The intergovernmental organization is more divided at present than it was during the Cold War, its leader has said...

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that the world is moving towards an "age of chaos" as a divided Security Council struggles to adapt to critical geopolitical issues and ongoing global crises.

In his annual address presenting his priorities for 2024 to the Security Council in New York, Guterres said that conflicts and wars across the globe are creating a "dangerous and unpredictable" reality for innocent civilians.

"For millions of people caught up in conflict around the world, life is a deadly, daily, hungry hell. This 'age of chaos' has created a 'dangerous and unpredictable free-for-all' at a time when the United Nations Security Council is deadlocked by geopolitical fissures."

Among the issues dividing the UN, Guterres said, is Israel's war in Gaza. He added that he was "especially alarmed" by reports that Israel intends to focus its military offensive in the southern area of the besieged enclave, where more than a million people have sought shelter from aerial and ground bombardment. He warned:

"Such an action would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare, with untold regional consequences."

US journalist Tucker Carlson, who recently interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been listed in the database of the Ukrainian website Mirotvorets (deemed extremist by Russia), which publishes the personal data of people deemed enemies of Ukraine by the portal's creators.

Carlson was blacklisted on June 8, 2023. He is attributed with "participating in humanitarian aggression against Ukraine" and "manipulating public information."

Earlier, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Carlson had met with Putin, and the two sat down to talk. According to Peskov, the interview will be released "as soon as it is ready." According to The Wall Street Journal, Carlson will post the interview on February 8. It is expected to appear on the journalist's X page as well as on his official website.

Conservative Senators tear into Mitch McConnell as GOP package unravels in just 72 hours after months of negotiations over provisions for funding Ukraine and Israel

The $118 billion bipartisan border security bill officially fell apart in the Senate Wednesday after conservative Republicans trashed the compromise package negotiated with the guidance of party leaders.

Republicans quickly rejected Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's vote to move the $118 bill border security bill forward 49 to 50 following days of outrage by the GOP. They said the bill didn't go far enough to secure the border.

Schumer, D-N.Y., said the vote would 'show who is serious about securing the border - and who is not.'

Yeah, darlin' gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Steppenwolf, Born to be Wild, 1967

The world has got to be thankful to the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dimitri Medvedev. Paraphrasing that iconic Cold War era string of ads about a beer that refreshes the parts other beers cannot each, Medvedev refreshes those - sensitive - parts the Kremlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for diplomatic reasons, cannot reach.

As astonishing tectonic shifts keep turning geopolitics and geoeconomics upside down, and the Angel of History looks East while the United States, corroded from the inside, desperately clings to scraps of its dwindling Full Spectrum Dominance, Medvedev makes no bones about how much he enjoys "smoke and lighting", not to mention "heavy metal thunder".

Exhibit One is something for the ages. It deserves a full quote - complete with colorful English translation:

"Western politicians who have shat their pants and their mediocre generals in NATO have once again decided to scare us. They launched the largest military exercises since the Cold War.

These involve 90,000 soldiers from 31 countries of the Alliance and 'almost block' Sweden, about 50 warships, 80 aircraft, 1,100 ground combat vehicles, including 133 tanks.

Some stages are expected to take place in the most blatantly Russophobic and most disgusting countries to us, such as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, that is, in close proximity to Russia's borders.

The NATO blabbers were afraid to directly say who these exercises are aimed against, and limited themselves to empty chatter about 'practicing defense plans and deterring potential aggression from the nearest opponents'.

But it is quite obvious that this convulsion of flabby Western muscles is a warning to our country. It's like they're saying, shouldn't we properly threaten Russia and show the Russian hedgehog a fat transgender European ass.

It turned out not scary, but very significant.

After all, if the Alliance itself decided to conduct exercises of this level, it means they are really afraid of something.

And even more so, they do not believe not only in victory but in any military successes of the rotten neo-Nazi regime in Kiev. Plus, of course, they are working out the anti-Russian agenda for domestic political purposes, consolidating their dissatisfied electorate.

Overall this is a very dangerous play with fire.

Significant forces have been assembled. And exercises of this scale have not been conducted since the last century. So they are a well-forgotten old thing.

We are not going to attack any country in this bloc. All reasonable people in the West understand this. But if they play too hard and encroach on the integrity of our country, they will instantly receive an adequate response.

This will mean only one thing - a big war, from which NATO will no longer turn away.

The same thing will happen if any NATO country begins to provide its airfields to Bandera's supporters or quarters its troops with neo-Nazis. They will certainly become a legitimate target for our Armed Forces and will be mercilessly destroyed as enemies.

All those wearing helmets with NATO symbols, who today swaggeringly rattle their weapons not far from our borders should remember this".

Early on in America's historic border crisis, now entering its fourth record-smashing year, some Republican lawmakers named a significant enabling culprit other than the usual Mexican cartel smugglers. They named the U.S. taxpayer-funded United Nations as essentially a co-smuggler after seeing my reports that the UN was handing out debit cards and cash vouchers to aspiring illegal border crossers on their way north.

One outraged group of 21 border-security-minded lawmakers even pitched a bill that would require the United States, the UN's largest donor, to turn off the taxpayer money spigot. H.R. 6155 never caught fire, though, in no small part because "fact checks" claiming to debunk other reports like mine in the conservative press dissuaded broader media interest and left the American public in the dark.

But now the UN's 2024 update to the "Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan" (RMRP for short), a planning and budget document for handing out nearly $1.6 billion in 17 Latin America countries, can cast a broad confirming light on the cash giveaways and much more aid for 2024 ahead — with the helping hands of 248 named non-governmental organizations. Despite the RMRP plan title naming Venezuelans as recipients of this aid operation, the document's fine print (footnote on p. 14 and paragraph on p. 43, for instance) says the largesse goes to "all nationalities" and "multiple other nationalities".

Budapest must ratify Sweden's NATO application "very quickly," an official has insisted, according to the news outlet

Germany is reportedly pressing the Hungarian government to ratify Sweden's bid for NATO membership, Politico has reported. A senior Berlin official reportedly told the press on Tuesday that approval is "a matter of loyalty to the alliance." Hungary's ruling party boycotted a ratification vote on Monday.

Hungary is the only NATO member yet to approve Sweden's application to join the US-led military bloc. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban gave his Fidesz party the go-ahead last month to vote on ratification, but the party - which holds a sizable parliamentary majority - refused to attend a vote on Monday. Unless a special session of parliament is called in the meantime, another vote will not be held until the legislature reconvenes on February 26.

"We believe that it is now a matter of loyalty to the alliance and, more generally, of friendly behavior between EU states that this should happen very quickly," the senior German official told reporters, according to Politico.

Ukraine's ability to fight Russia could soon be compromised, despite the flow of Western-made arms and munitions into the country, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has warned.

In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday, Scholz stressed that Western countries must continue to support Kiev, arguing that failing to do so would not only have disastrous consequences for Ukraine, but would also "dramatically change the face of Europe."

"Despite our support, Ukraine could soon face serious shortages in arms and ammunition," he said, noting that some Western financial commitments have already expired and many others need to be extended.

Scholz claimed that the West has "to do [its] utmost to prevent Russia from winning... If we don't, we might soon wake up in a world even more unstable, threatening and unpredictable than it was during the Cold War."

Republicans in the US Senate blocked a bill on Wednesday that would have allowed for more funding for Ukraine.

A majority of GOP legislators voted against the bill, according to The Hill. Democrats Ed Markey, Bob Menendez, Alex Padilla, and Elizabeth Warren, as well as Bernie Sanders - an independent from Vermont - joined the Republicans who refused to back the legislation.

The $118 billion package included $60 billion in military aid for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.

The bill was touted by President Joe Biden as a compromise with the Republicans, who have refused to greenlight more money for Ukraine unless Biden agrees to comprehensive border security and immigration reform.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, warned before the vote that there was "no real chance" for the bill to pass, as many GOP members argued that Biden's offer was not enough to effectively end "the border crisis." Other Republicans insisted that a border bill should not be tied to Ukraine aid.

Is what's happening all a bad dream? The wage of utter incompetence? A bad joke? Nefariousness?

Perhaps the answer to fathoming the currently unfathomable is that the powers that run our national, state, and local governments must think something like this:

"What is our next success after destroying the border and allowing in 8-million illegal aliens?"

Did New York offer an answer by not incarcerating arrested foreign thugs, illegally residing in the U.S., who had swarmed New York City police and kicked the heads of officers while on the ground?

The few of the guilty who were apprehended and arrested were released on the same day. Adding insult to injury, as they were set free, they flipped bystanders and journalists the middle finger. And then they sneered on their way to California — and to free health care, housing, food subsidies, and scholarships for illegal aliens in Gavin Newsom's $68-billion-in-the-red state.

Prosecutors in Stockholm announced Wednesday they have shut down the investigation into who was behind the 2022 sabotage explosions that crippled Russia's Nord Stream pipelines to Germany.

Sweden has long said it suspected an unknown state actor, and an official statement from its top prosecutor's office now claims:

"The conclusion of the investigation is that there is no Swedish jurisdiction and that the investigation should therefore be closed." This is because "nothing has emerged to indicate that Sweden or Swedish citizens were involved in the attack that took place in international waters."

Still, the same statement says they now have a "good picture" of the incident after a "systematic and thorough" investigation and this has ultimately led to the conclusion that "Swedish jurisdiction is missing" - according to Swedish Public Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist. "It is not Sweden's task to continue this investigation."

"We have had good international cooperation with several countries, above all Denmark and Germany, where we have continuously shared information and situational images," it said, also underscoring that Germany's investigation continues, but necessarily under the "secrecy that prevails for international judicial cooperation."

Also disappointing is the following: "I will also not be able to comment anything further on the conclusions of the Swedish investigation or comment on any suspected persons in the Swedish investigation," Ljungqvist said.

Presumably, Russia fully cooperated as well, given the statement is absent some kind of censure on this front, and long gone are the early days after the blast of blaming Russia for the destruction of its own vital pipeline, as was common in Western media in the weeks that followed Sept. 26, 2022. However, the Kremlin has repeatedly complained that it has been denied access or any insight into the ongoing Western investigations.