USA - President Donald Trump alleged Sunday that “we’re getting closer and closer,” in reference to his ongoing challenges to election results in key battleground states. “We’re getting closer and closer. And I hope you let everybody know we’re actually very close,” Trump said on WABC radio. “The fake news will not tell you that. They don’t want to talk about it. They’re trying to suppress it. We don’t have freedom of the press at all. It’s suppressed news. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened in our country. It’s been going on for, it started a long time ago, but it’s gotten to a point, it’s a terrible thing. It’s not freedom of the press, and we got to bring that back, because the press is so suppressed. It’s so dishonest. I don’t even call it fake news anymore. I call it corrupt news,” he added.

USA - Sidney Powell's "Kraken" has finally made it to the docket of the Supreme Court. The suit is perhaps the strongest collective argument yet against voter fraud. It contains the forensic audit done in Michigan that proves systemic voter fraud occurred through the Dominion Voting System tabulation. It also has proof of at least 200,000 fraudulent votes cast in the election. Further, it contains official Georgia elections records that prove the Dominion Voting Systems program's "inability to repeatably duplicate creditable election results." In other words, official Georgia election canvassers could not rely on Dominion Voting Systems' software to count the vote because it didn't repeat the same vote totals twice.

USA - A hand recount on Wednesday confirmed that a Michigan county falsely reported on election night a win for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The recount in Antrim County found 9,759 votes for President Donald Trump, versus 5,959 for Biden. On November 3, county officials said Biden received over 3,000 more votes than Trump. Two days later, they said Trump won by about 2,500 votes. A third change took place on November 21, with Trump being certified the winner by nearly 4,000 votes. Officials blamed the skewed results on human error. Antrim County uses Dominion Voting Systems machines and software.

EUROPE - The EU’s investment deal with Beijing punctures America’s dream of a ‘transatlantic alliance’ against China. The conventional wisdom in Washington that President Biden would find it easier to co-opt Europe into an anti-China agenda has been exposed as misplaced and naive. The EU is pragmatic, and Beijing’s being smart.

NATO - NATO said Saturday it was checking its computer systems after a massive cyberattack on US government agencies and others that Washington blamed on Moscow. "At this time, no evidence of compromise has been found on any NATO networks. Our experts continue to assess the situation, with a view to identifying and mitigating any potential risks to our networks," a NATO official told AFP.

USA - The SolarWinds breach could be the most significant cyber incident in American history. Russian intelligence — likely the SVR, the foreign-intelligence branch — infiltrated and sat undetected on US government networks for nearly 10 months. It was a sophisticated, smart and savvy attack that should alarm the public and private sectors.

GERMANY - The 2021 federal budget passed last week makes clear the priorities of the ruling class: not the health and lives of working people, but the interests of German imperialism at home and abroad. While the budgets for health, education and social affairs have been massively cut compared to this year, spending on the military and the security apparatus continues to rise. Next year, for example, the defence budget will be increased by a further €1.3 billion to €46.93 billion. It has thus increased by almost €15 billion since 2014. The additional billions for the security forces and the military are just the start of a massive arms offensive. The economic stimulus package adopted by the grand coalition of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in early May already included €10 billion for “new armaments projects with a high proportion of German value-added.”

GERMANY - As German Chancellor Angela Merkel prepares to leave office after nearly two decades in power, approval of Germany's leadership has never been higher in many countries. Across the 29 countries and areas that Gallup has surveyed so far in 2020, a median 62% approves of Germany's leadership, up slightly from a median of 59% for this same group in 2019. Approval ratings are at, or top, previous record highs in 18 of the 29 countries.

VATICAN - The year 2020 was marked by the global coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis said Thursday, but also saw a worrisome surge in “nationalism, racism, and xenophobia.” “Sad to say,” alongside all testimonies of love and solidarity during the coronavirus pandemic, “we have also seen a surge in various forms of nationalism, racism and xenophobia, and wars and conflicts that bring only death and destruction in their wake,” he said in his message for the 2021 World Day of Peace, released Thursday. In recent months, the pope has returned time and again to the topic of nationalism, tying it to the human person’s lowest instincts.

USA - With the first doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine now being administered in the US, the federal government is giving employers around the country the green light to require immunization for most workers. In general, companies have the legal right to mandate that employees get a COVID-19 shot, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said Wednesday. More specifically, employers are entitled — and required — to ensure a safe workplace in which "an individual shall not pose a direct threat to the health or safety of individuals in the workplace." That can mean a company requiring its workforce to be vaccinated. The Americans with Disabilities Act limits an employer's ability to require workers to get a medical examination. But the EEOC's latest guidance clarifies that getting vaccinated does not constitute a medical exam. As a result, ordering employees to get a COVID-19 shot would not violate the ADA.

EUROPE - European Jewish Association Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin warned that soon “there will be no kosher meat available in Europe,” following the EU Court of Justice’s Thursday decision that approved a ban on Kosher slaughtering. The Jewish Chronicle quoted Bini Guttmann, president of the European Union of Jewish Students, who suggested the ruling would “make Jewish life in Europe as we know it impossible."

EUROPE - The European Union's top court has deemed kosher and halal slaughter incompatible with animal welfare. This is a grim day for religious freedom in Europe, writes Christoph Strack. In Europe, leaders often laud the continent's Judaeo-Christian heritage. Not only that, 75 years after the industrial mass murder of European Jews in the Shoa, German and European leaders celebrate the return of flourishing Jewish life on the continent. They welcome the fact that liberal, conservative and orthodox Jews are once more part of Europe's social fabric. But for how much longer, given the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling that upheld a ban on kosher and halal slaughter in Belgium? The practice is only banned in two or three Belgian regions.

SINGAPORE - Commercial cultured meat has made its global market debut after climate-conscious teens got served premium-priced nuggets made from vat-grown chicken meat at a luxurious Singapore restaurant. On Saturday evening, the 1880 restaurant in Robertson Quay, a posh entertainment district in Singapore, began serving a special kind of dish. The diners were served what are basically chicken nuggets, but not a single chick died for them. The meat was cultured from chicken muscle cells in a lab and, according to the supplying company, previews a titanic change in the global food industry. With traditionally produced meats likely to be taxed based on their carbon footprint, poorer people who still want their protein intake to come from animals may be left with the third option – insects. Advocates say bugs can make for more efficient farming and their diseases are less likely to affect humans, so crickets or larvae, not slaughter-free nuggets, may be the mass food of the future.

EUROPE - Brussels plans to drop rules preventing some countries from serving up insects and worms for human consumption. I know that getting a food delivery is tough at the moment, but are we really desperate to swap crisps for crickets? Probably best not to read this while you’re eating but, with the news being wall-to-wall Covid-19 at the moment, a little story may have passed you by. While most of the world is consumed by the fight against the pandemic, the European Union is quietly set to authorise the sale of insects for human consumption. At some point over the next few weeks, its Food Safety Authority is expected to allow mealworms, locusts, and adult crickets onto our plates. Companies won’t just be doling out bags of freshly fried crickets, either: burgers, granola and even pasta have all been made out of such creepy crawlies. This is presumably because they think it will be easier for us to wolf down worms provided that they look more like normal food. And not wriggly things that just came out of the earth.

USA - Anti-Christian vitriol is rising out of the radical Democrat left and is more clearly framing a coming religious war in America that blames Christians for impeding the “progress” of a dark agenda. The Scientism that underpins Technocracy and Transhumanism only recognizes scientific truth while specifically excluding Biblical truth as mythical, unfounded and dangerous.