Jules Letambour had a fondue night with a few of his dwindling (socialist) friends. Jacques, Robert, Frank, Jean-Paul, Rémy, Phillipe and Jason. The hot Glühwein flowed like the pure local water stream fed by the Jura’s melting snow.

The conflict between the advocates of "a world based on rules" and those who advocate a return to "a world based on international law" continues. It began with the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and will last for years.

The military situation on the ground is blocked, as always in winter in this part of the world. The supporters of "a world based on rules" still refuse to implement the UN Security Council Resolution 2202, while those of "a world based on international law" are conducting a special military operation to implement it. In the end, they gradually moved away from it and stabilized the situation of the people of Novarussia.

by Thierry Meyssan

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed a visit to China which was scheduled for February 5-6 over an alleged Chinese "spy balloon" which has been recently detected in US airspace. Beijing explained that it is a weather device that had deviated from its planned route.

"Looking at this from outside the Biden administration, it seems like there was indecision as to how to respond to the balloon," Ross Feingold, a Taipei-based political risk analyst, told Sputnik.

During and after the Second World War, public intellectuals in Britain and the United States grappled with concerns about the future of democracy, the prospects of liberty, and the decline of the imperial system. Without using the term “globalization,” they identified a shift toward technological, economic, cultural, and political interconnectedness and developed a “globalist” ideology to reflect this new postwar reality. The Emergence of Globalism examines the competing visions of world order that shaped these debates and led to the development of globalism as a modern political concept.

How competing visions of world order in the 1940s gave rise to the modern concept of globalism

George Soros is either stunningly prescient or frighteningly influential when it comes to determining who will need to do all the bleeding and dying that he deems necessary to bring about a desirable “new world order.”

The most ancient parts of truth … also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatsoever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for 'to be true' means only to perform this marriage-function.

— "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth," Pragmatism (1907), p. 83.

— William James

The root cause of the conflict in Ukraine is linked to Washington’s belief that the US is exceptional and the contention that this supposedly justifies its dominance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking during an interview with Russian television on Thursday, the top diplomat urged people to “dig deeper” in their analysis of the confrontation. American officials believe the US is “an exceptional nation, unlike any other in the world,” and that it has a duty to lead, because otherwise “there will be chaos.”

Lavrov cited an opinion piece by Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to President Joe Biden, which was published in The Atlantic magazine in 2019.

Stephen Colbert opened Tuesday’s Late Show nervous for his revealing interview with Prince Harry, and also for a classified documents snafu involving papers from Joe Biden’s time as vice-president found at one of his offices at the University of Pennsylvania.

What makes the RAND Corporation’s latest report on Ukraine so significant, is not the quality of the analysis, but the fact that the nation’s most prestigious national security think-tank has taken an opposite position on the war than the Washington political class and their globalist allies. This is a very big deal.

BY MIKE WHITNEY

WHILE THE RUSSIAN INTERVENTION IN UKRAINE IS FILLING THE COFFERS OF NEWS-MAKERS AND OF AMERICAN WEAPON MANUFACTURERS, THERE IS ANOTHER WAR BEING FOUGHT IN THE BACKGROUND.

MANY SERIOUS JOURNALISTS HAVE ALREADY ALUDED AT THE "ECONOMIC WAR" BUT NOT SO MUCH ON THE WESTERN MAIN STREAM MEDIA (THE MEDIOCRE MASS MEDIA DE MIERDA) BECAUSE FOR ALL PUBLISHED JOURNALISTS IN THESE MEDIA, THERE IS ONLY ONE THING THAT MATTERS: THE US DOLLAR IS KING AND DON'T BOTHER US.

IT SEEMS WE'VE FORGOTTEN THE DAYS WHEN GENERAL DE GAULLE PUSHED FOR A GOLD PARITY RATHER THAN THE FLIMSY PAPER DOLLAR WHICH NOW IS WORTH MINUS 139 STICKS OF GUMSHOE GLUE — CONSIDERING THE US DEFICIT OF 31 TRILLION BUX WHICH IN UKRAINIAN CURRENCY IS WORTH SEVERAL ZILLION TANKS FULL OF GOLDFISHES.

THE ARTICLE IN USA TODAY (PUBLISHED A YEAR AGO) IS ADAMANT: Fact check: False claim of US biolabs in Ukraine tied to Russian disinformation campaign.

AND USA TODAY SHOULD KNOW BECAUSE WE ARE TOLD THAT THOUGH THE BIO-LABS DO (DID) EXIST IN UKRAINE... the Ukrainian and U.S. governments partnered in August 2005 to "prevent the proliferation of dangerous pathogens and related expertise and to minimize potential biological threats," according to [a] treaty.

SO THE BIOLABS ARE "NOT OWNED BY THE PENTAGON".

NOW THE QUESTION IS WHY WOULD A COUNTRY LIKE UKRAINE HAVE UMPTEEN (SAY 42?) BIOLABS, AND NOT JUST ONE OR TWO (LIKE CHINA)? IS IT TO PROVIDE EMPLOYMENT TO THE GOOD GENIUSES AND HONOURABLE IDLE SCIENTISTS IN A COUNTRY WITH KNOWN FASCIST TENDENCIES?

Enraged workers across France walked off the job and hit the streets Tuesday to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the nation’s official retirement age from 62 to 64.

It marks the second time this month that French workers have mobilized against Macron’s attack on the country’s pension system. Nationwide strikes and marches on Jan. 19 brought out between 1 million and 2 million people, and labor unions aimed to match or exceed those numbers on Tuesday, with roughly 250 demonstrations planned around the country.

We, the little bourgeois, bathing in political nothingness

Can’t complain much. We own our houses and our pensions

That keep tinselling in our purse like pure richness,

Helping us buy our Mediterranean diet grocery collections

And we travel free with senior passes to any train stations.

Our only worry is that our left foot is in the grave

And our right foot is painful with arthritis.

Until the day we forget what we crave, 

Nothing that cannot be fixed — unlike moralitis —

That social disease of moral paralysis.

Aspirin, Prunelax, Panadol and other wonder pills

That help us go through the enjoyable days, 

That we gleefully interrupt with a siesta for an afternoon daze.

We can’t even resent our kids, grandkids and their brats

Who want what we’ve got now. Now.

On January 27, Israeli forces kill 10 Palestinians in Jenin, including two youths and an elderly woman. The following day a lone Palestinian gunman shoots dead seven Israelis as they leave a synagogue in a settlement in East Jerusalem.

In response to the murdered Israelis, the US ambassador to Israel refers to the synagogue attack as ‘a horrific act of violence’, but with no reference to the fates of Palestinians in Jenin.

By Stuart Rees

The International Monetary Fund has revised upwards its estimate of Russian economic development, projecting GDP to grow by 0.3% this year, and 2.1% in 2024.

According to the fund’s World Economic Outlook update published on Monday, Russia’s GDP fell by 2.2% last year. In its October forecast, the IMF reported that the decline was expected to be 3.4%. For this year, the fund previously predicted a drop of 2.3%, and for 2024, a 2.1% decline.

The IMF’s estimates are beginning to converge with Russian forecasts, the press service of the Ministry of Economic Development told RBK business daily following the release of the report.