Journal of People wishes its readers and well-wishers season’s greetings and a happy new year.

On this occasion, Journal of People takes a two-week’s break, beginning from December 24.

Tales of a Queen’s Christmas and Christmas Tree workers

A Journal of People report

The Queen of UK might spend Christmas at Sandringham, but she still puts on a spectacular festive display at Windsor Castle each December.

The royal family started retreating to their Norfolk estate in the late 1980s. But before to that the royal family used to spend Christmases at the historic royal venue. The then Princess Elizabeth, and her younger sister Princess Margaret, would even perform pantomimes for the rest of the family.

Nevertheless, the castle is now transformed with regal decorations to celebrate the festive season. The decoration is always an impressive display.

On the royal family’s social media account, they have shared an insight into the striking decorations as they all come together.

The US Approves Bill That May Legislate Hybrid Warfare On Venezuela

One World  | December 20, 2019

In a nutshell, we can safely say that the US government will make large amounts of US taxpayers’ money available for regime change in Venezuela under the guise of “humanitarian relief” for a crisis that the US government created to start with.

On December 16, both houses in the US approved the appropriation bill to be signed by President Trump. Aside from the mind-boggling amount of $1.4 trillion that was approved in total our interest was in looking at the details concerning Venezuela.

A press release issued by the organization Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) is quite misleading in its over-optimism suggesting that the appropriations bill “rejects the use of force in Venezuela and endorses a negotiated solution to the country’s crisis”. Another interpretation may be more realistic.

Venezuela’s Armed Forces Denounce Attack on Military Base

teleSUR | December 22, 2019

The minister also confirmed that police and military agents were deployed in the area and managed to capture some of the attackers.

Venezuelan Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino Lopez confirmed Sunday an attack on a military base in Gran Sabana in the south of the country, in which an army trooper was killed during the assault.

Sanctions Kill. Join AFGJ and Nicaraguan Farmers to Fight the Blockade of Venezuela

by Chuck Kaufman

Alliance For Global Justice | December 18, 2019

Everything I know about true solidarity I learned from Sandinista Nicaraguans in the 1980s and since. I’m excited to write in this last NicaNotes blog of 2019 to introduce a 3-way solidarity project that we can all participate in. It is called the Manitos Children’s Fund. Manitos means “little hands” in Spanish. At its most basic, Manitos Children’s Fund raises money in North America (US and Canada) to buy food from Nicaraguan cooperatives to donate for children’s nutrition in Venezuela. But there’s a lot more to the story than just the basics.

The reason Venezuelan children need to have their nutrition supplemented is because the United States government is trying to overthrow their government, and the weapon of choice is unilateral coercive measures – sanctions – that are explicitly forbidden in the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS).

The Right to Healthy Food: Poisoned with Pesticides

by Colin Todhunter

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter addressed to three senior officials in Britain: John Gardiner, Under Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the British government; Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England; and Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Security.

Her letter focuses on the issue of food and the herbicide glyphosate. But the issues she discusses should not be regarded as being specific to the situation in Britain: they apply equally to countries across the world which are facilitating the interests of global agrochemicals conglomerates.

The Madrid Climate Disaster

by Peter Koenig

Does anyone know what COP25 stands for? Probably very few. It’s unimportant. As unimportant as the whole roadshow itself. Just for the hell of it, for those who read this article, COP means Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 25 stands for the 25th year that such annual conferences have taken place, every year in another country.  What a tourist bonanza for the hundreds, if not thousands of attendees and participants who travel — by air, many of them business class — to these most questionable, even useless, conferences.

The first of the COP summits took place in Berlin, Germany, in March 1995. The COP’s Presidency rotates among the 5 UN recognized regions and so do the conferences — to make “eco-tourism” most of the time for the same UN and government bureaucrats and jokers more attractive. I can’t help thinking of the enormous cost of these conferences — travel, food, lodging and everything in between for two weeks. In the case of COP25 Madrid (2-16 December 2019), two days more than planned, because after the scheduled two weeks no agreements were reached, so it was decided to add two days. Add to this all the preparatory meetings and related travels — tens of millions of dollars, possibly more, are spent for nothing, absolutely zilch, nada. That’s the officially recognized outcome at the end of the extended COP25 in Madrid – nothing.

The Real Lesson of Afghanistan Is That Regime Change Does Not Work

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

The trove of U.S. “Lessons Learned” documents on Afghanistan published by the Washington Post portrays, in excruciating detail, the anatomy of a failed policy, scandalously hidden from the public for 18 years. The “Lessons Learned” papers, however, are based on the premise that the U.S. and its allies will keep intervening militarily in other countries, and that they must therefore learn the lessons of Afghanistan to avoid making the same mistakes in future military occupations.

This premise misses the obvious lesson that Washington insiders refuse to learn: the underlying fault is not in how the U.S. tries and fails to reconstruct societies destroyed by its “regime changes,” but in the fundamental illegitimacy of regime change itself. As former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz told NPR just eight days after 9/11, “It is never a legitimate response to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done. If you simply retaliate en masse by bombing Afghanistan, let us say, or the Taliban, you will kill many people who don’t approve of what has happened.”