A Pakistani court has sentenced former prime minister Imran Khan to ten years behind bars. He has been charged with leaking state secrets, according to the spokesman for the politician's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI).

On Tuesday, Zulfiqar Bukhari said, as quoted by AP, that the verdict was announced at a prison in the northern city of Rawalpindi, not far from the capital, Islamabad. The same sentence was also imposed on former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

The charges relate to the so-called cipher, a classified cable sent to Islamabad by the Pakistani ambassador to Washington in 2022, shortly after the start of the Ukraine conflict. The document allegedly suggested that the US wanted to remove Khan over his neutrality regarding the hostilities.

The ex-Pakistani PM called the cipher case on Tuesday "false," adding that it "is being completed in violation of constitutional requirements and legal regulations.""This is not a trial but a fixed match outcome of which was predetermined," he added.

"The West is in danger," warned Argentina's new president, Javier Milei at this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

In his dangerously appealing style, Milei blamed "collectivism" - that is, social welfare, taxes and the state - as the "root cause" of the world's problems, leading to widespread impoverishment.

The only way forward, Milei declared, is through "free enterprise, capitalism and economic freedom." Milei's speech marked a return to the orthodoxy of Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys, who pushed forward an ideology of social cannibalism as the basis for their neoliberal agenda.

Since the 1970s, this scorched earth policy has devastated much of the Global South through the structural adjustment programmes of the International Monetary Fund. It also created factory deserts in the West (what Donald Trump, in his inauguration address in 2017, called the American carnage").

Therein lies the confounding logic of the far right: on the one side, calling for the billionaire class to dominate society in their interest (which produces the social carnage) and then, on the other side, inflaming the victims of said carnage to fight against policies that would benefit them.

Milei is right in his overall judgment: the West is in danger, but not because of social democratic policies; it is in danger because of its inability to come to terms with its slow demise as the dominating bloc in the world.

Republican-led committee sends two articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas to House of Representatives...

House Republicans voted along party lines after midnight on Wednesday to move toward impeaching the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, for a "willful and systematic" refusal to enforce immigration laws as border security becomes a top 2024 election issue.

In a charge against a cabinet official unseen in nearly 150 years, the homeland security committee debated all day on Tuesday and well into the night before recommending two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the full House.

The committee Republicans voted in favor, while the Democrats unified against, 18-15.

The partisan showdown reflected the Republicans' efforts to make the Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump's hardline deportation approach to immigration their own.

That approach was mirrored on a second front on Tuesday, as Republicans also lambasted the border deal recently brokered between the Joe Biden White House and a bipartisan group of senators, Democrats and Republicans alike.

Ukrainian military and politicial leader's don't believe in victory and are stealing Western aid on a massive scale, the former commander of Poland's land forces, General Waldemar Skrzypczak, has said in an interview with the newspaper Fakt.

The statement comes as Kiev attempts to secure more funding amid its supporters' growing reluctance to provide further assistance. So far, more than 41 countries, including Poland, have committed a total of €92.5 billion ($100 billion) in military aid to Ukraine, according to the Ukraine Support Tracker of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Ukraine's Western donors risk losing substantial sums, as the country has weathered a number of corruption scandals over the last few months.

"Democracy has won" in Poland following the election of a new government in October - or at least so declared the country's new prime minister, Donald Tusk. The former top European Union official's party only won 30% of the vote compared to the 36% of his incumbent conservative, EU-skeptical rivals, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, but was nonetheless able to assemble a coalition of leftists to take power. Since entering office, Tusk has moved quickly to prove his particular commitment to "democracy." Which is to say that, in a particularly striking example of what all of us can now increasingly anticipate whenever "democracy" wins elections in the West these days, he immediately began trampling the constitution in order to jail his political opponents.

West Asian exports to Israel have skyrocketed since 2020. These are the Arab and Muslim governments that put goods on Israeli shelves, despite their public stances supporting Gaza.
Israeli import data reveals that a number of Arab countries play a significant role in buoying the occupation state's trade volume, despite attempts by other regional nations to weaken Israel's economy.

Since this decade's onset, Israeli ports have been teeming with the arrival of goods from across the region. Each shipment not only boosts the occupation state's economy, but also weaves a narrative that goes beyond trade statistics as these economic interactions carry a hidden stream of political significance.

Although not an Arab country, Turkiye was the first Muslim state to establish diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv, and today leads the pack of West Asian states boosting Israeli imports. In 2020 alone, the value of Turkish exports spiked to $5.7 billion, constituting 6.2 percent of total Israeli imports that year.

Iron and steel ($1.06 billion), plastics ($464.67 million), electrical and electronic equipment ($346.83 million), vehicles ($331.48 million), machinery ($298.89 million), metals ($261.66 million), and building materials ($188.39 million) form the cornerstone of Turkish exports to the Zionist entity.

In second place is the UAE, which normalized ties with Tel Aviv as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, and was the first Arab state to sign a free-trade agreement (2022) with Israel as part of a plan to boost mutual trade to $10 billion annually. The Persian Gulf state's exports were valued at $1.89 billion in 2022, accounting for 2.1 percent of all Israeli imports.

Particularly intriguing is the 1543 percent surge in the value of Emirati exports to Israel since the normalization agreement. Noteworthy export categories include precious metals and stones ($525.32 million), iron and steel ($483.95 million), electrical and electronic equipment ($210.71 million), and oil ($94.55 million).

The recent meeting in Moscow between Chad's President Idriss Deby and Russia's Vladimir Putin is the latest sign Africa is embracing the emerging multipolar world order. Western reaction to this and a score of other linkups has been on the level of a geopolitical panic. One by one, and in batches, the nations of Africa are spurning the old-world imperialists, especially France. And Chad is a keystone nation in the dead center of the continent.

"Chad is one of our potential African partners. The range of opportunities of our [bilateral] cooperation is far from being fully tapped; we have plenty of work ahead of us." - Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov

This first meeting between Chad's interim president and Mr. Putin is significant for several reasons. First, and perhaps foremost, Idriss Deby's visit indicates that Western pressures on his government are no longer working. Some may recall that Deby intended to attend the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg but later cancelled the visit. Experts told TASS and other news agencies that Chad reduced its engagement with Russia owing to heavy pressure from Washington and the Europeans. These Western nations are not helping their African ambitions one bit by referring to President Deby (and others) as "junta leaders" and so forth.

Another sign that the tide has turned is that Chad's prime minister was in Moscow a week earlier, inking an agreement to develop military ties with Moscow. Amazingly, the think tanks and policymakers in the West seem to be failing in every effort to stem the stampede of world nations driving toward BRICS membership and closer China/Russia ties. A recent Council on Foreign Relations report is a perfect example of the losing hand the American hegemony is holding.

Take a look at the map of African nations that are supposedly succumbing to so-called Russian "misinformation campaigns." Miraculously, Chad sits in the center of a nest of other propagandised countries. Curious, no? Further proof that no policy geniuses live anywhere around the White House comes in the form of brainless admission of guilt. Part of the punchline of the CFR piece reads like testimony from a foolish criminal in an American court:

"The fallout from the war in Ukraine has revealed diplomatic fault lines. Analysts say the West needs to pursue more equal partnerships with African countries."

The bloc's chief diplomat has called for more weapons for Kiev and further sanctions on Moscow

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has rejected the notion of peace talks and a ceasefire in Ukraine, instead demanding that the bloc's member states cough up "whatever it takes" for Kiev to defeat Moscow.

In an op-ed for France's L'Obs magazine on Tuesday, Borrell urged EU leaders to reject "the temptations of conciliation" with Russia. "These ideas were wrong in 2022, and they remain wrong today," he wrote, arguing that "we must not let them shape our policy towards Ukraine."

It is unclear which calls for peace Borrell was referring to. In the EU, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has persistently called for a negotiated settlement, arguing that Kiev's forces cannot win a military victory against their Russian opponents, and that the EU's sanctions on Moscow hurt EU economies more than they hurt Russia's.

Borrell, on the other hand, claimed that sanctions have "weakened Russia's war machine," despite admitting in a speech one day earlier that they have largely failed to achieve their goals.

"Instead of seeking compromise, we should remember the lessons we have learned since 2022 and redouble our efforts," Borrell continued.

The West is championing the idea of free military movement to get rid of bureaucratic procedures and red tape and is seeking to conclude a deal on the creation of military corridors across Europe by July, as per The Times. What's really behind the idea?

The movement of troops and military cargo within Europe is reportedly complicated by numerous restrictions that prevent NATO forces from moving quickly across the Old Continent.

The NATO leadership is concerned about the rules that limit the exchange and movement of military equipment not only between European countries but also between regions in a particular country (namely Germany), claiming that the red tape could become a serious hurdle were a conflict with Russia to occur. The alliance would like to see "a military Schengen" in Europe, akin to the political Schengen which ensures seamless movement across Europe.

Washington has sent a message to Iran saying that it did not want an open war and warned that escalation would be met with US retaliatory action.

Iranian sources told Al-Jazeera Arabic that "The US sent more than one message to Tehran over the past two days via third parties."

The report adds that Tehran rejected Washington's threats and said targeting its territory is a red line, and crossing the line would be met with an appropriate response.