News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine …

Yesterday Mark Carney, a former central banker and now Prime Minister of Canada, gave a remarkable speech (video, transcript) at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

It is an attack on the ‘international rules-based order’, the concept that the imperial Western nations have promoted and used to justify their myriad deviations from, and abuses of international law:

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. We could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

The concept of the rules based order, a lie in itself, was useful for the proxy forces and vassals of the global hegemon as long as they themselves were not threatened by its consequences.

But as that hegemon has turned on those vassals who supported it, the concept has become dangerous and must be discarded:

Cont. reading: Carney Declares Death Of The ‘Rules-Based Order’

There are first signs that the people of Ukraine are changing their attitude towards the war.

In Winter Strikes Kiev I explored how Russian strikes against infrastructure in Ukraine would change the mood of the population:

During the war the parts of the Ukrainian population that were not directly involved in fighting seemed to have little interest in what was happening. There was still a lot of nightlife in Kiev, all goods were available and even the few short interruptions of electricity were not much to bother with.

This will now change. Electricity is off for most of the time. Shops are closing because running business on generators is unprofitable. Local public transport is mostly down. Longer range tail transport is interrupted. Apartments are unlivable. The consequences of the war have become personal.

This will change the mood even of those who want to prolong the war. The numbers of those willing to accept the loss of territory in exchange for peace will rise.

After a while a change of policies will follow from this.

Last night another wave of missile and drone strikes hit electricity and heating infrastructure in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. It caused sever additional damage:

The strike on energy infrastructure left consumers in Kyiv and the surrounding region, as well as in Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Rivne, and Kharkiv oblasts, without power, the Energy Ministry said.

Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said that more than 335,000 people lost electricity in Kyiv. At around 10 a.m. local time, power had been restored to 162,000 homes, while about 173,000 remained without service.

In Kyiv, 5,635 buildings remain without heating, or about 46% of the city’s housing stock.
…
The right bank of Kyiv, the western part of the city, is receiving water at reduced pressure, while about 3,500 homes on the left bank remain completely without water, according to the deputy minister.

Heat has been restored to about 1,600 buildings. The other 4,000 will have to freeze at least through the night.

The people in Ukraine are now changing their mood and attitude towards the war. Until recently many were still optimistic hoping that the war would have some positive outcome. It was patriotic (and did not cost anything) to have a positive attitude. Ukrainian media, largely under censorship, and Ukrainian artist supported this.

One such artist is the famous pop singer Tina Karol (Wiki, website, Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter).

Cont. reading: Ukraine – The Mood Is Changing – Pep Songs Are No Longer Welcome

U.S. President Donald Trump wrote a letter the Prime Minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Støre. Staff at the National Security Council delivered copies of the letter to European ambassadors in Washington DC.

A copy was provided to a Newshour journalist:

Dear Ambassador:

President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

Trump will continue to demand Greenland until something is done by Europe to decisively stop him.

Cont. reading: Trump Will Take Greenland … And Then Go For More

News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Jan 12 – Regime Change Riots In Iran Fail Faster Than Expected
• Jan 13 – Iran Riots – Now What Does This Mean?
• Jan 15 – Iran – Trump Chickened Out
• Jan 16 – Iran – The ‘Ragtag Network Of Activists’ Run By The State Department
  Related:
  – Trump’s Iran backdown – Helena Cobban
  – In Iran crisis, Trump confronted limits of U.S. military power (archived) – Washington Post
  – How Trump Went From ‘Locked and Loaded’ to Hitting Pause on Striking Iran (archived) – WSJ
  – Trump to POLITICO: ‘It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran’ – Politico
  – Revealed: The CIA-Backed NGOs Fueling The Iran Protests – MintPressNews
  – How Iran’s regime retook the streets (archived) – Financial Times

• Jan 17 – Dark Kiev
  Related:
  – Cascade effect and complete blackout? What happens to the Ukrainian energy sector after new Russian strikes (in Russian) – Strana
  – Why Rheinmetall’s Artillery Ammo Plant in Ukraine Still Hasn’t Been Built – Defense Express
  – Oreshnik vs Lviv Targets [i] – Black Mountain Analysis
  – Antiwar Russians in Europe Learn That They Must Watch Their Words (archived) – NY Times
  – EU ‘membership-lite’ plan for Ukraine spooks European capitals – Irish Times
  – Speech at the ceremony for presenting letters of credence – Kremlin.ru

—
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-016

The electricity and heat supply in Ukraine has stopped in large parts of the country. Kiev had already been on scheduled blackouts where groups of consumers received for example four hours of electricity to then be cutoff for eight hours. That scheduling has ended. The blackout has become permanent.

Over several weeks Russian attacks had isolated the electricity supply in Kiev from other parts of the country. It then attacked generating stations within the city. There is now less than 10% of electricity supply available than the city would normally use. Public lighting has been shut down as much as possible. Factories have closed down. Schools and Universities are on prolonged holidays. Many shops have closed as running their private generators is costing more money than they can make while open.

The electricity generation stations were also supplying hot water for long-distance heating. Several hundred of Soviet era high-rises in Kiev, each of them with hundreds of apartments, have neither heat nor power. The temperature in Ukraine has been below zero degree C for several days. Many of the buildings had not drained their water systems. The radiators and water supply lines have frozen and burst open. Those high rises are now uninhabitable. Experts estimate that up to nine month repair time, and a lot of money, will be needed to fix each of them. There are about 150,000 people affected by this.

Kiev is not the only city in trouble. Odessa is likewise shut down. People are protesting in the streets. Dnipro has similar problems. Today an attack hit Kharkiv and disable one of the last combined heat and electricity station within the city. Sumy and Zaparochia also reported blackouts.

Currently a wave of arctic air is flowing into Ukraine with night temperatures expected to go down to minus 30° centigrade.

The government of Ukraine says that it is expecting a new Russian wave of attacks. This, it says, will likely take out transformer station that make up Ukraine’s long distance 750 kilovolt electricity network which is fed by nuclear power stations. The stations are not endangered but they would have to lower their output or shut down as there will be no-one connected to them to receive the electricity they generate.

Large electric energy systems are very complex. To restart a system once it broke down requires a lot of coordination and planning. Any mistake will immediately lead to new breakdowns and damaged equipment. The systems in Kiev are now in a state where it could take weeks without new Russian attacks to get the it up and running again.

Ukraine had been warned that any attack on Russian infrastructure would be responded to in kind. But it continued to attack Russian cities which led to deaths and serious problems in Belgograd and elsewhere.

For three years Russia had mostly refrained from attacking Ukrainian infrastructure. Electricity and heat supply operated at peace time levels. Only during the last year did attacks increase. In March 2025  President Trump announced a 30 day infrastructure ceasefire. Russia committed to it. Ukraine didn’t.

In November 2015 Ukraine blew up transmission pylons that supplied Crimea. 75% of its populations were left without electricity. A brewery in Lviv celebrated that by creating a dark beer named ‘Crimea by night’.

In 1999 NATO bombed Serbia to further split up Yugoslavia. NATO bombing started on March 23 1999. It took out some 80% of Serbia’s electricity and water supply. During a press conference on May 25 1999 NATO spokesman Jamie Shea justified the attacks as follows:

Cont. reading: Dark Kiev

As the recent ‘regime change’ operation in Iran has now evidently failed the media are allowed to revile some details of the powers behind it.

Inside the Fight to Keep Iran Online (archived) – NY Times, Jan 16 2026
Activists spent years preparing for a communications blackout in Iran, smuggling in Starlink satellite internet systems and making digital shutdowns harder for the authorities to enforce.

Iran’s communications blackout last week seemed complete. Internet and cellular networks had been shut down by the authorities. Online banking, shopping and text messaging services stopped working. Information about the growing protests was scarce.

Yet a ragtag network of activists, developers and engineers pierced Iran’s digital barricades. Using thousands of Starlink satellite internet systems that they had quietly smuggled into the country, they got online and spread images of troops firing into the streets and families searching for bodies.

A ‘ragtag network’ of ‘activists’ … Let’s see who, according to the piece, belongs to it:

“You need to plan to have that infrastructure in place,” said Fereidoon Bashar, the executive director of ASL19, a digital rights group focused on Iran. “This is because of years of planning and work among different groups.”

ASL19 is an Iranian ‘regime change’ group in Canada. Its website says:

We build innovative solutions to advance human rights and civil liberty in Iran

Its ‘About’ page says nothing about who is behind it or how the group is financed. A Wikipedia page about the organization  leaves some doubt about the its integrity:

Cont. reading: Iran – The ‘Ragtag Network Of Activists’ Run By The State Department

Yesterday U.S. President Donald Trump was ready and willing to bomb Iran. The most important target would have been the Supreme Leader, Ajatollah Khamenei.

But Iran was ready and Khamenei safe. The U.S. military, in contrast, was not ready to defend against the inevitable retaliation that would have come out of Iran. There are only three destroyers with air-defenses in the area that could offer  protection against a ballistic missile onslaught. A few minutes after the first strikes their arsenals would have been empty.

Before the last bombing of Iran THAAD and Patriot air defenses from the U.S. and South Korea had been flown to the Middle East. A U.S. carrier group was stationed nearby and U.S. bases had been depopulated. The military was able to provide Trump with somewhat reasonable options.

U.S. allies, most importantly Israel but also some Gulf countries, were fully on board.

This round was way different.

The military was unable to give any good options for strikes. It had to ask Trump to stand down.

The Gulf countries were anxious and did not want to be part of a campaign:

“Bombing Iran goes against the calculus and interests of the Arab Gulf States,” said Bader al-Saif, an assistant history professor at Kuwait University. “Neutralizing the current regime, whether through regime change or internal leadership reconfiguration, can potentially translate into the unparalleled hegemony of Israel, which won’t serve the Gulf States.”

Even Israel suggested to wait until the ‘regime’ breaks down.

That is not going to happen.

The internal configuration of the Islamic Republic has made ‘regime change’ nearly impossible. A majority of the country and the security forces support the country’s political structure. No bunch of paid terrorists, who shoot at random people as well as security forces, can break that connection.

In consequence, at least for now, Trump chickened out.

News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine …

There is no Internet connection with Iran (except for a few white-listed officials). To whom then is this addressed?

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – Jan 13, 2026, 14:43 UTC

Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

And what does it mean?

Just two days ago I opined that the riots in Iran would lead nowhere.

Iran Shrugs Off Another Round Of U.S./Israel Sponsored Regime Change Riots – MoA, Jan 10 2026

I especially pointed out that the U.S. had delivered Starlink satellite terminals to organizers of the riots – 40,000 of them is a rumored number – but that the Iranian government had acquired the means to detect them and to shut down their traffic.

Just a day later Forbes reports that the government did indeed used its new tools:

‘Kill Switch’—Iran Shuts Down Starlink Internet For First Time – Forbes, Jan 11 2026

The Iranian government did not bother to track down single terminals but used the new Russian and Chinese equipment to shut down all Starlink traffic in Iran. Packet loss rates of 90% have made the connections unusable.

Today pro-government marches are held in all major cities of Iran. They are much bigger than anything the opposition could ever assemble. The Iranian system has again demonstrated that it is astonishingly stable. Not one official has changed side.

The riots are, for now, over. The streets tonight will likely be quiet. During the next weeks the riot leaders and instigators will be tracked down and punished – harshly one hopes in sight of the casualties on the government side.

The total blocking of Internet traffic and international phone communication in Iran was the decisive step taken to end the riots.

Without Internet access the CIA/Mossad agents directing the rioters were unable to command and control their on-the-ground forces. The lack of ‘horror’ propaganda videos from Iran, submitted via the Internet and used by the media to rake up support for western intervention, is also important. Color-revolutions à la CIA require these tools.

In 2022 the wave of U.S. induced protests in Iran took nearly three month before it subsided. This wave, started on December 28 by a massive short-selling attack on Iran’s currency, took just two weeks before it died down.

Trump, who had threatened to bomb Iran in support of the rioters, will have to pull back. The U.S. military says that it is not ready (archived) for the revenge Iran would unleash on it.

The failing of this regime change attempt shows that the methods used in it have become too obvious and can be countered. It will likely take a while before new methods are developed and new attempts will be launched.

News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Jan 5 – Trump Abducted Maduro But Did Gain Nothing
  Related:
  – Rodriguez or Trump: Who Is Really Running Venezuela? – Naked Capitalism
  – Shale chiefs warn Trump that Venezuelan oil will hobble US drillers (archived) – Financial Times
  – Venezuela’s New Leader Enlists U.S. Troops to Bring a Rogue Ship Back (archived) – NY Times
  – Donald Trump’s Venezuela oil deal is already up and running (archived) – Economist

• Jan 6 – Why ‘Might Makes Right’ Is Dangerous For All of Us
• Jan 7 – Mafia Increases Activities
• Jan 8 – More Ideas On How To Counter The Mafia’s Increasing Activities
• Jan 9 – Trump Has Changed And TDS With Him
  Related:
  – Trump’s Backyard Imperialism Won’t Work – American Conservative
  – The radical honesty of Donald Trump (archived) – Economist
  – The Wrath of Stephen Miller (archived) – Atlantic
  – Unexploded missiles, unclear targets in Trump’s strikes on Nigeria (archived) – Washington Post

• Jan 9 – Winter Strikes Kiev
  Related:
  – Ukraine scrambles to repair ruined Kyiv power grid after latest Russian attack – CBC.ca
  – Inside Ukraine’s Quest to Build a Missile to Strike Deep in Russian Territory (archived) – WSJ
  – Dutch former Military Officer Hendrik candid about horrors on the Ukrainian front: ‘every morning the nazi salute was brought’ (in Dutch) – De Telegraaf
  – Ukraine Awards Major Lithium Project to Investors With Links to Trump (archived) – NY Times

• Jan 10 – Iran Shrugs Off Another Round Of U.S./Israel Sponsored Regime Change Riots
  Related:
  – WaPo (archived)

  The internet monitoring group NetBlocks said Saturday that the internet shutdown had reached 48 hours and counting, and Filterbaan, a digital rights group that focuses on Iran, said international phone calls were being blocked. Iranians in the diaspora reported being unable to reach loved ones inside the country.

  – NY Times (archived)

  Yet each of the 10 protesters interviewed by The New York Times by phone — all of whom requested to withhold surnames for their safety — said …

—
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-010

Every two years or so the CIA and Mossad are instigating regime change riots in Iran. These attempts inevitably fail.

Currently a few thousand young men are during nighttime burning cars, mosques, shops and police offices in various cities of Iran. Armed agents are firing at and killing policemen. All these cells are coordinated via Internet connections.

It usually takes a week or two until Iranian government forces find the connections, trace down the ring leaders and shut them down. That process may take a little longer this time because some of the terror cells have been equipped with Starlink terminals.

As the unofficial CIA spokesman David Ignatius at the Washington Post writes (writes):

A harder question for Washington is whether to smuggle in Starlink terminals to reverse the internet blackout that Tehran imposed Friday. The Biden administration weighed that strategy during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022 and 2023 but decided against it — fearing it would put at risk crucial smuggling routes used by the CIA and Israeli intelligence. Perhaps this time, the benefit outweighs the cost.

That pretty much confirms that those terminals are already there.

Meanwhile Russia has developed equipment that allows to detect active Starlink terminals from the air. Iran has already received copies and will soon produces enough of its own to cover its cities.

Ignatius also claims that the riots are different this time because they are aimed to install a U.S./Israel sponsored puppet:

Cont. reading: Iran Shrugs Off Another Round Of U.S./Israel Sponsored Regime Change Riots

Last night Ukraine was finally confronted with the consequences of attacking Russian infrastructure.

And no, I do not mean last nights Oreshnik strike on the large gas storage facility in west Ukraine. The seismic impulse from that strike likely damaged the geological structure that allowed the gas to be stored in caverns. It can now escape and has been seen burning. Those were the Ukrainian reserves for the rest of the winter. The strike was in revenge for the late December drone strike on Russia’s strategic command facility and Putin’s home near Novgorod. It was also a warning, mostly to Europe.

But the real hurt came with a medium-sized drone and missile strike on Kiev. At least three combined-thermal-electric facilities were taken out. These used to provide water, heating and electricity to the blocks of Soviet era high rises that cover much of Kiev. These strikes, as the Russian Ministry of Defense empathizes in its reports, are in retaliation for strikes on Russian infrastructure facilities. Russia at a time, offered a ceasefire on infrastructure strikes. Ukraine did not keep to it.

Now nearly half of Kiev’s high-rise apartments have lost water, heating and electricity supplies. This while the temperature has gone down to minus 20° Celsius at night. Municipal workers have started to drain (in Russian) all water from intra-house systems. Otherwise the risers and pipes would freeze and break open. But it also means that water and heat supplies will not come back to those high-rises until the temperatures are back in a positive Celsius range.

The buildings have thus become unlivable. Hundreds of thousands if not millions will have to live elsewhere.

The mayor of Kiev Vladimir Klitschko has called on residents to leave the capital:

Half of Kyiv’s apartment buildings, almost 6,000, are currently without heat supply after critical infrastructure in the capital was damaged in a large-scale Russian attack.

“Municipal workers have connected social facilities – in particular hospitals and maternity hospitals – to mobile boiler houses. And together with energy workers they are working to bring electricity and heat supply back to Kyiv residents’ homes,” Klitschko said.

He added that the combined attack on Kyiv on the night of 8-9 January was the most painful for the capital’s critical infrastructure facilities.

“City services are operating under emergency conditions. And unfortunately weather conditions are forecast to be difficult in the coming days.

I also appeal to residents of the capital who have the opportunity to temporarily leave the city and go where there are alternative sources of power and heat, to do so,” Klitschko concluded.

A similar situation exist in Dnipro, one of Ukraine’s most industrial cities, since yesterday.

During the war the parts of the Ukrainian population that were not directly involved in fighting seemed to have little interest in what was happening. There was still a lot of nightlife in Kiev, all goods were available and even the few short interruptions of electricity were not much to bother with.

This will now change. Electricity is off for most of the time. Shops are closing because running business on generators is unprofitable. Local public transport is mostly down. Longer range tail transport is interrupted. Apartments are unlivable. The consequences of the war have become personal.

This will change the mood even of those who want to prolong the war. The numbers of those willing to accept the loss of territory in exchange for peace will rise.

After a while a change of policies will follow for this.