Russia to Hold Mysterious U.N. Security Council Meeting on Ukraine

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A Russian envoy to the United Nations suggested Moscow would deliver a sharp riposte to criticism of its invasion of Ukraine and hold an informal meeting at the body to outline its stance.

The first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, took aim at the nature of U.N. discussions about the war in Ukraine in a Telegram post on January 12, the Russian state-run news agency TASS reported.

In it, Polyanskiy criticized how on January 13, “western sponsors of Ukraine” would hold a meeting “the exact topic of which they cannot even formulate.” He said that “once a month” U.N. members would push an “anti-Russian” slant during discussions about the war.

He then issued an ambiguous warning about upcoming U.N. meetings, writing, “I will not expand on what will happen in the Security Council at our suggestion in Ukraine at the beginning of next week.” (Read more from “Russia to Hold Mysterious U.N. Security Council Meeting on Ukraine” HERE)

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China and NATO Agree: Dangerous to Depend on Each Other

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China is vulnerable to international restrictions on its ability to import vital supplies “once the international situation changes,” a senior official fears.

“China has a high degree of foreign dependence on some important mineral resources, and once the international situation changes, it will certainly affect economic security or even national security,” Chinese Natural Resources Minister Wang Guanghua told state media, per a South China Morning Post translation.

The widespread sentiment has emerged as a paradoxical point of consensus between Beijing and Western capitals, in part due to Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping’s high-profile alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the days before Russia launched the campaign to overthrow the Ukrainian government.

“It is dangerous to depend on authoritarian regimes. It was not long ago that many believed that buying gas from Russia was purely a commercial matter,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday at a Norwegian business conference. “We must not repeat this mistake with other authoritarian regimes, not least China.” (Read more from “China and NATO Agree: Dangerous to Depend on Each Other” HERE)

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Putin Declares a Cease Fire, Zelensky Gets Putin’s Terms for Peace

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. . .The Foreign Policy SmartSet® and Putin’s fellow travelers have been demanding negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. For negotiations to take place, there has to be something approaching good faith by both parties. That doesn’t exist. For instance, Turkish President Erdogan visualizes himself as a peacemaker in this war. The only high-level peace talks between Ukraine and Russia were held under Turkish sponsorship last Spring. . .

Vladimir Putin has ordered a 36-hour unilateral ceasefire in observance of Orthodox Christmas.

The Ukrainians aren’t big on the idea.

I doubt Ukraine will reciprocate because it doesn’t make sense to give the Russians a break. I’m sure I’ll see a lot of commentary like this pretending that Putin gives a rat’s butt about Christmas, peace, or Jesus Christ.

(Read more from “Putin Declares a Cease Fire, Zelensky Gets Putin’s Terms for Peace” HERE)

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Zelensky Signs New Anti-Press Law Allowing Him to Block News Websites

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A new law signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could give Ukraine’s government powers to block media outlets.

Zelenskyy signed the law on Thursday after Ukraine’s parliament passed it earlier in December, The New York Times reported. Lawmakers have touted the bill as an effort to bring Ukraine’s media laws closer to European Union standards as the country makes a bid to join the 27-member bloc. They have also argued that it will help counter Russian propaganda as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears its one-year anniversary.

But organizations representing journalists say the law will erode press freedoms in Ukraine. Under the law, Ukraine’s media regulator could block websites that are not registered with the government as news organizations, The Kyiv Independent reported on Friday.

The law is at odds with freedoms given to the press in other parts of Europe, the European Federation of Journalists said in a statement on Friday, according to the Times.

Ukrainian lawmakers have been considering a new law regulating the media since 2019, when Zelenskyy directed parliament to draft it. The version that Zelenskyy signed on Thursday is not as sweeping as a previous draft, which the Federation called “worthy of the worst authoritarian regimes.” (Read more from “Zelensky Signs New Anti-Press Law Allowing Him to Block News Websites” HERE)

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Kim Jong-un Demands ‘Exponential Increase of North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal’

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Communist dictator Kim Jong-un of North Korea used his party’s end-of-year meeting to make a call for “an exponential increase of the country’s nuclear arsenal” through the “mass-producing of tactical nuclear weapons,” state media revealed on Sunday.

The regime-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) published a summary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea’s (WPK) year-end plenary meeting, held from December 26-31, on Sunday, detailing what it described as a “report” delivered by Kim to Party elders. KCNA noted that Kim explicitly stated that North Korea’s nuclear weapons are not strictly defensive weapons and are necessary to “firmly safeguard the Republic’s absolute dignity, sovereignty and right to existence.”

North Korea, alongside ally China, has been at war with neighboring South Korea and its ally, America, since 1950 – a war that ceased active hostilities in 1953. Kim and his predecessors, father Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, have all intermittently entertained “denuclearization” and peace talks, but to no avail. Kim Jong-un allegedly proclaimed a “firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” during his meeting with former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018, but the document in which he stated that did not define “denuclearization.” The North Korean regime typically uses the term to mean the removal of American nuclear weapons from South Korea, not an end to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. (Read more from “Kim Jong-un Demands ‘Exponential Increase of North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal” HERE)

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Danish Reporter Says Ukrainian Intelligence Tried to Coerce Her Into Working as a Propagandist

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By The Intercept. Denmark’s leading chronicler of the war in Ukraine, Matilde Kimer, who has reported for Danish television from the front lines of the conflict since the Russian aggression began in 2014, revealed last week that Ukraine’s intelligence service had canceled her work permit and would only return it if she agreed to let the spy agency direct her reporting.

According to Kimer, an award-winning Moscow correspondent for Denmark’s public service broadcaster, DR, the proposal was presented to her by an officer from the Security Service of Ukraine, the intelligence agency known as the SBU, during a meeting this month in Kyiv that was also attended by two diplomats from the Danish Embassy.

The diplomats had brokered the meeting as part of an effort to help Kimer find out why Ukraine had suddenly canceled her accreditation in August, shortly after she made a reporting trip to the front lines around Mykolaiv, a strategically important Black Sea port where a Ukrainian counteroffensive had been playing out. (Read more from “Danish Reporter Says Ukrainian Intelligence Tried to Coerce Her Into Working as a Propagandist” HERE)

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Russia rejects Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’: Lavrov

By Aljazeera. Russia has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “peace formula” as a basis for negotiations and believes Kyiv is still not ready for real peace talks, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told state-run RIA news agency.

Lavrov also said Kyiv’s hopes of driving Russia out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea with Western help were “an illusion”, the agency reported on Thursday. The veteran Russian diplomat’s comments represent the latest evidence of the gulf in positions between Moscow and Kyiv, and how far the two governments are from any realistic chance of talks aimed at ending the war, now in its eleventh month.

Hours after Lavrov’s rejection of Zelenskyy’s proposal, Ukrainian officials said the country came under heavy Russian missile attack, with explosions in big cities, including capital Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Zelenskyy has been vigorously pushing a 10-point peace plan that envisages Russia respecting and restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity and pulling out all its troops.

But Moscow has insisted Kyiv must first accept Russia’s annexation of Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizhia in the south. There can be no peace plan “that does not take into account today’s realities regarding Russian territory, with the entry of four regions into Russia”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. (Read more from “Russia rejects Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’: Lavrov” HERE)

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Chinese Fighter Jet Buzzes U.S. Air Force Plane

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A Chinese fighter pilot flew within 20 feet of an Air Force reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea last week, forcing the U.S. aircrew to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision, American officials said Thursday.

The Pentagon’s U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement that an Air Force RC-135 aircraft was flying in international airspace and lawfully conducting routine operations on Dec. 21 when a pilot with the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) maneuvered a Chinese J-11 fighter jet in front of the large four-engine aircraft.

“The PLAN pilot flew an unsafe maneuver by flying in front of and within 20 feet of the nose of the RC-135,” according to the Indo-Pacific Command statement, which included a video of the incident.

(Read more from “Chinese Fighter Jet Buzzes U.S. Air Force Plane” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

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China Just Launched Its Largest Ever Simulation Attack on Taiwan

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Over the Christmas weekend China launched the largest military drills yet to simulate an invasion of Taiwan, causing alarm among national security experts.

“China sent 71 warplanes near Taiwan as a part of its biggest display of military might since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the democratically run island, with Taipei accusing Beijing of ‘military intimidation,'” Bloomberg reports. “The Ministry of Defense in Taipei said the flights included 47 Chinese military aircraft that crossed either the median line of the Taiwan Strait or entered Taiwan’s southwest air-defense identification zone in a 24-hour period to 6 a.m. Monday.”

(Read more from “China Just Launched Its Largest Ever Simulation Attack on Taiwan” HERE)

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US Military Personnel Are Lining up on a Waitlist To Hunt an Extremely Dangerous Scorpion in Kuwait

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According to Stars and Stripes, some members of the United States military have a new hobby: hunting one of the most dangerous scorpions on earth. And the hobby has become so popular that there is now a waitlist to get in on the scorpion hunts.

The scorpion they are hunting is called Androctonus crassicauda, known as the Arabian fat-tailed scorpion. Although the venom of the scorpion is extremely dangerous, it is generally regarded as aggressive towards humans; rather, members of the military hunt these creatures because they are a danger to the service dogs the military relies upon.

In fact, one of the reasons the hunts began was to encourage the military to provide anti-venom at bases in Kuwait, which the military has been reluctant to do since attacks on humans are so rare, and since the military believes that the population of Arabian fat-tailed scorpions is dwindling in the area.

“Initially we went out to do a population estimate, and then we found that there is a significant number,” Army veterinary technician Spc. Joseph Neitz told Stars and Stripes. Neitz has been organizing the hunts since May. (Read more from “US Military Personnel Are Lining up on a Waitlist To Hunt an Extremely Dangerous Scorpion in Kuwait” HERE)

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In England, Praying Outside an Abortion Clinic Can Be a Jailable Offense

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Just in time for Christmas, an English woman has been arrested for directing her thoughts to God in public. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was interrogated, searched, and jailed for praying in silence on a public street in Birmingham, England. Her crime? She is alleged to have violated a local law establishing a so-called “buffer zone” banning prayer, even silent prayer, in the vicinity of an abortion facility.

“Buffer zones” would more appropriately be described as censorship zones. More befitting a totalitarian state, they are an extreme violation of fundamental freedoms.

Isabel’s arrest happened at the same time that a bill is being hotly debated in the Parliament of the United Kingdom that would roll out nationwide censorship zones. Where these zones are already in place, such as in Birmingham, the abuses have been egregious. Their existence indicates a rapidly escalating trend to criminalize the freedoms of expression and religion in the U.K. — essentially, the policing of inner thoughts.

On December 15, Isabel, the director of March for Life U.K., was charged with four counts of failing to comply with Birmingham’s Public Space Protection Order, which came into effect in September of this year. The order is based on the eerily titled Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act of 2014. It prohibits “protesting, namely engaging in any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means” in a restricted zone encompassing several streets around an abortion facility. And as Isabel’s arrest shows, its definition of “protesting” includes: “graphic, verbal or written means, prayer or counselling.” (Read more from “In England, Praying Outside an Abortion Clinic Can Be a Jailable Offense” HERE)

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