I just learned that Mick Jagger wrote Sympathy for the Devil inspired by reading Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, a copy of which he had been given by Marianne Faithfull.

Berliner Zeitung:

Kotau vor Trump: Merz will Grönland nun gegen Russland verteidigen

Der Bundeskanzler sieht Russland als die größte Gefahr für die Welt. Mit einer interessanten Volte unterwarf sich der Kanzler dem amerikanischen Präsidenten.

The Russians are coming. No matter what Trump may do, The Russians will always be coming.

Guardian:

Britain will not join Donald Trump’s “board of peace” on Thursday, Yvette Cooper has said, citing concerns about Russian involvement.

The foreign secretary said the UK strongly supported the US president’s 20-point plan for peace in Gaza as he seeks to draw attention to it at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday.

Trump’s “board of peace”, was set up last week with the stated intention that it would oversee a ceasefire and reconstruction in Gaza, but critics argue it is a Trumpian alternative to the UN and will undermine existing international bodies. The charter proposed by the White House does not mention the Palestinian territory.

Pressed on whether the UK would join the ”board of peace”, Cooper told BBC Breakfast that Britain “won’t be one of the signatories” on Thursday.

“There’s a huge amount of work to do. We won’t be one of the signatories today,” she said. “Because this is about a legal treaty that raises much broader issues, and we do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine.

Far from destroying the legacies of Yeltsin’s neoliberal restructuring, Putin in many crucial ways preserved and extended them. There are, to be sure, differences between the style and temperament of the two leaders, but there has been no fundamental change in the character of the system itself. Indeed, the 1990s and 2000s should be seen as two phases in the evolution of the same system: first, a turbulent period in which the Soviet order was destroyed and a new capitalist model installed — with enthusiastic backing from the West — followed by a period of stabilization and consolidation, as the new model sank its roots deep into the country’s socio-economic soil. Throughout, the system’s main priority has been to defend capitalism in Russia — if necessary at the expense of democracy, as the consistent resort to electoral rigging, from the 1990s to the present, demonstrates. The authoritarianism for which Putin is widely criticized is not the product of any sinister personal preference, but rather an integral feature of the system he inherited and has continued.

—Tony Wood, Russia Without Putin, (Verso, 2018), 4-5.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos:

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We join its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, 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 we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

…

This bargain no longer works.

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

…

In the past few days, we’ve concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We’re negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.

Guardian:

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called on fellow leaders to activate the EU’s powerful anti-coercion instrument – commonly known as the “big bazooka” – if Trump went ahead with his tariff threats, French media reported, citing his team.

After the talks broke up, the head of the European Council António Costa announced an emergency EU summit, which is likely to take place on Thursday. The EU, he said, showed “readiness to defend ourselves against any form of coercion”.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said Trump’s tariffs would be a mistake, and the Dutch foreign minister, David van Weel, described the US president’s threats to allies as “blackmail”, as reaction from European leaders continued to pile up.

The anti-coercion law, which has so far never been used, enables the EU to impose punitive economic measures on a country seeking to force a policy change.

In January 2026 this is how Americans allow their president to be seen in the world.