USA - Americans have more money in their pockets than they ever have before. That sounds like really great news, but it isn’t, because the cost of living is rising much faster than our incomes are. In addition, much of the “new wealth” that has been created over the past couple of years has ended up in the hands of the very wealthy, and this has caused the gap between the rich and the poor to grow even wider.

CHINA - Beijing on Tuesday accused the United States of irresponsible and unsafe conduct in space over two "close encounters" between the Chinese space station and satellites operated by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Tiangong, China's new space station, had to maneuver to avoid colliding with one Starlink satellite in July and with another in October, according to a note submitted by Beijing to the United Nations space agency this month. The note said the incidents "constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station".

IRAN - Iran has published and distributed a video of rockets and drones being used to attack Dimona in the Negev Desert. It says the attack took place during the recent 17th Great Prophet drill with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the IRGC Air Force. Tehran says it “simulated a missile and drone attack on the Dimona nuclear center using 16 ballistic missiles and five suicide drones, successfully,” according to its semi-official Fars News Agency. The Jerusalem Post reported on the initial videos on Saturday. Iran has now doubled down with its own reports, bragging about its abilities. This matters more than in the past because Iran is threatening to attack the Dimona nuclear facility, a dangerous escalation in rhetoric. It is also tied to Tehran revealing aspects of its drone program and new technology.

IRAN - The Biden Administration faces a potential confrontation with a longtime rival that is better armed and more hard-line than at any time in its modern history. The bizarre diplomacy, Malley told me, took on unprecedented urgency in November. “We’ve seen Iran’s nuclear program expand, and we’ve seen Tehran become more belligerent, more bellicose in its regional activities,” he said. “They are miscalculating and playing with fire.” The stakes extend well beyond Iran. The world’s nuclear order, already perilous, is now at risk of unravelling. Nuclear pacts hammered out in the last century are dated or fraying, as the US, Russia, and China modernize their arsenals. The Pentagon estimates that China could have at least a thousand bombs by 2030. The talks with Tehran are designed to prevent a tenth nation — the latest was North Korea, in 2006 — from getting the bomb in the Middle East, Israel has had a nuclear weapon since the late nineteen-sixties. Saudi officials have also threatened to pursue the bomb if Iran obtains one. “The Iranian nuclear crisis can’t be viewed in a vacuum,” Kelsey Davenport, of the Arms Control Association, told me. “The broader nuclear order is in chaos.” The collapse of the talks with Iran — Biden’s first major diplomatic foray — would have consequences worldwide.

USA - What would be truly optimistic would be to surrender our dependence on asset bubbles and malinvested debt to prop up an unstable delusion of effortless "wealth." The most sacred liturgy of American culture is to always be positive and optimistic. The greatest taboo is breaking this sacred duty to say something upbeat and optimistic; it is acceptable (barely) to make awkwardly negative observations, but only if you immediately follow up the negative comments with a treacly, double-serving of sugary optimism: for example, inflation is transitory, the economy is growing strongly, wages are rising, etc. And so we sleepwalk into 2022, ill-prepared to deal with reality which most annoyingly continues responding to systemic dynamics no matter how much sugary optimism is spread around.

USA - A US Navy warship with a fully vaccinated crew has paused its deployment in Cuba on Friday following a COVID outbreak. The USS Milwaukee, a littoral combat ship, has been forced to stay in port at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay where it had stopped for a visit. The ship had only been on the water for less than two weeks following its deployment from Mayport, Florida, on December 14 where it was heading into the US Southern Command region. The Navy said in a statement that the ship’s crew is ‘100 percent immunized’ and that all of those who tested positive for COVID-19 have been isolated on the ship away from other crew members.

JAPAN - First reported in Japan's Kyodo news agency on Thursday, unnamed Japanese officials detailed the plan was struck between the US and Japanese militaries, and arranges for a forward operating base to be establish on southwest islands, where the US Marine Corps would rapidly deploy troops. Kyodo details that "Japan's Self-Defense Forces and the US military have drawn up a draft joint operation plan that would enable the setup of an attack base along the Nansei island chain in the country's southwest in the event of a Taiwan contingency, according to Japanese government sources." This comes as the past year has seen Tokyo go from a much more neutral stance on the Taiwan issue to firmly and vocally being in Washington's corner, which has resulted in Beijing lashing out with warnings and threats on multiple occasions.

JAPAN - According to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, an earthquake struck at a depth of 10 km. The earthquake of magnitude 5.9 struck the Ryukyu Islands in the southwest of Japan. According to the EMSC, the quake was registered about 232km from the city of Naha, Japan. No damage or casualties have as yet been reported. No tsunami warnings have been issued. Japan is located in a seismically active zone known as the Ring of Fire and regularly suffers from powerful earthquakes.

EUROPE - Two decades ago, a new currency was introduced across Europe. Since then, its limitations as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for diverse economies have been exposed, and its future is as uncertain as the EU’s itself. The euro became legal tender in 12 European Union member states on that day. Gone were the Deutsche mark, the franc, the peseta, the Italian lira – to name but a few – and in came the Frankfurt-controlled euro. It was a day to be celebrated by those who had dreamed of a federal Europe for many years. A few weeks back, the eurozone’s finance ministers gathered in Brussels to toast the 20th anniversary of the currency. There would have been lots of back-slapping and champagne drunk no doubt. But will the euro see its 30th, 40th, or 50th birthday? I am not so sure. Cracks within the EU are widening, and at some point in the future the bloc will have to decide what it wants to be: either a European superstate or a looser collection of independent states. If it fails to make this decision, the EU may well fragment – and the euro will inevitably suffer the same fate.

EUROPE - Poland’s deputy prime minister has accused Germany of trying to create a Fourth Reich, claiming it’s taking advantage of the European Union to deprive other nations of sovereignty and force them into a modern form of “serfdom.” “If we, as Poles, agreed to such contemporary serfdom, we would be degraded in various ways,” he said, adding that if Poland followed the EU’s approach to economic and energy policy, it “would mean that our citizens would be poorer in a few years than they are now.”

UK - Children are being 'brainwashed' by TikTok videos on ‘cool’ trans surgery viewed 26 billion times, campaigners claim. Campaigners have accused TikTok of helping children to be ‘brainwashed’ by hosting viral social-media videos that promote changing sex as ‘cool’. Material posted by transgender influencers on the social networking service – in which they provide advice on transitioning and accessing hormone therapies – has been seen by millions of young viewers. Some parents are concerned the involvement of TikTok, which became the UK’s most downloaded app last year, is fuelling a ‘social contagion’ of pressure on impressionable youngsters and the rise in teenagers who are identifying as trans. A spokesman for TikTok said: ‘We are honoured that the LGBTQ+ community has embraced TikTok from our very early days, as a platform for self-expression, education, community-building and joy.’ A spokesman for Stonewall said: ‘Our content allows young LGBTQ+ people to know that they are not alone in their experiences.’

USA - They are working relentlessly to transform our society into a dystopian “big brother” hellhole. The past two years have fundamentally transformed just about every nation on the entire planet, and there will be no going back if the elite have their way. For more than a decade, I have been warning about the rapid growth of the “Big Brother” control grid all around us, but in 2020 and 2021 things have gone to an entirely new level. The pandemic has given them the perfect excuse to impose lockdowns, mask requirements, vaccine passports and mandatory injections all over the globe. They have used fear of the virus to get the vast majority of the world population to accept measures that they never would have accepted during normal times. As a result, now they can monitor us, track us and control us like never before.

RUSSIA - During his marathon annual year-end press conference Q&A, which this year lasted about four hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin once again vowed to defend Russian society against the intrusion of the corrupted values of the West, in particular blasting the "gender obscurantism" pushed by the United States and Europe. "I am a proponent of the traditional approach that a woman is a woman and a man is a man," Putin laid out, which it goes without saying also reflects basic Biology 101 and humans' self-understanding for thousands upon thousands of years.

UNITED NATIONS - The release of the most recent report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was met with widespread international alarm. The BBC wrote that this was “code red for humanity” and the New York Times warned, “A Hotter Future Is Certain.” A Guardian headline stated that major changes to the climate were “inevitable” and “irreversible,” while both the BBC and the Guardian seemingly celebrated a survey that showed 4 in 10 young people now have almost uncontrollable anxiety about the climate.

USA - US Pacific coast is shaking! M6.0 earthquake hits Iliamna Volcano near Anchorage, Alaska just 2 days after M6.2 quake hits California. The quake was centered near Iliamna Volcano about 138 miles southwest of Anchorage. The quake was reported at a depth of 98.4 miles and shook the region at 1:42 pm. The jolt, which occurred across Cook Inlet from the Kenai Peninsula, was felt widely throughout much of the state, with reports from as far away as Fairbanks, Kodiak and Valdez. More than 1,500 people reported feeling it on the USGS website.