OffG in the New Year

The two faces of Janus, looking back to the past and forward to the futue.

And so the year ends. 2018 is a closed book. The final sentence dotted, a new chapter started. It was a bleak year, politically, for many of us – but not entirely without hope.

We enter 2019 with the US announcing they are pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan – if this comes to fruition, then the Syrian people deserve the world’s respect for a hard-fought victory. Though Western media will never cover it, or admit it, the Syrian government – with their Russian and Iranian allies – have done not only Syria, but the entire world, a major service in preventing the creation of a second Libya.

In the UK the Tory party still limps along in “power”, for want of a better word. But Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party are ahead in the polls, and there is every reason to think a new election will be called sometime this year. If that election is fair, Corbyn will win…and we may see some real positive changes in the way the UK is run.

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s government remains a hot-bed of neo-fascism, being enabled by their American sponsors – a dangerous situation that could boil over at any moment. Austerity continues to kill and impoverish millions across the world, especially in the EU. The absurd “RussiaGate” investigations being carried out by Robert Mueller are birthing a climate of hysterical Russophobia that could easily spiral out of control. Neo-McCarthyism in action. Silicon Valley corporate giants still wield enormous power online, seeking to stifle debate and censor free speech. We are under no illusions, this website – and dozens of others like it – live under a constant threat of being shut down.

OffGuardian will be four yers old in April 2019, having published over three thousand articles, which have been read by literally millions of people and received tens-of-thousands of comments. All far beyond our expectations when we launched this site in 2015. Some major changes are coming in the next few weeks. A new look. A new web-host. A new comment system. These changes are important, and will allow us more freedom and fluidity in the amount and type of content we can host.

But for now – to all our readers, authors and commenters – OffG sends our most sincere wishes for a happy new year.

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