The Taliban have halted all flights of Afghan evacuees for the past two weeks in a dispute about how the airport in Kabul is run and who is allowed on the evacuation flights, according to a congressional source, two refugee advocates and a source familiar with the matter. A State Department official involved in relocation efforts confirmed that flights have stopped.

"We are hopeful that flights will resume shortly, though as usual, winter weather conditions and airport operations remain additional factors to be aware of."

At issue are U.S.-chartered Qatar Airways flights that had been running between Kabul and Doha. The Taliban began demanding several seats on the flights for Taliban fighters and sympathizers to leave the country so they can work in other countries and send desperately needed money back to Afghanistan, according to a congressional official. The country's economy is in tatters, and millions of Afghans are short of food as temperatures drop.

The Taliban's argument is that they run the country and that it is their airspace and airport the Qataris are using, so they should get a certain number of seats on the flights.

Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos has put a six-month pause on new regulations designed to lower the cost of patented medicines in Canada.

Health Canada first announced in 2019 that the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) would change how it sets a price cap on medicines in Canada in an effort to lower excessively expensive drug costs.

This will be the fourth delay in implementing those changes.

The regulations were supposed to come into force at the beginning of January, but have been pushed back to July 1, 2022.

As tensions run high in the war-torn Donbass region, Putin remarked that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been sucked into the orbit of the "Nazis" who had been pulling officials off the path of seeking a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.

Speaking to journalists at his annual end-of-year press conference on Thursday, the Russian leader said that "instead of responding to his people's request for peace ... President Zelensky came to power and, rather than fulfilling them, he, like his predecessors, fell under the influence of radical elements - as they say in Ukraine, Nazis."

Moscow is doing "practically everything" to establish security in Ukraine's war-torn regions, Putin said. However, it is a difficult task. "How can one build a relationship with today's leadership, given what they are doing?" he mused. "It's practically impossible."

Coming straight from President Putin, it did sound like a bolt from the sky:

"We need long-term legally binding guarantees even if we know they cannot be trusted, as the U.S. frequently withdraws from treaties that become uninteresting to them. But it's something, not just verbal assurances."

And that's how Russia-U.S. relations come to the definitive crunch - after an interminable series of polite red alerts coming from Moscow.

Putin once again had to specify that Russia is looking for "indivisible, equitable security" - a principle established since Helsinki in 1975 - even though he no longer sees the U.S. as a dependable "partner", that diplomatically nicety so debased by the Empire since the end of the USSR.

Russia should not import gender issues from abroad into the country, President Vladimir Putin says.

Russia should import concepts from the rest of the world, such as the best technological and economic ideas, but it should reject the view that men and women are the same thing, Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed.

Speaking to journalists at his annual end-of-year press conference, Putin also said that the West has distorted views on transexual rights, and these issues are making their way to Russia due to the internet.

"It's inevitable [that these concepts will arrive in Russia]," Putin said. "If someone thinks men and women are the same thing, let them think that, but let us think about common sense."

The Overton window of political possibility is the concept that there are a limited range of ideas the public is willing to consider and accept. That politicians can only be effective by advocating policy that fits within the Overton window and that disruptive groups are the ones who can expand or contract the Overton window. In the case of COVID-19, the use of the noble lie has been used by government and world health officials as well as legacy media sycophants to restrict and even close the Overton window regarding issues such as mask use, vaccination strategies, and lockdowns. To be explicitly clear, the Overton Window is a political concept which is being actively manipulated to constrain scientific discourse.

Government officials are intentionally acting as those disruptive groups which limit the window by co-opting media outlets, social media and big tech through NGOs, The Trusted News Initiative and three letter agencies. Through NIH media campaigns, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins and many others have acted to limit or close the Overton Window. They have also effectively used smear campaigns both against groups and individuals to limit the Overton Window and keep their policy positions from being questioned by the public and to expand governmental authority. There is now a deep understanding of the political science behind the Overton Window, and the idea is being used to market ideas to the public in ways never thought of before by governmental organizations and agencies.

"The most common misconception is that lawmakers themselves are in the business of shifting the Overton window. That is absolutely false. Lawmakers are actually in the business of detecting where the window is, and then moving to be in accordance with it."

- Joseph Lehman

We are accustomed to thinking of great evil as instantly recognisable. From Nuremberg rallies to the squalor of the Gulag, great evil is something obvious and unmissable. Or so we think. Unfortunately, we have developed such a cartoonish idea of what evil, villains, and devils look like, that as a people we are entirely unprepared for the entrance of evil dressed in a very different cloak. As C.S. Lewis warned us decades ago in his Preface to The Screwtape Letters:

"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices."

Yet it is not only that great evil itself can be seemingly mundane, but it is often facilitated and allowed to grow by the ordinary, the middle-of-the-road. This has been the case in many totalitarian states, where the inaction and unwillingness of millions to confront the evil taking root and growing before their eyes has allowed it to thrive and take over their society like bindweed, and this is what is happening in our society right now.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on Friday that Washington grew "arrogant and self-confident" after the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the expansion of the Nato military alliance.

In recent years President Vladimir Putin has grown increasingly insistent that Nato is encroaching close to Russia's borders, and Moscow last week demanded "legal guarantees" that the US-led alliance will halt its eastward expansion.

"How can one count on equal relations with the United States and the West in such a position?" Gorbachev told state news agency RIA Novosti on the eve of the anniversary of his resignation as the leader of the USSR. He noted the "triumphant mood in the West, especially in the United States" after the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991.

"They grew arrogant and self-confident. They declared victory in the Cold War," Gorbachev, 90, said. He insisted that it was "together" that Moscow and Washington pulled the world out of confrontation and the nuclear race.

"No, the 'winners' decided to build a new empire. Hence the idea of Nato expansion," Gorbachev added. However, he welcomed upcoming security talks between Moscow and Washington. "I hope there will be a result," he said.

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed former national security adviser Michael Flynn's lawsuit against the House Jan. 6 select committee for failing to follow procedural rules in filing his case, but said he would have an opportunity to make corrections and re-submit it to the court.

U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven said in an order issued just one day after the lawsuit was filed that, among other things, Flynn's lawyers failed to show that there was an imminent need for the court to intervene against a set of subpoenas from the select committee aimed at the retired general and his phone provider.

Scriven, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote:

"Flynn may refile his Motion if he believes that he can comply with the procedural requirements discussed above. Of course, if the Select Committee attempts to expedite the response dates for document requests from Flynn or for the third-party subpoenas, Flynn may seek appropriate relief from the Court. If Flynn chooses to renew his request for a temporary restraining order, he must adequately explain why injunctive relief is necessary before Defendants have an opportunity to respond."

Flynn's attorney, David Warrington, said in a statement that Scriven's order will not affect their underlying case challenging the subpoena.

"General Flynn looks forward to obtaining relief from Congress's unconstitutional and unlawful investigation in the normal course of his pending suit for injunctive relief that was not affected by today' order."

An updated list of content restrictions for short video platforms, released last week by the China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA), adds a few familiar new political priorities to the old 2019 list — including respect for the CCP's new resolution on history and Xi Jinping's claim on the soul of 21st century Marxism.

On December 15, the China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA) released an updated version of its 2019 list of content restrictions for short video platforms. The purpose of the release, a notice from the CNSA said, was to "improve the quality of short video content, and to curb the spread of false and harmful content to create a clear cyberspace." While ostensibly an industry association comprising tech companies and radio broadcasters, both private and state-operated, the CNSA is also directly involved in the control of so-called "harmful content," its charter committing it to such goals as "upholding socialist core values."