After five elections that have paralyzed Israeli politics for nearly four years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has finally returned to power with the government he has long coveted: a parliamentary majority of religious and far-right lawmakers who share his hard-line views toward the Palestinians and hostility toward Israel's legal system.

Yet Netanyahu's joy may be short-lived. Putting together his coalition proved to be surprisingly complicated, requiring nearly two months of painstaking negotiations and a series of legal maneuvers just to allow his partners to take office. Among them: newly created Cabinet positions with widespread authority over security and a law allowing a politician on probation for a criminal conviction to be a government minister.

Along the way, he was forced to make generous concessions to allies that include commitments to expanding West Bank settlements, proposals to allow discrimination against against LGBTQ people and boosting subsidies for ultra-Orthodox men to study instead of work.

If these plans are carried out, they will alienate large portions of the Israeli public, raise the chances of conflict with the Palestinians, upset Israel's powerful security establishment and put Israel on a collision course with some of its closest allies, including the U.S. government and the American Jewish community. Even members of Netanyahu's Likud Party are grumbling.

The West is clinging to the impossible dream of hegemony, Russian philosopher tells RT

The conflict in Ukraine is the world's "first multipolar war," in which Russia is fighting for the right of every civilization to choose its own path while the West wishes to maintain its totalitarian hegemonic globalism, Aleksandr Dugin told RT in an exclusive interview on Friday.

Multipolarity is "not against the West as such," Dugin said, but "against the claim of the West to be the model, to be the unique example" of history and human understanding. The current Russophobia and hatred of Russia, he argued, are a relic of Cold War thinking and the "bipolar understanding of the architecture of international relations."

When the Soviet Union self-destructed in December 1991, it left the "global Western liberal civilization" in control of the world, Dugin noted. This hegemon is now refusing to accept the future in which it would be "not one of the two, but one of [the] few poles," put in its proper place as "just a part, not the whole, of humanity."

With 2023 about to dawn, Israel has sworn in its new, far-right government. Much has already been written about the new government, and the sinister figures of Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Avi Maoz, and others. On Thursday, Israel added fuel to the fire, with the release of the new government's agenda.

That agenda includes establishing the framework for annexing the West Bank to Israel; diminishing the power of Israel's judiciary; plans for expanding Jews-only settlements on both sides of the Green Line; revoking the law banning discrimination based on religious beliefs so that, for instance, doctors could refuse medical care to LGBTQ+ people if they claim it violates their religious beliefs; and much more.

These policy objectives are not legally binding, but they form the understanding that brings the parties in Israel's governing coalition together. The blatant racism and aggressive moves to squeeze Palestinians even further have brought a new kind of criticism even within Israel. Zvi Bar'el, a moderate opinion columnist at Haaretz, broke a taboo in Israel with his piece, "Zionism Is Racism."

The 118th United States Congress will be inaugurated on January 3, 2023, ushering in a number of changes, including Republican control of the House of Representatives and an attendant flip of the office of the speaker. That means that long-time Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi will have to give up her gavel and hand it over, most likely to Republican leader Kevin McCarthy.

This has been Pelosi's second tenure as speaker, as she served the first time from 2007-2011 and made history during that time by being the first - and so far only - woman to hold that title. Indeed, Pelosi's record as the third-highest constitutional officer in the US has been historic - but maybe for some reasons that aren't so savory.

For one, the California Democrat is a notorious self-dealer. For instance, Pelosi was one of the most high-profile members of Congress implicated in a five-month corruption investigation by Business Insider. She is reported to have deep holdings in companies such as Tesla, Disney, Alphabet (Google's parent company), and Meta (Facebook's parent company), which she is directly responsible for regulating as a member of Congress.

Elon Musk hinted on Sunday that he is about to release the next batch of his "Twitter Files," which will focus on Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Twitter CEO posted a New Year's message on the social media platform on Sunday, saying: "Hope you're having a great day 1 2023! One thing's for sure, it won't be boring." When one user responded to the post, saying she was "waiting for #FauciFiles," Musk replied: "Later this week."

The billionaire has been long critical of Fauci, who was the face of the US pandemic response under both the Trump and Biden administrations. Until recently, he also held the position of director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Last month, Musk went so far as to suggest that the doctor should be prosecuted for allegedly lying under oath about the funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab in China. Gain-of-function research can involve taking a virus which could infect humans and making it more transmissible.

In a new firsthand account of the frantic efforts of Capitol Police officers to protect Congress and themselves from an armed mob on Jan. 6, 2021, the department's former chief blames cascading government failures for allowing the brutal melee.

The federal government's multibillion-dollar security network, built after 9/11 to gather intelligence that could warn of a looming attack, provided no such shield on Jan. 6, former Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund writes in a new book. The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and even his own agency's intelligence unit had been alerted weeks earlier to reams of chilling chatter about right-wing extremists arming for an attack on the Capitol that day, Sund says, but didn't take the basic steps to assess those plots or sound an alarm. Senior military leaders, citing political or tactical worries, delayed sending help.

And, Sund warns in Courage Under Fire, it could easily happen again. Many of the factors that left the Capitol vulnerable remain unfixed, he said.

The Washington Post obtained an advance copy of the book, which will be published Tuesday.

Why was Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani assassinated by the US? His visit to Venezuela in 2019 may provide some answers.

On 3 January 2020, the US military assassinated Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), along with his companion, the deputy head of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Three years later, the motives for this decision - and its timing -are still being debated. The reasons for the US's shock killing, however, may not be solely related to Soleimani's role in regional conflicts, but could also arguably stem from his growing international clout.

Why was Soleimani assassinated?

Soleimani was reportedly responsible for leading Iran's plan to surround Israel with an arc of missiles and precision drones in the West Asian region - from Lebanon to Syria, Iraq and Gaza, all the way to Yemen - which was viewed by Israeli officials as an existential threat to the Jewish state.

The US has long accused Soleimani of being behind much of the resistance it faced after invading Iraq in 2003, as well as allegedly ordering operations against US forces in the period leading up to his assassination.

The Quds Force commander - along with Muhandis - were critical in the Iraqi effort to defeat ISIS, outside of the control and agenda of the US and its regional allies, who often used the terrorist group to secure political and geographic gains.

Furthermore, the US held Iran, and by extension Soleimani, responsible for the Yemeni attack on Saudi Arabia's Aramco oil facilities on 14 September, 2019. The Aramco attack was so massive that it disrupted half of Saudi oil production, and was the largest of its kind since former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Anthony Fauci is finally gone from his government perch. Let us recall that it was he who set this calamity in motion, squandering his credibility, while taking down public health and much else with it. More than anyone, he bears responsibility, even if he was acting on others' behalf. That is especially true if he was carrying out a hidden agenda (take your pick of theories).

There was already growing political and societal panic on March 11, 2020, when the House Oversight and Reform Committee convened a hearing on the new virus circulating. Fauci was the key witness. The only question on everyone's mind came down to the most primal fear: am I going to die from this thing, like in the movies?

This was one day before Trump's announcement of the travel ban from Europe, the UK, and Australia, essentially sealing the borders of the US to an extent never before attempted, thus separating families and loved ones and trapping billions of people in their nation states. It was five days before the evil declaration by all health authorities to immediately shut down all places where people could congregate.

Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, entered Al-Aqsa Mosque's courtyards in occupied East Jerusalem on Tuesday, in a move bound to inflame tensions.

A video posted on social media shows Ben-Gvir touring the courtyards with a heavy security detail.

On Monday, the Palestinian movement Hamas warned Israel that it "won't sit idly by" if the new security minister visits Al-Aqsa Mosque, as he vowed to do on Sunday.

Following his visit on Tuesday, Ben-Gvir said: "Our government will not surrender to threats from Hamas.

"The Temple Mount is the most important place for the people of Israel," he said, using the Jewish name for the site.

If you haven't heard by now, let me break it to you: Justice and politics don't mix. And most judges are cowards. Here's the short version of the Kari Lake election trial - from a writer who lives and votes in dysfunctional Maricopa County.

From the get-go: The Judge lowered Lake's 10 submitted counts to only two. Then he set the bar to an unreachable high - by insisting that proving election failures, and massive disenfranchisement of voters, was not going to be enough. Nope. He required proof that Maricopa County fully intended to sabotage our election.

And he gave Lake's team just two days to do it.