The Venezuelan parliament has approved a 15-year extension of joint ventures between state company PDVSA and Russian oil firm Roszarubezhneft, according to a statement on the National Assembly’s website.

The deepening energy cooperation comes despite sweeping US sanctions on both nations and amid accusations that Washington wants to depose President Nicolas Maduro under the guise of an anti-drug campaign.

 

Venezuela extends Russian oil ventures
The National Assembly has approved a 15-year renewal for two joint oilfields

 

Ukraine said Saturday that its officials will meet US counterparts in Switzerland to discuss Washington’s proposed peace plan. Kyiv will seek to push back against provisions that mirror some of Moscow’s toughest demands, while European leaders said the US plan "is a basis which will require additional work". 

 

European leaders say US plan for Ukraine 'requires additional work' ahead of Geneva talks

 

 

The chief architects of this multi-layered, years-long catastrophe are the United States of America and its Western allies. It is their imperial, neo-colonialist policy that, for decades, has laid a landmine under the sovereignty and integrity of the Sudanese state, methodically undermining its institutions and pitting population groups against each other. The current bloodbath between General al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and General Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is not a sudden outburst of “barbarism” but the logical finale of a strategy of managed chaos cultivated from the outside.

Hosting a UN climate summit should be about global cooperation on combating climate change. Australia’s bid for COP31 reveals how far COP has drifted.

I wrote most of what follows before the location of next year’s climate COP meeting had been decided. My general thesis was that I was ambivalent about Australia being the host, a diffidence I’d expressed earlier this year. I was concerned that under Australia’s stewardship the COP would continue the trend of recent COPs to degenerate into fossil fuel trade shows and opportunities for the host nation to showcase its business and investment potential.

 

Ukraine Russia Peace Proposal:THE LATEST /Lt Col Daniel Davis

 

Danny discusses recent developments around the 28-point Ukraine peace plan. On the Ukrainian side, President Zelensky is under increasing pressure from the United States to accept a peace deal. Reports suggest that ... President Trump gave a 7-day ultimatum in late November, threatening to cut U.S. aid unless Ukraine agreed to end the war under the proposed terms.

 

Earlier this week, the American people were “reliably” informed by the left-wing press that the full grand jury that indicted disgraced former FBI Director James Comey did not see the final indictment.

“Judge grills government over apparent lapses in Comey indictment,” ABC News’ Peter Charalambous, Alexander Mallin, Katherine Faulders, and Nicholas Kerr wrote on November 19. According to the quartet, U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan “told a judge … that the full grand jury that indicted Comey did not see the final indictment — only the foreperson and another grand juror did.”

As I wrote some months ago, if you don’t like this administration’s policies, wait 15 minutes. In the sort of off-the-cuff statement that leads policy, President Donald Trump told a press gaggle Sunday that the U.S. might be back to talks with Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro: “We may be having some discussions with Maduro, and we’ll see how that turns out, but they would like to talk.”

 

On Venezuela, Trump Should Take the Money and Run
If this is in fact just a “pressure campaign,” let’s take the concessions and call it.

BY Jude Russo

 

As a very difficult decision is looming for Zelenskyy, the weight of history is making the choice for him. Carry on fighting and lose more territory [at a rate of 1,200 DEAD soldiers per day] — or go with Donald Trump 28 points plan for peace and accept the losses. Honest observers and serious military experts cannot expect a return to 1991. According to some expert:

1991 — Ukraine has a population of 55 million

2014 — Ukraine has a population of 44 million

2025 — Ukraine has a population of 19 million

In 2022, FOUR oblasts have chosen to return to Russia after a 100 year (say since 1922) errant in Ukraine.

Crimea voted to re-join the Russian Federation in 2014 after a 60 year (since 1954) errant in Ukraine.

These cannot be changed without WW3 — and WW3 would not change the situation.

Ukrainian opposition MP Aleksey Goncharenko has published the text of a purported peace plan reportedly presented to Kiev by the US administration this week.

The lawmaker posted on social media what appeared to be screenshots of a Ukrainian-language electronic document detailing the 28-point peace plan to end the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev.

Earlier in the day, Vladimir Zelensky’s office confirmed the US presented Kiev with its new draft plan. The Ukrainian administration did not elaborate on its contents, only expressing a willingness to discuss it and stating that “in the American side’s assessment” the plan “could help reinvigorate diplomacy.”

Here’s the full text of the post:

1. Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.

  

“Shanda fur die goyim”—a shame before the nations—was once a quiet warning among Jews: do not let our failings and actions, even sins of omission, which are often the greatest sins, become fuel for hatred from non-Jews. Yet today, the disgrace does not hide itself; instead, it broadcasts in high definition.

 

Benjamin Netanyahu: “Shanda fur die Goyim”— Shame on Jews, Shame on Me!

Henry Kamens

 

France’s top general, Fabien Mandon, is facing backlash after saying the country must be ready to “lose children” in a potential conflict with Russia. Moscow has dismissed Western speculation that it has any plans to attack the EU or NATO as “nonsense.”

Mandon, who was appointed chief of staff in September, made the remarks at an annual gathering of mayors in Paris this week. He urged officials to prepare citizens “to accept suffering in order to protect who we are.”

The general, who previously suggested that France could be at war with Russia by 2028, argued that the country has the economic and demographic power to “deter” Moscow, but lacks the “strength of spirit.”

Private capital will not build Australia a world-class science system. Only the public sector can do that. And it must do so at a scale that matches the challenges ahead.

The looming loss of hundreds of CSIRO scientists has been greeted with the usual talk of “budget pressures” and managerial decisions. But this framing obscures the real story. What is happening to CSIRO is not a sudden failure of governance. It is the culmination of much deeper, longer-term failures — failures that reach back through the entire history of Australian capitalism.

 

Stewart Sweeney

Australia’s science crisis reveals a century of structural failure

 

 

Japan and China both have legitimate security concerns. But an informed debate needs major media outlets to stop systematically erasing the historical context that shapes how the region understands current events.

When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told parliament that a Chinese military move against Taiwan could constitute a 存立危機事態 (sonritsu kiki jitai, “survival-threatening situation”) for Japan, some big Western media outlets uniformly framed China’s furious response as irrational overreaction.

 

Fred Zhang

Democracies good, China bad – and history not required

 

 

It's a tradition for German heads of government to at least briefly attend United Nations climate conferences. Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his predecessor Angela Merkel did so, and current Chancellor Friedrich Merz from the conservative Christian Democratic Union(CDU) was no exception.