Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has invited former US president and potential Republican nominee in the 2024 election, Donald Trump, to visit Kiev.
In his interview with UK’s Channel 4 News on Friday, Zelensky was asked to comment on Trump’s claim that if he returned to the White House, he would be able to put an end to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in just 24 hours. “I don't know if his message… will have such [a] positive result,” the Ukrainian leader replied in English. It could be just a “political message” made by a candidate during the “complicated” election period, “but if it's some formula – I have to know it,” he stressed. The reporter then asked the Ukrainian leader if he wanted to invite Trump to arrive in Kiev in person to explain his plan. “Yes, please, Donald Trump, I invite you to Ukraine, to Kiev. So, if you can stop the war during 24 hours I think it will be enough to come, in any day,” Zelenksy said. “Maybe Donald Trump really has some idea, a real idea… he can share it with me, and I think it's OK,” he added. If somebody knows how to stop the conflict with Russia, this information shouldn’t be kept secret from the Ukrainian people, the president insisted. Addressing a crowd of his supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday night, Trump said, “I know [Russian] President Vladimir Putin very well; I know Zelensky well. I’m gonna get them in; we’re gonna get it solved very quickly.” On Thursday, in his interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, the former US president reiterated his other claim that “Putin would’ve never attacked Ukraine” if he was still in office. When asked about ways to end the conflict in Ukraine last week, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., suggested that “the only way” to persuade Zelensky to engage in talks with Russia was to “cut off the money” that’s being provided to Kiev by Washington. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, Zelensky tried to brush off concerns that US aid to Ukraine would halt if Trump were back in power. “One man can’t change the whole nation,” he argued.
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I spent a week with farmers protesting near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Too bad Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government didn’t get down off its high horse and do the same. It was a missed opportunity to benefit from a much-needed mugging by reality.
Instead, the Interior Ministry contented itself by preemptively framing the protesters as susceptible to far-right infiltration. Scholz said that “rage is being stoked deliberately” by “extremists”. When asked about this concept, the unanimous response among the farmers was laughter, eye rolling, or one-line jokes. If you want to put down a dog, just say it has rabies – or has been hanging out with the far-right. Despite the protest taking place right across the street from the German parliament, farmers said the only officials whose presence was noticed, as they inquired about the protesters’ concerns, were from the right-wing Alternative for Deutschland. Oh no, looks they’re co-opting already! Or maybe they’re just doing their jobs in trying to actually grasp the “ground truth” of the situation rather than framing it up with a convenient narrative in an effort to dismiss it. When a government official finally graced the protest with his presence on January 15, at the apex of the week-long protest, it was Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who took to the stage and loudly proclaimed that the government basically had no money. “I can't promise you more state aid from the federal budget. But we can fight together for you to enjoy more freedom and respect for your work,” he said. I’m not even a farmer – although I was raised on a farm in the Netherlands – and still I find this infuriating. Mostly just as a woman, though. Because Lindner sounds like a guy on a date who says that he’s broke, but instead of just splitting the check, he wants you to pay for the whole thing. The farmers aren’t asking Berlin to pay their bills. What they want is for Team Scholz to refrain from taking even more of their hard-earned money in the form of taxes on diesel fuel for their farm vehicles, particularly at a time when government efforts to stick it to Russia and to the climate-change bogeyman, by making fossil fuel energy less available and affordable, is making it increasingly harder for them to do the job of feeding the country. As if farmers aren’t already paying this government enough. One farmhand told me that his boss has a budget of €3,300 a month for his job, and that by the time all the taxes are paid to the German government, the final salary paid to the worker tops out at €1,400. Where’s all that cash going? Here’s a clue. Scholz said last fall that Germany had to “be able to help Ukraine on the basis of solidarity. We support Ukraine in its defense struggle, with financial resources and weapons.” Yet German farmers are not only told to eat cake, Marie Antoinette style, but also to pay up for the government’s screw-ups. Team Scholz blasted a hole in its own budget when it transferred cash from a Covid fund into a “climate and transformation fund,” but then couldn’t pay it all back, leaving a €17 billion ($18.5 billion) deficit and a scramble to somehow recoup the funds through austerity measures. So Scholz wants the farmers to pay his bills, but also to pay for his mistakes. And if they refuse, they must have been infiltrated by far-right extremists. Unlike this government, farmers pride themselves on productivity and self-sufficiency, which is why they’re juicy targets for the gold diggers in the Bundestag. When floods hit Germany, it was farmers, they say, who were on the front lines rescuing people even before the army was on-site. Throughout the entire protest week of sub-zero temperatures, farmers weathered the elements with several large wood-burning heaters fueled by a massive bin of chopped firewood. Many slept in their trucks or tractors all week. It’s hardly surprising that firefighters were captured on social media expressing their support and admiration for this group, as a large number of farmers also serve as volunteer firefighters in their communities. While he’s hiding across the street in his office, being serenaded by big-rig honking, Scholz’s popularity is hovering around 20%, while 69% of Germans support the farmers’ protests, according to an INSA poll from earlier this month. Has it dawned on the bundeskanzler that if such an overwhelmingly large swath of the population, from the right to the left, all agrees on something, then maybe he just has a “you” problem? The solidarity and unity witnessed in front of the Brandenburg Gate (a symbol of division once located in no man’s land between East and West Berlin) was astounding – from a woman in a hijab handing out soup from a basket to Berliners of migrant origin walking among the participants and expressing their support. Not only did trucks join the tractors, but word got out that farmers and truckers from the Netherlands were on the Autobahn’s A2 and heading towards Berlin. There was also buzz that Polish and Russian truckers were joining forces en route from the Polish border, just hours away. It’s not just farmers and truckers who are fed up. The folks who actually drive the Deutsche Bahn trains went on strike in the same week as the farmers. While the government is haggling with them over their union’s request of a €3,000 ($3,265) one-time employee bonus to cover government-driven inflation, it managed to nonetheless find several million more euros for each of nine top executives of the wholly government-owned company. Former President Donald Trump won a landslide victory in the first Republican primary of the 2024 presidential race, taking home three times more delegates than his closest opponent and over 50% of the popular vote. With more than 95% of the votes counted following Monday’s caucus in Iowa, Trump had 51% of the electorate and 19 delegates, far ahead of Republican rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who earned 21.3% and 19.1% respectively. DeSantis won eight delegates and remained in second place, while Haley scored seven. As the race came to a close late in the evening, Trump penned a social media post thanking his supporters in Iowa, writing “I LOVE YOU ALL!”The victory comes on the heels of favorable polling for the frontrunner, with an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey giving him an almost 30-point advantage over the other candidates. While the same poll put former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in second place, the number two spot went to DeSantis, Florida’s current governor. Before heading home, Haley hurled a veiled criticism at Trump, telling supporters “If you want to move forward with no more vendettas, if you want to move forward with a sense of hope, join us in this caucus.”
As the 2024 election season kicks off, the former president faces multiple criminal indictments, including charges linked to alleged election interference, hush money payments to a porn star, and mishandling of classified material. Trump has rejected all the charges against him, calling them part of a political “witch hunt” launched by his opponents in the Democratic Party.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has announced his departure from the 2024 presidential race, acknowledging he lacks a path to victory. The candidate is among several Republicans vocally critical of former President Donald Trump.
Speaking to supporters in New Hampshire on Wednesday, less than two weeks before the state’s Republican primary kicks off, Christie said dropping out was “the right thing for me to do,” but vowed to never “enable Donald Trump... to ever be president of the United States again.” “It is clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination, which is why I’m suspending my campaign tonight for president of the United States,” the former governor added. The decision follows underwhelming poll numbers for the Republican hopeful as voters prepare for the first round of the 2024 contest. A new CNN survey conducted alongside the University of New Hampshire showed that Christie was trailing far behind in the swing state, earning just 12% of the vote. GOP frontrunner Trump, meanwhile, continues to lead the pack with 39%, with former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley taking 32% in the poll. Before announcing he would step out of the race at the event in New Hampshire, Christie was heard slamming his Republican rivals on a hot microphone, saying that Haley would “get smoked” in the race and was “not up to this.” He also named Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who he said had called him “petrified,” though the audio was cut before he could finish. The Christie campaign has declined to comment on the incident. Christie’s White House bid was largely centered around criticism of Trump, who Christie had previously supported during the 2016 election cycle. In an attack ad released last week, the former governor acknowledged that was a “mistake,” arguing he only endorsed Trump “because I thought I could make him a better candidate and a better president.” In his remarks on Wednesday, the outgoing candidate took a parting shot at Trump, saying he was an “angry” person and would “[put] himself before the people of this country.” Christie added that he had no plans to endorse any other Republican running. German farmers have begun a week of nationwide demonstrations, blocking roads with tractors in protest against government plans to phase out agricultural subsidies.
As Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV), put it last month, ‘We will be present everywhere in a way the country has never seen before’. And the farmers are not alone. Lorry drivers, hauliers and tradespeople have also joined in the protests. The current wave of unrest was prompted back in December. The German government announced plans to abolish tax breaks on agricultural diesel and introduce new taxes on farm vehicles – a move which would cost farmers on average €4,000 per year. The swift and organised response of the farmers has already frightened the government. On 4 January, it tried to backtrack by announcing that subsidies for new farm vehicles would remain, and that the tax breaks on diesel would be phased out gradually over the course of the next few years, rather than suddenly this year. But these moves have not assuaged farmers’ anger. They insist that the ‘future viability of our industry’ is at stake. And so, as Rukwied put it last week, farmers ‘remain committed’ to the ‘week of action’. It was naïve of the government to believe that its half-hearted compromise would ever appease the farmers. This conflict goes much deeper than a fight over taxes and subsidies. It is about farmers’ long-standing resentment of the green agenda that has been pursued by successive governments. This agenda now threatens the very future of German agriculture. Indeed, the farmers first engaged in mass protest back in 2019, after Angela Merkel’s government demanded a 20 per cent reduction in the use of fertilisers and pesticides as part of its ‘agriculture reform package’. Merkel’s successors have only increased the pressure on farmers. Plans to further reduce fertiliser and pesticide use were announced last summer, with the government keen to meet the EU’s strict directives on nitrates. At the same time, the government announced it planned to tighten animal-husbandry regulations, entangling farmers in even more red tape and paperwork. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of farming is at stake. In the space of just two decades, countless farms have already had to close. The number of farms in Germany during this period has almost halved – from nearly 450,000 in 2001 to 256,000 in 2022. Environmental restrictions and soaring energy costs haven’t just affected smaller farms, either. Bigger farms have also felt the squeeze. To make matters worse, the prices of fertilisers and pesticides have risen sharply, as the German chemical industry has cut back production due to high energy prices. Thanks to the government’s embrace of the green agenda, it is incapable of addressing farmers’ concerns. Over and over again, it pursues Net Zero objectives that are directly at odds with the interests of farmers. And just to rub salt into farmers’ wounds, Germany’s agriculture minister, Cem Özdemir, is a militant vegetarian. ‘If we all eat less meat together, we can all do our bit for the planet’, he told a TV talkshow last year. No wonder farmers have lost all trust in the government. Instead of addressing problems afflicting the agricultural sector, the government, backed by the green-leaning media, has tried to discredit the protesting farmers. It is regularly claimed that the strikes are being exploited by populists and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD). But is it? News has been spreading throughout the media about a “disease outbreak” in China. For many, this brings back bad memories. The illness, described as a form of pneumonia, has reportedly gone widespread very quickly, triggering comparisons to how the Covid-19 pandemic emerged. As with the coronavirus, it was not long before there followed accusations of a government cover-up of the extent of the spread.
Cases of the same illness occurring outside of China have been the target of media attention, such as those in Denmark and the US, as has the World Health Organization’s request for more information and Beijing’s response. In reality, there doesn’t appear to be that much to worry about this time around. The pathogen responsible has already been determined not to be a novel virus and therefore not posing a distinctive new threat to humans the way Covid did. Known as “white lung syndrome,” it is a form of pneumonia that is resistant to some antibiotics and usually causes mild flu-like symptoms. In fact, the aforementioned Denmark suffers nationwide outbreaks every few years. So, rather than a mysterious political conspiracy wrapped in secrecy and malign intentions, this outbreak has a much simpler explanation: China is facing its first winter after having opened up from its zero-Covid policy and therefore old illnesses are reasserting themselves. But that won’t stop the scaremongering. Throughout history, it has been a human trait to scapegoat a group of 'others' when a disease emerged to threaten the community. Humans are tribalistic creatures, and each social group usually bonds together through a commonly held sense of values and customs, which are deemed superior to those of outsider groups. Disease, however, as abundant as it always has been, contravenes the group’s collective sense of self-esteem, causes misery and consequentially demands accountability on a political level. Because of this, it becomes habitual of human thinking to deflect the origins of a disease outbreak on an outsider group and to frame it as an invasive force which challenges the values they hold, and therefore could not have come from themselves. This mode of thinking is especially relevant in the East-West geopolitical dynamic, whereby Western countries hold themselves to be inherently superior and the ultimate standard of civilization in the world. In such thinking, most of the East, be it Asia or the Middle East, is deemed uncivilized, inferior and brutal. This mode of thinking is only confirmed by popular stereotypes, rather than introspecting material, economic and social realities. As a result, it has become commonplace to scapegoat the Eastern world, especially a large and powerful country like China – which happens to also a be a geopolitical adversary to the main Western power, the US – as being a source of disease outbreaks 'inflicted' upon the West. This was the narrative which took hold during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Western media and governments scrambled to deflect attention from unpopular decisions and their dramatic consequences. They sought to blame the Chinese government’s negligence, malice or both, for Covid, and propping up that narrative was an astronomical amount of racism which sought to play on stereotypes about Chinese culinary habits and hygiene, perfectly in line with the West-East mentality of Oriental 'inferiority'. Anti-communism, especially in the US, was conveniently layered on top of these prejudices, concealing them in a somewhat acceptable manner. Thus, the science of how Covid spreads was ignored in favor of a dramatic political blame game, which was aggressively amplified by the Trump administration. This time around, there won’t be a new pandemic, but it’s easy to draw false comparisons. It’s a basic fact that for the past three years China has lived under a strict zero-Covid regime which often entailed extreme precautions to prevent the spread of the disease. Entire major cities such as Shanghai found themselves in lockdown, and these restrictions only became more tedious as Covid variants became more transmissive. Because of this, there was no space in the disease ecosystem for flu and other less sensational illnesses, as they were jammed between the rock and hard place of Covid and all these protection measures. Therefore, as soon as China abandoned these restrictions, with the coronavirus having swept through the population, the winter season meant the less severe viruses could spread their wings again. Despite this, we are likely to see more media headlines about the scary new “Chinese disease,” because fear of disease, and especially fear of disease linked to a fear of China, sells well. Even though this development is a nothingburger, expect some close coverage, baseless speculations, even outright propaganda and hearsay about how things are worse than they seem, how the Communist Party is covering up deaths, how statistics are rigged, hospitals are full, etc. – we’ve heard it all before. The Covid pandemic has been a lesson in how diseases can be politically weaponized to suit an agenda, and in this case it’s happening again at a smaller scale. Former US Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger passed away at age 100 on Wednesday.
The renowned diplomat and influential foreign policy thinker died at his home in Connecticut, his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, said in a statement. After quitting the US military, Kissinger earned a PhD at Harvard University and taught international relations before becoming President Richard Nixon’s top national security adviser in 1969. He eventually served as secretary of state under Nixon and his successor, President Gerald Ford. A skilled negotiator committed to realism, Kissinger was instrumental in improving US relations with the Soviet Union in the 1970s and paved a way for the normalization of Washington's ties with China. With Kissinger's stewardship, the Nixon administration's easing of travel and trade restrictions against Beijing was instrumental in kick-starting China's rise to prominence as an industrial economy. In 1973, Kissinger shared the Nobel Peace Prize with diplomat Le Duc Tho for negotiating the Paris Peace Accords, which facilitated the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. In 1974, he helped to negotiate Israel’s disengagement agreements with Syria and Egypt, which officially ended the Yom Kippur War. However, a book by US-British journalist Christopher Hitchens ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’ accused the diplomat of ordering the first round of Cambodia bombings in the 1960s without congressional approval. In addition to this, an Intercept report released in May to mark the Kissinger’s 100th birthday claimed that he was behind more than 3 million civilian deaths, and that he helped to prolong the Vietnam War while fostering strife and civil wars in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Kissinger remained active after leaving office, giving lectures and interviews, in which he commented on world affairs. One of his last trips was a visit to Beijing in July 2023, during which he met with President Xi Jinping. He also repeatedly warned the US and China that if they continued on their current foreign policy course, they risked sliding into open military confrontation. On the Ukraine conflict, Kissinger described the West’s decision to offer Kiev a pathway to NATO as “a grave mistake” which led to the hostilities in the first place. While the veteran diplomat opposed Ukraine’s membership in the US-led military bloc before the conflict, he later changed his stance, arguing that the country’s neutrality is “no longer meaningful” amid the ongoing fighting. Last year, he also suggested that Ukraine could relinquish its territorial claims to Crimea and grant autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics – all Russian territories now – to achieve peace, an idea repeatedly rejected by Kiev. Geert Wilders is a stalwart of the Dutch opposition, whose controversial views on immigration and Islam have seen him live under police protection for nearly two decades. Now, after a decisive election victory, he could be the next prime minister of the Netherlands. Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) won 37 seats in Wednesday’s general election, more than doubling its presence in parliament and making it the country’s largest party. After decades in opposition, Wilders declared in his victory speech that he intends to form a government, and is “confident that [he] can reach an agreement” with the mainstream right, which has for years balked at working with the PVV. Anti-Islam crusaderWilders’ began his political career as a member of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). Following the assassination of Pim Fortuyn – a popular politician and critic of Islam – in 2002, Wilders made a series of speeches condemning multiculturalism and Islamic immigration. When the VVD endorsed Türkiye’s bid for EU membership in 2004, Wilders split from the party and formed the PVV. In a manifesto published two years later, Wilders called for a moratorium on all non-Western immigration to the Netherlands, a ban on the founding of new mosques, and a tax on the wearing of the Hijab by Muslim women. Wilders went on to call the Islamic Prophet Mohammed “the devil,” the Quran “a fascist book” that should be outlawed, and Moroccan immigrants “street terrorists.” Targeted by extremists Wilders’ hardline positions and proclivity for political stunts – including his hosting of a ‘Prophet Mohammed cartoon competition’ in 2019 – have led to death threats from extremist preachers and terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda. Wilders was placed under police protection in 2004, after plans for his assassination were discovered, and to this day he is watched 24/7 by armed officers. Wilders has been tried twice for hate speech in the Netherlands. In 2016, a court found him guilty of inciting "discrimination and hatred" over a speech he gave two years earlier, in which he asked his supporters whether they wanted “fewer Moroccans” in the country. The verdict was overturned in 2020. A right-wing liberal While Wilders is often described in the media as “far-right,” he rejects the label, and has distanced himself from other European right-wing movements. “I'm very afraid of being linked with the wrong rightist fascist groups,” he told The Guardian in 2008, explaining in subsequent interviews that he views Islam as a threat to women’s and LGBT rights, free speech, and social tolerance. A more moderate message Wilders toned down his anti-Islam rhetoric during this year’s campaign, although immigration remained front and center. His manifesto promised a freeze on the admission of asylum seekers, the deportation of criminal immigrants, and the prioritization of native Dutch people for social housing. "The Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch,” he said in his victory speech, declaring that “the asylum tsunami will be curbed.” In a nod to potential coalition partners – likely the VVD or the newly formed and centrist New Social Contract party – he added that all of his proposals will be “within the law and the constitution.” In this year’s manifesto, Wilders also proposed to either hold a referendum on leaving the EU or dramatically lower the Netherlands’ contributions to the union, scrap climate legislation, and halt arms transfers to Ukraine. While Wilders has condemned Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, he argues that the Netherlands should bolster its own military rather than that of Kiev. Wilders has also vowed to block Ukraine’s accession to the EU and NATO, and has called sanctions on Russia “ineffective and also bad for the Netherlands.” The next prime minister? "We want to govern and...we will govern,” Wilders said in Wednesday night’s speech. To do so, Wilders will need the backing of 38 other lawmakers to make up a majority, a situation that could lead to protracted talks and compromise from the PVV leader. New Social Contract leader Pieter Omtzigt said that his party is “available to govern,” potentially adding another 20 seats, while Thierry Baudet, whose right-wing Forum for Democracy (FVD) managed to secure only three seats, said that he would “contribute… in any way.”
With 24 seats, the center-right VVD is a potential coalition partner, having secured the PVV’s support to form a government in 2010. However, the deal fell apart within two years, and the VVD’s current leader, Dilan Yesilgoz, has previously ruled out entering a coalition with Wilders. The PVV has convincingly won the 2023 parliamentary election, standing at 37 seats with 94 percent of the votes counted. About 2.3 million people voted for the far-right party on Wednesday. Geert Wilders’ party is doing better than the VVD did in 2021 and 2017 when 2.2 million people voted for the party. In 2012, Rutte’s party received slightly more votes at 2.5 million.
GroenLinks-PvdA became the second-largest party on Wednesday with 1.57 million votes, followed closely by the VVD with almost 1.53 million votes. NSC also attracted over a million voters. Pieter Omtzigt’s party got almost 1.3 million votes. D66 got more than 1.5 million votes two years ago, but only around 630,000 remained this year. The smallest party is the Politieke Partij voor Basisinkomen. It got just over a thousand votes. Two years ago, De Groenen was the smallest party with over a hundred votes. Nine municipalities still have to report their results to the ANP Election Service. The votes from the special municipalities of Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba, and the postal votes from Dutch abroad have also not been received yet. ANP’s latest prognosis puts the PVV at 37 seats in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, up one from the previous forecast. D66 dropped from 10 to 9. The projection is based on nearly 94 percent of the votes counted nationwide. BBB will also increase slightly from 5 to 7 seats compared to the first forecast. The CDA has 5 seats and not the previously reported 6. The animal rights party PvdD and far-right FvD each got one seat less than in the first forecast, ending up with 3 instead of 4. For the other parties, the number of seats corresponds to the exit polls by Ipsos on behalf of NOS and RTL. GroenLinks-PvdA remains at 25 parliamentary seats, closely followed by the VVD with 24. NSC gets 20. The SP ends up with 5 seats. ChristenUnie gets 3 as do SGP and DENK. Volt got 2, and JA21 got 1. The party for the elderly 50Plus got 0 seats, while the exit poll seemed to put it at 1. BIJ1 also lost its only seat in the Tweede Kamer. The PVV, PvdA-GroenLinks, and the VVD are tied in the final poll by I&O Research. 63 percent of voters had not yet finalized their vote choice for the parliamentary elections that will take place on Wednesday.The survey was conducted from Monday at 09:00 p.m., following the EenVandaag debate, until Tuesday at 09:00 a.m. The previous poll by I&O Research was conducted from Friday afternoon to Monday morning and published on Monday evening.
PVV rose from 26 to 28 seats in just one day, slightly ahead of the VVD and the left-wing alliance PvdA-GL, with both at 27 seats. The difference between these three parties is so minor that it cannot be stated that the PVV is leading. "The parties are statistically indistinguishable," according to the researchers. The New Social Contract of Pieter Omtzigt follows with 21 seats. The four parties have a margin of error of three seats, meaning that the actual support for these parties could be three seats higher or lower than indicated. There are no significant changes compared to Monday, according to I&O Research. Apart from the PVV, which gained two seats, D66 rose from 8 to 9 seats, while the BBB lost another seat, now at virtually five seats. CU and JA21 also lost one seat since the previous day and now have virtually three and one seat respectively. The researchers warned that the poll should not be interpreted as a prediction of the election outcome. Approximately two-thirds of voters (63%) have not yet definitively decided which party they will vote for Libertarian economist Javier Milei was elected to become Argentina’s next president on Sunday.
With 86.59% of the votes counted, Milei won with nearly 56%, while his rival in the runoff, Economy Minister Sergio Massa, received 44%. Before the official results were announced, Massa conceded defeat in a speech. “The results are not what we expected, and I have contacted Javier Milei to congratulate him and wish him luck,” he said, thanking his supporters. “I am a man of democracy and I value nothing more than the verdict of the people. I am confident that tomorrow we can start working with Javier Milei to ensure an orderly transition [of power],” President Alberto Fernandez wrote on X (formerly Twitter). Milei, a 53-year-old self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who leads the Liberty Advances party, has been compared to former US President Donald Trump due to his sometimes brash and eccentric personality. During his campaign, Milei made several radical proposals, including the abolishing of the country’s central bank and swapping the Argentine peso for the US dollar as the country's official currency. He also advocated public spending cuts as a way to fix the economy. Libertarians typically see government activity as an encroachment on individual freedom and advocate a free market approach coupled with far lower taxes and little or no social spending. Voters have been frustrated by a cost-of-living crisis and triple-digit inflation, which over the summer hit its highest level since the early 1990s. A political outsider, Milei has built his appeal around promises to revive the economy, as Argentina is on track to slip into a recession for the sixth time in a decade. US House Republicans are fast approaching a point where they will have to decide whether to impeach President Joe Biden, but following the evidence and observing due process takes time, Speaker Mike Johnson said on Thursday.
“I do believe that very soon we are coming to a point of decision on it,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “We’re gonna follow the evidence where it leads and we’ll see, and I’m not gonna predetermine it this morning.” Johnson pointed out that Democrats had twice used impeachment for “raw partisan political purposes” against President Donald Trump. “We have to follow due process and we have to follow the law,” he added. Impeachment is the most serious power Congress has, next to a declaration of war, and it has to be done properly, Johnson said, and “not the way the Democrats did it – snap impeachments, sham impeachments, and all the rest.” Trump was impeached by the House twice, once for allegedly conditioning US aid to Ukraine on investigating Biden, and the second time over the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Both times, the Senate voted not to convict. Biden has long been accused of profiting from influence-peddling schemes by his brother James and son Hunter, dating back to his vice-presidency under Barack Obama. He has denied any wrongdoing and repeatedly denied any knowledge of his son's business dealings. Evidence that has recently emerged, however, suggests otherwise. On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee Republicans released a report showing that a $40,000 “loan repayment” check Joe Biden received from his brother in September 2017 originated from a larger payment the Chinese company CEFC wired to his son Hunter, who “extorted” it from them in a text message later discovered on his laptop. Biden not only lied to the American people about Hunter’s business dealings and his role in them, he also placed “America’s interests behind his own desire for money,” said committee chair James Comer, a Kentucky Republican. On Thursday morning, USA Today published an op-ed by Hunter Biden, in which he accused the Republicans of weaponizing his drug addiction for “a vile and sustained disinformation campaign” against his father, the president. The right-wing Swiss People's Party is projected to be the biggest winner of the general election after voters in Switzerland cast their ballots on Sunday to choose a new parliament for the 2023-2027 legislative period.
According to final projections published at 20:00 local time (2200 GMT), the Swiss People's Party has won 28.9 percent of the vote, 3.3 percentage points up compared with its result in the elections in 2019. It was followed by the left-wing Social Democrats with 18 percent of votes, while the left-wing Green Party garnered 9.2 percent of the votes, losing four percentage points from last election. Swiss media reported that the turnout for the Sunday election was 46.9 percent, up from 45.1 percent four years ago. The final results of the elections are expected by Monday. Since the 1970s, most seats of the Swiss legislative body usually go to the country's four largest political parties: the Swiss People's Party, the center-right Radical-Liberals Party, the center-right Centre Party and the left-wing Social Democratic Party. The Swiss People's Party made strong gains in 1999 and 2003, but in 2019 the Green Party massively expanded its voter base, ousting the Centre Party as the fourth most-represented party in the House of Representatives. Founded in 1971, the Swiss People's Party advocates a restrictive policy on immigrants and refugees, the principle of neutrality, no further political integration into Europe, and a restrictive taxation and financial policy. On September 22, influential United States Senator Bob Menendez was indicted on corruption charges along with his wife, Nadine. It is the second time Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has faced such charges.
As per the indictment from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Menendez and his wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from three New Jersey businessmen in the form of gold, cash, a luxury vehicle and assorted other goodies. In exchange, the Democrat from New Jersey allegedly used his position of power to benefit the three businessmen as well as the government of Egypt, the home country of one of the men in question. As the old saying goes, power tends to corrupt. According to US mythology, of course, corruption is entirely the business of other, less civilised nations – particularly enemies of the US – that lack the proper commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and all that nice and noble stuff. But here’s a news flash for those sectors of the domestic audience scandalised by the Menendez revelations: Corruption is about as American as apple pie. (And a related newsflash: Menendez or no Menendez, the US has spent decades flinging billions of dollars at Egypt’s repressive apparatus – which should constitute a scandal in itself.) To be sure, Menendez is hardly the only bad apple in this pie. Take Clarence Thomas, the US Supreme Court justice whose corrupt exploits have been thoroughly investigated by the New York-based nonprofit ProPublica. One recent ProPublica report notes that, “like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence”. The report goes on to document said “leisure activities”, which have included at least 38 vacations, 26 private jet flights, eight helicopter flights, and various excursions to luxury resorts, sporting events and so on. Billionaire real estate tycoon Harlan Crow, an enthusiastic collector of Nazi paraphernalia, is but one of the filthy rich right-wing contributors to Thomas’s seemingly eternal “leisure”. Crow has also funded numerous other favours, such as paying for Thomas’s grandnephew to attend an exclusive private boarding school. In September, ProPublica revealed that Thomas had secretly participated in donor summits for the Koch network, founded by the billionaire Koch brothers and devoted to driving US policy ever more to the right. And what do you know? The Koch strategy includes bringing cases before the very court on which Thomas sits to impact US law. So much for that silly old concept of “conflict of interest”. At the end of the day, though, Thomas’s antics are merely of a piece with US capitalism, which is predicated on maintaining a tyranny of the elite under the guise of democracy. In other words, it’s about as corrupt a system as you can get. That anyone can still apply the term “democracy” to the US with a straight face is, meanwhile, a testament to the corruption of language itself. After all, you can’t very well have “rule by the people” in a country where the Supreme Court reverses campaign finance restrictions and political influence is transparently up for sale. The list of offenders goes on. There’s Samuel Alito, another Supreme Court justice who this year was exposed as having also accepted undisclosed gifts from billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican Party mega-donor Paul Singer. After being treated by Singer to a luxury fishing trip in Alaska in 2008, Alito ruled in favour of Singer’s hedge fund in a case before the Supreme Court. And then there’s Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general acquitted of corruption charges on September 16 in a historic impeachment trial, in which he was accused of bribery, obstruction of justice, abuse of public trust and other misdeeds. Allegations ranged from shady dealings with a real estate developer in Texas and misuse of power to retaliate against whistleblowers. An ally of former US President Donald Trump and an accomplice in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results, Paxton remains under FBI investigation on separate corruption charges and faces trial on allegations of felony securities fraud. After the Texas Senate acquitted the state’s top law enforcement official, Trump took to his social media platform to celebrate with typical eloquence: “The Ken Paxton Victory is sooo BIG. WOW!!!” The online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary offers several definitions of the word “corruption”. The first is “dishonest or illegal behaviour especially by powerful people”; the second is “inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means”. Further down the dictionary entry is another option consisting of just two words: “decay, decomposition”. And as US officials get away with all manner of bribery scandals and the frenetic injection of right-wing money into politics sustains a brutal plutocracy, the whole scene does indeed reek of decay. House Speaker Anthony Rota praised Yaroslav Hunka, 98, as a ‘Ukrainian hero’ at Canada’s Parliament, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Justin Trudeau attending and applauding.
The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons has apologised for praising an individual who served in a Nazi unit during World War II in a session attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Speaker Anthony Rota recognised Yaroslav Hunka, 98, as a “Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero”, saying “we thank him for all his service” before the Canadian Parliament on Friday. Hunka served in World War II as a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, according to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group, that demanded an apology. The centre said Hunka’s ties to the Nazi war machine “are well-documented”. Both Zelenskyy and Trudeau joined in acknowledging Hunka during the parliament session with applause. Rota took responsibility for what he characterised as an oversight, calling the initiative “entirely my own”. “I have subsequently become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision,” he said in a statement issued on Sunday, offering his “deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world”. The recognition came following the visit to parliament by Zelenskyy, who thanked Canada for its assistance in Ukraine’s war against Russia. Rota said no one, including fellow parliamentarians or the Ukrainian delegation, was aware of his plans or remarks beforehand. |
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