🇦🇹 The Austrian Parliament voted to lift Herbert Kickl's immunity and start a criminal investigation

Kickl is the president of the right-wing FPO party which won the latest Austrian Parliamentary elections, becoming the biggest political force in the country with 56 seats in the Parliament.

Prosecutors claim Kickl gave a false testimony for alleged misuse of public funds.

The greens, socialists and center-right conservatives voted to remove Kickl's immunity. Along with Kickl, three other FPO MPs had their immunity lifted for other alleged crimes.

The FPO, like in every European country, was sidelined and the center-right OVP formed a coalition with the socialists (SPO) and liberal-progressives (NEOS), creating a cordon sanitaire against the FPO.

🔗 https://uk.news.yahoo.com/austrian-parliament-lifts-far-leaders-213427897.html

🇪🇺 The European Central Bank cut interest rates by 0.25%

It revised economic growth projections for 2024, 2025 and 2026 and the inflation rate. However it remains moderately optimistic that the EU will overcome the phenomena of "stagflation" and things will start to improve beginning in 2025.

Meanwhile, Europe‘s largest economies:

Germany - decided to get rid of its industry, sick man of Europe

France - 6% fiscal deficit despite highest tax burden in Europe, political paralysis

Italy & Spain - heading into pensions and healthcare benefits crisis due to collapsing demographics

🔗 Michael Arouet

🇨🇦🇺🇸 Canadian official threatens to cut off energy to US if Trump imposes tariffs

After meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other top Canadian officials, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, threatened to cut off energy to parts of the United States if President-elect Donald Trump imposes sweeping tariffs on Canada.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/12/business/video/doug-ford-trump-tariffs-energy-digvid

🇨🇦🇺🇸 "No one is even talking about the fact

that on top of 5,000,000 barrels of oil per day

Canada exports electricity to the USA

This could get REAL UGLY, REAL QUICK"

📎 Tablesalt

🇨🇺🔌 Cuba's Energy Crisis Sparks Unrest

🔺Cuba's energy crisis, characterized by frequent blackouts and fuel shortages, is causing significant economic hardship and social unrest.

🔺The crisis is attributed to aging infrastructure, lack of investment, and the US embargo, which hinders fuel imports and economic development.

🔺While the Cuban government is promoting renewable energy as a long-term solution, immediate challenges persist, and the population continues to face daily struggles.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Cubas-Energy-Crisis-Sparks-Unrest.amp.html

🇷🇺🌐 Russia Tests Cutting Off Access to Global Web, and VPNs Can't Get Around It

Russia has reportedly cut some regions of the country off from the rest of the world's internet for a day, effectively siloing them, according to reports from European and Russian news outlets reshared by the US nonprofit Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Western news outlets.

Russia's communications authority, Roskomnadzor, blocked residents in Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, which have majority-Muslim populations, ISW says. The three regions are in southwest Russia near its borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan. People in those areas couldn't access Google, YouTube, Telegram, WhatsApp, or other foreign websites or apps—even if they used VPNs, according to a local Russian news site.

Russian digital rights NGO Roskomsvoboda told TechRadar that most VPNs didn't work during the shutdown, but some apparently did. It's unclear which ones or how many actually worked, though. Russia has been increasingly blocking VPNs more broadly, and Apple has helped the country's censorship efforts by taking down VPN apps on its Russian App Store. At least 197 VPNs are currently blocked in Russia, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/russia-tests-cutting-off-access-to-global-web-and-vpns-cant-get-around

🇨🇳🇹🇼 China's largest maritime deployment in decades 'pressure tests' Taiwan

TAIPEI -- China has launched what Taiwan officials say is its largest maritime deployment in recent memory, ratcheting up intimidation against Taipei and neighboring countries weeks before the U.S. presidential transition.

Beijing had dispatched more than 90 naval and coast guard ships to the region "aimed at all the parties in the first island chain," according to a Taiwanese national security memo seen by Nikkei Asia, referring to Taiwan, Japan's Okinawa prefecture and the Philippines. The memo calls it China's largest fleet deployment in regional waters in nearly three decades and estimates it took 70 days to prepare.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Taiwan-tensions/China-s-largest-maritime-deployment-in-decades-pressure-tests-Taiwan

🇷🇺🇸🇾📹 — Video shared over the past days shows a convoy of former Syrian Arab Army soldiers, filmed by Russian soldiers in northeast Syria, during the capitulation of the Baathist Syrian Government

➡️ They threw away their weapons and equipment, abandoned their posts and are wandering towards the Iraqi border.

➡️ On the video, the Russian soldier filming, notoriously angry, is heard saying:

"These are all those faggots who laid down their weapons, and just, just THOUSANDS, thousands, fucking faggots, fucking Syrians, fucking bastards. How much have we driven?

There's much more than a thousand here…
Fucking hell, these fucking faggots, running the fuck away… And we're supposed to suffer here for these faggots…

Just look, fucking hell, goddamn bastards…
They could have been defending their homeland… What assholes…
How many of them are there, maybe five thousand here?

The column doesn’t end, these scumbags…
Fuck, they threw away their weapons… Threw away their balls… They're all bitches. Just look, the convoy doesn’t fucking end… Holy shit, fucking scum..."

🔗 @RWApodcast

#BREAKING

🇮🇱❌🇮🇷☢️❗️ — Israeli Army Radio: The Israel Defense Forces believes that now is an perfect opportunity for an all-out strike against nuclear facilities in Iran!

🇮🇱❌🇮🇷☢️❗️ — Times of Israel's Emanuel Fabian on Twitter/X:

The Israeli Air Force is continuing its readiness and preparations for potential strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, following the weakening of Tehran's proxy groups in the Middle East and the fall of Assad Regime in Syria

The military believes that an isolated Iran may push further with its nuclear program.

Due to the dramatic changes in the Middle East, especially the fall of Assad which allowed the IAF to take out the vast majority of Syria's air defenses, the Israeli military believes there is now an opportunity to strike Iran's nuclear sites.

🇷🇺📞🇨🇳 — Medvedev took a personal message from Putin to Xi Jinping

The vice president of the Security Council is on a two-day working visit to China.

"Two years ago there was a meeting like this, and now it also takes place on the line of interaction between our ruling parties. I would like to convey President Putin's greetings, best wishes, as well as his personal message," Dmitry Medvedev said during the meeting with the PRC leader.

➡️ Xi Jinping highlighted that Mainland China and Russia will continue to deepen mutual trust and strategic coordination.

🇨🇳🇺🇦 China Is Cutting Off Drone Supplies Critical to Ukraine War Effort

China’s escalating conflict with the US over trade is now extending to the drones that have become a vital part of Ukraine’s defense.

Manufacturers in China recently began limiting sales to the US and Europe of key components used to build unmanned aerial vehicles, according to multiple people with knowledge of the developments, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information.

The moves are a prelude to broader export restrictions on drone parts that western officials expect Beijing to enforce in the new year, the people said. Those rules could take the form of license approvals based on the intended use of the components or softer requirements for Chinese companies to notify the government of their shipment plans, according to one of the people.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-09/china-is-cutting-off-drone-supplies-critical-to-ukraine-war-effort

https://archive.ph/BLSPM

🇺🇦⚠️🤝🇸🇾❌🇷🇺🔫 — 🇺🇸 The Washington Post | Syrian rebels had help from Ukraine in humiliating Russia | Eager to bloody Putin’s nose, Kyiv supplied drones for the offensive that toppled Assad | December 11, 2024:

"The Syrian rebels who swept to power in Damascus last weekend received drones and other support from Ukrainian intelligence operatives who sought to undermine Russia and its Syrian allies, according to sources familiar with Ukrainian military activities abroad.

Ukrainian intelligence sent about 20 experienced drone operators and about 150 first-person-view drones to the rebel headquarters in Idlib, Syria, four to five weeks ago to help Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the leading rebel group based there, the knowledgeable sources said.

The aid from Kyiv played only a modest role in overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Western intelligence sources believe. But it was notable as part of a broader Ukrainian effort to strike covertly at Russian operations in the Middle East, Africa and inside Russia itself."

🗄 Archive

🔗 Source:

🇨🇳❗️📉💸❌🇺🇸 — 🌟 Reuters | Exclusive: Chinese authorities are considering a weaker yuan as Trump trade risks loom | December 11, 2024:

"Dec 11 (Reuters) — China's top leaders and policymakers are considering allowing the yuan to weaken in 2025 as they brace for higher U.S. trade tariffs as Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The contemplated move reflects China's recognition that it needs bigger economic stimulus to combat Trump's threats of punitive trade measures, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Trump has said he plans to impose a 10% universal import tariff, and a 60% tariff on Chinese imports into the United States."

#Geoeconomics

🗄 Archive

🔗 Source:

🇨🇴🏴‍☠️🤝🇱🇾🇸🇩 — 📰 WSJ: The Global War Machine Supplying Colombian Mercenaries to Fight in Sudan

➡️ At first glance, the shaky cellphone videos captured on the desolate plains of Sudan’s Darfur region looked like many others emerging from the country’s brutal civil war: Men in camouflage uniforms pose next to crates of weapons, showing off the spoils of their battle.

➡️ Then one of the men flips through their newly seized prisoners’ papers and personal belongings.

➡️ “Look at this, they aren’t Sudanese,” he says, his Arabic inflected with the local Zaghawa dialect, holding up a passport issued some 7,000 miles away by the government of Colombia. “These are the people who are killing us.”

➡️ The videos are a telling sign that the war in Sudan between the country’s military and the rebel Rapid Support Forces has turned into a battleground for more foreign powers, drawing in fighters and weapons from as far as Latin America and Europe.

➡️ Several regional governments are vying to assert their influence as the fighting escalates, led by the United Arab Emirates on one side and Egypt on the other—with devastating consequences for Sudan’s 48 million people, some of whom are now in the grip of famine. At stake is control of Red Sea shipping lanes, some of Africa’s largest gold reserves and the contested waters of the Nile.

🔗 Link
https://archive.is/SQ5GM

🇨🇴🏴‍☠️🤝🇱🇾🇸🇩 — Observers report that Colombians Mercenaries were spotted, after being sent, at an airport in Benghazi, a city in eastern Libya controlled by LNA's Khalifa Haftar, the Russia-backed Libyan warlord, and then to an old air base near the Sudanese border, as part of effort to help the Sudan's Rapid Support Forces

🔗 Mohamed Tailamun|محمد طيلمون (@MTailamun)