"Winter wonderland" isn't a term often associated with Hawaii, but that's exactly how one meteorologist described the Aloha State on Thursday.

Nearly half a foot of snow fell at the Mauna Kea Weather Center on Hawaii Island throughout the day on Thursday. Meteorologists shared photos and videos of the snowfall across social media. The images shocked many people who have never seen snow in a tropical climate before.

However, it is not uncommon for snow to fall on Hawaii's volcanic peaks given their altitude, and even blizzard warnings have been issued in Hawaii during the winter months.

The Mauna Kea Weather Center is based on the Mauna Kea volcano. At nearly 14,000 feet above sea level, the volcano is the tallest peak in Hawaii. It is the world's tallest mountain when measured base to peak, as its base extends nearly 20,000 feet below sea level.

Venezuelans going to the polls Sunday will be asked to answer an unusually provocative question:

Should their government be given a blank check to invade neighboring Guyana, and wrest away three-quarters of its oil-rich territory?

The government of Nicolás Maduro is putting the query before voters, part of a century-old territorial dispute between Venezuela and Guyana that is raising tensions in the region and threatening to escalate into a shooting war.

The question will be on the ballot in a five-part referendum that, among other things, would grant Maduro special powers to invade Guyana and create a new Venezuelan state encompassing 74% of English-speaking Guyana’s current landmass. The new area would be called Guayana Esequiba.

Some experts see the whole thing as a political ploy, though many Guyanese see the threat as real and fear, among other things, the loss of their citizenship.

As the US government hurtles toward insolvency while political and cultural divisions intensify across the country, Texans are poised to take their long-simmering flirtation with secession to the next level, as a non-binding proposition is expected to appear on the statewide GOP primary ballot in March 2024.  

On Friday, the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) announced that it had obtained the number of signatures required to compel the Republican Party of Texas to include this question on the primary ballot: “Should the State of Texas reassert its status as an independent nation?”

The party's State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) is meeting this weekend to finalize the list of ballot propositions. According to TNM, the SREC's wishes are not relevent, as the Texas Election Code empowers voters to place a proposition on a ballot by collecting the signatures of 97,709 Texans who want the question to appear. TNM says it has more than 102,000. 

A new "cutting-edge" textbook on transgenderism written with the help of activists will be used to train psychiatrists and could harm millions of children in the future, some experts have warned.

"Gender-Affirming Psychiatric Care," just released on Amazon at $58, is a textbook printed by American Psychiatric Association (APA) Publishing.

The textbook signals early on that it's more subjective than objective, quoting a feminist studies professor saying, "Scientific neutrality is a fallacy."

The content has prompted some critics to question the textbook's reliance on a mix of transgender-identifying professionals writing about their experiences, limited scientific studies, and neo-Marxist critical theories.

"This is a huge issue; millions more kids will be harmed," said Dr. Lauren Schwartz, a psychiatrist in Oklahoma speaking out against the rush to "transition" children.

The textbook's introduction says the book is based on an "evidence-informed approach" instead of an evidence-based approach, which is more scientific, she told The Epoch Times.

The 26 chapters are written by 56 authors, 50 of whom are in the transgender community, according to the textbook's foreword.

HHS' security team, the Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3), issued a sector alert on Thursday urging all U.S. healthcare organizations to secure vulnerable NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway devices against ransomware gangs' attacks.

"The Citrix Bleed vulnerability is being actively exploited, and HC3 strongly urges organizations to upgrade to prevent further damage against the Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) sector. This alert contains information on attack detection and mitigation of the vulnerability," HC3 warned.

"HC3 strongly encourages users and administrators to review these recommended actions and upgrade their devices to prevent serious damage to the HPH sector."

Before this, Citrix issued two warnings asking admins to immediately patch their appliances. It also reminded admins to kill all active and persistent sessions to prevent attackers from stealing authentication tokens even after installing the security updates.

Teenagers and young people in their 20s, 30s and 40s in the U.K. are dying from rapidly metastasizing and terminal cancers at an unprecedented rate since mass COVID-19 vaccination began, according to a new analysis by Edward Dowd.

The 45-page report by Dowd, a former Wall Street hedge fund manager and author of “‘Cause Unknown’: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,” alarmed some oncologists who characterized it as a sharp reversal of decades of mortality data.

Edward Dowd based his analysis on readily available government statistics from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics.

In an interview with The Defender, Dowd said he and his research partners, who include a handful of high-level scientists, data analysts and financial experts, examined all International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, (ICD-10) codes for cause of death in the U.K. in the study period of  2010-2022 to investigate trends in malignant neoplasms (C00 to C99 codes).

ICD-10 codes are the international physicians’ classification of diagnosis, symptom and procedure for claim processing set by the World Health Organization (WHO). A malignant neoplasm is a cancerous tumor.

Dowd said his research team noticed a striking pattern: While almost all deaths among older people in 2021 and 2022 in Wales and England had been coded, 8% of deaths among 15- to 44-year-olds in 2021, and 30% of deaths in that age group in 2022, hadn’t yet been coded.

Tens of thousands of Microsoft Exchange email servers in Europe, the U.S., and Asia exposed on the public internet are vulnerable to remote code execution flaws.

The mail systems run a software version that is currently unsupported and no longer receives any type of updates, being vulnerable to multiple security issues, some with a critical severity rating.

Internet scans from The ShadowServer Foundation show that there are close to 20,000 Microsoft Exchange servers currently reachable over the public internet that have reached the end-of-life (EoL) stage.

A 52-year-old man who stabbed former police officer Derek Chauvin with an "improvised knife" is a former FBI informant, according to court documents filed on Dec. 1.

John Turscak stabbed Chauvin 22 times before being subdued by responding corrections officers. He later told them that he would have killed the man convicted for the murder of George Floyd (who had an elephant dose of fentanyl in his system and died 'with' Covid).

Recent IPSOS polling (www.euronews.com/business/2023/11/26/one-in-four-europeans-say-their-financial-condition-is-precarious) found several concerning trends among the populations of Europe

30% of Europeans can no longer afford a “surprise expense”

47% of Europeans have had to turn down the heat in their homes and go cold, due to energy prices

37% of Europeans have had problems affording health treatment (medicines etc etc)

Israeli warplanes launched a devastating dawn raid inside Syria yesterday, killing two senior officers of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who were in the country training terrorists.

In an escalation in its war on terror Israel targeted the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in an air strike just ten miles from Damascus, the Syrian capital.

The base was being used by the Tehran-backed terrorism group Hezbollah, which is closely allied with Hamas in Gaza.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said: 'The two IRGC officers were the target of the Israelis. They struck immediately after the pair went into the Hezbollah site.'

A spokesperson for UNICEF has condemned the mass killings of children in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas conflict, and called on “those with influence” to put an end to the conflict.

James Elder posted an emotional video on Instagram on Friday, saying: “The ceasefire is over. We can already hear the bombing. I am at a hospital. There was a hit about 50 metres from here. This is the biggest, still functioning hospital in Gaza. It's at 200% capacity. The health system here is overwhelmed.”

The spokesman for the UN children’s fund said the world “cannot see more children with the wounds of war, with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their body, with the broken bones,” adding: “This is a war on children.”

Every reputable pollster in Canada has been in agreement for months that the next federal government will be Conservative, and that’s it’s likely going to be a majority. That’s typical after three terms of a Liberal government. But where this is getting weird is that there doesn’t appear to be a floor for Justin Trudeau’s unpopularity.

If the White House wants to bail themselves out of the border crisis using federally owned land, the House of Representatives just gave them a serious reality check.

In a bill passed on Thursday, The Daily Signal reported, the GOP-controlled lower chamber specifically prohibited any Washington funding to house illegal immigrants on land managed by the federal government.

The legislation was spearheaded by Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York.

Extremism in the ranks remains a troubling trend for the US military, as evidenced by the fact that 78 service members were suspected of being advocates for the overthrow of their own government, an annual Pentagon report has revealed.

The report, released this week, also showed that 44 service members were suspected of supporting or engaging in terrorism in the past year. Overall, the 183 allegations of extremism across all branches of America’s military marked a 25% increase from the previous year’s level.

In addition to cases in which service personnel allegedly advocated revolution or supported terrorism, the study documented cases of criminal gang activity, the promotion of widespread discrimination, and advocating or engaging in violence to achieve political objectives. The Pentagon has been releasing its extremism data to US lawmakers since 2021, the year in which President Joe Biden took office and began touting the threats posed by white-supremacist terrorism.

In his famous essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote that the English language was becoming “a catalogue of swindles and perversions.”

He added that “the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” And that, dear reader, was in 1946.

The Left has a genius for “swindles and perversions.” It is always inventing new words in its fight against reality. A pioneering example was the word “racism.” It didn’t exist until 1934, when the German-Jewish medical scientist Magnus Hirschfeld wrote a book, which was translated into English with the title Racism.

It may be hard to believe, but the United States managed to institute and abolish slavery, set up Jim Crow, and segregate schools and neighborhoods without once using a word that society considers indispensable today. How did we manage?

Phase One of Israel’s genocidal campaign on Gaza has ended. Phase Two has begun. It will result in even higher levels of death and destruction.

The skies over Gaza are filled — after a seven-day truce — with projectiles of death. Warplanes. Attack helicopters. Drones. Artillery shells. Tank shells. Mortars. Bombs. Missiles. Gaza is a cacophony of explosions and forlorn screams and cries for help beneath collapsed buildings. Fear, once again, is coiling itself around every heart in the Gazan concentration camp.

By Friday evening, 184 Palestinians — including three journalists and two doctors — had been killed by Israeli air strikes in the north, south and central Gaza, and at least 589 injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Most of them are women and children. Israel will not be deterred. It plans to finish the job, to obliterate what is left in the north of Gaza and decimate what remains in the south, to render Gaza uninhabitable, to see its 2.3 million people driven out in a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing via starvation, terror, slaughter and infectious diseases.

Mandy Cohen the new Jewish head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just defended all of the insane policies of the COVID era. She thought that forcing people to take deadly fake vaccine shots and shutting down schools over a hoax pandemic were excellent policies.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has warned that it may soon halt sanctions relief for Venezuela unless the oil-rich nation makes more progress in meeting Washington’s demands for the release of “political prisoners” and detained American citizens.

At stake is a relaxing of sanctions, announced in October, that eased US restrictions on trading of Venezuelan oil, natural gas, gold and government bonds. In return, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government was given a November 30 deadline to release jailed politicians and begin lifting bans on oppositional presidential candidates for the country’s 2024 election.

Naval forces from Iran, Russia and China are set to stage a joint naval exercise in the Persian Gulf, where the three powerhouses will conduct large-scale maritime drills involving various divisions of their military forces, Press TV reports.

Forces from the three countries will jointly practice exercises during the 2024 Marine Security Belt naval war game, Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Shahram Irani told the IRINN news channel on Friday evening.

Admiral Irani added that delegates from Pakistan, Brazil, Oman, India, South Africa and a number of the Caspian Sea littoral states have also been invited to participate in the drills as observers.

Iran, China and Russia have held several joint military drills in recent years to improve the security of international maritime trade, counter piracy and maritime terrorism, exchange information in naval rescue and relief operations, and exchange operational and tactical experiences.

Irani went on to say that the main phase of the country's largest maritime zone will come on stream at the port city of Jask in southeastern Iran during the Ten-Day Dawn celebrations marking the 46th anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution.

Heavy-lift vessels will be deployed in the maritime zone by the end of the current Iranian calendar year, which concludes on March 20, 2024, the navy chief stated.

After wasting ten-thousands of men in hopeless battles the Ukrainian comedian has finally acknowledged that his army's performative 'counter-attacks' and hold-to-the-last-man defenses have made no sense.

Politco's Dreamer of the year finally calls for building defensive lines:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for a faster buildup of major defensive lines amid Kyiv’s stalled counteroffensive and concerns that Russia could attempt to take more territory.

Zelenskiy urged greater speed and efficiency in building defenses in a video statement on Telegram after a meeting with key military and security officials Tuesday evening. He encouraged local communities to pitch in and pledged to make money available for the effort.

“Our country will definitely have enough mines and concrete,” he said. He didn’t provide details on where the fortifications would be built or how extensive they might be.

There are several new report on how the Zionist want to continue their killing spree in Gaza (and beyond it).

Israel Planning for Gaza War To Last Over a Year - Antiwar

The Financial Times reported speaking with sources who said that Israel plans to wage war on Gaza for over a year. In a little less than two months, Israel has killed at least 15,000 people, damaged 100,000 buildings, displaced 1.7 million Palestinians, and destroyed most of Gaza’s medical facilities.

On Friday, FT reported sources said Israel was preparing for a multi-phase conflict in Gaza that will last at least a year. “This will be a very long war…We’re currently not near halfway to achieving our objectives,” said one person familiar with the Israeli war plans.

According to the sources, Israel’s goals include “killing the three top Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Marwan Issa — while securing a decisive military victory against the group’s 24 battalions and underground tunnel network and destroying its governing capability in Gaza.”
...
The first phase of the war, an intense bombing campaign and ground invasion, is expected to last well into 2024. One source said the first phase of the war is about 40% complete. “Gaza City isn’t finished yet, nor fully conquered. It’s probably 40% done,” the person explained. “For the north as a whole, it will probably require another two weeks to a month.”

• A Hamas official tells Al Jazeera negotiations on prisoner exchanges are now over and will not resume until Israel halts it attack and hands over all Palestinian prisoners.
• Israel ordered its Mossad negotiating team in Doha to return to Israel because of what it called an “impasse”.
• Israel renews its bombardment of Gaza, hitting areas across the enclave after the end of a week-long truce.
• At least 15,207 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7. In Israel, the official death toll stands at about 1,200.

Relations between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, have been icy for years.

When democratically elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was removed from office by then General Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in 2013, Erdogan immediately sided with the jailed Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated leader, calling el-Sissi a putschist, murderer and tyrant.

Erdogan adopted the Muslim Brotherhood's signature hand gesture and often dismissively referred to Turkish opposition politicians as el-Sissis in an expression of loathing for the new Egyptian president.

Egypt, in turn, accused Turkey of supporting the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and granting safe haven to its members.

The countries supported opposing sides in the Libya conflict.

Podcast king Joe Rogan noted earlier this week that he believes there is no strategy for 2024 on the part of Democrats, and the only play they have is to imprison Donald Trump.

“I think at this point they kind of have to run [Biden] unless he dies,” Rogan asserted, adding “We have one year now, we’re in late November, we have less than one year. What are they going to do? If Biden died tomorrow, what do they do with Kamala Harris? Put her on the moon? What are they going to do, she’s the vice president. If he dies, she becomes the president, which is fucking wild when you hear that lady talk.”

Rogan further noted that throwing someone like California Governor Gavin Newsom in as the nominee in place of Harris would expose how lacking in direction the party has been.

“I think they have no cards and they’re looking at this game and I think they’re depending upon party loyalty and they’re depending upon Trump getting convicted and arrested and imprisoned,” Rogan contiuned.

Webmaster addition: Or "Something worse!"

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Saturday that the wars raging in the Middle East and Europe, coupled with increasingly brazen “bullying” by China, have underscored the need for robust U.S. leadership on the global stage.

“Only one country on Earth can provide the kind of leadership that this moment demands…and that’s the United States of America,” said Mr. Austin, who warned that global security crises will only worsen if Washington chooses isolation over engagement.

“We’re living through challenging times,” the Democrat-appointed defense secretary said in the keynote address at the 10th annual Reagan National Defense Forum — a bipartisan event well attended by devotees to the former Republican president’s “peace through strength” foreign and national security doctrine.

Mr. Austin said today’s challenges are multifold and include “the major conflicts facing our fellow democracies, Israel and Ukraine; bullying and coercion from an increasingly assertive China; and a worldwide battle between democracy and autocracy.”

Webmaster addition: Talk about arrogance!

Photo album at source.