Last week the United Nations Development Program officially launched their new initiative promoting "Digital Public Infrastructure" (DPI) around the world.

The "50in5" program - so-called because it aims to introduce DPI in fifty countries in the next five years - began with a live-streamed event on November 8th.

For those of you unsure what "Digital Public Infrastructure" is, the 50in5 website is quite clear:

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) - which refers to a secure and interoperable network of components that include digital payments, ID, and data exchange systems.

There's nothing new there, for anyone who has been paying even the slightest bit of attention. Digital identity and digital payment systems are self-explanatory (and we've covered them before). "Data Exchange Systems" essentially means national governments will share identity and financial records of citizens across borders with other nations, or indeed with global government agencies.

The key word is "interoperable".

As we have written before, the "global government" won't be one single health care system, identity database, or digital currency - but dozens of notionally separate systems all carefully designed to be fully "interoperable".

Moscow continues to engage with the Global South despite attempts to isolate it, the foreign minister has said.

Western attempts to turn Russia into an international pariah over its military campaign in Ukraine were always doomed to fail, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told RT in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.

The minister noted that the West had "loudly announced" that it would inflict a "strategic defeat" on Moscow following the outbreak of the conflict in February 2022, while also claiming it would make Russia a "rogue state" and diminish its global status.

Europeans "have no choice" but to help Kiev, Krisjanis Karins told Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus.

Western states have no other choice than to pour more resources into Ukraine so it can continue to fight Russia, former Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins told pranksters Vovan and Lexus.

The official, who assumed the office of foreign minister after his premiership ended in September, claimed that senior Western officials were "very much of the same view and opinion" regarding Ukraine during the NATO summit in Lithuania in July. Everyone was determined to pay the cost of the conflict, he stated, speaking on a video call which was made public on Tuesday.

Sir Keir Starmer faces a serious challenge to his authority after a number of Labour MPs backed a Commons vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Eight of his shadow ministers and two parliamentary private secretaries have either resigned or have been sacked after defying the party whip by backing the motion put forward by the SNP.


Among the most high profile resignations was domestic violence and safeguarding secretary Jess Phillips, who said she was leaving the the Shadow Cabinet with a "heavy heart".

New centers of global economic growth have emerged to rival the West, and are seizing opportunities to cooperate and strengthen ties, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told RT on Wednesday.

Lavrov named China, India, Iran, the Gulf countries, and groups such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) as among the growing economic powers.

"The West has been calling the shots in the world for over five centuries. And this era is over. It will take time for this era to be replaced by multipolarity, which has already started to take shape," the Russian diplomat stated.

Lavrov cited the suggestion by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who said CELAC should "really think about getting rid of total dependence on the US dollar and think about their own currency."

Washington needs to win its Gazan war against Iran because it failed to win its Ukrainian war against Russia.
The Global South was expecting the Dawn of a New Arabian Reality.

After all, the Arab street - even while repressed in their home nations - has pulsed with protests expressing ferocious rage against Israel's wholesale massacre of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Arab leaders were forced to take some sort of action beyond suspending a few ambassadorships with Israel, and called for a special Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit to discuss the ongoing Israeli War Against Palestinian Children.

Representatives of 57 Muslim states convened in Riyadh on 11 November to deliver a serious, practical blow against genocidal practitioners and enablers. But in the end, nothing was offered, not even solace.

The OIC's final statement will always be enshrined in the Gilded Palace of Cowardice. Highlights of the tawdry rhetorical show: we oppose Israel's "self-defense;" we condemn the attack on Gaza; we ask (who?) not to sell weapons to Israel; we request the kangaroo ICC to "investigate" war crimes; we request a UN resolution condemning Israel.

For the record, that's the best 57 Muslim-majority countries could drum up in response to this 21st-century genocide.

History, even if written by victors, tends to be unforgiving towards cowards.

The Top Four Cowards, in this instance, are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morrocco - the latter three having normalized relations with Israel under a heavy US hand in 2020. These are the ones that consistently blocked serious measures from being adopted at the OIC summit, such as the Algerian draft proposal for an oil ban on Israel, plus banning the use of Arab airspace to deliver weapons to the occupation state.

Egypt and Jordan - longtime Arab vassals - were also non-committal, as well as Sudan, which is in the middle of a civil war. Turkiye, under Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once again showed it is all talk and no action; a neo-Ottoman parody of the Texan "all hat, no cattle."

US officials have backed the country's allegations that militants are stationed within the complex

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has launched an operation against al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, the Palestinian enclave's largest medical complex. IDF officials say the facility has been used for military purposes by Hamas, a claim rejected by the armed group.

The IDF announced the raid early Wednesday morning, saying it would carry out a "precise and targeted operation" against Hamas fighters within a "specified area in the Shifa Hospital," also accusing the group of using "human shields" there.

"In recent weeks, the IDF has publicly warned time and again that Hamas' continued military use of the Shifa hospital jeopardizes its protected status under international law, and enabled ample time to stop this unlawful abuse of the hospital," the military added.

Alastair Crooke posed those issues as "the elephant in the room" related to Gaza during his 9 November talk with Judge Napolitano and now repeats it in his SCF essay after disclosing the fact that Hamas is deep underground — 60 meters — in their vast tunnel networks:

So, the Elephant in the room for inhabitants of the Middle East - watching the destruction of the above-ground, civil structure - is what exactly is the objective of this killing? Hamas are deep below the ground. And although the IDF claims many successes, where are the bodies? We don't see them. The bombing therefore must be to force an evacuation of civilians - a second Nakba.

And the intent lying behind the expulsion? Benn says it is to create a sense that they will never return home:

"Even if some cease-fire is soon declared under American pressure, Israel will be in no hurry to withdraw and allow the population to return to the northern Strip. And if they do come back - what will they come back to? After all, they will have no homes, streets, educational institutions, shops or any of the infrastructure of a modern city".

Is this punishment on Gaza's civilian population, prompted by desire for vengeance? Or is it an outpouring of eschatological rage and determination? No one can say.

This is the 'Elephant'. And on its clarification hangs the issue of whether the U.S. too will be tainted by a crime. On this clarification, hangs whether some sustained diplomatic accommodation can be found, or not (if Israel is indeed returning to Biblical, eschatological root-justification).

In op-ed for WSJ, Likud's Danny Danon and Yesh Atid's Ram Ben Barak say world should uphold practice of providing safe haven for refugees fleeing war through pre-planned programs...

Likud's Danny Danon and Yesh Atid's Ram Ben Barak, both members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, wrote in an editorial published in the Wall Street Journal that the West should take in refugees fleeing the war in Gaza.

They argued that the UN overlooks the truth that Hamas is a problem rather than a solution, and stress that it's crucial for the international community to support Gaza's people and consider innovative approaches to assist them. Their proposal suggests a model seen in other global conflicts, where various countries would welcome Gaza families wishing to migrate out of the war-torn strip for a chance at a better life.
They write:

"Countries can accomplish this by creating well-structured and internationally coordinated relocation programs. Members of the international community can collaborate to provide one-time financial-support packages to Gazans interested in moving to help with relocation costs and to ease refugees' acclimation to their new communities."

Americans have become easy prey for hackers, scammers, snitches, spies, and con artists.

But don't be fooled into thinking the government is protecting you.

To the contrary, the U.S. government is selling us (or rather, our data) to the highest bidders.

By the way, those highest bidders also include America's political class and the politicians aspiring to get elected or re-elected. As the Los Angeles Times reports:

"If you have been to a political rally, a town hall, or just fit a demographic a campaign is after, chances are good your movements are being tracked with unnerving accuracy by data vendors on the payroll of campaigns."

Your phones, televisions and digital devices are selling you out to politicians who want your vote.

Journalist Evan Halper writes:

"Welcome to the new frontier of campaign tech — a loosely regulated world in which simply downloading a weather app or game, connecting to Wi-Fi at a coffee shop or powering up a home router can allow a data broker to monitor your movements with ease, then compile the location information and sell it to a political candidate who can use it to surround you with messages."

In this way, "we the people" have been reduced to economic units to be bought, bartered and sold by all and sundry.