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🇸🇾 🫂 One year after the fall of Assad, over 3.2 million Syrians returned. The map illustrates the provincial distribution of 1.3 million refugees who returned. Top 3 host countries: - Turkey (42%) - Lebanon (35%) - Jordan (18%) Many are still waiting for improved economic conditions and the rebuilding of essential infrastructure. https://www.unhcr.org/media/syria-situation-crisis-regional-flash-update-57 📎 Qalaat Al Mudiq

Dramatic new footage shows one of the seven men arrested by NSW tactical police being dragged from a Toyota Yaris, crying after repeatedly being told to follow police commands.

New footage shows NSW Police Public Order and Riot Squad with five men now arrested on the footpath of George Street, Liverpool.

🇺🇸 🇲🇽 🇻🇪 The Trump administration originally planned to go after Mexican drug cartels, but pivoted to Venezuela, according to current and former officials. A trio of legal documents and directives have subsequently authorized an unorthodox lethal campaign. President Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, and other senior officials were looking for a fight. In the first months of the administration, Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-immigration and border policies, and his team discussed starting a new war on drugs by striking cartels and alleged traffickers in Mexico, according to one current and two former U.S. officials. “When you hope and wait for something to develop that doesn’t, you start looking at countries south of Mexico,” said the current official, who, like nine others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/12/18/stephen-miller-boat-strikes-mexico-venezuela-execute-order/ 📎 WaPo

🇸🇩 🤝 🇪🇬 The President of Sudan arrives in Cairo and meets with the Egyptian President. Coinciding with this visit, the Arab Republic of Egypt issued what is considered the most firm statement to date since the outbreak of the Sudanese war, which stated the following: 🔹 Egypt is following with deep concern the continued state of escalation in Sudan and the resulting horrific massacres and blatant violations against Sudanese civilians, especially in El Fasher. 🔹 The Arab Republic of Egypt affirms that there are red lines that cannot be crossed or treated with leniency, as doing so would directly affect Egyptian national security, which is directly linked to Sudanese national security. 🔹 Egypt emphasizes that preserving the unity of Sudan and the integrity of its territory is among the most important of these red lines, including not allowing the secession of any part of Sudanese territory. Egypt also renews its categorical rejection of the establishment of any parallel entities or recognition thereof, as this would undermine Sudan’s unity and territorial integrity. 🔸 Egypt affirms its full right to take all necessary measures and actions guaranteed by international law and the joint defense agreement between the two brotherly countries to ensure that these red lines are not violated or crossed. 🔹 The Arab Republic of Egypt renews its affirmation of its full support for the vision of U.S. President Donald Trump aimed at achieving security, stability, and peace in Sudan. 🔹 Finally, Egypt renews its full keenness to continue working within the framework of the International Quartet with the aim of reaching a humanitarian truce that leads to a ceasefire, in full coordination with Sudanese state institutions. 📎 VISTA

🛢 🇺🇸 🇻🇪 The Trump administration is asking U.S. oil companies if they’re interested in returning to Venezuela once Maduro is toppled, per sources familiar with the discussions. ⚡️ So far, the answer is a hard “no.” The administration’s outreach to the industry, previously unreported, is the latest sign the White House is dreaming of a post-Maduro future for Venezuela — and how the world’s oil markets are both helping and hindering that goal. The U.S. benchmark oil price was around $56 a barrel Wednesday afternoon, the lowest since January 2021. That means Trump has only limited reason to worry that an attack on Venezuela would send gasoline prices spiraling upward — but it also means U.S. oil companies have better investment options elsewhere. Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Weatherford International and Baker Hughes were all operating in Venezuela in the early 2000s when Chávez tried to force them to give majority stakes of their projects to Petróleos de Venezuela. Venezuela seized the assets of companies that resisted. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/17/trump-oil-venezuela-return-00695292

🇺🇸📁 — Jeffrey Epstein linking up with Steve Bannon and Noam Chomsky, and Bill Gates hugging girls. Photos released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

🇿🇦❌🇺🇸US State Department issues statement condemning the doxing and harassment of American officials by the South African government: The U.S. condemns in the strongest terms the South African government’s recent detention of U.S. officials performing their duties to provide humanitarian support to Afrikaners. Furthermore, the public release of our U.S. officials’ passport information is an unacceptable form of harassment. This can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate U.S. government personnel in South Africa on official business. The United States will not tolerate such behavior toward its government’s officials – or toward any of its citizens – who are legally and peacefully operating abroad. The public release of personal identifying information puts the official in harm’s way. Failure by the South African Government to hold those responsible accountable will result in severe consequences. We call on the Government of South Africa to take immediate action to bring this situation under control and hold those responsible accountable. 📎 US Department of State 📝 Various pan-African and Bantu-nationalist accounts on X spread a photocopy of a U.S. official's passport. This document was most likely leaked by a South African government official. @SouthAfricaReports

📢 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 Marco Rubio on X: "Today, the Trump Administration is sanctioning two International Criminal Court judges directly engaged in politicized and illegitimate actions against Israel. The United States has been clear: we will continue to respond with significant and tangible consequences to protect against the ICC’s lawfare, abuse of power, and blatant disregard for the sovereignty of the U.S. and Israel." 📎 Secretary Marco Rubio

🇵🇱 🇪🇺 🇷🇺 Poland to start producing anti-personnel mines to lay along eastern border The mines would be part of the "East Shield", a defensive programme aimed at fortifying Poland's borders with Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, he said. Asked whether production of mines could begin next year, once the withdrawal process from the Ottawa Convention was completed, Zalewski said: "I would very much like that... We have such needs." 📈 "We are preparing for Polish demand ... to amount to 5-6 million mines of all types," Belma's CEO Jaroslaw Zakrzewski told Reuters. Belma's Zakrzewski said exports to Ukraine were possible and that NATO countries bordering Russia, including the Baltic states, had already signalled interest in buying anti‑personnel mines. He said Poland's own needs would take priority, but any excess production could be supplied to allies in the region. 🇱🇹 🇫🇮 Earlier this year, Lithuania and Finland said they expected to start producing anti‑personnel mines next year amid rising concerns about Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 🇱🇻 🇪🇪 Latvia and Estonia are also leaving the treaty but have not announced production plans, though officials in Riga said they could launch manufacturing quickly if needed and Estonia sees it as a future option. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/poland-start-producing-anti-personnel-mines-lay-along-eastern-border-2025-12-17/ 📎 Reuters

🇱🇧 The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is reportedly “ready” to begin disarming Hezbollah between the Litani and Awali rivers as part of the second phase of the LAF’s disarmament plan. This effort would mark an unprecedented step by the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah north of the Litani River. 📎 Critical Threats

🇺🇸⚡- "US Naval Forces Central Command successfully launched the one-way attack drone LUCAS from a ship at sea in the Middle East for the first time on December 16," - NAVCENT.

We Are the Americans—A Response to Vivek Ramaswamy’s “What Is An American?” "Ronald Reagan was wrong, and so is Vivek Ramaswamy. To be an American is not to proclaim loyalty to a set of abstract and GOP-focus-group-approved ideals." James K. responds to Indian anchor baby and Ohio gubernational candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's NYT OpEd describing a history of immigration law that has, until 1965, been deliberately crafted to maintain the founding demographic character of this nation. "America is a nation of European settlers, of Christians, and is the most successful outpost of Western civilization. It is our inheritance, and it is not yours to use for your political purposes. To be an American is to inherit something wonderful which our ancestors created for us, their posterity." 🔗 Read on Substack here 🔗 or our website here 🔗 follow us on X

🇨🇳 This is an incredible story by Reuters: they reveal that China now has a working EUV lithography machine prototype, which makes China the only country in the world to have succeeded at replicating the ASML technology, years earlier than anticipated. The machine apparently "fills nearly an entire factory floor". It's operational and successfully generates extreme ultraviolet light (what "EUV" stands for), but has not yet produced working chips. The objective for the latter is 2028, which is a crazy fast timeline: ASML took 18 years to go from prototype to machines that could produce commercially-available chips, China aims to do it in 3. The security measures around the project look insane. The employees work under fake identities so they don't know each other's real names. They work inside secure facilities where "no one outside the compound could know what they were building - or that they were there at all". They're divided in "teams who are kept isolated from each other to protect the confidentiality of the project," where "they don't know what the other teams work on." For foreign employees, China exceptionally gave them Chinese passports and allowed them to maintain dual citizenship, which is normally forbidden under Chinese law. This seems to be because some of the employees are former ASML workers such as Lin Nan, ASML's former head of light source technology who would be less vulnerable to Western sanctions under Chinese citizenship. The salaries offered are apparently "uncapped" with "signing bonuses that started at 3 million to 5 million yuan" and "home-purchase subsidies". This all means that we're looking, within a few years, at yet another self-inflicted wound by the West: the development, because of sanctions, of a serious competitor for Europe's most successful technology company (one of our very rare ones!). And the worst part, for Europe, is that these sanctions weren't even initiated by us nor serve our interests: we just followed Washington's lead as usual, suffering the costs while getting no obvious benefit out of it. Quite the contrary in fact as all its doing is replacing a massive customer with a massive future competitor. We, again, let ourselves be the chessboard on which others play. We just absorb the damage from both sides and have no voice in the game. 📎 Arnaud Bertrand

— 🇺🇸/🇮🇱 NEW: Harvard officials have opened a 'secret disciplinary investigation' into at least two students for their roles in exposing the relationship between Israeli pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the school’s former Jewish-American president, Larry Summers, who stepped down in November – New York Times The students are facing potential disciplinary actions that could range from a private reprimand to being required to withdraw from the school. @Middle_East_Spectator

🇺🇸📞🇭🇳 — US State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs on X:

In Honduras, the National Electoral Council (CNE) needs to begin immediately the special scrutiny process to finalize official results. Any call to disrupt public order or the CNE’s work will be met with consequences. The voices of 3.4 million Hondurans must be respected and upheld.

#BREAKING 🇭🇳🗳❗️ — After the Socialist LIBRE Party called for Revolution, the CNE, Honduras' election committee, suggests there is an imminent threat to the electoral process of the country and calls on Honduran Armed Forces to secure a government site where election materials are stored! The CNE also makes a request for the international community to "document what may occur"

🇺🇸 🇹🇼 🇨🇳 US announces massive package of arms sales to Taiwan valued at more than $10 billion The Trump administration has announced a massive package of arms sales to Taiwan valued at more than $10 billion that includes medium-range missiles, howitzers and drones, a move that is sure to infuriate China. The State Department announced the sales late Wednesday during a nationally televised address by President Donald Trump, who made scant mention of foreign policy issues and did not speak about China or Taiwan at all. U.S.-Chinese tensions have ebbed and flowed during Trump’s second term, largely over trade and tariffs but also over China’s increasing aggressiveness toward Taiwan, which Beijing has said must reunify with the mainland. The eight arms sales agreements announced Wednesday cover 82 high-mobility artillery rocket systems, or HIMARS, and 420 Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS — similar to what the U.S. had been providing Ukraine during the Biden administration to defend itself from Russia — worth more than $4 billion. They also include 60 self-propelled howitzer systems and related equipment worth more than $4 billion and drones valued at more than $1 billion. Other sales in the package include military software valued at more than $1 billion, Javelin and TOW missiles worth more than $700 million, helicopter spare parts worth $96 million and refurbishment kits for Harpoon missiles worth $91 million. ⚡️ Under federal law, the U.S. is obligated to assist Taiwan with its self-defense, a point that has become increasingly contentious with China, which has vowed to take Taiwan by force, if necessary. https://apnews.com/article/trump-taiwan-arms-sales-china-2743b66e3a4e47a895e731568cef9008

🇪🇺🇺🇸🇷🇺 Trump and Putin are not the enemies of Europe | CIG #commentary 📝 Martin Sellner: When we say "Remigration" we mean: 1. Getting rid of the traitors class. Liberals who are responsible for population replacement and the weakness of Europe. 2. Getting rid of left-wing liberalism, universalism, the ideology of human rights interventionism & the end of history. 3. Dealing with foreign powers and ensuring nonintervention in our space. It will work because: a) there are adults in the room again, who will be taken seriously by US, China & Russia b) European patriots will be actually willing to fight for such a political leadership, while they despise the current one. 🔗 https://telegra.ph/Trump-and-Putin-are-not-the-enemies-of-Europe-12-17

📢 🇺🇸 President Trump Delivers an Address to the Nation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpLvGmPetds