Top Trump allies hold secret talks with Zelenskyy’s Ukrainian opponents

Poroshenko: ‘Donbas children will sit in cellars, ours’ will go to school’

Top Trump allies hold secret talks with Zelenskyy’s Ukrainian opponents

The senior Trump allies held talks with Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, a remorselessly ambitious former prime minister, and senior members of the party of Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy’s immediate predecessor as president, according to three Ukrainian parliamentarians and a U.S. Republican foreign policy expert.

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Elon Musk’s Cruel Cuts Expose What MAGA Really Thinks of Veterans

Elon Musk’s Cruel Cuts Expose What MAGA Really Thinks of Veterans

Key takeaways:

  • 60 percent of the 16 million Americans who have served in the military supported Donald Trump, and 55 percent believed his policies would benefit veterans, but many veterans have been fired due to massive cuts by Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
  • Nearly 6,000 veterans have already lost their jobs due to the cuts, and an estimated 100,000 veterans could be out of work when all is said and done, with around 36,000 disabled veterans facing unemployment and difficulty in finding private-sector jobs.
  • The federal government plays a critical role for veterans, providing professional opportunities and support for those transitioning from military to civilian life, but the mass firing of federal workers, including many veterans, will have devastating effects on communities and individuals across the country.

53% of Taiwanese, 36% of Americans think US would send troops if China invades

53% of Taiwanese, 36% of Americans think US would send troops if China invades

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Taiwan-US poll found that Taiwanese and Americans differ on whether Washington would send troops if Beijing launches an invasion, but both support maintaining the status quo. 

On Monday (Dec. 2), the Ministry of National Defense’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released the results of a joint survey that examined how Taiwanese and Americans view the Taiwan Strait situation and bilateral security cooperation.

Related:

Institute for National Defense and Security Research

While it receives almost all of its funding from government sources INDSR is institutionally independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit.

Chicago Council on Global Affairs 2021 Financial Donors

Chicago Council on Global Affairs (Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab Corporation, Rockefeller Foundation)

Chicago Council on Global Affairs grants from MacArthur Foundation

Corporate Partners | Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Front Organizations (Rockefeller)

Zelensky’s wear and tear

Zelensky’s wear and tear (original)

For more than two and a half years, war has been the raison d’être of the Ukrainian state. The budget presented by Kyiv this week allocates more than 50% of the budget to the defence sector – to which must be added the cost of veterans – something that has been repeated since 2022. Maintaining the front, avoiding its collapse and ensuring that there is still enough support to continue fighting until the objectives are achieved is the priority of the government team, which has set aside practically all other obligations of the state, which today depends entirely on foreign subsidies that make it possible to pay salaries and pensions. One of the aspects that has completely disappeared under the cover of the unity demanded by the war is precisely domestic politics. The Russian invasion gave Zelensky’s team the opportunity to create for the president the image of a war leader, the representation of the nation, a savior capable of achieving what he sets out to do, the only person capable of rescuing the country from certain ruin.

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UK: Will Labour legalise assisted dying?

As things stand, “assisted dying” is illegal in England and Wales under section two of the Suicide Act 1961 — but will this change under Keir Starmer’s government? Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill had its first reading in the House of Lords last week and has just been published.

Will Labour legalise assisted dying?

As if privatizing the NHS wasn’t enough, now they want to kill off the plebs!

Related:

The Nazis’ First Victims Were the Disabled

The NATO “solution”

The NATO “solution”

The focus of political and media attention has inevitably turned from Europe to the Middle East, where the United States, through the Secretary of the Pentagon, has insisted on “Israel’s right to defend itself,” has welcomed the assassinations of Hezbollah leaders carried out by means of massive bombings in Beirut, and has given explicit approval to the ground operation with which Tel Aviv and Washington claim to want to “dismantle the attack infrastructure along the border to ensure that the Lebanese Hezbollah cannot carry out attacks in the style of October 7 against communities in northern Israel.” The precedent of the last twelve months in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon foreshadows what the ways of defending oneself against Israel will be and that the United States will continue to justify any excess, selective assassination or massacre, while any response, such as that which occurred yesterday with the launching of Iranian missiles against Israeli military bases, will be considered an unacceptable escalation. And although Ukraine’s public concern for securing priority war status has not yet begun, any escalating war could affect Kiev, especially when it comes to imposing its discourse of existential war on the West as a collective.

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As predicted: violence by the far-right Venezuelan opposition breaks out across Caracas

Sources; Venezuela/Iraq

The day after the Venezuelan people voted in their presidential elections, a number of seemingly coordinated protests broke out across Caracas

Venezuela’s far-right refuses to recognize electoral results, violent protests break out across Caracas

Related:

President Nicolás Maduro Denounces Violent Acts Perpetrated by the Far Right in Venezuela

He also said that they know the “operandis mode” with which the right acts, recalling that it is the one “has been used for the April 2002 coup d’état, for the first guarimba of 2004, for the actions of Capriles after the elections and for the guarimbas of 2014”.

Guarimba is a ‘protest method’ devised by Venezuelan opposition member, Robert Alonso (who collaborated with the CIA to train terrorists). It was ‘inspired’ by Gene Sharp’s book, From Dictatorship to Democracy (see my ‘front organizations’ page for more on Sharp).

2014 Venezuelan ‘protests’:

Source

Previously:

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