Trump calls Iran a 'starving nation'

• Welcome to a TACO Monday. Look at this utter propaganda posted on Trump’s Truth Social. Iran Parliament Speaker: ‘We Are Hungry, We Cannot Survive’. And Iran's response just above. 
• Iran’s SNSC Secretary, Mohsen Rezaee: "Trump wants to start a new game called 'economic warfare'. We have not attacked any of America's economic interests until now. So far, we have only targeted military bases, but if they choose to escalate to an economic war, we are prepared to target all American oil and economic companies in the region. If countries surrounding Iran join the US in an economic war against us, we will first warn them, and if they continue, we’ll target their interests. If they hold any meetings with anti-Iran groups in the region, we will strike there as well." 

• The Head of the Iranian Parliament news agency Mehdi Rahimi revealed to Al Mayadeen that Tehran has received an official invitation to join the Mecca Agreement. Rahimi confirmed that the proposal is currently under consideration by Iranian leadership. The agreement was signed earlier this month between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, aimed at forming collective deterrence against attacks targeting these nations. [Sounds like it might be aimed at growing distrust of Israel. Time will tell.]
• Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur: 'An International Protection Presence in West Bank/east Jerusalem and Gaza is absolutely URGENT. Third states have an obligation, per the ICJ, to act to end Israel's unlawful occupation. Will #UNSG's good offices and #UNGA (#Uniting4Peace) help overcome the #UNSC paralysis?'

• Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman: Israel has no strategy for survival in the long term. It assumes that it can always live by pointing a gun at everyone else, and this is not a survival strategy by any standard. So there are grave doubts in Israel about its longevity as a state.

• Lt. General Apti Alaudinov said it to TASS last week: "We must realize that the war in the Middle East will only gain momentum. I think Israel's aim is precisely this, for the war to gain maximum momentum, to draw in both the US and the entire NATO bloc. They are good at this. Ultimately they will overestimate their strength and cease to exist as a state."

• Sovereignista: Guyana’s UN Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights and one of the Security Council’s sharpest critics of the Israeli war on Gaza, took the lead in the race to become the next UN secretary-general, topping the council’s second informal straw poll with eight “encourage” votes. She overtook Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan, who had led the first round in July but slipped to a tie for second alongside IAEA chief Rafael Grossi of Argentina [a zionist agent]. As Guyana’s envoy, Rodrigues-Birkett has repeatedly condemned the Israeli war on Gaza, previously telling the council that Israeli strikes reflected “a complete disregard for the humanitarian principle of proportionality” and amounted to “the senseless massacre of the Palestinian people.” The winner will succeed António Guterres [who was a total failure], whose second and final term ends on December 31.
• A Paris woman claimed someone was leaving antisemitic graffiti at her home. She was later convicted of staging it herself. Multiple French media reports (Le Parisien, 20 Minutes, Le Figaro and others) identify the woman, Nancy Szejnberg (Nancy S.), as being of Jewish faith. She was convicted of staging the antisemitic graffiti, along with her daughter, in the Paris 11th arrondissement building. 

• Foreign ministers from 12 Arab and Muslim countries condemned Israeli aggression on the Abu al-Duhur Airbase in Syria’s Idlib province (where IDF hit Turkish planes), calling the aggression a dangerous escalation and a blatant breach of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. In a joint statement issued by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, Türkiye, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritania, Somalia, and Pakistan voiced deep concern over Israel’s continued aggression on Syrian territory and infrastructure.

• Here is a criminal act that we have seen many times before. The US seized Venezuelan gold from a British bank. According to reports in the newspaper El Nacional, the entire Venezuelan gold reserves – a total of 31 tons – held at the Bank of England will be transferred to the US. The value of these reserves is $4 billion, which means that Venezuela will lose sovereignty over these resources. This is precisely why Iran will never allow the US to enter its territory. Yet some incompetent individuals are labeling Iran a terrorist organization simply because it refuses to allow America to steal its resources – just as it is currently doing in Venezuela and elsewhere. 

• The neo-Nazi nature of the current Ukrainian regime has become so visible that even Polish authorities, who are usually gripped by Russophobia, cannot help but see it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Ukraine’s open, state-sponsored glorification of World War II-era nationalists who collaborated with Nazis on multiple occasions and were responsible for the ethnic cleansing of thousands of Poles has driven a major wedge between Kiev and Warsaw. Earlier this month, Polish parliament speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty said that Ukrainians must “rethink all aspects of their history” and specifically recognize the massacre of Polish civilians at the hands of WWII-era nationalists [led by Stepan Bandera in photo below] as genocide before being greenlit to join EU. “Despite the well-known Russophobia in the politics of Poland, the Polish authorities today are nevertheless paying serious attention to the foundations of current Ukrainian statehood. I mean, first and foremost, the ideology of neo-Nazism,” Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin in an interview on Sunday. He added that the Polish leadership’s “principled” position on the issue is a reflection of broad-based public demand. 

• Ukraine is beginning to legislate to conscript women to the military. Europe and the UK are reducing financial and other support for Ukrainians who have escaped the war, wanting to force them back for the meat grinder, and Ukraine is unable to field missile defense. Numbers now reveal that near 50% of Ukrainian military are mercenaries mainly from Latin America. In addition, Ukrainian soldiers are active in the Sahel region in Africa. They are the latest version of ISIS.
• Ukraine has once again requested American-made PAC-3 interceptor missiles for the Patriot air defence system from South Korea, but was again rejected, according to the South Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo. Seoul responded that it needs these missiles itself in case of an emergency on the peninsula.

• Washington Post: Trump announces tariffs on Canadian vehicles and steel in escalation of trade war. Trump offered no additional details about the levies, but he said they would take effect Jan. 1 — leaving time for the two sides to resume negotiations.

• Global Affairs: One of the world's leading producers of plastics, the US has proposed revising the draft objective of the treaty to reduce plastic pollution by eliminating a reference to an agreed 'approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastics'. The US has sent letters to at least a handful of countries urging them to reject the goal of a global pact that includes limits on plastic production and plastic chemical additives at the start of UN plastic treaty talks in Geneva, according to a memo and communications seen by Reuters. 

• RT: The shakeup in India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday has brought changes to its organizational hierarchy, raising some eyebrows. At least a couple of the big exits can be attributed to the student protests last month over leaks of questions for a national medical entrance test – the biggest challenge Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has faced so far. India, the world’s most populous nation with 1.4 billion people, also has the most young people of any country; the average age is around 29. The government responded to the protests with brutal police violence, stoking public anger – before it caved and sacked Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The BJP seems to have been guided by the thinking that fresh faces can help it regain trust among the country’s youth. It hopes to do so by meeting them in the social media spaces they prefer, and speaking using their lingo – as certain lawmakers have done in parliament. How that works out will be seen when a number of big states, including Modi’s Gujarat, go to the polls next year.