Submitted By Thomas Kolbe

The EU summit held in Brussels on December 18–19 was supposed to deliver two fundamental decisions. First, it was meant to address the expropriation of frozen Russian assets held at Euroclear. Second, it was expected to ratify the Mercosur trade agreement. In both cases, the EU’s bureaucratic elite around Ursula von der Leyen failed—paralyzed by its own dysfunction and ultimately by a lack of real power.

Via Remix News,

As the EU moves to crush protesting farmers demonstrating in Brussels, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán offered full backing to the farmers and their efforts to stop the EU’s Mercosur free trade deal, which threatens to destroy food security in Europe.

“Farmers are 100 percent right,” said Orbán, who is currently in Brussels attending the EU Summit.

The chart below is a fascinating snapshot of the last 75 years in the demise of the American empire.

Russian President Vladimir Putin made clear during his annual end of year question-and-answer session in Moscow that the matter of Ukraine ceding land which Russia now controls is the heart of the issue when it comes to peace talks. The issue of territory gained, lost, to be ceded or not, remains the prime topic that must be considered, but it's the very thing that Ukraine's Zelensky refuses to talk about or compromise on, Putin explained.

Ukraine is hailing a "new, unprecedented special operation" after a Russia-linked oil tanker was attacked off the coast of Libya. Needless to say these waters are very distant from anywhere Ukraine operates in the war with Moscow forces.

Officials within the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) are being quoted in international reports as saying the SBU deployed a drone in the Mediterranean which struck a so-called "shadow fleet" tanker used by Russia.

Authored by J/B/Shurk via American Thinker,

Via Remix News,

For years UK officials turned a blind eye to rape gangs because it might look racist to crack down on foreigners. Now, suddenly, the real problem is young boys who are 'radicalized' into becoming misogynists. The only solution is of course Orwellian; and includes an agenda to reeducate British boys showing "signs of misogyny" (anti-wokeness).

Foreign fighters continue to play a role on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war. In the latest example, on Thursday Russian prosecutors announced that a British national who fought alongside Ukrainian forces has been sentenced to 13 years in a high-security penal colony after being captured on the battlefield.

The Prosecutor General’s Office identified the man as 30-year-old Hayden Davies, and described he had been fighting on behalf of Ukrainian forces. He was tried in a court in Russian-controlled Donetsk.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Every nation is operating on models that are collapsing without those at the controls being aware that the implicit assumptions of their models no longer map reality.

Europe has folded rather quickly on EU leaders' controversial plan to confiscate Russian assets held in Belgium's depository Euroclear to use as a reparations loan for Ukraine.

On Friday it became clear in the two day Brussels summit the EU was unable to agree on the plan, but instead has opted to raise €90 billion ($105 billion) in joint borrowing, with Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia choosing not to take part.

President Trump ordered the suspension of the U.S. green card diversity lottery after federal investigators said the suspect in the Brown University shooting and the killing of an MIT nuclear scientist was a non-citizen who entered the country through the program.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in an X post late Thursday that, at Trump's direction, she had ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) program.

Russia has deployed all eight of its nuclear icebreakers simultaneously in an unprecedented move. The fleet is being used to keep critical winter shipping lanes in the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei Gulf open, ensuring continued access to key export terminals. The deployment sends a clear signal to the West that Russia can sustain year-round Arctic shipping and maintain its natural resource export revenues.

Ship tracking website MarineTraffic reported earlier this week:

Bloomberg Opinion columnist and chief energy correspondent Javier Blas posted a chart on X from the International Energy Agency's new global coal report showing that coal demand jumped to an all-time high this year, despite years of efforts by the green-industrial complex to end its very existence.

Via Remix News,

After a bizarre speech that mimicked much of the rhetorical style of Adolf Hitler at the founding congress of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) youth group, Alexander Eichwald has confessed that he joined the party as a form of provocation.

Authored by Tom Margenau via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Minnesota lawmaker alleged on Dec. 17 that a man awaiting trial on federal charges that he laundered $1.1 million in taxpayer dollars and his wife continue to collect payments from other government programs, a state lawmaker said Dec. 17.

Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

In the latest insane case of free speech being utterly dead in the UK, a socially isolated man has been slapped with an 18-month prison sentence for two anti-immigration tweets that barely anyone saw—viewed a pathetic 33 times combined.

Russia is upping the ante at a moment the US and some European countries are threatening action and new sanctions on vessels transporting Russian oil and gas to global markets, in defiance of Western sanctions.

Sweden's navy announced Wednesday it has spotted armed personnel in uniform providing security for vessels linked to Russia's so-called "shadow fleet" traversing main shipping routes in the Baltic Sea.

Authored by Conrad Black via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Donald Trump has once again expanded the U.S. travel ban, adding seven new countries and, for the first time, holders of Palestinian Authority passports to a growing list of nations whose citizens are barred from entering the United States.

Authored by Jennifer Cowan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Nearly seven in every 10 Canadians are identifying the cost of living in their area as a major issue, according to a newly released survey.

Instead of addressing the state’s mounting crises, from fiscal mess, soaring power bills, and exodus of residents to violent crime and illegal aliens, unhinged Democrats in Annapolis spent their time on Tuesday overriding Gov. Wes Moore’s veto of Senate Bill 587, creating a reparations commission to study how Maryland should address slavery and racial discrimination.

What better way to spend precious time as the year winds down? Many thought the entire reparations and wealth-redistribution grift was over. Apparently, not in Maryland.

•    33 year old pro dancer Santo Giuliano suffers heart attack 5 days after.
•    32 year old Olympic Tennis player Joachim Gerard collapses during match with heart problems.
•    19 year old Football player Jalen Leavey dies at campus after the game.
•    23 year old Baseball player Daniel Brito suffers stroke during game.
•    19 year old Football player Tirrell Williams dies following on-field collapse.