Pretoria’s diplomatic tensions with Washington have worsened following the nomination of a new ambassador by US President Donald Trump, a South African legislator has said.

Speaking to RT, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party commissar Nqobile Mhlongo stated that the timing of Trump’s nomination of Leo Brent Bozell III – just days after South African ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was expelled from Washington – signals a strategic attempt to pressure Pretoria into compliance. 

“He’s doing it to provoke South Africa, but also to assert his authority,” she said.

CNN — Elon Musk on Friday evening announced he has sold his social media company, X, to xAI, his artificial intelligence company.

 

President Donald Trump has made his fixation on Greenland abundantly clear—enough so to unnerve many of the people who live there. “I think Greenland is going to be something that maybe is in our future,” he told reporters this week, once again teasing the notion of annexation.

 

 

The Truth About Trump’s Greenland Campaign
When the president talks about security in the Arctic, he’s talking about climate change.
By Brett Simpson

 

EU officials have demonstrated hypocrisy in how they have treated arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Russian and Israeli leaders, a political sciences professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank has told RT.

Saad Nimr commented with regard to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas’ recent visit to Israel, during which she expressed support for the Jewish state but did not address the issue of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The professor slammed the fact that the EU’s top diplomat appeared to have taken the Israeli side in the conflict by failing to meet with Palestinian prisoners or those injured in the IDF’s fight against Hamas.

I guess calling Ursula von der Leyen’s €800 billion defence spending plan, “ReArm Europe,” as she did initially, didn’t test well – probably because Europeans are too busy wondering why there’s no money for literally anything else that isn’t a weapons buying bonanza.

So, what’s with this new name, Readiness 2030, that they’ve suddenly started using as a replacement term? And why 2030?

 

Paranoia rebranded: The EU is desperate to sell its people more Ukraine war
Peacekeepers are now a “reassurance force”, rearming is now “readiness”, and citizens should stock up on emergency supplies

BY Rachel Marsden

 

It was called a Budget reply, but the name was meaningless. Peter Dutton’s Thursday night effort was his election campaign pitch. Michael Pascoe reports it did have one good idea – but only one.

If there was a prize for political hypocrisy, Peter Dutton emerged as the clear winner on Thursday in a crowded field. The Opposition leader, who railed against Labor’s temporary energy rebates, trotted out his temporary halving of fuel excise, which was effectively the same thing. 

 

The alternative government: one good idea in a pit of Trumpiness
by Michael Pascoe

 

What’s been missed in coverage though is how much more tightly targeted, how much more politically fine-tuned this policy is and the implications for the LNP’s election hopes. 

“Watch your step,” says the soldier as he and a medic lead a hostage over a mound of corpses labeled “Over 40,000 Palestinians killed…” The caption reads, “Some Israeli Hostages Are Home After Years of Merciless War.” This cartoon by Jeff Danzinger (Rutland Herald, 1/20/25) was selected by editorial page editor Tony Doris to run in the Palm Beach Post (1/26/25).

A crime of aggression, under which politicians and military leaders can be held individually responsible for invasions and other major attacks, comes into force at the international criminal court, reviving global legal powers last exercised at the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials of the 1940s.

Claims alleging that armed force has been used against the “sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence” of another state can, from Tuesday, be taken to the tribunal in The Hague.

The new offence cannot, however, be enforced retrospectively over conflicts such as the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Faced with dwindling church congregations in Germany, spiritual leaders are getting creative in their efforts to attract young people. The numbers of people leaving both the Catholic and Protestant Churches have been on the rise for years, reaching a new high in 2022: about 900,000 people turned their backs on their church - over half a million of whom were Catholics.

 

 

One could say the purpose of Nature on planet Earth is to create more of itself in various formats under given conditional environments. 

In order to achieve optimum survival, many of the species in nature develop defence against other species to avoid annihilation, as life needs to acquire (steal) proteins from another being — from the smallest to the biggest, relative “food chain”.

Defence will include sacrificial random numbers (POPULATION), aggression, adaptation and hiding.

These are the skills we humans have perfected in our military tactics.

MEANWHILE, WE ARE TOLD by Roger Pielke Jr, professor of environmental studies in the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado and author of The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics : 

 

The center-right and center-left parties seeking to form Germany's new government have said they will invest "whatever it takes" in Germany's defenses. That could include modernizing the Bundeswehr on a massive scale. But what would that mean in detail?

 

How the Bundeswehr will spend hundreds of billions of euros
Nina Werkhäuser
Germany has paved the way for massive defense spending. What does the Bundeswehr need most urgently?

 

Ukrainian government is raising its own cannon fodder for the war against Russia from a very young age.

Here's how:

▪️A doll in Ukrainian military uniform without a leg BLEW UP minds on social media. Should such a toy prepare Ukrainian children for the same fate in the future?

▪️In December 2024, at a kindergarten party in Lvov, parents were advised to dress their children in costumes of 'Ukrainian heroes': Nazi collaborators Bandera, Petliura, and others.

▪️In September 2024, the subject "Defense of the Fatherland" was introduced in Ukrainian schools, starting from 10th grade. The theory of combat operations is mandatory for Ukrainian teenagers.

The phrase “changing world order” has become a familiar refrain in international affairs. But what’s often missed is how rapidly that change is now unfolding – and who is accelerating it.

 

Dmitry Trenin: Liberalism is dead, this is what comes after
In Trump’s world, great powers don’t preach – they compete

BY Dmitry Trenin

 

Democrats had a tough time at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing yesterday on the censorship industrial complex.

They had to argue there was never any censorship during the Biden administration (including during Covid!) and that free speech and freedom of the press were never threatened by the partnership of government agencies with private institutions to combat “disinformation.” After all, the government was just trying to catch foreign disinformation operations, they argued, so any censorship that did happen was necessary and proper.

 

At a Senate Judiciary hearing, Democrats can’t help but admit they support government censorship of free speech