People are always correcting me when I use the term "elite" to describe that group of "people" (or maybe lizards) who are calling the shots and who created the "agenda" and want the rest of us (useless eaters) either under their thumb or dead.

The people who correct me claim these people (or lizards) are not "elite" which falsely implies "better," "advanced," or "special." They don't want to give these people (or lizards) any credit they do not deserve. I get it. The clear and indisputable official definition of "elite" is: "A group or class of persons considered to be superior to others because of their intelligence, social standing, or wealth."

But who is doing the "considering" — them, or us, the "non-elite"?

However, it is an easy word to use to describe a group, just like "sheep" and "shrew" are easy to use. It's not necessarily wholly accurate, but everyone knows what I am referring to when I use these terms. I get the same sort of criticism when I use the phrase "powers that be" — many people want me to use the more awkward expression, "powers that shouldn't be" — yes, more accurate, but more awkward.

So, what about these "elite?"

Who are they and what are they up to, and why are they considered, at least by themselves, to be "better," "advanced" and "special?" What do they all have in common other than evil? Are they all evil? Are they actually lizards?

"Physically dragging out a reporter from the State Department briefing room while preaching press freedom to the rest of the world is the perfect example of the Biden administration's love affair with double standards and duplicity," said one foreign policy observer.

Two journalists were removed from Secretary of State Antony Blinken's final news conference on Thursday after interrupting Blinken's remarks to heckle him about the United States' policy toward Gaza, a day after a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel was announced. One of the reporters, independent journalist Sam Husseini, was physically carried out of the briefing room by security.

Less than two minutes into Blinken's remarks, as he was thanking the reporters in the attendance for "asking tough questions," Max Blumenthal, the editor in chief of The Grayzone — an independent news [organization] — addressed Blinken, saying loudly in reference to the cease-fire deal: "300 reporters in Gaza were on the receiving end of your bombs. Why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May?" On Wednesday, President Biden announced the breakthrough, saying that "this is the ceasefire agreement I introduced last spring."

Last weekend, US proxies launched a drone attack on a critical part of the TurkStream gas pipeline located in southwest Russia. The incident was largely ignored by the mainstream media, but its importance to energy starved Europeans cannot be overstated. The attack is clearly a continuation of the same hostile policy that led to the sabotage of the NordStream pipeline. (Note — The biggest act of industrial terrorism in history.) The strategic objective of these attacks is to isolate Russia by blocking all attempts at economic integration in order to divide the world into warring blocs. This process of 'decoupling' is intended to portray Russia as an emerging threat to the West thereby justifying Washington's covert operations. This is from an article at the Asia Times:

The Ukrainians sent nine drones to attack a natural gas compressor station in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia. The compressor station was part of the TurkStream pipeline. All the drones were reportedly shot down. There was some minor damage, but the compressor station is operating normally.

The pipeline runs from Russia to Turkey (with) Some gas flows onwards to the European Union....

A key report says that "In 2024, Russian gas reached Europe via three routes: transit through Ukraine (30%), via Turkey and the Turkstream pipeline (31%) and as LNG (39%)." LNG deliveries come primarily from the US and Russia.... Neither the US nor Russia can increase LNG deliveries to make up for the cessation of transport through Ukraine. Had the Ukrainian attack on TurkStream been successful, over 60% of Europe's imported natural gas supplies would have been cut off.

LNG is more expensive than pipeline gas, and there are problems with transport and transmission overland....

The destruction of most of the Nord Stream pipelines...., the Ukrainian shutdown and Ukraine's attacks on TurkStream could very well destroy Europe's ability to keep its factories running and homes and businesses heated.... The economic impact has already driven Germany into a recession and helped force the collapse of the Olaf Scholz coalition government....

Cutting off gas deliveries and attacking pipelines that feed Europe could send Europe into a death spiral, but the Masters of Kyiv either don't care or alternatively are trying to demonstrate to the Europeans that they better help bail out Ukraine or they will bite the hand that feeds them. Ukraine's TurkStream pipeline attack sends a message to Europe, Asia Times

After 466 days of war between Israel and Gaza, a ceasefire has finally been declared and is set to go into effect in the coming days. The deal, in essence, is the same exact proposal that was set forth some 8 months ago. In order to understand what may happen next, it is essential to analyze the circumstances that led to this outcome.

On Wednesday, Hamas officially accepted a ceasefire/prisoner-exchange agreement with Israel. The day prior, the Israelis had pledged to announce and then finalize the deal within as little as 24 hours given a Hamas commitment to the deal. Suddenly, on Thursday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu postponed a planned cabinet meeting to formally ratify the ceasefire, claiming that Hamas had made additional demands, without making it clear what the Palestinian group was asking for. Immediately Hamas responded by stating that it hadn't made such demands and was fully committed to the deal they just signed.

The Israeli PM's efforts to delay the implementation of the deal came after an avalanche of Israeli media coverage that pushed the narrative of an Israeli defeat, framing the ceasefire as a surrender deal. Shortly afterwards, Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, decided to threaten the resignation of his Otzma Yehudit Party from Netanyahu's coalition, threatening a collapse of the government. This all occurred as Israeli forces were already beginning a slow withdrawal from two key areas inside the Gaza Strip. Although the deal is not dead, considerable pushback from a segment of the Israeli public and members of the ruling coalition threaten its implementation, despite there already being steps taken to go ahead with it. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes across Gaza have been ramped up, inflicting hundreds of casualties, some against groups who were celebrating the announcement of the ceasefire.

The Middle East is on the verge of total war despite recent developments involving a fragile ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas and the collapse of the Assad government in Syria last month which is now occupied by terrorists, so 2025 seems like its going to be a turbulent year with the transition from the Biden's criminal cabal to the incoming Trump regime.

Both President Joe Biden and President-Elect Donald Trump claimed credit for ending Israel's genocidal war that has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians to date. But don't get your hopes up too high because the new ceasefire deal will not last. What will most likely happen after Trump's inauguration is that Israel will somehow violate the ceasefire agreement and strike alleged Hamas targets. It is certain that Hamas would retaliate which would allow Trump to give Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to respond in any way he sees fit and then the world will witness once again another war.

The exact opposite of what Kagan posited is true: Russia can't militarily control Ukraine indefinitely; a Russian-American brinksmanship scenario is terrifyingly realistic; and Putin is indeed interested in compromising but only under certain conditions.

Hugely influential neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan recently published a lengthy diatribe at The Atlantic fearmongering about Russia's total and indefinite control of Ukraine, which he takes for granted if Trump doesn't redouble aid to Ukraine. It's premised on the presumptions that Russia can military control all of Ukraine indefinitely, there's no realistic Russian-American brinksmanship scenario over that country, and Putin is unwilling to compromise.

The following three arguments tear apart his claims:

You're aware, I'm sure, that a lot of people thought "Joe Biden" was being play-acted in the White House over his four years there by a series of look-alike actors. You saw those news items comparing "JB's" earlobes to the old gaffer who showed up at the podium on a given day. Hmmmmmm. . . . I was not persuaded by any of that. "Joe Biden" has simply been impersonating himself — play-acting the role of "president." The mystery is how he got there.

You can expect very shortly, probably only a matter of weeks, to see a raft of news stories, soon-to-be big-money books, revealing the utter sustained chaos that churned behind the pathetic, half-animate figure pretending to be "chief executive" of the US government lo these dismal four years past. You will learn who was pulling his strings day-to-day since 1/20/21, probably a gang of 25-year-old, ambitious, Cluster-B staffers too disorganized to even amount to a cabal — but sufficiently united in their mission to destroy the country by any means necessary.

Whose idea was it, anyway, back in the spring of 2020, to retrieve this broken hack from the dumpster of discarded Democratic Party primary candidates and jam him into the role of nominee for president? You'd suspect Barack Obama, of course, since the former president had set-up a war-room across town from the White House during the Trump interregnum, and had openly bragged that he'd love nothing better than to someday kick back in a warm-up suit and phone-in governing orders to a stand-in dummy occupying the oval office.

For decades, the European Union was known for its chest-thumping about "freedom, democracy and the rule of law". The troubled bloc also claimed that it was purely an "economic project" and that it "had nothing to do" with NATO, geopolitics, military, etc. However, in the last two years, all those masks have fallen, showing that the EU is nothing more than a geopolitical pendant of the world's most vile racketeering cartel.

The troubled bloc's close coordination with NATO shows that there's virtually no difference between the two. One of the most glaring examples of this is the "enforcement of democracy" in various member states (and not just member states, as evidenced by Western meddling in Georgia), extremely reminiscent of the way the United States and later NATO did in the immediate aftermath of WWII and later years.

Donald Trump takes over from Joe Biden at the White House in less than a week in what is, for all intents and purposes, a theatrical change of the executive figurehead.

One manikin is wheeled out, another wheeled in. Cue the brass band and gun salutes.

There's a big difference in personal style and rhetoric about policies. But the world will continue to endure its experience of U.S. power - one of imperialistic militarism, conflict, and violence.

Outgoing Democrat President Joe Biden let the cat out of the bag - as he is prone to do - when he delivered what was billed as his last foreign policy speech this week. He outlined a world of U.S. domination by military force and proxy machinations. It was a dystopian view of international relations - yet Biden exulted in the belief that "America is winning" and that this something noble to report to the American people.

During his 30-minute rant at the State Department, Biden declared: "The United States is winning the worldwide competition compared to four years ago. America is stronger. Our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker."

It was hard to listen to Biden as he slurred from one fragmented sentence to the next without punctuation. It was harder still to listen to the delusional lies about America leading the world under the aegis of his administration.

He went on to boast that adversaries Russia, China and Iran were all weakened by his policies to create a new Cold War. That's right, Biden actually claimed it a virtue when he stammered, "the post-Cold War is over, a new era has begun" of fierce competition and crises."

The proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, where as many as one million military deaths have been incurred in three years, has been recklessly fueled by the Biden administration. The Biden White House and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson deliberately sabotaged an early peace settlement in March 2022.

Israeli forces killed an elderly Palestinian during a raid that used a vehicle disguised as an ambulance.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops that killed an elderly civilian during a West Bank raid may have committed a war crime, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has told Sky News.

The 80-year-old, Halima Abu Leil, was on a grocery run on December 19 when she was shot six times by IDF troops during "counterterrorism activity" at the Balata refugee camp near Nablus. She died soon afterward.

"When I look at the footage, what emerges prima facie is that there were no precautions taken - within these operations whose legality is debatable - to avoid or spare civilian life. No principle of proportionality because there was wild fire directed at the identified target and ultimately no respect for the principle of distinction," Albanese told the British outlet on Monday.

"So this was a murder in cold blood, and could be a war crime as an extrajudicial killing," she added.