War

The battle for Aleppo is officially over.

Having concluded the evacuation of rebels from their last enclave in the eastern part of the city, the Syrian army said Aleppo has returned to government control, ending the 4-year rebel control over parts of the city that years ago was the largest metropolitan center in Syria and is now a landscape out of Call of Duty.  The evacuees have been taken to rebel-held territory in the countryside west of Aleppo and in Idlib province.

In a curious convergence of superpower opinions, earlier on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for the country to reinforce its military nuclear potential. In a speech that recapped military activities in 2016, Putin said the army's preparedness has "considerably increased" and called for continued improvement that would ensure it can "neutralise any military threat".

Donald Trump is calling on President Barack Obama’s administration to veto a U.N. resolution that denounces illegal Israeli settlements and backs the Israeli government. A planned vote Thursday on a draft resolution calling for an immediate end to Israeli settlement activity on occupied land that Palestinians want for a state was postponed amid pressure from Israel, NBC News reported.

Several days ago, Merkel may have walked on her own into one a potentially career-ending, political traps as she prepares to runs for her fourth term as Chancellor in 2017, when she said  has said "it would be particularly repulsive if a refugee, seeking protection in Germany, was the perpetrator" of the Monday Christmas market terrorist attack.

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Around the time of Passover in 67 AD, the Jews of Judea were in the midst of a major rebellion against the occupying Roman Empire.

Riots and violence were commonplace, and an organized rebel force of more than 25,000 men fought regularly against the imperial legions.

But a small group of zealots decided that conventional warfare wasn’t good enough.

So they went to the nearby town of Ein Gedi in modern-day Israel and killed 700 civilians.