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Christmas Tree

Best of the Web: Merry Christmas in Syria: Liberated from terror by Russia, oldest Christian country celebrates birth of Jesus


RT
Wed, 25 Dec 2019 11:44 UTC
syria christmas
© AFPSyrians gather for the lighting of the Christmas tree in Aleppo's Aziziyah neighbourhood on December 21, 2019.
Flashy firework displays and bright lit Christmas trees popped up all across Syria to celebrate Christmas, a joyous day not only for the Christian minority, but to people of other faiths living in the country.

Christians were among the minority groups persecuted by various Islamist militant forces, which tore Syria into pieces since 2011. The central government has managed to regain control over most of the country, and life there is slowly returning to normality. That includes celebrating Christmas openly and without fear of sectarian violence.

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Dominoes

Best of the Web: Triumph of the right in Sweden is a result of the total failure of liberalism

Graham Dockery
RT
Tue, 24 Dec 2019 17:06 UTC
Jimmie Akesson
© Reuters / Johan NilssonSweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson
Sweden's right-wing Sweden Democrats are now neck and neck with the ruling Social Democrats in opinion polls. Though vilified and demonized, the party's success represents a complete failure of liberalism in the face of reality.

The Sweden Democrats - who were until recently dismissed as a fringe, racist party - are now surging in the polls. A voter survey, commissioned by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper last week, puts the party within 0.2 percentage points of Prime Minister Stefan Lofven's left-wing Social Democrats. Moreover, voters now agree with the party's policies on nine out of nine issues.

On immigration, 43 percent of voters side with the party and its leader, Jimmie Akesson. Only 15 percent favor Lofven's policies. Likewise, 31 percent favor Akesson's position on law and order, compared to 19 percent for Lofven.

The press has not made Akesson's ride to the top easy. Yet, most outlets have failed to dig up dirt on the 40-year-old politician, who like France's Marine Le Pen, has made a point of distancing his party from its extreme-right roots and presenting a clean-cut image.
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: 'Russian aggression': An excuse for US politicians to further bloat 2020 defense budget - Moscow won't care

Scott Ritter
RT
Mon, 23 Dec 2019 21:53 UTC
trump address military
© Global Look Press / Shealah Craighead/White House
By including provisions to stop Russian pipelines and target Russia's actions in Syria, the new US defense budget demonstrates that country's overreach, but likely does nothing to rein in Vladimir Putin.

$718 billion for NDAA 2020 includes 'lethal aid' for Kiev

Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2020. The NDAA lays out the annual budget and expenditures of the Department of Defense and allows Congress to set the policies under which the money appropriated can be spent. The modern American military budget, which for 2020 is slated to be a whopping $718 billion, underwrites the world's largest military and defense enterprise. The NDAA for 2020 builds on the notion that the US is engaged in a major power confrontation with Russia and, as such, it mandates that the Pentagon devise and implement strategies designed to impose political, military, economic, budgetary, and technology costs on Russia.
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Nebula

Best of the Web: Stunning iridescent clouds snapped above skies of Siberia's Belukha mountain


The Siberian Times
Mon, 23 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC
Svetlana Kazina
© Svetlana Kazina"The clouds in my photos are so thin that they look more like lace."
Local photographer Svetlana Kazina caught a rare natural phenomenon on camera.

"The clouds in my photos are so thin that they look more like lace" - Svetlana Kazina

Svetlana Kazina, who lives in the Altai Mountains, snapped these breathtaking pictures of the glowing sky over Belukha mountain, Siberia's highest peak (4,506 metres/14,783ft).

Belukha Mountain, literally 'whitey' in Russian, is the highest peak of the Altai Mountains in Russia. Located in the Altai Republic, Belukha is a three-peaked mountain massif that rises along the border of Russia and Kazakhstan, just a few dozen miles north of the point where this border meets with the border of China.

The images show thin clouds resembling soap bubbles in colours.

Iridescent clouds, also known as rainbow clouds, occur when sunlight scatters through water droplets in the atmosphere.

Comment: 'Rare' and wondrous sights in the skies are becoming ever more common on our changing planet. Their 'iridescence' is thought to be the result of ice crystals, typically seen in polar stratospheric clouds, also called nacreous cloud. The phenomenon is named after the Greek goddess Iris, goddess of rainbows and messenger of Zeus and Hera to the mortals below... Also check out SOTT radio's: As well as SOTT's monthly Earth Changes Summary - November 2019: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs:



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War Whore

Best of the Web: Nord Stream 2: Washington to "free" Europe from freedom to decide for itself

Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook
Sun, 22 Dec 2019 18:30 UTC
nord stream 2
Nord Stream 2 is a pipeline project extending from Russia to Germany that - when completed - will provide a secure means of exporting Russian natural gas to Western Europe - circumventing a now volatile Ukraine all while tying Russia and Europe together further through mutually beneficial economic activity.

Of course, for special interests residing across the Atlantic in Washington and on Wall Street, Russia and Europe building closer ties through constructive economic activity undermines a long-standing strategy of coercing Europe via the constant threat of a supposedly hostile Kremlin Washington claims undermines a free and united Europe.

Ironically, in order to preserve Europe's "freedom" the US has now resorted to punishing interests in Europe - and in Germany specifically - for freely choosing to do business with Russia. It not only fully illustrates the supreme hypocrisy that lies at the very root of Washington's current foreign policy, but also threatens to undermine legitimate US business interests seeking - just as Russia does - to build constructive economic ties with companies and nations around the globe.
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NPC

Best of the Web: 'Queer techno rave and porn' next to Buckingham Palace is the latest in decadent 'artivism'

Alexander Adams
RT
Mon, 23 Dec 2019 18:16 UTC
Pride Parade
© AFP / Niklas HALLE'N2019 Pride Parade in London
When the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London issued a press release declaring that in the following month a night would be given to "queer techno rave and porn," long-time observers were not shocked - or even surprised.

The ICA - once the premier venue for great Modernist painting and sculpture - is now a circus of transgression a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace.

A December 17 press release announced that on January 31 "Queer techno rave INFERNO take over the ICA's Theatre, Bar and Cinema with an all-night programme of music, queer porn and performance art." In case you miss it, don't worry. "This is the first in a series of all-night takeovers from club collectives exploring nightlife as a realm of self-expression." This is only the latest in a long line of events held at the centre situated on the Mall, the ceremonial avenue leading to the gates of Buckingham Palace.
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Map

Best of the Web: All aboard the Eurasian Express! Train traffic opens on Crimea Bridge - Putin rides across it in opening ceremony


RT
Mon, 23 Dec 2019 17:08 UTC
train crimea bridge
President Putin has opened railway traffic on the 19-km-long Crimea Bridge, which connects the peninsula with mainland Russia and is the longest in Europe. He called the bridge "a beauty" as he took a ride in the driver's cabin.

The construction of the bridge kicked off in February 2016, less than two years after the Crimean people overwhelmingly voted to reunite with Russia in a referendum. The link was crucial for Crimea, which only has a land border with Ukraine, so the 15,000 builders worked hard, often in difficult stormy conditions, to make it happen.

Automobile traffic across the 19-kilometer bridge, which became the longest not only in Russia, but in the whole of Europe, was opened in May 2018.

"It's not a bridge, but a beauty," Putin exclaimed as he gazed at the engineering marvel.
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Star of David

Best of the Web: Bolivia: How it was a coup for Israel too

Belen Fernandez
Middle East Eye
Thu, 19 Dec 2019 12:48 UTC
Pic Evo
© AFPDemonstration in support of Bolivia's overthrown president Evo Morales, in Buenos Aires.
The right wing seeks to reconquer Bolivia, dismantling solidarity with Palestine and bringing in Israeli advisors to help crush protests

Shortly after left-wing Bolivian President Evo Morales was ousted in a US-supported coup in November - disguised as a noble reaction to alleged electoral fraud - the self-appointed, fanatically right-wing Bolivian "interim" government announced the renewal of diplomatic relations with Israel.

These had been severed by Morales in 2009 during Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, which killed some 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 300 children. Though Israel naturally cast itself as the singular victim of the affair, the ratio of Palestinian civilian to Israeli civilian deaths was 400:1.

During a subsequent Israeli-inflicted bloodbath in Gaza in 2014, this one by the name of Operation Protective Edge and entailing the slaughter of 2,251 Palestinians (including 299 women and 551 children), Morales denounced Israel as a "terrorist state" - a perfectly accurate assessment, given the circumstances and Israel's track record.

Comment: Beware the tendrils of Israel and all it reprehensibly represents! The speed at which the usurpers of the Morales government called upon Israeli expertise leaves no doubt as to who collaborated in the coup and what they anticipate to gain by adding Bolivia to their collection.

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Eye 2

Best of the Web: Macron's Achilles Heel: The Corrupt Privatization of Toulouse Airport

Evan Jones
Dissident Voice
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 18:05 UTC
macron on throne
© Charles Platiau/AFP/Getty
Emmanuel Macron is a spiv, a first class spiv. Yet Emmanuel Macron is President of the French Republic, which is a worry.

The stamp of the man could have been readily gauged from his curious appointment and period as Economy Minister, August 2014 to August 2016, under President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Macron's first action as Economy Minister was the privatization of the Toulouse-Blagnac airport (SATB). It was a process steeped in anomalies, for which reason it has been the subject of unprecedented court proceedings.

This is a story of deception, incompetence and corruption at the highest levels of the French state. This account is essentially drawn from Laurent Mauduit, tireless investigative journalist with the online daily Mediapart.
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Snowflake

Best of the Web: In ancient Scottish tree rings, a cautionary tale on climate, politics and survival


Sciencemag.com
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 21:48 UTC
ancient scottish tree rings ice age
© Tree Ring Lab, University of St. Andrews.
A 1600s famine with echoes in the age of Brexit

Using old tree rings and archival documents, historians and climate scientists have detailed an extreme cold period in Scotland in the 1690s that caused immense suffering. It decimated agriculture, killed as much as 15 percent of the population and sparked a fatal attempt to establish a Scottish colony in southern Panama. The researchers say the episode-shown in their study to have been during the coldest decade of the past 750 years-was probably caused by faraway volcanic eruptions. But it was not just bad weather that brought disaster. Among other things, Scotland was politically isolated from England, its bigger, more prosperous neighbor that might have otherwise helped. Propelled in part by the catastrophe, the two nations merged in 1707 to become part of what is now the United Kingdom. Such a famine-related tragedy was never repeated, despite later climate swings.

With Brexit now threatening to isolate the UK from the European Union, the researchers think politicians should take this as a cautionary tale. "By joining England, Scotland became more resilient," said lead author Rosanne D'Arrigo, a tree-ring scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "The bigger message for today is arguably that as the climate changes, nations will be stronger if they stick together and not try to go it alone." The study appears in the early online edition of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research.
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