Either Guardian journalists don’t care about police accruing powers to jail journalists for doing journalism, or they have no real control over the material the paper publishes

Guardian journalists have probably the strongest chapel of the main journalist union in Britain. Strong enough that they were able to organise a strike this past week over the sale of the Guardian’s sister Sunday paper, the Observer, to Tortoise Media.

Outgoing US President Joe Biden has claimed credit for the fall of Damascus to a coalition of armed groups, including jihadists from Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS). Washington had weakened the supporters of former Syrian President Bashar Assad, the American leader has said.

The result of the lightning offensive of anti-government militants in the past two weeks was a “fundamental act of justice” and a “moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering citizens of Syria,” Biden said in a video address from the White House on Sunday. 

“For years, the main backers of Assad have been Iran, [the Lebanese-based militant movement] Hezbollah, and Russia. But over the last week, their support collapsed, all three of them. Because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when I took office,” Biden said.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, having become a staple of the disruptive discourse that is so valued on Uncensored, joins Piers Morgan yet again for a one-to-one interview on the state of the world. The most shocking development over recent days has been the rapid advance of Syrian rebel troops and their capture of the City of Aleppo. Sachs tries to explain that the conflict is extremely complicated, but that the main culprit is none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A truly seismic change in the Middle East appears to be happening very fast. At its heart is a devil’s bargain – Turkey and the Gulf States accept the annihilation of the Palestinian nation and creation of a Greater Israel, in return for the annihilation of the Shia minorities of Syria and Lebanon and the imposition of Salafism across the Eastern Arab world.

This also spells the end for Lebanon and Syria’s Christian communities, as witness the tearing down of all Christmas decorations, the smashing of all alcohol and the forced imposition of the veil on women in Aleppo now.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected a call by US President-elect Donald Trump for an immediate truce and peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Following a meeting between Trump, Zelensky, and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday, the president-elect issued a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform saying, “there should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin” to settle the Ukraine conflict. According to Trump, Ukraine “would like to make a deal and stop the madness.”

However, Zelensky made it clear that this is not the case in an even longer post published on X on Sunday, in which he said the conflict “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures.”

US Senator Tom Cotton has introduced a Senate bill that seeks to eliminate the federal use of the term “West Bank” and instead implement the use of “Judea and Samaria”, claiming the terminology aligns with Israel’s historical and biblical claims to the territory. 

Judea and Samaria is the Israeli term for the occupied West Bank.

The proposed legislation mirrors a House bill introduced earlier this year by Representatives Claudia Tenney, Randy Weber, and Anthony D’Esposito.

If enacted, the measure would remove all references to “West Bank” from US government documents, replacing them with the biblical name.

Following the collapse of Germany’s coalition government and the announcement that an election would take place on February 23, 2025, members and supporters of the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) have collected hundreds of signatures in working-class neighbourhoods in Berlin. The signatures gathered at anti-war protests, schools and universities are necessary to put the party on the ballot to counter the pro-war and austerity policies of all of the parties represented in the German parliament (Bundestag).

Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei campaigns for the 2025 federal elections in Germany

US President-elect Donald Trump has met briefly with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in Paris. No joint statement was released after the trilateral talks, but Zelensky hailed the conversation as “good and productive.”

Trump arrived in Paris on Saturday to attend the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral, extensively damaged in a fire in 2019. The trip was Trump’s first foreign visit since he defeated Kamala Harris in last month’s presidential election, but he nevertheless arrived at the Elysee Palace 40 minutes late, French media reported.

Trump and Macron shared a warm embrace outside the palace, and speaking to reporters inside, Macron said that it was a “great honor” to host the incoming US president. Trump returned the compliment, before declaring that “the world seems to be going a little crazy right now.”

It's 1982, and a young UFO researcher is sitting in a director's office at the Department of Defence headquarters in Canberra eager to get his hands on information he's been dreaming of for years — the Australian government's UFO files.

Wearing slacks and a tie, with a tidy short haircut, Bill Chalker wants to demonstrate this is a serious scientific endeavour.

Then he sees two postal sacks full of files being dragged into the austere government room.

There they are.

The secretary leaves the room and Bill hurries to get to work, documenting what he can.

Ankara officially denies its involvement in the escalation of military tensions in Syria. In reality, the Turkish trace is openly visible in the conquest of the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib.

Turkey Implements the Neo-Ottoman Doctrine in Syria

by Alexandr Svaranc

Signs of the "Turkish Trace" in the Syrian Escalation

Has the world forgotten the real danger of nuclear war?

Do we live in a fantasy world where we think we can escalate tensions and put entire portions of the world under threat by using Ukraine as a sacrificial pawn (in what is classically sold as providing humanitarian and ally support) in a decades-long psychopathic foreign policy play to destroy Russia?

      by Dennis J. Kucinich

"Everything I believe in, everything that I hold sacred is based upon my belief in the honesty and nobility of my fellow agents, and that belief is unshakable, unarguable and incontrovertible. Of course, I could be wrong." - Maxwell Smart, in "The Decoy."

France is a perfect example of centrist elites wrecking the West
Political crises seem to be taking down Western nations one by one, their leaders clinging to hubris and showing a disdain for democracy

It is almost as if some EU capitals have a tenacious death wish. After Berlin’s amazing and ongoing self-Morgenthauing act of industrial suicide for the greater glory of America’s NATO and Zelensky’s Ukraine, Paris is now self-Waterlooing. As France’s newly-discharged prime minister Michel Barnier almost correctly noted, the “country is going through a profound crisis.” 

The use of media and propaganda during the First World War served a multitude of purposes. It was not only used to encourage young men to sign up to the army, it also aimed to keep morale high, and maintain the nation’s will to fight.

Recruitment campaigns 

The most well-known campaign was that of Lord Kitchener’s appeal for volunteers to sign up to the army. Lord Kitchener was Secretary of State for War and had been a career soldier; he believed the war would last up to four years and millions of men would need to be mobilised to win the war. Therefore he created a new volunteer army – soldiers had to be at least 18 years old to join, and 19 before they could be sent abroad to fight.

After President Joe Biden issued an unusual blanket pardon for his son, Hunter, Democratic Congressman Ed Markey has urged the president to extend "preemptive pardons" to other top Democrats whom Donald Trump believes "harmed him" and might otherwise be treated by him in a "fascistic way."

BY Ekaterina Blinova