Ukraine is a mere tool in the hands of the collective West which is using it to fight Russia, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday. He was speaking at a military hospital in Moscow where he met servicemen wounded during the ongoing conflict.

Asked about the enduring Western support for Kiev, the president said the elites of the collective West were actually the true enemy of Russia, rather than Ukraine itself. 

“The point is not that they are helping our enemy, but that they are our enemy. They are solving their own problems with [Ukraine’s] hands, that’s what it’s all about,” Putin stated.

The Israeli military has said it expects the conflict in Gaza to continue throughout 2024. 

In a new year's message, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman said troop deployments were being adjusted to prepare for "prolonged fighting". 

James Stavridis, the retired Navy Admiral and NATO’s former supreme allied commander for Europe, has made another prediction.

At the beginning of 2023, Stavridis predicted that Russia would “be burned through and exhausted, losing so many men, so much equipment.” His prediction for Russian President Vladimir Putin? Putin will meet the same fate as Nicholas II.

BY Bradley Devlin

Despite this outlandish prediction, Stavridis had a rather sensible prescription: “Let’s all push for a negotiation sometime mid-2023.”

The presumption of innocence the French leader invoked in discussing the sexual assault allegations against the actor is a principle worth defending. But to proclaim pride in a man who regularly displays his contempt for France and his admiration for Vladimir Putin is ludicrous.

Le Monde editorial

Since 2017 and the revelations about predatory film producer Harvey Weinstein, the wave that has liberated the expression of women victims of sexist and sexual violence has also shaken up the way societies, in France as elsewhere, view these acts and their perpetrators, whether anonymous or famous. Because their lives are scrutinized by public opinion as a whole and because their behavior is considered emblematic, artists have fueled debate, often scandal and sometimes progress.

One of two Diggers to die during the Iraq conflict, Jake Kovco, was shot by his own gun, and John Howard made a great show of attending the corporal’s funeral in his small Victorian High Country hometown to calm fears and criticism about the war. But Australians remain none the wiser about what prompted the prime minister to go to war nearly 21 years ago. And they may stay in the dark for a little while longer.

The National Archives of Australia on Monday released the cabinet papers of Howard’s government, but the submissions relied upon by the nation’s spy agencies to justify the decision to join the “coalition of the willing” were missing in action.

China looms large in the Australian psyche. On a practical level, what happens in China largely determines the success of global action to deal with climate change, the profitability of our rural economy and the financing of our universities. Our national leaders are concerned about rising tensions in our region and the interplay of US-China relations. How are we to find our way through media doom and gloom and come to grips with the reality of China?

Modern Ukraine is the bastard child of (Russian) communism and (German) fascism — a child that the American Empire is trying to steal from its bickering divorced parents. The western media is supporting the robbery.

Take this crap for example by "the Conversation"...:

Ukraine can still defeat Russia, but it needs the right tools to do it.

Ukraine’s strategic position has declined over the last six months. The summer offensive, which sparked hope among Ukraine and its supporters, failed to deliver significant territorial gains.

Investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger died at age 84 on Saturday at his home in London, his family announced on Sunday in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Pilger was known for his hard-hitting exposés on the human cost of empire, from the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Iraq, to Western democracies’ systematic repression of their own working classes. His documentaries include ‘Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia’, ‘Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror’, ‘The War on Democracy’, ‘Palestine is Still the Issue’, and ‘The Coming War with China’. 

“Every journalist, even though they may not know it, owes a debt to John Pilger,” Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi told RT on Sunday, calling the award-winning filmmaker “one of the greatest journalists in all of history.”

The recent escalation in reckless Houthi attacks originating from Yemen threatens the free flow of commerce, endangers innocent mariners, and violates international law. The Red Sea is a critical waterway that has been essential to freedom of navigation and a major commercial corridor that facilitates international trade.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Statement from Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III on Ensuring Freedom of Navigation in the Red Sea

Countries that seek to uphold the foundational principle of freedom of navigation must come together to tackle the challenge posed by this non-state actor launching ballistic missiles and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) at merchant vessels from many nations lawfully transiting international waters.

That the Albanese government could further compromise Australia’s sovereignty, international integrity and national interests seemed inconceivable. Yet, intelligence, a vital government function inextricably connected with independence and protecting national interest, is being penetrated and colonised by the Americans.

A repost from August 3, 2023. 

By Mike Scrafton

On the anniversary of Baron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen's death (September 1923), the horrible man, and on the present killing of nearly 10,000 children by the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) and on the grooming of (millions of?) kids as exposed by the movie Sound of Freedom, we should ask what is wrong with the world... The answer is simple: us. 

NO WE DO NOT DO THE KILLINGS, BUT WE FIND EXCUSES FOR IT... NO, WE DO NOT DO THE ABUSE, BUT WE REFUSE TO SEE THE MOVIE....

Child sexual exploitation is a form of sexual abuse where offenders use their power, (physical, financial or emotional) over a child or young person, or a false identity, to sexually or emotionally abuse them.

Washington Pushes To Seize $300 Billion In Russian Assets As World Races To Secure Reserve Assets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5uDpM3by0k

Russia will retaliate in kind to the potential confiscation of its assets by Western countries, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Friday.

Russian authorities have assessed the unpredictability of the opposing side, as well as their tendency to violate international and other laws, Peskov stated, adding that, for now, confiscation of foreign assets in Russia can only be considered in theoretical terms.

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley retreated on Thursday from an answer she gave during a presidential town hall in New Hampshire a day earlier, in which she did not mention slavery when asked about the cause of the US Civil War.

“Of course, the Civil War was about slavery, that’s the easy part,” Haley said on Pulse of New Hampshire, a radio show. The former UN ambassador, who removed the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse in 2015, said, “Yes, I know it was about slavery. I am from the South.”

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The recent decision in Maine to ban former President Donald Trump from the state ballot in the 2024 presidential election could rapidly escalate and lead to a complete disintegration of the national US political system next year, such as happened in 1860 - leading directly to the 1861-65 Civil War, experts told Sputnik.

"This whole situation might end badly for the United States [and] lead straight to a national breakdown. Like it happened in 1860," US constitutional historian and political commentator Dan Lazare said.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows disqualified Trump from the state's Republican primary ballot because of his role [UNPROVEN] in the January 6 riot at the Capitol in 2021.

The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has surged to 20,674, the Health Ministry in the territory said yesterday.

Wounded Palestinian children, are taken to hospital after Israeli attacks on December 23, 2023 in Khan Yunis, Gaza. [Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Image.

Some 1,000 children have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its brutal bombing campaign on 7 October, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said.

It added that allowing the continued shelling of Gaza means greenlighting the killing of more children.

The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip has previously stated that nearly 70 per cent of the casualties of the aggression were children and women.