Why is she still on the committee?

Rep. Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee has been outed as the leaker of the Matt Gaetz report.

The House Ethics Committee was going to release a "damaging" report on Matt Gaetz last month, but because he resigned from Congress, the committee lost jurisdiction. The Democrats on the Committee fiercely worked to release the report amid damaging leaks.

Parts of the Gaetz report were selectively leaked to the media, and a 'hacker' also obtained a trove of documents from the 'damaging' report.

Pardoner-in-Chief

Joe Biden has now established two precedents in presidential history.

First, he "pardoned" his own son Hunter.

No prior president has ever tried that shameless act, which is an affront to the entire hallowed notion of "equality under the law.".

Second, he did so in a way that no president has rarely, if ever, pardoned anyone.

Hunter, a convicted federal felon awaiting sentencing, was gifted by his father a blanket exemption from federal prosecution over the entire past decade (2014-2024).

Biden thus exempted Hunter from a series of much-discussed past criminal activities and provided further pardons for any federal criminal exposure occurring over the last ten years — yet to turn up.

Given the Biden suppression of the justice system and the media's complicity in hiding the Biden family's criminality, it is quite possible that in the next few years, disinterested prosecutors might finally expose Hunter Biden's long-suppressed, sordid career. And that could mean possible criminal exposure for three generations of Bidens.

Third, in the remaining waning 40 days of his now nonperforming presidency, Biden threatens to establish yet another presidential precedent. He contemplates issuing pardons to a variety of controversial cronies, bureaucrats, and officers — even though none of them have yet been indicted or even are under federal investigation.

Worse, Biden completed his shameless trifecta by breaking his serial pledge, voiced at least six times, and most prominently as a 2024 campaign plug, unequivocally not to pardon Hunter Biden. That performance-art braggadocio was serially greeted — by design — with glee in the media.

On spec, the vow supposedly contrasted Biden's "reverence for the rule of law" with a purportedly legally insubordinate Trump. Biden would put the law above family. Trump, in contrast, was supposedly chronically questioning the morality, fairness, and legality of his own five criminal and civil indictments over the campaign cycle — some of them (i.e., Bragg, Smith, Willis) demonstrably with the full knowledge of, if not coordinated by, the Biden White House.

The development of the Taiwan issue, which remains one of the most serious challenges to global stability, has recently been marked by a number of notable events in the island's foreign and domestic policy alike.

The last months of 2024 have seen increased foreign policy activity by Taiwan's president and government, in line with the general course of the Democratic Progressive Party, which has been in power without interruption since 2016. Moreover, out of almost the two hundred countries in the world today (the basis for which status is their membership of the UN), only 12 recognize Taiwan as an equal. Of these, the largest are Guatemala and Paraguay (with populations of approximately 20 and 10 million respectively). The others are mostly tiny states, three of which (the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau), located in the Pacific Ocean basin, were visited by Taiwanese President William Lai on December 1 during a week-long tour.

In 2016, Steven Bannon interviewed me about the Middle East for his very popular talk radio show. The kind of questions he asked me showed clearly that he really knew very little of the region. But Bannon is smart. He asked smart questions. One of those was who is the trouble maker of the region? I answered that possibly this could be Turkey's leader Recep Erdogan who had just survived a coup d'état masterminded by arguably the most powerful leader of the region, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan who is often called MBZ. I argued that Erdogan had such huge geopolitical ambitions, the money, the military resources and the true grit to actually make Turkey a regional power, competing with KSA and UAE. I said that Erdogan had a lot to prove and was eager to make a wave and that he might just pull it off if he can keep a cool head.

To my great surprise, I noted a couple of weeks later Bannon do an interview with a Saudi newspaper and repeated all of what I had told him verbatim. He even copied my expressions!

But levity aside, there are some serious points about Erdogan's role and what now he must be thinking about Turkey's positioning in the region.

Syria falling took everyone by surprise. The sheer speed of the Assad regime collapsing as an entire army walked away from the slew of jihadists driving at high speed south, until they reached Damascus, was stunning. Presently we are only left with journalists' clichés. Who are the winners and losers? Does this now weaken Iran thus tempting the U.S. and Israel to take a second shot at it? Or will Israel now target Iran's allies in the region now that the Shia Crescent no longer has a lifeline highway which can be used to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon?

All of these questions still hang in the air as we need to see whether these jihadists from Idlib have the political skills to feather their own beds with regional players. Perhaps within Syria, it might be harder as already, at the time or writing, the HTS is already fighting key towns in the north which are controlled by Turkey's main foe, the PKK, or should we say the YPG as it is known - the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which is largely made up of Kurds, with a minority of Syrian army defectors thrown into the mix.

Buying natural gas from Russia was a good deal, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said, rejecting suggestions that it may have been a strategic mistake.

Merkel, who served as chancellor from 2005 to 2021, was in Paris this week to promote her memoir. She gave an exclusive interview to state TV channel France 2, in which she was asked about Germany's energy relationship with Russia.

"The gas trade with Russia has a deep-rooted tradition. It began during the Cold War and continued throughout my time in office. I do not think it was a mistake, because we obtained Russian gas at a favorable price," Merkel said in the interview, which aired on Monday evening.

"It was a win-win situation," the former chancellor added.

It looks like any previous crime can be forgotten as long as there's regime change to be achieved.

What reasonable person wouldn't give terrorists the benefit of the doubt? Maybe banking on jihadists will work out this time, eh? If not, the West can always just bomb them into oblivion. That should work out about as well as it always does.

Where have we seen this movie before? Ah, yes. "Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace," journalist Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent in 1993 - about Al-Qaeda founder and former CIA asset against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden. And we know how that turned out. Now Al-Qaeda's leader in Syria is getting the same treatment from the Western establishment.

It seems like just yesterday Washington and vassals were slamming the same group of jihadists who recently rampaged through Syria and rocked right up to Damascus as former President Bashar Assad fled to Moscow.

A poll showed Reform gaining ground on Labour and the Tories today in the wake of bombshell immigration figures.

Research by More in Common found Nigel Farage's outfit was up three points in the week after official statistics revealed the UK's record for net inflows had been smashed.

The survey - conducted between November 29 and December 2 - put Reform on 21 per cent. Labour dropped two points on 26 per cent and the Conservatives were down one on 28 per cent.

Zionist apologists commonly present support for Israel as a necessary extension of opposition to radical Islam and the threat of Jihadi terrorism. "Support us fighting them here, so you don't have to fight them there" is a common plea to the West from Zionist spokespeople within Israel. Yet when it comes to the Syrian Civil War, the conflict which sparked the major refugee crisis responsible for flooding Europe with millions of Muslims, Israel has been firmly on the side of Jihad, even and most particularly Al-Qaeda.

Trump is the [incoming] president of the United States and will first and foremost be protecting the interests of his country, even if it will be to the detriment of Gulf states.

The rapidity with which Donald Trump is setting up his team indicates that he wants to get to work immediately after the inauguration on January 20. The choice of Steve Witkoff, a close adviser and confidant, as special envoy to the Middle East may indicate that the president plans to deal with this region personally.

During Trump's first term in office (2017-2021), the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), collectively and bilaterally through its member states, maintained close and mutually beneficial relations with the United States. As is known, at that time Trump broke with tradition by choosing Saudi Arabia for his first trip abroad and meeting with the leaders of Gulf states, Arab and Muslim leaders in Riyadh in May, 2017. Although there have at times been disagreements between the two sides, especially vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, their strategic partnership continued up until the last days of Trump's tenure. Most likely, this spirit of cooperation will continue and strengthen over the next four years.

Biden has treacherously shown what his real legacy is: bringing back perpetual wars, creating chaos through bribery and corruption, financing coups, unfreezing dormant conflicts and playing one against the other.

As if that weren't enough, a week later, Turkey (the largest NATO army in Europe) launched an offensive in neighbouring Syria through intermediaries led by HTS*, the former Al-Nusra Front*, effectively tearing up the Astana agreements with Moscow and Tehran on its role in Syria. Towards the end of the Biden administration, two major escalations took place in the two largest military conflicts taking place today, in Ukraine and the Middle East, both geographically separated by Turkey, which has now entered the scene.

At whose behest?

It would be naive to think that Erdoğan took the initiative to stage the invasion of Syria without the support, or at least the acquiescence, of the Americans, the British, the Israelis and the Europeans. Organising, training and arming tens of thousands of men on Syrian territory under his authority or in Turkey itself is an operation that requires logistical and intelligence coordination between various state and non-state entities.

"The US is the only power that has allowed itself to occupy Syria since 2014"