Navalny has been in and out of Russian jails more than ten times since 2011, when he first became the face of Russian opposition to Putin and coined the phrase that the ruling United Russia party was "the party of crooks and thieves".

"We came up with this investigation, while I was in intensive care, but we immediately agreed that we would release it when I returned home, to Russia, to Moscow, because we do not want the main character of this film to think that we are afraid of him and that I will tell about his worst secret while I am abroad." — Alexei Navalny, YouTube video, "Putin's Palace", January 19, 2021.

Thousands demonstrated -- and were arrested by police armed with stun guns and batons -- this weekend as well, voicing anger over falling living standards, shrinking political freedoms, "corruption, a skewed court system" and a political system that is rigged before "another round of fraudulent elections," possibly this spring and no later than next fall.

Putin, ironically, may largely have himself to thank. If it had not been for the arrest and jailing of Navalny, the current protest movement might have remained dormant.

"Xenophobia" has been a constant Biden theme... Within moments [of President Trump's "travel ban" last January] ... Biden went on the attack. "This is no time for Donald Trump's record of hysterical xenophobia and fear mongering to lead the way instead of science," he said. There was nothing "xenophobic" about Trump's travel ban. It was imposed on arrivals from the country where the disease first appeared. The ban, therefore, saved lives, and it would have saved even more if it had been stricter, announced sooner, and had been more rigorously enforced.... [If Biden] had been president then, the disease would almost certainly have spread faster in America. He was, during the campaign, against all such travel prohibitions.

Now, Biden is supporting another Chinese propaganda campaign.... The Chinese regime, which to this day uses geographical names for strains of virus, has been trying to ban any identification of China with the pandemic. Biden, with his executive order [rejoining the World Health Organization (WHO)], is doing Beijing's work as Chinese leaders try to deflect blame.

This decision was especially hideous because WHO was complicit in China's deliberate spread of the disease. WHO disseminated Beijing's position that the coronavirus was not readily contagious even though the organization's senior doctors knew it was highly transmissible. Moreover, WHO championed the Chinese campaign against travel bans. Americans died because of these and other indefensible actions on the part of WHO, and now Biden will go back to legitimizing and supporting that organization.

So far, Biden has taken steps that certainly encourage Beijing. His rejoining the Paris Agreement, his cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and his repeal of the ban on Chinese equipment in the American electrical grid, among others, favor, directly or indirectly, Beijing. Also of great concern is the failure of Commerce Secretary nominee Gina Raimondo to confirm that Huawei Technologies will remain on the department's Entity List.

But what does the term "minority" mean in a democracy based on equal citizenship for all? The term minority denotes "less-ness" compared to the "more-ness" of another entity. However, how could one regard some citizens of a democratic state as "less" than other fellow citizens?

[T]he United States is about "We the People," not "We the Minorities". Democracy is a melting pot, not a salad bar.

America... started as a space for settlers from England but was put on the way of becoming a nation by "founding fathers": Their "one nation under God" had the distinction of being the first constitutional democracy. Its motto became: Government of the People, by the People, for the People.

To pretend that this or that Cabinet minister was chosen because of his or her skin color, religious faith or other "minority" attribution is certainly not a compliment. If the choice is based not on the individual's competence but on salad-bar considerations, it cannot be justified on democratic grounds. If, on the other hand, such considerations played no part in the choice, why make such a song-and-dance about "rainbowism" and progressive representation?

[F]ortunately, many members of the new Washington team have impressive academic and practical resumes. It is in everyone's interest to hope that they will see themselves not as figures in a game of ethnic tokenism but the servants of the American demos at a difficult time.

What is alarming is that Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, who has been in the US for almost 35 years, was working for the Iranian regime and getting paid [by Iran] for nearly 13 years without being detected.

Afrasiabi presented himself as an independent political scientist, academic and expert. He allegedly wrote articles, including instance for The New York Times, a book, and gave TV interviews while getting guidance and payments from the Iranian regime. When Iranian officials reportedly asked him to revise an article already submitted, he followed up on their instructions.

A year ago, three Republican Senators, Ted Cruz (TX), Tom Cotton (AK) and Mike Braun (IN), called on the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). "NIAC's innocuous public branding masks troubling behavior," the senators wrote. The congressmen noted that this entity was a lobby group acting as a "foreign agent of the Islamic Republic...."

For safeguarding America's national interests, it is urgent that the US follow up on the recommendation of these Senators, at least to investigate who might be operating for the Iranian regime and what they might be up to.

Instead of storing medicine and vaccines, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are busy storing rockets and explosive devices.

The Palestinian terror groups that moan about a crippling economic crisis in the Gaza Strip somehow always seem to find enough money to purchase, smuggle or manufacture weapons.

In addition, Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups have frequently violated the laws of war by firing rockets from within populated areas.

It is important to stress that Hamas is planning to participate in the election while continuing to store weapons in residential areas in the Gaza Strip.

Had the explosion in Bet Hanoun been caused by Israel, international media outlets would have been falling over themselves to shout about another Israeli "war crime." Perhaps it is time to heed the postings.... that call out the true enemy: Hamas, PIJ, and other Palestinian terrorist groups.

Lebanese citizens have launched an online campaign that says that they have the right to be vaccinated before any foreigner living in the country. The term "foreigner" mainly refers to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in Lebanon.

The campaign, which is being condemned by Palestinians and others as "racist" and "discriminatory," has evidently failed to attract the attention of all those individuals and organizations who are making false, libelous accusations against Israel. They do not care about this racist campaign because an Arab country, and not Israel, is discriminating against Arabs (the Palestinians).

Israel, in fact, has vaccinated more Palestinians than any Arab country.... Given that tens of thousands of Arab Israelis and residents of east Jerusalem have received the vaccine without any problem, means that Israel is the only country that actually has so far given the vaccine to Palestinians.

Why did Brennan leave out communists?

We have every reason to suspect Schiff's motives and the law enforcement legitimacy of his proposal. Combined with Brennan's theories – this sort of thinking comprises the dark fantasies of people seeking to destroy liberty in the name of defending the Constitution.

The Biden administration, its allies, advocates, and television sock puppets are advancing a Constitution-threatening series of initiatives disguised as "safety and security" measures. This, combined with the Big Social Media-backed suppression of free speech, and not-so-subtle "shaming," are all aimed at crushing opposition and stopping people from questioning decisions, motives and authority. The pressure is palpable. Our liberties are in grave danger.

"You get the impression that Armin Laschet still believes in a partnership with Putin's Russia. He ignores the fact that there simultaneously is both a geopolitical and a value conflict with Moscow. This conflict requires a certain degree of severity, a policy of deterrence and also a policy of sanctions. It is wishful thinking that all foreign policy conflicts can be resolved through dialogue and goodwill." — Ralf Fücks, former Green Party politician and head of the think tank, Center for Liberal Modernity.

"Mr Laschet's first priority will be uniting the party. It will not be easy. He beat Mr Merz by 53 to 47 per cent of the vote. There is a large minority in the party who want it to take a clearer conservative direction. When he lost the 2018 leadership contest, Mr Merz retreated. This time, he seems determined to weigh on the party's future." — Editorial Board, Financial Times.

"The new CDU chairman faces a difficult task of maintaining coherence in a party that is struggling to find its identity while simultaneously trying to lure voters from the environmentalist Green Party and the right-wing AfD." — Oliver Hackel, senior financial strategist, Kaiser Partner Privatbank.

"German politics is drifting away from Mrs. Merkel's breed of consensus. Despite winning a leadership election among delegates to the CDU party conference, Mr. Laschet's soft foreign-policy views are increasingly at odds with prominent CDU figures who advocate a sterner approach to Russia and China. The Greens are on the rise as a mainstream center-left party on the back of their foreign-policy hawkishness and hostility to crony capitalism at home." — Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal.

Ankara and Athens, starting in 2002, held 60 rounds of talks before their exploratory efforts came to a halt in 2016. After a five-year-long pause the rivals agreed to resume talks on January 25, starting the 61^st round.

"The idea that a strategic — so-called strategic — partner of ours would actually be in line with one of our biggest strategic competitors in Russia is not acceptable." — Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden's then-nominee for Secretary of State, Arab News, January 26, 2021.

"Turkey has adopted a strongly militaristic approach, making efforts toward conflict resolution increasingly unlikely." — Dimitris Tsarouhas, a professor of international relations, a Scientific Council member of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies in Brussels, and a World Bank consultant, Arab News, January 26, 2021.

In recent weeks Iran announced that it had begun work on enriching uranium to 20 percent -- just short of the level required to produce nuclear weapons -- as well as informing the International Atomic Energy Agency... that it was to resume work on producing uranium metal.

Both these developments represent a clear breach of the JCPOA. Under the agreement, Iran committed to keep uranium enrichment at 3.5 percent, the level required for civilian use, and signed up to a 15-year ban on "producing or acquiring plutonium or uranium metals or their alloys".

Iran's announcement that it was proceeding with the production of uranium metal has prompted a furious response from the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, who, in a joint statement earlier this month, warned that there was "no credible civilian use" for the element, and that "The production of uranium metal has potentially grave military implications.

[W]hat makes anyone think Iran would honour a new deal any more than they honoured the old one? Why enter a new sham deal at all?

Not a week has passed since the inauguration of President Joe Biden -- whose son reportedly engaged in business deals with China worth $1.5 billion -- and the Chinese Communist Party, which illegally seized Hong Kong last summer, has already sent more than two dozen warplanes, including bombers, into Taiwan's airspace for two days in a row.

China also issued a new law permitting its "coastguards to launch pre-emptive strikes without prior warning" on any foreign ship that might enter disputed waters that China would like to consider its own.

Biden's team should not misinterpret any Chinese conciliatory rhetoric as being a sign of a less aggressive CCP effort to push US military assets out of the Western Pacific.

Xi, a stalwart of the "One China Policy," may still demand not words but actions, such as: a moratorium on Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) by US Navy vessels in the South China Sea, a cessation of US criticism of Chinese human rights violations, and a promise to reduce American VIP visits to Taiwan following President Trump's high-level contacts with Taipei.

China has clearly assessed Biden's capacity for bold leadership as highly improbable.

The Biden administration should not assume that Chinese objectives are negotiable. The CCP is committed to becoming the premier power in the world at the expense of US interests and is most likely willing to risk war to accomplish it.

The Swamp is terrified of Trump – still. That explains their fixation on eradicating him and his movement.

You are also supposed to ignore the facts concerning months-long violent protests with killings and burnings across America's cities by Antifa and BLM. Months ago, Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser, demanded that the National Guard withdraw from her city amid violent demonstrations. She then named a street after those demonstrators and allowed them to paint their motto across the entire street.

Watch for the same sort of public treatment and language applied to Trump supporters going forward. It is consistent with a government that is in fear of its own people. The type of government that has 25,000 soldiers guarding a few politicians in an empty city.

In "Four Principles to Guide U.S. Policy Toward China," the Atlantic Council's Ali Wyne suggests a weakened America needs to accommodate the People's Republic of China.

China also cannot get along with the United States, which maintained China-friendly policies for more than four decades. In fact, People's Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, in May 2019 carried a piece that declared a "people's war" on America.

China's "unrestricted warfare" on the United States has taken a toll. Recently, Chinese leaders deliberately spread the coronavirus beyond their borders, making deaths in America mass murder as well as "genocide," as that term is defined by Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Moreover, in late January of last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in the International Falls Port of Entry in Minnesota seized 900,000 counterfeit $1 bills, made in China.... Nobody, in China's near-total surveillance state, can counterfeit American currency without authorities knowing about it. [C]ounterfeiting another country's currency is considered an act of war.

Leaders of democracies, despite all the good will in the world, will find they cannot cooperate with thugs.

Muslim fighters tortured a 58-year-old Christian woman of Armenian descent by hacking off her ears, hands, and feet before finally executing her. — Medium.com, January 14, 2021, Artsakh.

As to why she was mutilated before being killed, jihadis often cite the Koran's calls to cut off the hands, feet, and throats of infidels (e.g., Koran 5:33, 47:4). — Artsakh.

One of the survivors... managed to escape his home in time and hide in the outside bathroom: "through the ventilator of the latrine he saw the rebels killing 4 members of his family including his wife and 3 children." — Virtueonline.org, December 3, 2020, Democratic Republic of Congo.

"My husband began reading verses in the Koran that allowed men to beat their wives if they disobey them, and after that he started beating me...." — Morning Star News, December 17, 2020, Uganda.

"About 20 people who knew us wanted to help us with the searches, but the gendarmerie prevented them from coming.... and civilians were not allowed to help. If the permission required had been given, we would have found my mother right away...." — Father Remzi Diril, a priest of the Istanbul Chaldean Church and one of the couple's sons, after his mother's body was found bullet wounds in the head and back; interview with Milliyet, January 11, 2021.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Assyrians in southeast Turkey "suffered forced evictions, mass displacement and the burning down of their homes and villages." They were exposed to severe persecution "including abductions (including of priests), forced conversions to Islam through rape and forced marriage, and murders. These pressures, and other more insidious forms of discrimination, have decimated the community." — Minority Rights Group International, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, Assyrians, updated June 2018.

Today, EU candidate and NATO member Turkey is still not willing or able to provide security and basic human rights for this persecuted minority.