Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) announced on Wednesday they would initiate contempt proceedings for Hunter Biden after he did not sit for a scheduled deposition and instead held a press conference rebuffing the chairmen's claims.

The president's son was subpoenaed by Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to sit for a deposition before the Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

But instead of showing up for the deposition, he appeared outside the Capitol and stated he would not sit for the closed-door deposition and would only testify before a public committee hearing.

On a day of global shame this week, the United States voted against calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. It means the U.S. is an accomplice in the genocide by the Israeli regime.

It can't get more graphic than this. Out of 193 nations at the United Nations, 153 of them (nearly 80 per cent) voted for an immediate ceasefire and the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza where more than two million civilians have been subjected to over two months of non-stop indiscriminate bombing by the Israeli military.

Not just callous deliberate murder of civilians, but a blockade on all basic humanitarian needs. Water, food, medicines, and fuel have all been cut off by an Israeli regime that calls Palestinians "human animals".

This is the second time the U.S. has voted against the vast majority of nations at the UN General Assembly appealing for an end to the violence. The United States has also vetoed three resolutions at the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire.

In the latest vote on December 12, the U.S. joined with Israel and a handful of minor states in opposing the call for peace. Another 23 states shamefully abstained including Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Ukraine.

On the same day, President Joe Biden gave a speech to fundraisers in Washington DC in which he cautioned Israel to be "more careful" in conducting the military onslaught against Gaza. Biden was more concerned that Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" of civilians was a public relations problem, not a moral outrage and war crime.

A UN Security Council vote on December 8, demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war, failed because the U.S. used their veto power in the sole dissenting vote. The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, did not cast the damning vote, she sent her assistant instead, shielding herself from the disgust of the international community. Thomas-Greenfield is the direct descendant of African slaves held in America without citizenship or human rights, similar to the Palestinian people today.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani ahead of the December 8 meeting with the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee, including Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Jordan's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Al-Safadi, Egypt's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad Al-Maliki, and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan.

Some had envisioned the meeting between Blinken and the Arab ministers would take place prior to the UN vote, and the ministers could present their case as to why a ceasefire to save children's lives should be supported by the U.S., as initiated by Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres.

But, instead Blinken waited until after the U.S. voted no, and the ceasefire was an impossibility, to sit around the table with the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee, who all looked dejected, and hopeless. They all told Blinken they reject the U.S.-Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and called on the U.S. to assume its responsibilities and take the necessary measures to push Israel towards an immediate ceasefire. They also called for a lifting of the siege which prevents adequate amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that neither Israel nor its Western allies want Palestinians to establish an independent state in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank on Wednesday.

"Judging by the stance taken by the West, they are not going to have a Palestinian state established. Our data suggests that the West and the current Israeli government do not want Gaza to be united with the West Bank, as required by the decision to create a state," Lavrov told the upper house of the Russian parliament.

The top Russian diplomat referred to United Nations Resolution 181 as the grounds for establishing a separate Palestinian state. In 1947, the UN General Assembly voted 33-13 to divide UK-governed Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime. The partitioning was planned to take place in May 1948 when the British mandate was due to end, but only the state of Israel was established.

Diplomatic and military support - and a thriving arms trade - make the UK complicit in the oppression of Palestinians

I often tell my first-year politics students that the study of politics is the study of power. And what we saw last month, above all, was the glaring disparity in power between Israel and the Palestinians.

When Palestinians in Gaza and around the world celebrated the news of a ceasefire, breathing a sigh of relief, many commentators hailed it as a return to calm. For Palestinians, however, "calm" means a status quo of occupation, blockade, and repression.

In fact, one can say the true nature of this conflict is what happens between the periodic escalations - the constant grind of life under apartheid. Israeli power over the Palestinians is not simply military, and it is not only maintained by force; it is sustained by international support. The significance of this support becomes obvious during Israeli military offensives - last month, the US wilfully obstructed a UN security council statement on Gaza to buy more time for Israel's bombing campaign - but the key elements of this international support are consistent.

Now more than two months into Al-Aqsa Flood, the Outlaw US Empire has killed any voice it had when it comes to upholding Human Rights by vetoing the UNSC resolution calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza, not just a "pause." At the end of the Crooke/Napolitano video chat is a clip of the FMs of Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia saying as one that such a vote was unacceptable, which is diplomatic speak for reprehensible. The imbecilic US UN representative that gave the Empire's justification for its veto said to allow a ceasefire would be to allow new seeds of conflict to be sown — the puke, or rather the person who told him what to say, doesn't seem to realize those seeds were sown long ago and replanted every time the Outlaw US Empire and its Zionist partners didn't allow a solution for the Palestinians other than the continual shrinkage of their lands and imprisonment in Gaza. As Lavrov said, the Outlaw US Empire simply cancels whatever it deems necessary to justify its narrative.

But before clicking the link to the video, additional context is to be supplied by Crooke's SCF essay and Pepe Escobar's article for The Cradle as both just spent the last week together in Moscow discovering what they could and sharing insights. Crooke's will get first viewing as in his first sentence he anticipates the Judge's opening question as the title gives away, "Strategic Reflections From Moscow," and it begins with Russia's relations with the West that readers have read mostly from the Russian perspective here at the Gym. And instead of telling readers what they'll read, they get to find out for themselves.

Germany may have to declare an emergency at home in order to provide additional assistance to Kiev next year if the situation in Ukraine gets any worse, Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned in a government statement to the parliament on Wednesday. The opposition has branded his plan "financial trickery" and vowed to never let it happen.

Scholz's coalition government has just reached a deal on its 2024 budget following weeks of tense negotiations. The cabinet agreed to keep existing debt restrictions while cutting the operational costs of various departments and slashing certain climate-related subsidies. Further military and financial aid to Kiev was still named as one of Berlin's top priorities, alongside Germany's green-economy transformation and the strengthening of social cohesion.

Introduction

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zeleneksiy appears to be at the end of the line politically and perhaps biologically. Portraying himself as a fighter for peace, anti-corruption, and full democratization when he ran for and won the presidency in 2019, he proceeded to lead the country into war, further corruption, and de-republicanization (authoritarianization). On both a personal and global level this is high tragedy. A superb comedian and actor stars in a television fictional series as the president of Ukraine, rises in popularity, wins the country's presidency on a peace platform, and leads the country into a catastrophic, easily avoidable war that threatens the survival of his country and himself. The unreality of Ukraine refracts in our century of simulacra and disinformation through this icon moved from the television screen to real life politics, and the tragedy of it all is sold as a heroic triumph on the road to universal democracy, peace, and brotherhood. In the real world, however, there is a rub. The country is historically divided along every conceivable line (ethnic, linguistic, cultural, political, ideological, economic, and social), an almost accidental state cobbled together by communists but claimed by hapless republicans and determined ultra-nationalists. Thus, Zelenskiy becomes president of a fundamentally divided country further riven by schism as a result of two 'revolutions' - really revolts - and a civil war compounded by foreign (Russian) intervention.

Trouble has followed Sara Catherine Jones since she married into the Biden family almost three decades ago.

Not long after her 1995 wedding to Jim Biden, she took a job with one of his brother Joe's Senate donors, who later accused her of "fraud" and "unjust enrichment," according to court records reviewed by RealClearInvestigations. In the years since, she and her husband have been accused of reneging on debts and failing to pay their taxes, court and property records show. Like their nephew, first son Hunter Biden, they have reportedly sold the promise of access to their powerful relative to companies, several of which have gone bankrupt, some of which are tied to foreign countries hostile to the United States.

Now, Sara Jones Biden has emerged as a key figure in the mushrooming Biden foreign influence-peddling scandal.
GOP lawmakers seek to question the 64-year-old licensed attorney as part of their investigation of President Biden for possible impeachable offenses, including bribery. They are especially interested in subpoenaed bank records that include almost a quarter million dollars in checks Sara Biden wrote to her brother-in-law Joe, conspicuously marking them as "loan repayment." Republicans want to ask her about the origin of those loans and whether checks "were funded by Biden influence-peddling schemes with China."

Kiev has "unrealistic expectations" about what Washington can provide, American officials told the outlet...

Ukrainian commanders and civilian officials overestimate the ability of the US to supply the country with weapons and ammo amid the conflict with Russia and are asking for things that simply don't exist, American officials have told the New York Times.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has provided Kiev with $111 billion in military and economic assistance since Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. However, the White House recently warned that funds for the government of Vladimir Zelensky had almost run out, with hardline Republican lawmakers blocking the approval of another $106 billion 'national security package' for Ukraine and Israel.

Many in Kiev still "do not realize how precarious continued US funding for the war is," the NYT said in an article on Monday. The unnamed US officials, who talked to the paper, insisted:

"Ukraine will have to fight on a tighter budget. Some Ukrainian decision-makers have unrealistic expectations about what the US will supply. They are asking for millions of rounds of artillery, for example, from Western stockpiles that do not exist."

After the failure of Kiev's counteroffensive, the US and Ukraine are currently trying to work out "a new strategy," the implementation of which is expected to begin in early 2024 in order to "revive Kiev's fortunes."