English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For December 25/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.december25.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
Merry Christmas/Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests
Luke/02/01-20/In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus 2 that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. 3 She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. “When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 24-25/2022/
Video-Text: Christmas Is A Holy Event For Openness Prayers, Contemplation, & Forgiveness/Elias Bejjani/December 25/2022
Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi in Christmas message: All political indications confirm the presence of a plot against Lebanon involving presidential and constitutional vacuum/NNA/December 24/2022
Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi: Decries 'plot against Lebanon'/Naharnet/December 24/2022
Lebanese Leaders Respond to Macron’s Call to ‘Remove Them’ with Silence
Saudi Ambassador Calls for Electing President Who Returns Lebanon to Arab Fold
Lebanese create Christmas holiday spirit defying crippling economic crisis
Italian Deputy Prime Minister visits Beirut, meets Lebanese officials
Wronecka congratulates Lebanese on Christmas Eve
Minister of Environment participates in a conference on waste management in Istanbul
Geagea's Christmas wish is to elect a president
Interior Minister: Tampering with security is prohibited

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 24-25/2022/
CENTCOM: We Are Working to Consolidate Regional Partnerships to Confront Iranian Threats
Cécile Kohler's Family Spoke to Her for First Time Since Her Arrest in Iran
Ukraine Official Urges 'Liquidation' of Iranian Weapons Factories
Germany Suspends Measures to Promote Business with Iran
Türkiye in Talks with Russia About Using Syrian Airspace in Potential Operation
Iraqi Prime Minister Prepares Dissolution of De-Baathification Commission
Details emerge about the Paris shooter
Kurds clash with police in Paris for second day after killings
Kurdish Protesters Clash with Police in Paris
Taliban Orders All NGOs in Afghanistan to Forbid Female Employees From Working
Zelensky says Russia is killing for the sake of 'pleasure' after busy streets in the recaptured city of Kherson were attacked on Christmas Eve, leaving at least 10 dead
Putin's speeches invoke Russia's fight against fascism in WWII to justify the war in Ukraine — and use propaganda strategies from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, historian says
Nancy Pelosi Hits Kevin McCarthy With Searing Question In Likely Final Speech As Speaker

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 24-25/2022/
Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute: Iranian Mullahs’ Militia Group “The Basij” Are Trained To Kill/Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute/December 24, 2022
A Strong Signal That Recession Is Looming/Peter Coy/Asharq Al-Awsat/December, 24/2022
Not just a young person’s game: Iran’s parents and grandparents on three months of protest

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 24-25/2022/
Video-Text: Christmas Is A Holy Event For Openness Prayers, Contemplation, & Forgiveness
Elias Bejjani/December 25/2022
ذكرى الميلاد هي فرصة مقدسة للصلاة والتأمل والإنفتاح على الغير والمسامحة
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/81746/elias-bejjani-christmas-and-the-obligations-of-the-righteous-%d8%b0%d9%83%d8%b1%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d9%8a%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ac%d9%8a%d8%af-%d9%88%d9%88%d8%a7%d8%ac%d8%a8/
Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. (Luke 02/11)
Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men (Luke 02/14)
The holy birth of Jesus Christ bears numerous blessed vital values and principles including love, giving, redemption, modesty and forgiveness.
Christmas is a role model of love because God, our Father Himself is love.
Accordingly and in a bid to cleanse us from our original sin He came down from heaven, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. (John15/12)
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John15/13)
Christmas is way of giving …God gave us Himself because He is a caring, generous, forgiving and loving and father.
Christmas embodies all principles of genuine redemption. Jesus Christ redeemed us and for our sake He joyfully was crucified, and tolerated all kinds of torture, humiliation and pain
Christmas is a dignified image of modesty ..Jesus Christ accepted to be born into a manger and to live his life on earth in an extremely simple and humble manner.
Let us continuously remind our selves that when our day comes that could be at any moment, we shall not be able to take any thing that is earthly with us for the Day of judgment except our work and acts, be righteous or evil.
Christmas is a holy act of forgiveness ….God, and because He is a loving and forgiving has Sent His Son Jesus Christ redeem to free us from the bondage of the original sin that Adam and Eve committed.
Christmas requires that we all genuinely pray and pray for those who are hurt, lonely, deserted by their beloved ones, feel betrayed, are enduring pain silently pain, suffer anguish, deprived from happiness, warmth and joy .
Christmas is ought to teach us that it is the duty of every believer to practice his/her faith not only verbally and via routine rituals, but and most importantly through actual deeds of righteousness….
Christmas’ spirit is not only rituals of decorations, festivities, gifts and joyful celebrations…But deeds in all ways and means by helping those who need help in all field and domains.
Christmas’s spirit is a calls to honour and actually abide by all Bible teachings and values.
In this realm we have a Biblical obligation to open our hearts and with love extend our hand to all those who are in need, and we are able to help him remembering always that Almighty God showered on us all sorts of graces and capabilities so we can share them with others.
Christmas is a time to hold to the Ten Commandments, foremost of which is “Honour your father and your mother”.
Christmas is a good time for us to attentively hear and positively respond to our conscience, which is the voice of God within us.
Christmas should revive in our minds and hearts the importance of fighting all kinds temptations so we do not become slaves to earthly wealth, or power of authority.
Christmas for us as patriotic and faithful Lebanese is a time to pray for the safe and dignified return of our Southern people who were forced to take refuge in Israel since the year 2000.
Christmas for each and every loving and caring Lebanese is a holy opportunity for calling loudly on all the Lebanese politicians and clergymen, as well as on the UN for the release of the thousands of Lebanese citizens who are arbitrarily and unjustly imprisoned in Syrian prisons.
Most importantly Christmas is a time for praying and working for the liberation of our dear homeland Lebanon, from the Iranian occupation.
No one should never ever lose sight for a moment or keep a blind eye on the sacrifices of our heroic righteous martyrs who willing sacrificed themselves for our homeland, identity, existence, and dignity. Our prayers goes for them on this Holy Day and for peace in each and every country, especially in the chaotic and troubled Middle East. May God Bless you all and shower upon you, your families, friends, and beloved ones all graces of joy, health, love, forgiveness, meekness and hope.

Video-Text: Christmas Is A Holy Event For Openness Prayers, Contemplation, & Forgiveness
Elias Bejjani/December 25/2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_oPXT3YyYg&t=94s&ab_channel=EliasBejjani

Etienne Saqr-Abu Arz:  Merry Christmas to The Lebanese and to Lebanon
Face book/December 24/2022
We are celebrating the Merry Christmas and the blessed New Year while Lebanon is still floundering in endless crises, and our people are hardly struggling order to survive... However, since our culture of life is the strongest, and since we are children of hope and resurrection, therefore we ask Christ to bless Lebanon tormented country, hastens to save it,  grant all the Lebanese the grace of patience, strength and faith.  Merry Christmas to all the Lebanese hoping that they are well

Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi in Christmas message: All political indications confirm the presence of a plot against Lebanon involving presidential and constitutional vacuum
NNA/December 24/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/114366/%d9%81%d9%8a%d8%af%d9%8a%d9%88-%d9%88%d9%86%d8%b5-%d8%b1%d8%b3%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a9-%d8%b9%d9%8a%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d9%8a%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%af-%d9%84%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%b7%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83-%d8%a7/
"All political indications confirm the presence of a plot against Lebanon involving presidential and constitutional vacuum," said Maronite Patriarch Beshara Boutros Rahi, in Christmas message from Bkerki this morning. "The Maronite Patriarchate is determined to continue its struggle and endeavors in Lebanon and among the Arab and international communities in order to accelerate the presidential entitlement," Patriarch Rahi added, pointing out that the regional conflict hinders these efforts because there are those who want a president for themselves, not for Lebanon, and they want a president for their project, not for the historical Lebanese project. Rahi considered that so far no Lebanese party has proposed a national or civilized idea better than the Lebanese idea, and that his call for a conference sponsored by the United Nations and friendly countries on Lebanon is to distance Lebanon from any military clash and for the situation to remain fine in this unknown regional stage."Our call to this conference comes because we have surrendered to Lebanese politicians," he concluded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyOgKgi8zUE

APatriarch Beshara al-Rahi: Decries 'plot against Lebanon'
Naharnet/December 24/2022
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/114366/%d9%81%d9%8a%d8%af%d9%8a%d9%88-%d9%88%d9%86%d8%b5-%d8%b1%d8%b3%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a9-%d8%b9%d9%8a%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d9%8a%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%af-%d9%84%d9%84%d8%a8%d8%b7%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b1%d9%83-%d8%a7/
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Saturday lamented that “all political indications confirm the presence of a plot against Lebanon aimed at causing presidential vacuum accompanied by a constitutional vacuum, which is more and more complicating the election of a president.”“Didn’t some political groups block the formation of a government prior to the end of the term of (ex-)President General Michel Aoun despite their knowledge that the incumbent government had been certainly resigned and acting in caretaker capacity and that it would create problems in the specification of its role?” al-Rahi added in his annual Christmas message. Noting that the Maronite patriarchate is “determined to continue its struggle and efforts inside Lebanon and with the Arab and international communities to speed up the presidential election,” the patriarch noted that “the regional conflict is hindering these efforts, because some want a president for them, not for Lebanon, and want a president for their project, not for the historic Lebanese project.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyOgKgi8zUE

Lebanese Leaders Respond to Macron’s Call to ‘Remove Them’ with Silence
Beirut - Paula Astih/Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 24 December, 2022
Lebanese politicians acted with disinterest towards the harsh statements made by French President Emmanuel Macron during his return from the Jordanian capital, Amman. Macron had attacked the Lebanese leaders, urging a change in the country's leadership.
Macron's statements are considered the harshest that he had leveled against the Lebanese political class so far. The French president visited Beirut twice. Macron’s first visit followed the Beirut port explosion in August 2020. In his second visit, which came about a month later, Macron gathered Lebanese leaders around a round table at the headquarters of the French embassy. The French leader invited Lebanese politicians to agree on a formula that would allow the formation of a new government and pave the way for a solution to the worsening economic crisis. “My answer is to try to help bring a political alternative to life... and to be intractable with political forces,” Macron said in media interviews. He urged ignoring influential forces who have been keen on practicing extortion in Lebanon. “I care about Lebanese men and women, not those living off their backs,” he said. Macron said the priority now was to have “honest” people as president and as prime minister capable of moving swiftly to restructure Lebanon's failed financial system. Responding to Macron’s statements, member of the Progressive Socialist Party, MP Bilal Abdallah, stressed that leadership change in Lebanon was a matter of sovereignty. “Changing the leadership and the political system in Lebanon is a sovereign issue that is subject to the will of the Lebanese people, who alone decide who their leaders are, choose and hold accountable according to the mechanisms provided by our democratic system,” Abdallah told Asharq Al-Awsat. Lebanese Forces bloc MP Ghassan Hasbani, in response to Macron’s remarks, said that those hindering reform are known and that the Lebanese crisis can be solved by the election of a reformist president and placing the right people in executive power.

Saudi Ambassador Calls for Electing President Who Returns Lebanon to Arab Fold
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 24 December, 2022
Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari visited several Christian figures on Friday and will meet several others on Saturday to extend congratulations on the occasion of Christmas and the New Year. Bukhari met on Friday Ignatius Joseph III Yonan, the Syriac Catholic Patriarch, at the patriarchal headquarters in Beirut. They discussed the Lebanese developments, namely the election of a new president. They highlighted the need for Lebanese parties to agree on the election of a new head of state who returns Lebanon to the Arab fold, unites the Lebanese people together, and helps the recovery of the crisis-hit nation. The two officials also discussed issues of mutual interest.

Lebanese create Christmas holiday spirit defying crippling economic crisis
Najia Houssari/Arab News/December 24, 2022
BEIRUT, Lebanon: The Lebanese are getting ready to welcome the holidays, but their joy is only as deep as their pockets.
Some commercial streets in Beirut and major coastal cities such as Jounieh, Jbeil and Batroun were decorated with Christmas lights, powered either by solar panels or private electricity generators, in an attempt to lighten up the holidays in cities that had plunged into darkness months ago.
Malls are packed with shoppers, between whom the social differences are clearly visible. One toy store owner told Arab News: “Some shoppers buy expensive toys without even asking about the price first, while others go around the shop comparing prices and settle for the cheapest ones.”
The differences are even starker in clothing shops. Purchases are very limited in luxury stores, while the cheaper outlet stores, which have become more popular in recent years, are filled with shoppers.
However, supermarkets and grocery stores attract the most shoppers, who face the struggle of choosing between high-priced items and local, cheaper ones of lower quality.
Temporary Christmas markets were held in public squares to create an atmosphere of joy, especially for children. One visitor told Arab News: “Such activities really make us feel the holiday spirit. It’s nice to see so many people out. The circumstances are difficult but we are trying to overcome them.”
Claudine, a bank employee, told Arab News: “Everyone is preparing to celebrate the holidays in their own way. I did not decorate my Christmas tree this year. Decorations are too expensive. A Christmas tree costs 4,000,000 LBP to 15,000,000 LBP; that’s more than my salary. A pack of six ornaments is at least 500,000 LBP.”
The owner of a decoration shop in Furn El-Chebbak said: “The cost of Christmas tree decorations has reached 25,000,000 LBP ($545 based on the black market rate of 45,800 LBP/USD). “It all depends on the person’s salary and purchasing power. For instance, private-sector employees now receive parts of their salaries in dollars, which allows them to spend more than others.”May, a mother of two and a teacher, told Arab News: “The priority this year is for the Christmas Eve dinner. People want to be happy, regardless of the circumstances, and the dinner table, be it simple or luxurious, brings the whole family together.” Christmas dishes cost millions of Lebanese pounds. The cost of a holiday turkey is no less than $150 (6,870,000 LBP) and the price of 250g of cheese is no less than 300,000 LBP, while the Buche de Noel cake is at least 900,000 LBP.
Faced with these prices, families have avoided exchanging expensive gifts such as new cell phones and gold jewelry.
Nohad, a Lebanese citizen, told Arab News that she would rather have someone cover the cost of her medicines instead of getting a Christmas gift.
A study by the American University of Beirut this year on the cost of living concluded that “a Lebanese family needs at least five times the minimum wage to secure food.”
Seba, a young woman from the Bekaa region, told Arab News: “People are no longer able to buy fuel for heating, and they may spend the cold nights of the holidays wrapped in blankets or burning clothes and shoes in heaters instead of firewood and diesel.”
The financial collapse of 2019 has caused poverty to rise across Lebanon. According to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, there are no less than 1.5 million Lebanese living below the poverty line, subsisting on less than $2.15 per day (about 114,000 LBP). The local currency has lost more than 95 percent of its value against the dollar.
Dozens of planes loaded with expatriates wishing to spend the holidays with their families arrive daily at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut. Walid Nassar, Lebanon’s minister of tourism, had expected about 500,000 expatriates to arrive over the holidays as part of a campaign launched by the ministry dubbed “Come Back in Winter,” potentially generating revenues of up to $2 billion. Several hotels have recently reopened after being badly damaged in the August 2020 Beirut port blast. Pierre Al-Ashqar, head of the Hotel Owners Syndicate, says he expects a lot of bookings at hotels and ski chalets over the holidays. Meanwhile, on the administative front, political differences are still impeding the election of a new president. This has angered citizens who have become frustrated with the situation, especially amid the increasing security concerns in a lawless state. The Central Security Council has taken measures to prevent unrest. A security source told Arab News: “The measures include conducting security patrols, setting up checkpoints in various regions, and stationing security forces in front of churches and places of worship. “About 90 percent of the military personnel will be on call, and all these measures aim to reassure people that security is maintained and all matters are under the control of the security services.”The Lebanese Motorcycle Club, the YASA Association, and the Freedom Rider Association, with the support of the Internal Security Forces, organized an awareness campaign on traffic safety during the holidays.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister visits Beirut, meets Lebanese officials
NNA/December 24, 2022
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Italian Republic, Antonio Tajani, conveyed, during his two-day visit to Lebanon, a message to the Lebanese political and institutional authorities, in which he affirmed "the Italian government's closeness to Lebanon and its intention to reinforce the historic Italian commitment for a secure and stable Lebanon."During his meeting with Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Tajani stressed "The importance of expediting the election of a president and the formation of a new government that implements the reform and renewal agenda based on the procedures agreed upon with the International Monetary Fund," considering that it is based on these foundations and within the framework of growth diplomacy, it will be possible to strengthen and relaunch bilateral economic relations. To this end, he announced the organization in the near future of visits by trade delegations to Lebanon and Italy, to strengthen industrial and commercial partnerships between the two countries. The Deputy Prime Minister affirmed, in his talks with the caretaker Minister of Defense, Maurice Slim, and the Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, "Italy's continuous support for Lebanon's security and stability, which are essential for the entire region.

Wronecka congratulates Lebanese on Christmas Eve
NNA/December 24, 2022
"May this Christmas period unite families and people together in Lebanon and restore their hope in a brighter and more prosperous future for their country," wrote the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka, on the occasion of Christmas Eve, via her Twitter account.

Minister of Environment participates in a conference on waste management in Istanbul
NNA/December 24, 2022
Caretaker Environment Minister Nasser Yassin participated in a conference on solid waste management in Istanbul, at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Murat Corum. Yassin delivered a speech in the presence of Mrs. Amna Erdogan, in which he stressed "the importance of joint action to combat plastic pollution and other pollutants."Yassin met his Turkish counterpart, discussed cooperation frameworks, and agreed to follow up on the implementation of joint projects related to waste reduction and promotion of sorting from the source within the initiative launched by Mrs. Erdogan to reach zero waste.

Geagea's Christmas wish is to elect a president
NNA/December 24, 2022
Head of the "Lebanese Forces" party, Samir Geagea, confirmed that "his desire this Christmas is for the House of Representatives to be able, as soon as possible, to elect a president of the republic who will be an actual president and not a figurehead."He pointed out that he does not see at the present time that this wish "can be fulfilled in the near future, but this does not mean at all that we must stop the daily pursuit in order to achieve it."

Interior Minister: Tampering with security is prohibited
NNA/December 24, 2022
"Lebanon is still living in multiple economic, social and security crises, and these crises have increased since the explosion of the port of Beirut," said the caretaker Minister of Interior, Bassam Mawlawi. He pointed out that "the people have suffered a lot from politics, politicians and the political class as a whole, and we do not accuse everyone of corruption."Mawlawi considered that "getting out of the crisis of the presidential vacuum in Lebanon is by applying the constitution."Finally, the minister stressed "if this crisis is aimed at a social explosion, the Lebanese have shown that they do not want any social crises and tampering with security is prohibited."

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 24-25/2022/
CENTCOM: We Are Working to Consolidate Regional Partnerships to Confront Iranian Threats
Washington - Elie Youssef/Saturday, 24 December, 2022
Gen. Michael Kurilla, top commander of US forces in the Middle East, has reaffirmed that Saudi-US military ties are “very strong” and “necessary for permanent peace and security in the Middle East.”
Kurilla, during a press briefing from CENTCOM headquarters, Tampa, Florida, added that he is working to invest in partnerships that bring together countries of the region, where he said everyone is a stakeholder. US commitment to the region was measured by the number of soldiers on the ground, said Kurilla, but then added that this is the old way of thinking. “Rather, it should be measured by the strength of our partnerships,” he commented. “For example, we are building on assets that we already have and creating an interconnected mesh of sensors that transmit real-time data, viewed together through data integration, artificial intelligence platforms that help build a clearer picture of the operating environment.”“We’re using unmanned systems paired with artificial intelligence, or AI, to give us better information faster. This allows us to employ our manned systems more efficiently and strategically.” “All of this helps us achieve decision dominance. We’re able to cultivate information and use AI to make decisions faster than our adversaries and use our manned systems more efficiently.”“CENTCOM has recently stood up three innovation task forces: Task Force 59, Task Force 99, and Task Force 39.”
“Task Force 39 will test concept and technology, to include a fleet of unmanned land vehicles paired with manned ground vehicles, to help us and allow us to protect the force while maximizing our troops strength and force posture.” “Task Force 39 is teaming manned and unmanned systems. Task Force 39 is also looking at new technology to defeat Iranian drones. We want to serve as the experimentation center for new drone-defeat systems, ideas, and technology, to include directed energy.” “Meanwhile, Iran continues to undermine regional security and stability through militia groups, ballistic missile capabilities, UAVs, and routine threats to international waterways.” “Iran continues to violate sanctions and embargoes, proliferate weapons to its network of proxies and affiliates, and seize shipping in international waters. Iran continues to spread chaos through violent proxy groups funded by Tehran.”
“For more than 40 years, the Iranian regime has funded and aggressively supported terrorism and terrorist organizations and defied international norms by conducting malign activities while destabilizing not only the region, but global security and commerce as well.”

Cécile Kohler's Family Spoke to Her for First Time Since Her Arrest in Iran
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 24 December, 2022
The family of Cécile Kohler, a Frenchwoman detained in Iran, was able to speak to her for the first time since her arrest in May, through a video call on WhatsApp last Sunday, her support committee announced on Saturday. “The interview, which lasted for few minutes, had not been announced. It took place under surveillance. Wearing a veil, Cécile could not speak freely” said the "Freedom for Cécile" committee in a press release. According to her family members, “she was in tears” when they answered the call. “We felt she was psychologically suffering, especially because she was unable to have any contact with her family for more than seven months," the committee added. Her family voiced extreme concern, saying their daughter was suffering, but said they were “relieved to have finally had direct contact.” Cécile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris have been detained in Iran since May 2022 when they were visiting as tourists. Tehran accuses them of espionage.

Ukraine Official Urges 'Liquidation' of Iranian Weapons Factories
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 24 December, 2022
A top Ukrainian presidential aide called for the "liquidation" of Iranian factories making drones and missiles, as well as the arrest of their suppliers, as Kyiv accused Tehran of planning to supply more weapons to Russia. Writing on Twitter on Saturday, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said Iran "blatantly humiliates the institution of international sanctions", before calling for the destruction of Iranian weapon factories in response, Reuters reported.Kyiv has accused Tehran of supplying 1700 Shahed-136 loitering munitions to Moscow, which it says have been used to hit targets in Ukraine since September. Iran denies the allegations. Ukraine's espionage chief said in an interview released on Friday that Russia had already launched around 540 of the drones at military and energy targets in Ukraine.

Germany Suspends Measures to Promote Business with Iran
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 24 December, 2022
Germany's government is suspending state measures designed to foster business with Iran due to the repression of nationwide protests in Iran, the economy ministry said on Friday. The suspension will affect export credits and investment guarantees as well as Germany's manager training and trade fair programs in Iran, the ministry said. German-Iranian trade totaled $1.87 billion in 2021, according to Reuters. The death in custody of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, after her arrest by the morality police for violating Iran's dress code, unleashed years of pent-up grievances in the country over issues ranging from tightening social and political controls to economic misery and discrimination against ethnic minorities. Moreover, Luxembourg has expressed concern to Iran about one of its residents feared to have been detained and facing execution there, the government said on Friday. Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn called his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Thursday to address the situation, the statement said. Luxembourg did not name the detainee but described him as "a resident of Luxembourg of Iranian origin who, according to available information, may have been arrested and condemned to capital punishment." Tehran has launched a crackdown on a wave of anti-government demonstrations and announced at least 11 death sentences in connection with the protests. It was not immediately clear whether the Luxembourg resident was among those. But Asselborn used his call "to plead in favor of the Iranian demonstrators risking their lives to win respect for their fundamental rights, and in particular for those who have been sentenced to death." The statement did not report the Iranian minister's response. In a related context, the United States has announced another round of sanctions against Iranian officers and the public prosecutor involved in the government’s crackdown on protesters. The US Department of the Treasury said on Twitter that it was slapping sanctions on Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri for issuing “a directive to courts to act decisively and issue harsh sentences to many of those arrested during the ongoing protests.”The Imen Sanat Zaman Fara company was also designated by the US because it manufactures equipment used by Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces (LEF).

Türkiye in Talks with Russia About Using Syrian Airspace in Potential Operation
Saturday, 24 December, 2022
Turkish F-16 jets at Türkiye's Incirlik air base - Reuters
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday,24 December, 2022
Türkiye is in talks with Russia to use the airspace above northern Syria for a potential cross-border operation against the Syrian Kurdish YPG, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Saturday. Türkiye has carried out several incursions into northern Syria against the YPG and has been threatening a new incursion for months. It stepped up preparations last month after a deadly bomb attack in Istanbul it blamed on Kurdish militants. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the YPG, have denied involvement in the bombing of the busy pedestrian avenue. Türkiye launched air strikes against YPG targets in November and President Tayyip Erdogan signaled a possible ground offensive. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Akar said Ankara was in talks with Moscow, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces, about the operation.

Iraqi Prime Minister Prepares Dissolution of De-Baathification Commission
Baghdad – Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 24 December, 2022
Iraqi government request to transfer the files and data of the Accountability and Justice Commission to the judiciary in preparation for ending its work sparked a sharp political debate among the poles of the Shiite Coordination Framework. The Commission is an extension of an institutional body known as the “de-Baathification” that was established by a law issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by US Governor Paul Bremer, in 2003 to uproot the leaders of the dissolved party. Senior Iraqi sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the government sent a request to the commission to send all of its data and archives to the judiciary. A source in the Coordinating Framework confirmed that this request would pave the way for the dissolution of the commission, based on a political agreement that preceded the formation of the government. Last month, Iraqi sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the political forces that allied to form the current government had obtained promises from Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani, which include the elimination of the Accountability and Justice Commission. For 17 years, the Iraqi Sunni forces have been demanding the abolition of the law or the deletion of articles that allow parties to exploit it in order to prevent Sunni candidates from running for Parliament. Sunni party leaders have long criticized the commission’s mechanism of action and its delay in resolving hundreds of thousands of cases related to individuals who are designated by the law. A leader in the Shiite Framework said that the decision to dissolve the commission came within the framework of a political agreement with the prime minister. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Shiite politician noted that the Sunni forces did not stipulate the dissolution of the committee, but to transfer its legal functions to the judiciary and the secretariat of the Council of Ministers.   Iraqi Politician Intifad Qanbar said on Twitter that the prime minister’s decision to dissolve the commission was “null and unconstitutional,” stressing that such resolution “falls exclusively within the competence of parliament.”The Iraqi Constitution stipulates that the commission is an “independent” entity, and that Parliament “has the exclusive right to end its mission by an absolute majority.”

Details emerge about the Paris shooter
Agence France Presse/Saturday, 24 December, 2022
A 69-year-old man who opened fire at a Kurdish cultural center and a hairdressing salon in central Paris on Friday is a retired train driver with a history of racist violence and weapons offenses, according to police and prosecutors. Identified as "William M." by French media, the gunman is suspected of stabbing at least two migrants with a sword in a Paris camp last year, police and judicial sources told AFP. The man is believed to have slashed several tents in the migrant camp at the Bercy park in eastern Paris on December 8, 2021. In June 2016, he was convicted of armed violence by a court in the northeastern suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, which he appealed. A year later, he was given a suspended six-month prison sentence for illegally possessing firearms, judicial sources told AFP. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the question of whether Friday's attack was motivated by racism "will obviously form part of our investigations,"Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the man "was clearly targeting foreigners", but that it was "not certain" he had aimed to kill "Kurds in particular."He was also a member of a shooting sports club "and has several registered weapons," Darmanin said. The assailant, reportedly born in Paris, has been taken to hospital for treatment for serious facial injuries after he was arrested at the scene.
- 'Crazy idiot' -
Key questions for French authorities in the coming days include why the suspect was out on parole, with left-wing opponents already accusing President Emmanuel Macron's government of failing to take far-right threats seriously enough. "The far-right appears to have struck again. With deadly consequences," senior hard-left MP Clementine Autain wrote on Twitter. "When will those at the head of the state start taking this terror threat seriously?"Beccuau stressed, however, that "nothing enables us to establish at this stage that this man belongs to an ideologically extreme group."
The suspect had been released from custody on December 12 pending trial over the migrant tent attack, and was prohibited from carrying a weapon or from leaving the country, the Paris prosecutor's office said. The M6 TV channel said one of its reporters had interviewed his parents, who are 91 and 93 years old. "He is crazy, he's an idiot," said his father, according to an audio recording posted online. "He is a taciturn person who doesn't live like normal people do." M6 said neighbours described the suspect, who had been living with his parents since his release from prison earlier this month, as "strange." The 20 Minutes newspaper said he was born in March 1953 in Montreuil, an eastern suburb of Paris, and had been living in the capital's upmarket second arrondissement. The paper also quoted an anonymous police officer as saying that the gunman had said "he didn't like Kurds" during his arrest when he "also made incoherent remarks."

Kurds clash with police in Paris for second day after killings
Agencies/December 24, 2022
PARIS: Clashes broke out for a second day in Paris on Saturday between police and members of the Kurdish community angry at the killing on Friday of three members of their community. Cars were overturned, at least one vehicle was burned and small fires set alight near Republic Square, the traditional venue for demonstrations in the city where Kurds earlier held a peaceful protest. Clashes broke out as some demonstrators left the square, throwing projectiles at police who responded with tear gas. Skirmishes continued for around two hours before the protesters dispersed.
A gunman carried out the killings at a Kurdish cultural center and nearby cafe on Friday in a busy part of Paris’ 10th district, stunning a community preparing to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the unresolved murder of three activists. The suspected attacker was wounded and is in custody. He is a 69-year-old Parisian who was charged last year with attacking migrants and was released earlier this month. He is facing potential charges of murder and attempted murder with a racist motive, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Saturday. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the suspect was clearly targeting foreigners, and had acted alone and was not officially affiliated with any extreme-right or other radical movements. The suspect had past convictions for illegal arms possession and armed violence. Following questioning of the suspect, investigators had added a suspected racist motive to initial accusations of murder and violence with weapons, the prosecutor’s office said on Saturday. After an angry crowd clashed with police on Friday afternoon, the Kurdish democratic council in France (CDK-F) organized a gathering on Saturday at Republic Square.
Hundreds of Kurdish protesters, joined by politicians including the mayor of Paris’ 10th district, waved flags and listened to tributes to the victims. “We are not being protected at all. In 10 years, six Kurdish activists have been killed in the heart of Paris in broad daylight,” Berivan Firat, a spokesperson for the CDK-F, told BFM TV at the demonstration. She said the event turned violent after some protesters were provoked by people in a passing vehicle who displayed a Turkish flag and made a nationalistic gesture. Friday’s murders came ahead of the anniversary of the killings of three Kurdish women in Paris in January 2013. An investigation was dropped after the main suspect died shortly before coming to trial, before being re-opened in 2019. France’s Interior Ministry reported a 13 percent rise in race-related crimes or other violations in 2021 over 2019, after an 11 percent rise from 2018 to 2019. The ministry did not include 2020 in its statistics because of successive pandemic lockdowns that year. It said a disproportionate number of such crimes target people of African descent, and also cited hundreds of attacks based on religion. “The Kurdish community is afraid. It was already traumatized by the triple murder (in 2013). It needs answers, support and consideration,” David Andic, a lawyer representing the CDK-F, told reporters on Friday. Kurdish representatives, who met with Paris’ police chief on Saturday, reiterated their call for Friday’s shooting to be considered a terror attack. The questioning of the suspect was continuing, the prosecutor’s office added.
(With Reuters and AP)

Kurdish Protesters Clash with Police in Paris
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 24 December, 2022
Clashes broke out for a second day in Paris on Saturday between police and members of the Kurdish community angry at the killing on Friday of three members of their community. Cars were overturned, at least one vehicle was burned and small fires set alight near Republic Square, the traditional venue for demonstrations in the city where Kurds earlier held a peaceful protest. Clashes broke out as some demonstrators left the square, throwing projectiles at police who responded with tear gas. Skirmishes continued for around two hours before the protesters dispersed. A gunman carried out the killings at a Kurdish cultural center and nearby cafe on Friday in a busy part of Paris' 10th district, stunning a community preparing to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the unresolved murder of three activists, Reuters reported. Police arrested a 69-year-old man who the authorities said had recently been freed from detention while awaiting trial for a saber attack on a migrant camp in Paris a year ago. Following questioning of the suspect, investigators had added a suspected racist motive to initial accusations of murder and violence with weapons, the prosecutor's office said on Saturday. After an angry crowd clashed with police on Friday afternoon, the Kurdish democratic council in France (CDK-F) organized a gathering on Saturday at Republic Square. Hundreds of Kurdish protesters, joined by politicians including the mayor of Paris' 10th district, waved flags and listened to tributes to the victims.

Taliban Orders All NGOs in Afghanistan to Forbid Female Employees From Working
Asharq Al-Awsat/December, 24/2022
Afghanistan's Taliban-run administration on Saturday ordered all local and foreign non-governmental organizations (NGO) to stop female employees from coming to work, according to an economy ministry letter, in the latest crackdown on women's freedoms. The letter, confirmed by economy ministry spokesperson Abdulrahman Habib, said the female employees were not allowed to work until further notice because some had not adhered to the administration's interpretation of Islamic dresscode for women, AFP reported. It was not immediately clear whether the order applied to United Nations agencies, which have a large presence in Afghanistan. It comes days after the Taliban-run administration ordered universities to close to women, prompting strong global condemnation and sparking some protests and heavy criticism inside Afghanistan.

Zelensky says Russia is killing for the sake of 'pleasure' after busy streets in the recaptured city of Kherson were attacked on Christmas Eve, leaving at least 10 dead
Kenneth Niemeyer/Insider/December 24, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia is "killing for the sake of pleasure." Shellings killed at least 10 people in Kherson on Saturday. Zelensky had previously warned that "with the approaching holiday season, Russian terrorists may become active again." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin is "killing for the sake of pleasure" after shelling killed at least 10 people in the captured city of Kherson on Saturday. Zelensky had previously warned that "with the approaching holiday season, Russian terrorists may become active again" in his oversight address on Friday. Russian forces shelled the city's center on Saturday morning while the streets were busy, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president's office said according to the New York Times. Kherson is the only Ukrainian regional capital to be captured by Russia since its invasion. The city was liberated by Ukraine last month but was recently recaptured by Russia. Ukraine's minister of defense, Oleksii Reznikov, called the shelling "barbaric" and said that it "is not only another war crime, but also revenge on its residents who resisted the occupation and proved to the whole world that Kherson is Ukraine." "Ukraine will be able to prevent such tragedies if it has more means of counter-battery warfare, more artillery and more long-range ammunition," Reznikov wrote on Twitter. "Thus, russian murderers will be punished and driven out from Ukraine." Zelensky posted photos of the attack to his Telegram account containing bloodied bodies where he said that the attack was carried out for the sake of "pleasure," The Times reported. "In the morning, on Saturday, on the eve of Christmas, in the central part of the city," Zelensky wrote. "These are not military facilities. This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure."

Putin's speeches invoke Russia's fight against fascism in WWII to justify the war in Ukraine — and use propaganda strategies from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, historian says
Kelsey Vlamis/Business Insider/December 24, 2022
Norris studies Russian history, nationalism, media, and propaganda.
Norris told Insider Putin's speeches have gotten more existential and apocalyptic.
The following is a Q&A with Stephen Norris, a professor of Russian history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What is your perception of how Putin's speeches have changed over time, and what specifically about them is most concerning to you?
The evolution is probably most apparent in the last year or so. The major Putin state speech of the year is the Victory Day speech every year on May 9. Those speeches tend to be quite repetitive. Every year he says something about the sacrifice that the Soviet Union made, but he also transitions that into saying, "We have inherited that sacrifice. It's a sacred victory where we, Russia/the Soviet Union, saved the world from the brown plague of fascism and liberated Europe." And then he usually, especially over the last 10 years, says something about how "We have inherited this willingness to defend our motherland."
This year's Victory Day speech was one where he blended these two ideas together. Now it's, "We've done that, but now we're also actively doing it again." And that's why this year's Victory Day speech was quite scary.
It's almost like this DNA of patriotism that sort of seeded the ground for his speeches over the last year, especially since the invasion of Ukraine. He laid out this culture of patriotism and this historic mission that Russia has inherited from victory over Nazi Germany, and now he's activated in that the necessity of having to fight Ukraine because what he keeps saying is that "We're not really fighting an offensive war. We're fighting a defensive war where we now have to once again liberate Europe from the brown plague of fascism."
What similarities do you see between the messaging put forth by Putin and Russia today compared to Soviet Union propaganda?
The messaging about Victory Day and it's significance is largely a Putin-era phenomenon — laying claim to this victory over Nazi Germany is the one achievement from the 20th century that the Putin state has really latched onto, and then used to kind of construct this larger patriotic culture around the willingness of Russians across centuries to sacrifice themselves for the motherland.
Having a simple repetitive message is key to any propaganda, and one that rests at least in some part on truth. So it is of course true that the Soviet Union won WWII and that the sacrifices of the Soviet Union in World War II are difficult for us in America to understand. But then the other side of propaganda that Putin also is quite adept at is ignoring all the inconvenient facts. In that sense, the Victory Day propaganda is a Soviet era creation that's been revived under Putin.
In the 19th century and even in the 20th century, in the imperial propaganda and then Soviet propaganda, Russia "never attacked" anyone, or the Soviet Union never attacked anyone — it was always defense. Even when it wasn't. Clearly Russia has attacked Ukraine, but Putin is pitching it as a necessary defense of our civilization and Russians living across our borders. In the 20th century, it was more the sense of they need to protect socialist regimes from the evils of the West.
Did Putin use the Victory Day speeches to repeat that messaging so the Russian people would be primed to accept his narrative of the Ukraine invasion?
I don't think that Putin had in mind 10 years ago that he was going to invade Ukraine. What happened in the wake of Putin returning to the presidency and these massive protests that broke out in 2011 and 2012 across Russia, especially in Moscow, was a fear from Putin's point of view of a color revolution, or some sort of popular revolt that would topple his system. And so what the Putin system did, especially through the Ministry of Culture, was to particularly stress patriotic narratives — in schooling, movies, television shows, news programs, and things like that.
You compared the speech Putin gave announcing the annexation of four Ukrainian territories to the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Can you elaborate on that?
One of the more worrisome trends in Putin speeches, especially in the last six or seven months, has been how amorphous, almost existential they've been. The Ukrainian war has been framed in existential terms — it's a war to save Russian civilization. In the speech when he signed the treaties that annexed the four territories, he said Western culture is nothing less than satanism and this is the new threat against Russia. It was kind of scary and quite apocalyptic in the way his speeches had ever been. And in that speech, Putin actually referenced Goebbels. He said what the West has done is create a culture of lies about Russia that's reminiscent of Goebbels. In a speech in May of 1943, Goebbels said weirdly similar things. This was after Nazi Germany had lost at Stalingrad after the Soviet Union was turning the tide of the war. Goebbels gave a speech that turned the seeming defeat into victory and into a more existential question, saying the allies are trying to eliminate German culture, German history, the German people.
As a historian, I don't want to go too far with comparisons, because of course Goebbels' speech was also filled with a lot about who was supporting the West and the need to answer "the Jewish question." That's not a big part of Putin speeches, but I think the analogy here is what does an authoritarian or authoritarian system or even a dictatorship do when things aren't going well in a war? And how do they cast the meanings of this war at that moment? And what Goebbels did in 1943 at that moment was to really bring these sort of apocalyptic, existential questions to the forefront. And that's in a sense what Putin's saying. Why that's worrisome is because there's no obvious out. Where's the out when you cast the war in terms of your very way of life being at stake?How much are film and TV in Russia part of the state's propaganda?
Like most European countries, Russia has a Ministry of Culture that oversees film production. In the wake of the protests in 2011 and 2012, Putin appointed a new cultural minister named Vladimir Medinsky, and every year he put out a list of the 10 things the state wanted in films: things like patriotic stories from the past and achievements in Soviet and Russian science. That meant that monies were dolled out only if you met one of those criteria. Which meant that popular films, which are very slick, well-produced — they look like Hollywood films — increasingly took on patriotic messages that dovetail with the state's ideals. Tons and tons of war movies about WWII. It's really hard to overstate how many war movies have come out in Russia in the last 10 years. I think almost to the tune of, on average, about one per month.
Some of them are really good, some are a little more nuanced, but you can imagine if this is your basic consumption, you are on some level always getting messages about the significance of WWII, the patriotism of our forefathers in it, that we saved the world from fascism — those are the messages that the war speeches have kind of hijacked. There's also examples over the last 10 years where if there are Ukrainians in the film, they usually fall in one of two guises. A Ukrainian who's in the Red Army, along with his fellow Soviet soldiers, who speaks Russian, is always good. But if the Ukrainian speaks Ukrainian in a Russian film, almost inevitably, he's a Nazi collaborator. The media landscape in Russia is much more varied, even if it's still primarily state-run. It's not like the Soviet era where there's two channels, two radio stations, a handful of papers all controlled by the state. Now it's seemingly more diverse, so it doesn't necessarily feel to the public like it's centralized or condensed. In some ways, it's more sophisticated even than Soviet propaganda because of that. A lot of American movies portray Russian characters as evil. How do those play into Russia's narratives about the West?
That's a frequent talking point in Russia, that Russians tend to be the villains now. And that really rankles with Russians, understandably so. American movies are widely released in Russia and they're frequently the most popular movies in Russia, just like they are in America. New American movies were still coming out in Russia all the way up until February this year, and every time an American movie came out with a Russian bad guy, there would be lots of articles in the Russian press.
Putin talks about Russophobia as a form of racism. And then someone can say, "Well, all these Hollywood movies do have all these bad Russians, therefore they really don't like us. So when the president says the West wants us to collapse and cease to exist as a nation, maybe that's true. Maybe not. I don't know." And that's the point.

Nancy Pelosi Hits Kevin McCarthy With Searing Question In Likely Final Speech As Speaker
Ben Blanchet/Bloomberg/December 24, 2022
Pelosi, who previously announced she was stepping down as leader of the House Democrats, responded to the GOP congressman’s comments that the bill — a $1.7 trillion measure to fund the federal government through September — was a “monstrosity.” McCarthy gave a roughly 25-minute address railing against what he called “left-wing pet projects” funded by the bill. “It is one of the most shameful acts I’ve ever seen in his body,” said McCarthy, who is seeking to become speaker as Republicans take the House majority next year. “The appropriations process has failed the American public, and there’s no greater example of the nail in the coffin of the greatest failure of a one-party rule of the House, the Senate and the presidency.” Pelosi, in what she said may be her last speech as speaker on the House floor, said McCarthy’s remarks were “sad to hear.”“I can’t help but wonder, had he forgotten January 6?” Pelosi asked. It’s unclear whether McCarthy had temporarily forgotten about the deadly insurrection last year, but the House Jan. 6 committee certainly didn’t forget about McCarthy. The panel referred McCarthy and other House Republicans to the House Ethics Committee after they failed to comply with its subpoenas over the course of its investigation into the events surrounding the attack on the U.S. Capitol. It appears unlikely that the committee will act on the referrals, though, as Republicans will take over the chamber on Jan. 3, and the most severe potential action, expulsion from the House, requires a two-thirds majority vote, Bloomberg reported.

Jan. 6 report blames Trump, aims to prevent return to power
Associated Press/December 24, 2022
A massive final report released by the House Jan. 6 committee late Thursday places the blame for the 2021 Capitol insurrection on one person: former President Donald Trump. The dense, 814-page document details the findings of the panel's 18-month investigation, drawing on more than 1,000 witness interviews and more than a million pages of source material. The committee found a "multi-part conspiracy" orchestrated by Trump and his closest allies, all with the aim of overturning his 2020 election defeat. By laying out the extraordinary details — his pressure on states, federal officials and Vice President Mike Pence — the committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans says it is trying to prevent anything similar from ever happening again. The panel is also aiming to prevent Trump, who is running again for the presidency, from ever returning to power. Among other recommendations, the panel suggests that Congress consider barring him and others who helped him from federal office for his role in the insurrection, in which a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden's victory. "Our country has come too far to allow a defeated President to turn himself into a successful tyrant by upending our democratic institutions, fomenting violence, and, as I saw it, opening the door to those in our country whose hatred and bigotry threaten equality and justice for all Americans," wrote the committee's chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, in a foreword to the report.
A look at the findings and what's next:
'ONE MAN' TO BLAME
The report traces Trump's lies about widespread election fraud to conversations with some of his allies ahead of Election Day, evidence that his plan was "premeditated," the committee says. After he carried out that plan by questioning the legitimate results on election night — "Frankly, we did win this election," he told the TV cameras — he purposely disseminated false allegations of fraud. Many of Trump's White House advisers told him the lies were not true, according to multiple committee interviews, and his campaign lost a series of lawsuits challenging the results. But the former president did not waver. "Donald Trump was no passive consumer of these lies," the committee wrote. "He actively propagated them."The false claims "provoked his supporters to violence on January 6th," the committee wrote. Trump summoned them to Washington and instructed them in a fiery speech to march to the Capitol even though some "were angry and some were armed."And after the violence started, Trump waited hours to tell them to stop. That was a "dereliction of duty," the committee said.
PRESSURE ON THE STATES
As he lost in the courts, Trump "zeroed in" on key battleground states Biden had won and leaned on GOP state officials to overrule the will of their voters. The plan was wide-ranging, the committee shows, from pressuring state legislatures and election officials to creating false slates of electors. The panel obtained emails and documents showing talks within the White House and with outside advisers about how such a scheme could work. Perhaps the most stunning attempt to pressure a state official was Trumps' remarkable Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked him to "find" votes. Raffensperger did not comply. After speaking with election officials from several states, the committee said that Georgia call was "one element of a larger and more comprehensive effort — much of it unseen by and unknown to the general public — to overturn the votes cast by millions of American citizens across several states."
The panel assessed that Trump and his inner circle engaged in "in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach" to state officials between the election and the insurrection. At the same time, the president was trying to get Justice Department officials to go along with his plan. "Had enough state officials gone along with President Trump's plot, his attempt to stay in power might have worked," the committee wrote. "It is fortunate that a critical mass of honorable officials withstood President Trump's pressure to participate in this scheme."
PENCE'S LIFE AT RISK
As Trump aggressively pushed Mike Pence to illegally object to the congressional certification of Biden's victory as he presided over the joint session of Congress, the vice president's life was increasingly in danger, the committee found. At 8:17 a.m. on Jan. 6, Trump tweeted, "Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!"By the start of the joint session at 1 p.m., Pence had announced that he would not. By then, there were hundreds of Trump's supporters outside the Capitol, some chanting, "Hang Mike Pence!" Pence eventually fled the Senate chamber and narrowly escaped the rioters. According to Secret Service documents provided to the panel, agents were aware of growing threats against Pence. In one instance, an agent in the intelligence division "was alerted to online chatter 'regarding the VP being a dead man walking if he doesn't do the right thing,'" the report says. "It was an unprecedented scene in American history," the committee wrote. "The President of the United States had riled up a mob that hunted his own Vice President."
A THWARTED TRIP TO THE CAPITOL
Trump was determined to go to the Capitol with his supporters, the investigation found, but nearly everyone thought that was a bad idea — most of all his security detail. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, testified over the summer about a conversation she had with former Trump security official Tony Ornato, where he recalled Trump lashing out at his security after his speech and even grabbing the wheel of the presidential SUV. In the report, the committee writes that Ornato denied Hutchinson's story in a deposition last month, saying he was not aware of a genuine push by Trump to join his supporters at the Capitol. The committee said it continues to have "significant concerns about the credibility" of his testimony. The driver of the presidential SUV testified that he didn't see Trump and could not recall if Trump had lunged toward him. The driver, who is not named in the report, did recall Trump asking within 30 seconds of getting inside the vehicle whether he could go to the Capitol. One Secret Service employee testified to the committee that Trump's determination to go to the Capitol put agents on high alert. "(We) all knew ... that this was going to move to something else if he physically walked to the Capitol," a unidentified employee said. "I don't know if you want to use the word 'insurrection,' 'coup,' whatever."Trump stayed at the White House, watching the violence on television for hours while refusing to ask his supporters to leave.
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE
The report includes an appendix on the role of foreign influence in the 2020 presidential campaign, saying that while adversaries including Russia, Iran and China sought to sway American voter opinion, there was no evidence to support Trump's repeated claims that foreign actors had interfered in the voting process or did anything to manipulate the outcome. "President Trump's relentless propagation of the Big Lie damaged American democracy from within and made it more vulnerable to attack from abroad. His actions did not go unnoticed by America's adversaries, who seized on the opportunity to damage the United States," the report states. The report suggests that even Trump himself did not believe some of his allies' claims about foreign actors. According to testimony from longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks, Trump appeared somewhat incredulous when he was talking on the phone to lawyer Sidney Powell, who had pushed theories of hacked voting machines and thermostats. The report says that while Powell was speaking, Trump muted his speakerphone and laughed, "telling the others in the room, 'This does sound crazy, doesn't it?'"
WHAT'S NEXT
The committee is dissolving over the next week as the new Republican-led House will be sworn in on Jan. 3. But the panel ensured that its work will live on, officially recommending that the Justice Department investigate and prosecute Trump on four crimes. While a so-called criminal referral has no real legal standing, it is a forceful statement by the committee and adds to political pressure already on Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith, who is already conducting an investigation into Jan. 6 and Trump's actions. The panel recommended the department investigate charges of aiding an insurrection, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make a false statement, all for various parts of his scheme. The committee is also making its work, including transcripts, public for the Justice Department and the public to see. "We have every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap to justice," Thompson said.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 24-25/2022/
د. ماجد رفي زاده من معهد كايتستون: “البسيج” هي ميليشيا ملالي إيران وأفرادها تدربوا على القتل
Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute: Iranian Mullahs’ Militia Group “The Basij” Are Trained To Kill/
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/114371/majid-rafizadeh-gatestone-institute-iranian-mullahs-militia-group-the-basij-are-trained-to-kill-%d8%af-%d9%85%d8%a7%d8%ac%d8%af-%d8%b1%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%b2%d8%a7%d8%af%d9%87-%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%85/
Majid Rafizadeh/Gatestone Institute/December 24, 2022
That members of the Basij appear in plainclothes makes it extremely difficult for people to identify them before being attacked. Iran International news agency reported: “According to Rouydad24 news website in Tehran, when people produce evidence that they were beaten or arrested by plainclothes individuals or even when videos of plainclothes officers arresting, beating or shooting at protesters emerge, the government always claims that they were ‘rogue elements…’ Since 1999… some regime insiders have been trying to convince the security forces to issue uniforms to all law enforcers, to no avail. Security forces are under the command of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei who needs the plainclothes agents to save the regime from the people.” — Iran International, October 19, 2022.
The ruling mullahs claim that the Basij is a voluntary group, but its members are paid. In fact, the regime designates a large budget to the group every year. The Basij… is reportedly one the largest investors in the Iran Stock Exchange. Those who join the group are given financial and non-monetary incentives, such as easier entry to universities, obtaining bank loans, grants and getting employment.
Instead of preaching about human rights, the United Nations and the European Union urgently need to impose severe sanctions and cut the flow of funds to the regime and IRGC’s paramilitary and mercenary group to compel them to stop.
The Iranian regime’s mercenary paramilitary group, the Basij, consists of millions of members, and they are killing protesters with full impunity. Pictured: Basij commanders and forces attend a speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in honor of “National Basij Week,” on November 23, 2016.
While the European Union is busy appeasing the ruling mullahs of Iran who are delivering weapons to Russia with which to kill Ukrainians, and while the United Nations is turning a blind eye to the massive crimes against humanity committed in Iran, neither the UN nor a single European country has yet to hold accountable the Iranian regime’s mercenary paramilitary group, the Basij. It consists of millions of members and they are killing protesters with full impunity.
The theocratic establishment has been rocked with continuing anti-regime protests for four months now, and the Iranian authorities appear to be resorting to every possible mode of repression to suppress the demonstrators. These violent methods include shooting at protesters, injuring and killing people, executing protesters, thousands of arrests, physical and mental torture, sexual violence, and the rape of minors.
The Basij, a leading force committing crimes against humanity, acts freely throughout Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) granted the Basij extensive powers that allowed its members to act as religious and moral police, enforce the regime’s revolutionary laws, monitor people’s daily activities, suppress anti-regime protests, operate in foreign countries, organize religious events throughout Iran, and recruit and train child soldiers for the IRGC. Basij centers can be seen in almost every city, town, school and university campus across Iran. In return, the Basij has significantly empowered and emboldened the Iran’s Islamist regime. As the US Treasury Department pointed out:
“In addition to its involvement in violent crackdowns and serious human rights abuses in Iran, the Basij recruits and trains fighters… including Iranian children, who then deploy to Syria to support the brutal Assad regime.”
The Basij have played a critical role in attacking demonstrators and those who dare to criticize the Islamic Republic and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Many videos on social media show plainclothes agents shooting and beating up protesters.
That members of the Basij appear in plainclothes makes it extremely difficult for people to identify them before being attacked. Iran International news agency reported:
“According to Rouydad24 news website in Tehran, when people produce evidence that they were beaten or arrested by plainclothes individuals or even when videos of plainclothes officers arresting, beating or shooting at protesters emerge, the government always claims that they were ‘rogue elements.’
“As long as all law enforcement officers in Iran do not wear uniforms, the government can always get away with criminal acts committed by them. Since 1999, when plainclothes officers violently suppressed a student uprising in Tehran killing several students, some regime insiders have been trying to convince the security forces to issue uniforms to all law enforcers, to no avail. Security forces are under the command of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei who needs the plainclothes agents to save the regime from the people.”
The ruling mullahs claim that the Basij is a voluntary group, but its members are paid. In fact, the regime designates a large budget to the group every year. The Basij has become an important player in both the private and public sectors, and is reportedly one the largest investors in the Iran Stock Exchange. Those who join the group are given financial and non-monetary incentives, such as easier entry to universities, obtaining bank loans, grants and getting employment.
While Iran’s theocratic establishment denies that Basij are involved in the regime’s crackdown, a member of Basij surprisingly revealed to France 24 International in a rare interview that
“In our unit, we have shotguns, tear gas, batons, paintball guns and stun guns. We had a few hours of introduction and training on “non-combat” weapons like these…. I try not to hit protesters… The others in my unit aim at people to hit them, to hit them in the chest or head, to kill them. And if you kill someone, you won’t get in trouble. So hotheads or officers who do not care shoot at people’s heads. That can be deadly. We have some Kalashnikovs in our arsenal too, but we have not used them yet. Kalashnikovs are now being used by IRGC members and the police. As far as I know, the Basij arsenal is the same in all the big cities. As Basij, we have not yet been ordered to use Kalashnikovs, but our unit used them in 2019. We will use Kalashnikovs again when the orders come.”
Instead of preaching about human rights, the United Nations and the European Union urgently need to impose severe sanctions and cut the flow of funds to the regime and IRGC’s paramilitary and mercenary group to induce them to stop.
**Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
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A Strong Signal That Recession Is Looming
Peter Coy/Asharq Al-Awsat/December, 24/2022
The clearest signal that the US economy is likely to fall into a recession in the next year is coming from interest rates. One of the first people to establish the signaling value of interest rates was Arturo Estrella, then an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. I interviewed him recently about his life, his research and what he foresees for the economy.
Before I get to Estrella, though, let me speak of the chart that has a lot of economists, including him, deeply worried. It shows the path of yields this year on two Treasury securities, the three-month bill and the 10-year note. More than 90 percent of the time the yield on the shorter-term security is lower than the yield on the longer-term security. When the pattern flips, as it did this year, it’s a strong signal that a recession is nigh.
To see why Estrella is so certain, picture a narrow band where short- and long-term rates are roughly equal. Inside that band, it’s hard to say what will happen to the economy. But things are much clearer when there’s a noticeable gap between short- and long-term rates, in either direction.
Estrella has calculated that going back to 1968, every time the long-term rate was at least 0.07 percentage points higher than the short-term rate, the economy escaped recession. And every time the long-term rate became at least 0.07 percentage points lower than the short-term rate, the economy entered a recession within six to 17 months. The average gap so far in December is 0.81 percentage points, which is the biggest since 1981 and deep into recessionary territory.
Why would the “inversion of the yield curve,” as the flipping phenomenon is called, tell us anything about the economic outlook? It’s pretty simple, actually. The Federal Reserve has strong influence over short-term interest rates. When it raises them — usually to snuff out inflation — it makes borrowing more expensive, which often goes too far and causes a recession. At the same time, longer-term rates can decline because of expectations of lower inflation or a decline in the “real” (inflation-adjusted) rate of interest. Those expectations intensify when a recession appears likely.
A 1989 New York Fed research paper by Estrella and Gikas Hardouvelis, later published in The Journal of Finance, established statistically that an inversion of the yield curve predicted recessions. Campbell Harvey of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business produced similar results around the same time. (There’s a long-running disagreement about who was first, which I won’t attempt to adjudicate.) Frederic Mishkin, a Columbia University economist who spent time as Estrella’s boss when Mishkin was the New York Fed’s research director, told me: “Arturo was a top intellect. Boy, he really had the goods.”
Estrella has a story about how he accidentally angered E. Gerald Corrigan, who was the president of the New York Fed at the time. A Fed governor in Washington had put out a request for research on whether there was predictive power in the yield curve and Corrigan put his people to work on it, hoping to show that the answer was no. Not knowing of Corrigan’s preferences, Estrella innocently reported in a big meeting that yes, indeed, his research showed that the yield curve had predictive power. “His reaction was not something you can print in the paper,” Estrella said. “I thought I was going to get fired. A few months later, I was transferred to bank supervision.” (Albeit with a promotion.)
Estrella told me his interest in the predictive power of interest rates dates back to his childhood in San Juan, P.R., where he attended Catholic schools. “My math teacher was a nun,” he said. “She was also in charge of the music program. We hit it off very well.” He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Columbia with a special interest in Ludwig Wittgenstein, the kind of philosopher beloved by the technically minded. He followed that with master’s degrees in math at the University of Puerto Rico and the University of Michigan and a doctorate in economics at Harvard.
Estrella left the Fed in 2008 and taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., until 2018, when he took emeritus status. I asked him what he thinks of the Fed’s aggressive rate increases. “It’s a very difficult line to draw, whether something is necessary to control inflation or not,” he said. “I don’t know if what they’re doing right now is necessary. My gut feeling is that they’re going too far.”
About three-quarters of occupations in the United States became more “age-friendly” between 1990 and 2020, but a lot of the new jobs were filled by young people, according to a working paper released on the National Bureau of Economic Research website in September. “Many of these age-friendly jobs have been taken up by females and college graduates, as the occupational characteristics preferred by older workers (e.g., flexibility, office work, less strenuous demands, etc.) also appeal to these groups,” wrote Daron Acemoglu of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nicolaj Sondergaard Muhlbach of Aarhus University in Denmark and Andrew J. Scott of London Business School.

Not just a young person’s game: Iran’s parents and grandparents on three months of protest
Niloufar Goudarzi/AP/The National/December 24/2022
From trying to make up for 1979 to continuing years of protest, it's not just the young driving for change
Iran’s raging anti-regime protests may be regarded as the "revolution of the new generation", but millennials and baby boomers are also playing a keen role. Protests began in September after Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian-Kurdish woman arrested for not wearing her hijab properly, died in the custody of the country's morality police. Her family claimed Mahsa was beaten and struck on the head several times, but the authorities denied the allegations, claiming she died due to an "underlying illness". The protests were not the first time women have resisted the veil. Mahnaz, 36, an architect living in Karaj, removed hers four years ago. “I felt more connected to the environment," Mahnaz says by Skype. "A sense of joy, being alive. And you think to yourself, 'Could life have been like this all along?'“The hijab made me a stranger to myself, cut off from the environment. Yet there was a price to pay."
There was a mixed reaction from the people on the street. Some were surprised, some supportive, but on several occasions she was beaten by a paramilitary volunteer group called the Basij forces, hardline regime supporters. Every time I leave the house, I mentally prepare myself for the worst. Being shot. Being raped. Being executed. As I walk out of the door, I make my peace with it. Mahnaz. The recent protests are not without precedent. In December 2017, Vida Movahed removed her scarf and stood on a platform in the artsy Enghelab (Revolution) Street in Tehran to protest against the mandatory hijab law.
Her protest led to sentence of a year in prison, but she was pardoned by the supreme leader. She started a movement called The Girls of the Enghelab Street, which expanded to other cities. These girls stood on platforms, removed their hijabs, tied them to a stick and waved them as a form of protest. Twenty-nine girls were arrested for being part of that movement. The most recent resistance against the government also carries significant risk. Two men aged 23 have been executed for taking part so far. Hundreds have been injured and hundreds more imprisoned. "Every time I leave the house, I mentally prepare myself for the worst. Being shot. Being raped. Being executed," Mahnaz says. "As I walk out of the door, I make my peace with it. "The protests are suppressed by two groups. One is IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]-affiliated forces who wear normal civilian clothes and people call them Lebas Shakhsi (plainclothes men). "If they arrest you, it's the worst as no one knows where they will take you and the detainees often are found with severe injuries or at points dead.“There is another group, the police. If they detain you, you will likely be placed in a prison, where hopefully there are rules and laws in place that will make it safer than the first scenario."
Has Iran really suspended the morality police?
She says people are also using other methods to protest, including recent strikes in the country, and some are resigning from government positions. Protesters are a younger, more tech-savvy generation, so social media is being used more prominently than ever before to organise and raise awareness of their aims. Mahnaz says the Iranian Cyber Police “really care about how things are reflected on social media".She had a visit from them after posting in support of the protests. “They said the only reason they have not arrested me is that I don’t have many followers," Mahnaz says.
A new generation? Protesters from earlier years are annoyed by the term "revolution of the new generation". Negar, 42, a psychologist living in Tehran, says when she demonstrated in her youth, no one called it a young movement. With a wry smile, she says this generation has the benefit of being supported by more open-minded parents. Those of her age who have children have more to lose, and they fear that their children will grow up without parents. "My sister is two years older than me and divorced," Negar says. "As much as she wants to play an active role, she is scared for her children. "She doesn't care what happens to her but she is responsible for her kids, and if she is killed or arrested, no one can substitute for her as a mother". She vividly recalls a mother who was begging Lebas Shakhsi agents to return her son to her. “She was crying at their feet asking where her son was, telling them he has done nothing wrong and was just peacefully protesting," Negar says. “I can’t get her voice out of my head.”Bita, 60, a retired teacher living in Tehran, says she has taken an active role because she feels the weight on her shoulders of the 1979 revolution, which brought the hardline religious government to power. She thinks she owes it to the young generation to fight for change. "We made a mistake by blindly pursuing a major change without fully understanding the details it would entail," Bita says. "It is my children and grandchildren who are paying the price for the actions of my generation."She says young women, the largest sector of the protests, have been subject to sexual harassment by security forces. Some incidents have been caught on camera. In one video, the police in uniform hit a young girl and then grope her breasts while she is on the ground. "The violence perpetrated against people is unimaginable," Mahnaz says. "People are being tortured mentally using new techniques. "You are called and threatened that you must cease your political activities or you will be summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence," Mahnaz says. Nevertheless, the women feel achievements have been made. They believe more women are finding the courage to experience having the choice to wear what they want. They say you can see significantly more women on the street without a veil, and claim this is becoming normalised. “Another big win, maybe the biggest, is that the dark and unbreakable image of an undefeatable regime has shattered," Mahnaz says. "Now a lot of people think it's just a matter of time for the new chapter to begin.”