French President Emmanuel Macron “betrayed” Friedrich Merz by failing to back the German chancellor’s push to steal Russian assets frozen in the EU to fund Ukraine, the Financial Times has claimed.

Earlier this week, EU leaders failed to agree on the European Commission’s controversial proposal to use Russia's immobilized central bank funds to finance Kiev’s military and economy.

IS DONALD TRUMP DOING HIS BIT AND TRYING TO PREVENT GLOBAL WARMING BY PREVENTING RUSSIA AND VENEZUELA TO SELL THEIR OIL? ONE WOULD HAVE TO BE SARCASTIC TO SUGGEST THIS CAPER, AS DONALD WANTS HE AND HIS MATES (SAUDIS, ETC) TO HAVE EXCLUSIVE PETRODOLLAR RIGHTS ON THIS WARMING PLANET — A WARMING DUE TO THE HUMAN USAGE OF FOSSIL FUELS...................

The Arctic endured a year of record heat and shrunken sea ice as the world’s northern latitudes continue a rapid shift to becoming rainier and less ice-bound due to the climate crisis, scientists have reported.

Japan is confronting existential crises: a rapidly aging demographic, a stagnant economy, crippling debt, fraying relationships with its neighbors, and a declining regional influence. Its military buildup and sanctions against neighbouring countries are only worsening these issues.

On Japan’s Soul Searching: Between Tokyo’s Neon Facade and Aokigahara’s Dark Forest

Tamer Mansour

Against the backdrop of hysteria over “repressions in Russia,” Great Britain itself has long since transformed into a police state, where dissent is stigmatized and truth is replaced by propaganda. Putin’s response has exposed the double standards of Western media.

The Empire of Lies: How the BBC Strangles Free Speech Under the Mask of Objectivity and Why Trump is Right to Sue

Viktor Mikhin

The Smokescreen of the “Free Press”

Mourners in Australia fell silent on Sunday in honour of the victims of the Bondi Beach attack.

The memorial was part of a national day of reflection to mark a week since the shooting in which two gunmen opened fire on an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hannukah.

A 10-year-old girl, a British-born rabbi and a Holocaust survivor were among 15 people killed in the attack.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was booed when he arrived at the memorial event — an expression of anger by Australia's Jewish community against his government after a rise of antisemitic attacks over the past few months.

Reddit users have previously been shamed for running their own investigations into criminal matters, but for the Brown University shooting last Sunday one user proved vital for finding the suspect.

On December 13 a gunman killed two Brown University students and wounded nine others in their Engineering building, before escaping by foot.

How a Reddit tip proved vital for uncovering the suspect of the Brown University shooting

By Kitty Shepherd-Cross

Donald Trump has claimed that he could pay himself $1 billion in US government money as damages for a raid carried out at his Mar-a-Lago estate by the FBI.

Federal agents searched Trump’s property in Palm Beach, Florida in August 2022 as part of an investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified documents during his first term in office. Last year, the case was dismissed by a judge, who ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith did not have the authority to prosecute the president.

Trump addressed the issue during his rally in Rocky Mount, North Carolina on Friday, calling the search “illegal” and claiming that the FBI had been “forced” to conduct the operarion by the then President Joe Biden's Department of Justice (DOJ).

“These thugs are disgusting and we cannot let them get away with this stuff,” he insisted.

Prof. Jiang Xueqin reveals what no one is talking about: Israel's hidden hand in Trump's war on Venezuela and predicts the demise of US empire. In this video, he sits down with Danny Haiphong to comment on the significance of this, and the underlying competition for an Israeli empire that's being kept secret by the elites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GZuCC2V6sA

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

A fortnight ago, I wrote in these pages that there are two ways to discuss immigration. In good time, civilly and constructively. Or too late, angrily and hatefully.

With Australia teetering on a millisecond, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dithered and left it too late.

He missed the moment on October 9, 2023, the day after Hamas slaughtered 1200 civilians in Israel. 

https://www.smh.com.au/national/too-timid-too-late-albanese-dithered-as-jewish-australians-endured-attacks-20251219-p5np10.html

================

HOLD IT... HAMAS DID NOT DO THE ENTIRE DAMAGE ON THE FATEFUL 7 OCTOBER 2023... 

There is an unavoidable military reality that Europe continues to deny, even as its own officials whisper it in private briefings and NATO commanders leak the same conclusions to any journalist willing to hear. The conflict is not merely going badly for Ukraine; it is structurally unwinnable.

Strategic Reality: The Conflict of Attrition, Ukraine Cannot Win

Phil Butler

I love the optimism of Santa Claus 

Father Christmas, Père Noël and Saturnalia

I enjoy the commercialism of these times

When boots become full of joy and paraphernalia

Useless toys, new cars with CO2 exhausts

For dumb kids and environmental crimes

I love the shops and their bright windows

full of tinselling love and fake falling snows

I enjoy the commercialism of these times

When felt-bags are hung over fireplaces

To be filled by a bearded jolly man 

Driving a trolley pulled by deers with red faces

Futile plastic amusements and silly games

Made by miniature midgets at the North Pole

Or miraculously crafted by the industrious chinaman

His machines under strict communist control

Which we hate so much the West claims

But love anyway because the price is cheap

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE AT IAI news IS RELATIVELY WRONG AS IT SEEMS TO IGNORE THE NECESSARY PHYSICALITY OF MEMORY… 

Conscious experiences of change, from seeing a bird take flight to listening to a melody, cannot be broken down into ever smaller units of experience. They must inhabit what William James called the “specious present,” a sliding window of time where the immediate past and present overlap. Philosopher Lyu Zhou argues that this exposes a deep rift between mind and matter. When the physical world undergoes change, it does so through succession – one physical state replaces another, and the past is gone – whereas consciousness requires the active retention of the past inside the present, revealing its fundamentally non-physical nature.

Revelations about overseas training, intelligence failures and police responses raise urgent questions that cannot be left to internal reviews.

In a sharp piece of investigative journalism, the ABC’s Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop this week reported that the alleged Bondi terrorists, Sajid and Naveed Akram, travelled to the Philippines for ‘military style training’. This occurred in November, just weeks before they opened fire on the Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.

A new analysis by the news outlet DeSmog finds that the Trump administration’s efforts at EPA and other agencies to support coal generation, combined with growing energy demand driven by artificial intelligence, are prompting 15 U.S. coal plants to delay planned retirements this year, with one plant delaying its closure by seven years.