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2024 was a big year for foreign influence in the U.S., in all the worst ways. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the nation’s top lobbying and public relations firms from foreign powers in 2024. The final numbers aren’t in yet, but we’re already seeing 8-figure spending from America’s allies (like Japan and Australia), adversaries (like China), and whatever Turkey and Saudi Arabia are these days … Illicit foreign influence operations, however, really had a banner year (congratulations corruption, you did it!) and garnered immense media attention. There was rampant evidence of attempted foreign meddling in the 2024 elections … The Israeli government ran big, illicit foreign influence campaigns in the U.S … and nobody cared.

The theft of mail by staff members within the United States Postal Service is an increasingly severe problem — as some employees infiltrate the agency in order to steal items. A report from the Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service Office released in October revealed … The office has seen a rapid increase in internal mail theft closed cases in recent years. There was an increase from 1,216 closed cases in fiscal year 2020 to 1,790 closed cases in fiscal year 2023 … That small minority of employees swipes packages suspected to contain “credit cards, checks, cash, gift cards, narcotics, high value articles, and other sensitive items.” Frank Albergo, the president of the Postal Police Officers Association, said in a November interview … “As bad as you think it is, it’s much worse!”

The child victims of rape were denied justice and protection from the state to preserve the image of a successful multicultural society / … Anxieties over appearing racist saw safeguarding officers waving away concerns simply because the perpetrators were Asian … A total of 7,365 sexual grooming offences were recorded by forces in 2023/24, more than any other year, and up 10.1 per cent on the previous financial year … The rule of law was abandoned to sustain the myth that diversity is our strength, destroying the lives of thousands of working class white girls in the process. This scandal starts with the onset of mass migration. This appalling affair is the final nail in the coffin for liberals who cling to the argument that Britain is an integration success story. Mass migration must end immediately …

Historian Mark Weber speaks with Manuel, a libertarian podcaster in Canada, about the importance of World War II in shaping our lives and our world today, and why the widely accepted view of the global conflict as the “Good War” is a dangerous myth. In this lively, wide-ranging discussion the two men present an informed, “revisionist” view of the war’s origins, the Soviet Stalin regime, Third Reich Germany, the British empire, “Holocaust remembrance” and the “lessons of the Holocaust,” and how popular attitudes about history and the world are sharply shifting. The two men conclude by discussing specific books that provide especially illuminating perspective on the Second World War. Runtime: one hour, 28 mins.

The Israeli government plans to offset wartime spending and an economic slowdown tax hikes and deep cuts to public services. But the proposed budget for 2025 also includes a massive new allocation: toward pro-Israel advocacy efforts abroad. Under the new budget, Israel’s Foreign Ministry will receive $150 million, on top of what it gets for its existing activities, for what’s officially known as public diplomacy, or in Hebrew, hasbara. That sum is more than 20 times what such efforts have typically been allotted in past years … The news comes as public opinion about Israel in the United States and elsewhere around the world has been intensely battered … It would be used to influence sentiment in the foreign press and on social media. Saar’s statement also said he foresees a focus on American college campuses …

Emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal how leading “anti-hate” campaigner Imran Ahmed collaborated with Israeli embassy officials to censor pro-Palestine social media accounts — and courted them for donations to his censorship-obsessed Center for Countering Digital Hate … The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has become one of the trans-Atlantic establishment’s most effective tools for censoring online speech. Its founder, Imran Ahmed, has nurtured close ties with the Biden White House since moving to Washington DC, targeting its political enemies with calls for their removal from social media. Back in his hometown of London, Ahmed was an influential advisor to the neoliberal wing of UK Labour, helping sabotage the leftist insurgency of Jeremy Corbyn and place his ally, Keir Starmer, in charge of the party.

… On June 8, 1967 – three days after Israel initiated the Six-Day War by attacking Egypt – Israeli forces launched a combined aerial and naval assault on the USS Liberty. Lasting over an hour, the unprovoked attack killed 34 Americans and wounded more than 170 others … Despite the heavy casualties and the crew’s heroic performance during and after the attack, the US government, evidently, has never investigated the responsibility of Israeli civilian leaders and military officers for ordering the unprovoked assault … The second of the three information reports correctly reported that Israeli forces had identified the Liberty prior to the attack … Kinnucan v. National Security Agency et al. has demonstrated that there is still a substantial body of documentary evidence concerning the attack on the Liberty being withheld.

In this startling work, an eminent author presents evidence of collusion between US and Israeli intelligence in the murderous 1967 attack against the USS Liberty, a US naval surveillance vessel, and in maintaining a cover-up that has endured for more than 50 years. So intense and sustained was the attack – it lasted for nearly an hour and a half – and so specific was the aiming for the antennae and satellite dish on deck, that it was scarcely credible that Israel’s aggression was not deliberate. Based on interviews with more than 40 survivors, knowledgeable political insiders, and Soviet archives of the period, investigative writer Joan Mellen presents disturbing evidence of complicity between US and Israeli intelligence in the attack, and in maintaining the decades-old cover-up.

… What if any form of stable central government might emerge from this lightning fast upending of the power dynamics in Syria? …. The boundaries of Syria were set following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, along with Jordan, [Iraq], Trans-Jordan, Lebanon and the British mandate of Palestine. The lines on the map were drawn by Mark Sykes and Georges Picot in a secret agreement in 1916, known as the Picot-Sykes Agreement, in anticipation of victory over the Turkish Ottoman Empire … Like many European borders drawn before and after the First World War, lines on maps did not match the population already present … It is not the fall of Damascus that we should focus on — it is what will happen next, and what Turkiye and Israel will do with the troublesome lands between their borders.

… In April 2019, Jimmy Carter told his church congregation in Georgia that President Trump had called him for advice about China. Carter said he told Trump that China was economically overtaking the United States as the world’s largest and most dynamic economy because the United States had spent decades wasting trillions of dollars to fight endless wars, while China had instead focused on economic development and   lifted hundreds of millions of its people out of extreme poverty. “China has not wasted a single penny on war,” Carter said, “and that’s why they’re ahead of us, in almost every way.” … Some of Trump’s statements during the election campaign suggest that he hasn’t forgotten Carter’s advice. At the very least, he got the message that peace would be good for America, and that a lot of Americans understand that.

The MAGA folks are going to be in for a rude awakening. That’s because Donald Trump has been taking to the public stage in recent weeks promising a new “golden age” of American prosperity upon his return to the Oval Office, but nearly the opposite is just around the corner. What’s actually coming down the pike is the UniParty’s revenge — a financial and economic shitshow that is likely to dwarf all that has gone before. There is no mystery as to why … We are referring to the utter fiscal paralysis that stems from the combination of the GOP’s addiction to tax cuts and Big Defense budgets and the Dem’s demagoguery about Social Security, Medicare and the rest of the Welfare State.

Elon Musk has reignited a political row about gangs of men who groomed and raped girls in England over several decades. In the past week the tech billionaire has shared a flurry of posts on his social media platform X accusing Keir Starmer and other senior politicians of covering up the scandal … Prosecutions for grooming and sexual abuse of young girls in England began in 2010, and the number of known victims is in the thousands. The northern towns of Rochdale, Oldham and Rotherham were at the centre of the scandal. In 2014, a landmark inquiry into the abuse in Rotherham by Prof Alexis Jay came to the “conservative” estimate that 1,400 children had been exploited there between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by men of Pakistani heritage.

How does the government of Israel treat Christians? In the US, Christian leaders don’t seem interested in knowing the answer. They should be. Here’s the view of a  Palestinian Christian. Tucker Carlson has come under fierce criticism for this interview with Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, who is pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, and the Lutheran Church in Beit Sahour, both in Israel-occupied Palestine. Isaac holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, a master’s degree in Religion-Biblical Studies from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and a doctorate from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies in England. He is the author of several books.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s far-right National Front who was known for fiery rhetoric against immigration and multiculturalism that earned him both staunch supporters and widespread condemnation, died Tuesday. He was 96. A polarizing figure in French politics, Le Pen was convicted numerous times of antisemitism, discrimination, and inciting racial violence. Yet, despite those convictions and his eventual political estrangement, the nativist ideas that propelled his decades of popularity — encapsulated in slogans like “French People First” — remain ascendant in today’s France, across Europe and beyond.

Former President Jimmy Carter speaks from his home in Plains, Georgia, about his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. In this interview, he talks about pressure put on the American political system that results in US support of Israel. Runtime: 4:26 mins.

The US Department of State has notified Congress of a planned $8 billion arms sale to Israel, an American official has confirmed to the BBC. The weapons consignment, which needs approval from House and Senate committees, includes missiles, shells and other munitions. The move comes just over a fortnight before President Joe Biden leaves office. Washington has rejected calls to suspend military backing for Israel because of the number of civilians killed during the war in Gaza. In August, the US approved the sale of $20 billion in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel. The latest planned shipment contains air-to-air missiles, Hellfire missiles, artillery shells and bombs, the US official said.

Since October 7, 2023, the US has provided Israel with more than $22 billion in military aid, Israel Hayom reported Wednesday, citing data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The stepped-up US military aid to Israel has supported the genocidal war in Gaza, Israel’s war in Lebanon, military operations in the occupied West Bank, and attacks on Syria, Iran, and Yemen. According to SIPRI, from 2019 to 2023, US weapons accounted for 69% of Israel’s arms imports. Since October 7, that number has risen to 78%, demonstrating Israel’s significant reliance on US military aid … An Israeli Air Force official told Haaretz that without US military aid, Israel would not be able to sustain operations in Gaza for more than a few months.

The number of people in the United States experiencing homelessness reached a new record this year, with lingering inflation and high housing prices among likely drivers, a government report said Friday. An estimated 771,480 people were homeless on a single night in January 2024, rising 18 percent from 2023, said the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in an annual assessment. This translates to about 23 in every 10,000 people in the country, home to the world’s biggest economy. The uptick came as households felt the pressure from housing costs, with the median rent for January 2024 being 20 percent higher than that in January 2021, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

President-elect Donald Trump finds himself at a crossroads as Elon Musk, his billionaire backer, has called to expand the H-1B visa program to address workforce shortages — conflicting with the views of a majority of Americans, which polling shows opposes such measures and favors domestic solutions to labor shortages. A Rasmussen Reports poll conducted in November found that 60 percent of Americans believed the country already had enough talented people to train and recruit for higher-skill roles, while 26 percent supported increasing the number of foreign workers for such positions … Trump has previously supported policies that limit immigration and prioritize American workers. During his first administration, he implemented measures to tighten immigration rules, including restrictions on H-1B visas.

Americans have become mediocre and lazy from binging on culture like “Friends,” Vivek Ramaswamy said. In an appeal to hire migrant workers that sparked a furious row in Maga circles, Donald Trump’s incoming government efficiency tsar attacked American culture of “venerated mediocrity over excellence.” Mr. Ramaswamy, who is set to lead a federal cost-cutting drive alongside Elon Musk when Mr. Trump takes office, suggested on Thursday that top US tech firms preferred to hire foreigners because they had a better work ethic. He said that America “celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

… Jewish movies are actually having a moment. “The Brutalist,” a historical epic about a Hungarian Jewish architect trying to succeed in postwar America, and “A Real Pain,” a modern-day dramedy about two Jewish cousins on a Holocaust tour through Poland, are two heavy favorites in this year’s Oscar race after racking up big festival prizes. The new Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” — which includes a brief glimpse of a photo album showing the boy once known as Robert Zimmerman becoming a bar mitzvah — has earned raves … Works focusing on Jewish clergy and religious life have also found success … Meanwhile, the small-screen romantic comedy “Nobody Wants This,” starring Adam Brody as a meme-worthy “hot rabbi” dating a non-Jewish woman, was one of the year’s most popular and buzzy TV shows.

Jimmy Carter speaks frankly about Israel’s apartheid policy of Jewish supremacy and the harsh reality of Israeli-Zionist treatment of non-Jews in the occupied Palestinian territories. The former US president also cites the tremendous clout of the Zionist lobby, and particularly the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in pressuring US Senators and members of Congress to support Israeli-Zionist interests. This “Democracy Now” interview with Amy Goodman first aired on Sept. 10, 2007. Carter was also author of the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, for which he was denounced as an anti-Semite. Runtime: 4:13 mins.

The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations — but not in the United States. For the past 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticise policies of the Israeli government is due to the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices. It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.

Switzerland is looking to ban the swastika, Hitler salute and other Nazi signs due to a rise in antisemitism, the federal government announced on Friday. The Federal Council said in a statement that “banning symbols linked to the Third Reich has taken on a particular urgency due to the sharp increase in antisemitic incidents.” It proposes an immediate ban on “the use of Nazi symbols in public” and imposing a fine of about 200 Swiss francs ($224) on anyone who breaks the law … Switzerland also wants to go further than banning the most well-known Nazi symbols, extending it to more cryptic signs of recognition used by supporters of Nazi ideology. As such, use of the “18” — the first and eighth letter of the alphabet signifying Adolf Hitler’s initials — and “88” — for “Heil Hitler” — will also fall foul of the proposed law.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces arrest if he travels to the UK, after an international arrest warrant was issued for him, Downing Street has indicated. A No 10 spokesman refused to comment on the specific case but said the government would fulfil its “legal obligations”. On Thursday [Nov. 21] the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, along with Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes in Gaza. The court’s member countries, including the UK, have signed a treaty that obliges them to act on arrest warrants.

… I consider World War I as the greatest tragedy to befall civilization… At least 17 million died in World War I, not counting China or India. This conflict was the direct result of Serbia’s efforts to draw Russia into war with Austria- Hungary, as well as Great Britain’s efforts to crush growing strategic rival Germany and France’s lust to reconquer Alsace Lorraine. Germany struck first in fear of being surrounded and crushed by Europe’s two leading military powers, France and Russia. 19h century Europe was the highwater mark of world civilization. Germany was the most socially progressive nation in Europe … The horrors we are seeing today in Gaza and Lebanon resemble the fate of German and Japanese  cities in WWII brought on by massive l American and British firebombing of half of their cities.

Roman Catholic Pope Francis drew the ire of the Israeli government on the eve of Christmas week by calling the bombing and killing of children “cruelty.” … The airstrikes, particularly on Gaza’s remaining hospitals and tent encampments housing displaced people, have been a daily occurrence. “Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” the pope told members of the government of the Holy See … The pope doubled down, remarking Sunday: “And with pain, I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty,” the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer. He also called for a “ceasefire on all fronts, in Ukraine, in the Holy Land, throughout the Middle East and throughout the world.”

… If 100,000 white British people moved to Pakistan every year, adding to an already extensive community of white British people in Pakistan, these people would be accused of “colonisation” and more. But when people from countries like Pakistan move in such large numbers to the UK we are told it is “diversity” … Terrorist outrages, criminal gangs, knife crime and much more are the mere tip of the problem. And even that is something much of the media and political class will not mention. The bigger problem is that if you keep immigration at such levels, fail to even deter illegal boat arrivals and stop considering the remigration of people who should not be here, it is not just that you betray your voters. You don’t really have a country any more.

Hundreds of nationalists gathered in the German city of Magdeburg to protest the attack on a Christmas market by an Arab immigrant in which five were killed – including a child – and more than 200 were injured, some seriously. The protest rally on Saturday night, Dec. 21, was organized by the nationalist group “Heimat” (“Homeland”) and its youth branch “Junge Nationalisten” (“Young Nationalists”). Protesters chanted “We are the people,” and “Those who do not love Germany should leave Germany.” They carried a large banner emblazoned with the word “Remigration.” A Saudi Arabian who had been living in Germany for years carried out the attack. Runtime: 1 min.

The State Department’s foreign disinformation center, accused by conservatives of censoring U.S. citizens, shut its doors due to lack of funding this week. Elon Musk had deemed the Global Engagement Center (GEC), established in 2016, the “worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation,” and its funding was stripped as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Pentagon’s yearly policy bill. “The Global Engagement Center will terminate by operation of law [by the end of the day] on December 23, 2024,” a State Department spokesperson said … The agency had a budget of around $61 million and 120 people on staff.

The little town of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank has good reason to consider itself the capital of Christmas, but this year it does not feel like it. There are very few visitors at what is typically a peak time. There are not the usual cheerful street decorations nor the giant Christmas tree in front of the Nativity Church … Public celebrations of Christmas have been cancelled for a second year because of the war in Gaza … “This should be a time of joy and celebration,” comments Rev. Dr Munther Isaac, a local Lutheran pastor … “It’s hard to believe that another Christmas has come upon us and the genocide has not stopped,” Isaac said … Many Bethlehemite Christians I meet feel despair and question what they see as the failure of other Christian communities around the world to speak out.

Iranians mark Christmas in Tehran. The holiday spirit is alive in Iran’s capital city, as people experience the vibrant holiday mood, with Christmas trees, dazzling lights and decorations, festive music, and delicious food. One street in Tehran is particularly well known for its Christmas displays and offerings. There are about 600 Christian churches in Iran. Runtime: 18:50 mins.

What appears to be evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history is etched onto finger-length, clay cylinders excavated from a tomb in Syria by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers. The writing, which is dated to around 2400 BCE, precedes other known alphabetic scripts by roughly 500 years, upending what archaeologists know about where alphabets came from, how they are shared across societies, and what that could mean for early urban civilizations … “Previously, scholars thought the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 BCE,” Schwartz said. “But our artifacts are older and from a different area on the map, suggesting the alphabet may have an entirely different origin story than we thought.”