US President Donald Trump has suggested that neighboring Arab countries should take in Palestinian refugees and “clean out” the embattled Gaza Strip.

Speaking to journalists aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said that he spoke to King Abdullah II of Jordan over the war and was planning to speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Sunday.

“I’d like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump said. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, we just clean out that whole thing. It’s a real mess.”

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“I do hold the view that the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British,” he said. “Not that they were perfect by any means, but they were infinitely more successful and beneficent colonisers than other European countries.” – John Howard, October 26, 2023.

In confirmation of our erstwhile prime minister’s perspicuity, there follows an extract from a venturer’s Memorial from the late 1720s to his Majesty, the Hanoverian George II.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has warned against ending support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression.

Source: Pistorius quoted by Zeit, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Pistorius said that Ukraine needs to be able to act from a position of strength and possibly "be able to negotiate at some point".

Quote: "If we stop supporting Ukraine tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow that will be the end of Ukraine – the end of a sovereign, free state in the centre of Europe."

Details: Pistorius also addressed calls for support to be withdrawn because this is not Germany's war.

The year 2025 had barely started when the outgoing Joe Biden administration presented a belated 'holiday gift' to Russian oil exporters. Washington announced a new sanctions package – the “most significant” yet, according to US officials.

This time, it affected Russian oil giants Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz. These companies already face restrictions on access to American financing and technology, but now it seems that the US and UK are about to impose more severe sanctions on the Russian oil giants. 

In a daring thought experiment, imagine just for a moment that you are the powerful president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). You are sitting next to a cozy fireplace in a mountain retreat, looking out of a panoramic window and musing about the ‘Middle Kingdom’. What is your sweeping vista of China’s current standing and what future do you envision for this dragon beyond the distant summits in a rapidly changing world, where conventional truth is apparently being pulverized at lightning speed?

Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass № 10: China’s silky future in a realigned world

The country’s road ahead looks increasingly bleak, but it has great countercyclical expansion potential via domestic and international rebalancing...

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is set to cruise to victory after more than 30 years in power. Sunday's presidential election has been slammed as a sham, with his rivals broadly seen as government stooges.

Polling stations opened in Belarus on Sunday for a presidential election in which long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko — in power since 1994 — is seen as certain to be declared the winner.

Top Trump ally Elon Musk has publicly thrown down the gauntlet to the world's leading liberal 'philanthropist' and his NGOs' color revolution-fueling soft power influence operations. Sputnik asked a leading independent political commentator what this could mean under Trump 2.0.

Open Society Foundations chairman Alex Soros has put a brave face on the losses facing by his father's neoliberal philanthropic empire now that Joe Biden is gone and MAGA has turned to Washington with a vengeance.

Why Soros' Soft Power Empire is More Vulnerable Than Ever With Trump Back at the Helm

Will Thomas, assistant professor of business law at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, has been keenly and carefully following the legal twists and turns surrounding Donald Trump.

Thomas explores where things stand now that Trump is back in the White House:

“Unprecedented legal entanglements continue to cast a shadow. A New York trial court recently sentenced Trump over 34 felony counts of falsifying business records—crimes stemming from efforts to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.

I have been reading Stan Grant’s beautiful new book, Murriyang song of time (Bundyi: Sydney 2024). There is in it a sentence pertaining to the Uluru Statement of the Heart and the subsequent failed Referendum. Stan Grant says, poignantly, that ‘the Uluru Statement spoke from the afflicted to a nation that has never loved us.’

It is a very painful experience to feel unloved.

To feel, as Stan says, that it felt like the nation never fully listened to the Statement.

Republicans routed Democrats in the 2024 election. The coming year offers a chance for the defeated party to figure out if the last cycle was a realignment or an electoral anomaly.

There has been lots of soul-searching and finger-pointing in recent weeks; that will continue for months as Democrats sort through the results and test theories about how to win in this environment.

By Nia-Malika Henderson / Bloomberg Opinion

We can get a sense of where the party is moving by watching five key leadership contests in 2025:

The US Senate has confirmed army veteran and Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth as the next secretary of defense on Friday.

Vice President J.D. Vance arrived in the chamber and cast the tie-breaking vote, sealing Hegseth’s appointment.

Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Mitch McConnell broke ranks and joined the Democrats in voting no.

Hegseth, who wrote a book about the need to restore a “warrior culture,” has promised to boost combat-readiness and the prestige of military service.

During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, he pledged to be “laser-focused on warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards, and readiness.”

President Donald Trump said Hegseth will be “a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy.”

This is the political season to be thankful for small favors of optimism, and in this edition of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer and guest Joe Lauria, editor of the Consortium News website, are excited to have found a gift of striking significance to what remains of the practice of serious journalism on the internet. It is Donald Trump’s delivery on a promise in his inauguration address that “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all censorship and bring back free speech to America.”

It’s January in Australia and so the annual Australia Day political circus has rolled into town. It started much earlier this year, with Peter Dutton and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price working to grab some headlines before the upcoming election. Their followers have declared January is now “Australia Month” and have washed through social media with absurd lies and conspiracy theories about Aboriginal people. Yes, that crock about Aboriginal people wiping out the original pygmy race has been dug out again.

FOR GUS Leonisky, this is a personal issue. When JFK was assassinated, Gus was visiting someone who had been working for the family. The person is long dead, but the tears are still alive. GUS has been waiting 62 years to find out WHO killed JFK…

I think the files won’t reveal who did it… The CIA and the Secret Service wouldn’t have squealed or reported on one of their own. The files might contain the missing forensic pieces of the puzzle which we have explored in UNCLE GEORGE…

But we might be surprised....

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Jack Schlossberg, the only grandson of John F. Kennedy (JFK), has lashed out at US President Donald Trump for his decision to declassify files related to JFK’s assassination in 1963.

Donald Trump’s return to power for a second term has sent ripples across the globe. On his first day in office, he wielded executive authority with vigour, signing many executive orders, including withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement for the second time. This move reversed the country’s climate commitments yet again, signalling Trump’s prioritisation of energy dominance and domestic interests.