the full story by Nicolas Cinquini. Also watch CNN’s interview with Muhammad al Julani below:
After the presidents of Russia and Belarus signed security agreements in Minsk on Friday, Alexander Lukashenko asked Vladimir Putin about obtaining some of Moscow’s cutting-edge Oreshnik (Hazelnut tree) missiles. Putin said that the missiles could be deployed in Belarus in the second half of 2025, when the system fully enters service. Oreshnik missiles are capable of carrying kinetic warheads that strike at hypersonic speeds, that is up to Mach 10. Russia has already placed nuclear weapons in Belarus and expanded its nuclear protection to include Belarus as part of their Union State partnership.
Source: RT International
Header image is a screenshot from RT News, cropped and framed by me. See also:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has given an exclusive interview to conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson this week. The two talked about a wide range of topics of international concern, primarily the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the state of US-Russia relations.
Read the full text of the conversation on RT International.
Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organization said in a landmark new report published today.
The report, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity.
“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.
“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.”
Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.
“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza. It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.
“Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”
Full article: Amnesty International
Hunter Biden, the first child of a sitting US president ever to be criminally charged and convicted, was found guilty of two counts of willful tax evasion, and a separate charge related to lying about his illegal drug use while purchasing a handgun.
He was to be sentenced in both cases in mid-December before Sunday’s surprise pardon by his dad clearing the 54-year-old of legal responsibility for the crimes. The maximum penalty in the tax case was 17 years, while the gun charge carried a punishment of up to 25 years behind bars.
Along with the criminal tax charges, Hunter also faced six misdemeanor tax offenses, including failing to pay his taxes on time and making false business deductions in returns.
Through the course of the criminal investigations and trials into Hunter Biden, some observers have been peeved about the Justice Department’s focus on comparatively trivial tax and gun charges instead of potentially far more serious crimes.
Representative James Comer, chairman of a House Oversight Committee investigation into the Biden family over suspicious business activities revolving around an pay-to-play corruption scheme by Hunter which allegedly saw the collection of over $20 million in bribes to secure access to his powerful father during the Obama years, hinted as much in his reaction to Sunday’s pardon.
“Joe Biden has lied from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities. Not only has he falsely claimed that he never met with his son’s foreign business associates and that his son did nothing wrong, but he also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden,” Comer said.
In August 2024, Comer’s investigators released a damning 300-page report detailing “impeachable conduct” by the president and alleged criminal activity by his son. This included allegations related to Hunter Biden’s lucrative no-show job on the board of a Ukrainian energy company beginning in 2014 (which culminated in the post-coup government’s firing of a local prosecutor investigating suspected money-laundering activity), and charges of similar pay-to-play schemes involving corrupt business dealings with actors across Eurasia.
Source: Sputnik International. See also: The Laptop from Hell.
Header image is courtesy of Getty Images, cropped and slightly enhanced by me.
Regardless of who becomes president, the Jewish lobby will make sure that the U.S. always supports Israel unconditionally! (professor John Mearsheimer)
Original image is courtesy of AIPAC, modified by me.
Against the Grain 