🚨🇵🇰💥🇮🇷 ~ Pakistan correspondent for NY Times confirms Pakistani air strikes inside Iran.

‎🚨🇵🇰💥🇮🇷 ~ A picture of the Pakistani rockets hitting the area of ​​Shamsar Saravan, Iran.

More visuals are coming out of Iran as its almost 8AM in the morning.

🚨🇵🇰⚡️🇮🇷 ~ Pakistani officials are now giving out proper details to senior journalists that armed forces have hit 7 targets inside Iran using various weapons.

🚨🇵🇰⚡️🇮🇷 ~ Fresh visuals confirm that Pakistani rockets are still shelling Iran’s Saravan city surroundings.

Considering the daylight, these rocket attacks seems to be new.

➡️ https://xn--r1a.website/haalvsh/18491

🚨🇵🇰⚡️🇮🇷 ~ Pakistani strikes inside Iran are now being covered by International media including RT, NDTV and various US media outlets.

🚨🎥🇵🇰💥🇮🇷 ~ Destruction caused by Pakistani air strikes inside Saravan, Iran.

🚨🇵🇰💥🇮🇷 ~ Here is the area where Pakistan is said to have conducted retaliatory strikes in Iran little while ago.

At least 7 locations targetted (almost 50 Kms) inside Iran using multiple weapon systems, according to Pakistani officials.

The Middle East right now

🚨🇵🇰💥🇮🇷 ~ Pakistan’s Army Chief General Asim Munir personally commanded airstrikes and missiles strikes inside Iran from military’s headquarters in Quetta, Baluchistan.

🇩🇪 Germany's ruling coalition wants to ban the AfD because its getting too popular

The debate kicked off in earnest after Saskia Esken, the co-chief of the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD), came out earlier this month in favor of discussing a ban — if only, as she put it, to “shake voters” out of their complacency.

Since then, politicians from across the political spectrum have weighed in on whether a legal effort to ban Alternative for Germany (AfD), while possible under German law, would be tactically smart — or only further fuel the party’s rise.

Like so much of German politics, the conversation is colored by the country’s Nazi past. In a society mindful that Adolf Hitler initially gained strength at the ballot box, with the Nazis winning a plurality of votes in federal elections before seizing power, a growing number of political leaders, particularly on the left, view a prohibition of the AfD — a party they see as a dire threat to Germany’s democracy — as an imperative rooted in historical experience.

Others fear the attempt would backfire by allowing the AfD to depict their mainstream opponents as undermining the democratic will of the German people, desperate to ban a party they can’t beat.

“Calls for the AfD to be banned are completely absurd and expose the anti-democratic attitude of those making these demands,” said Alice Weidel, co-leader of the party, in a written statement to POLITICO. “The repeated calls for a ban show that the other parties have long since run out of substantive arguments against our political proposals.”

🔗 https://www.politico.eu/article/can-a-ban-stop-the-rise-of-germanys-far-right/

🇪🇺 The European Commission wants to use Taylor Swift to promote "democracy" for the future EU Parliament elections

In what appears to be a desperate last-minute appeal, Margaritis Schinas, Vice-President of the European Commission, has thrown his support behind the notion of enlisting pop star Taylor Swift to raise awareness about the upcoming election.

The endorsement comes amid warnings that the parliament may encounter serious governance challenges.

The truth is that the EU is facing a complicated election. The surge in support for far-right parties is often attributed to concerns about migration, with cultural wars now firmly entrenched in mainstream discourse.

While Brussels is said to be considering mobilising other, European superstars including Rosalía, Måneskin, Dua Lipa, and Stromae to help get the voters to the polls this year, the issue seems much bigger than something easily solved by popular appeal.

Taylor Swift probably cannot provide solutions, and as the window before the election is closing, it is imperative for the European centre-right to urgently undertake the challenging process of rediscovering its identity.

🔗 https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/01/16/could-taylor-swift-stop-the-rise-of-the-far-right-in-europe

Crypto exchanges deplatform Rich Houck and other nationalists after being pressured by the ADL.
Don’t keep you money on exchanges/ use monero(XMR) from a non KYC sources instead of BTC for privacy reasons.
https://xn--r1a.website/MoneroPilled/892


(Tweet).

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russia may emerge from the war in Ukraine as a hyper-mobilized, hyper-illiberal revisionist power with a deep pool of trained military manpower and a deep sense of grievance toward the West.

Western sanctions no longer look like wonder weapons. The Russian economy contracted by just 2.2 percent in 2022, and resumed growing in 2023. Russian trade has been rerouted to Asia; financial, technological and commercial relations with China are flourishing. Geopolitically ambivalent swing states, such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, are helping Moscow mitigate its economic isolation. Granted, the costs of conflict have exacerbated economic imbalances in Russia. But there is no near-term prospect of the economy, or the war machine it supports, falling apart.

Nor is it clear that the West will soon face a weakened, humbled Russia, incapable of seriously menacing its neighbors. Sure, Putin’s country has suffered grievous losses of men and materiel. But the government has mobilized hundreds of thousands of new soldiers and put the economy on a war footing. With the Kremlin pouring money into the defense sector, military production is soaring: Russia will pump out more artillery shells in 2024 than the US and Europe combined.

Putin has squeezed most remaining moderates out of the political system and weathered internal challenges to his power. He has doubled down on partnerships with Iran, China and North Korea, fellow autocracies that are now providing Russia with military and economic sustenance.

The Russia that emerges from this war may be a hyper-mobilized, hyper-illiberal revisionist power with a deep pool of trained military manpower and a deep sense of grievance toward the West. That’s a recipe for trouble on NATO’s Eastern front — and for increased global demands on American military power.

Finally, the democratic community no longer looks so committed, so unified. For months, political dysfunction has prevented the US from replenishing the level of support Ukraine needs to fight its war. The European Union has been momentarily stymied in its own bid to ramp up Ukraine assistance by the resistance of the pro-Putin government in Hungary. “Ukraine fatigue” is rising in much of the West.

If Donald Trump wins the presidency this November, democratic solidarity could devolve into transatlantic rancor. And if the US ends up abandoning Ukraine, that country could still go down to a military defeat that would have global consequences, by demonstrating that democracies lack the stamina to prevent expansionist autocracies –- whether Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, Kim’s North Korea, or Khamenei’s Iran -- from imposing their will on the world.

🔗 Bloomberg | 🗄 Archive