The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has agreed to add legislation to the annual defense-spending bill that would place sanctions on Russia's Nord Stream 2 project, potentially putting into jeopardy an agreement reached between the Biden administration and Germany in July.

The House on September 22 unanimously passed on a voice vote a package of amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including the sanctions legislation.

The House is expected to vote on the NDAA on September 23. The bill would still require approval in the Senate and President Joe Biden's signature to become law.

"Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization - bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments - all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don't think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.

"In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability - problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action."
- Strauss & Howe, The Fourth Turning

I've been pondering this Fourth Turning in articles since its spectacular onset in September 2008, with the Wall Street/Federal Reserve initiated global financial implosion. The description above is apt, as this ongoing two-decade long storm gains intensity and our freedoms, liberties and rights are slowly extinguished as the electricity flickers and our modern civilization reverts to a more brutish state of antipathy among competing tribes, based on race, gender, class, party, geographic location, and now medical status.

This is a very nervous country, and for a good reason: the collective sense of reality has commenced a momentous shift, the compass is spinning wildly, things are shaking loose in the national brain-pan, the gaslight has lost its sheen, and the once-solid narrative is turning to vapor, starting with the unspooling riddles of Covid-19.

The numbers don't add up, starting with the fact that when you combine the official registered Covid cases (people with acquired natural immunity) with the people who already had some kind of immunity from previous life-long coronavirus encounters, with the number of people vaccinated, you have a population supposedly way beyond herd immunity. Who's getting sick now? Mostly people who are all vaxed up.

Contrary to the behavior and statements of public health officials and politicians, the news is out that the spike proteins produced by the vax's mRNA genetic reprogramming are toxic agents that create disorder in the major organs and blood vessels. The news is also out, despite strenuous suppression, that early treatment of Covid-19 with a kit of cheap drugs defeats the disease. People must conclude that there is a malevolent purpose behind the suppression of early treatment. They may also conclude that the vaxes are poison.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky announced his opposition to using FISA warrants on American citizens, specifically political candidates, during an exchange Tuesday with FBI Director Christopher Wray.

At a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Paul questioned Wray about the surveillance of American citizens via the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Paul said:

"The problem is the system can be abused. We should obey the Constitution. I don't think Americans nor political candidates should be investigated using a foreign intelligence surveillance court."

Wray responded to the senator's comments saying he believed FISA warrants were constitutional and that they have a "difference of opinion on how to characterize" its legality.

President Biden's Special Envoy for Haiti Ambassador Daniel Foote resigned Thursday, saying he will not take part in the United States' "inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees," amid a surge in migrants from Haiti across the southern border.

In his resignation letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, first reported by PBS News Thursday, Foote said the Biden administration's approach to Haiti "remains deeply flawed," and said his recommendations have been "ignored and dismissed."

"With deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes, I resign from my position as Special Envoy for Haiti, effective immediately. I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life.

"Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different than my own."

Foote was appointed to his post in July, following the assassination of Haiti's president.

It has not been proved that an unlimited number monkeys in a room with typewriters to match and an infinite amount of time would type the complete works of Shakespeare, or even one of the Bard's lines.

But the improbability of the infinite monkey theorem is nothing compared to the certainty which the British government, its judiciary, the Metropolitan police, and the combined forces of the London Bar proved on Wednesday in a room of the Royal Courts of Justice on The Strand. They proved that a troop of humans are making a monkey out of every principle of British justice and the criminal law — in order to advance the government's war against Russia.

On September 22, Dame Heather Hallett, the coroner in the inquest into the cause of death of Dawn Sturgess on July 8, 2018, officially ordered the prosecution of a crime without a defence; in a trial in which the verdict has already been declared by the judge herself and the prosecutors; in which the surviving victims of the alleged crime, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, are not allowed to testify and forbidden to appear in public at all; when the three Russians accused of the crime are not permitted to be represented in the proceeding; in which there will be no jury; and in which the evidence of the crime, the weapon, the intention and motive of the perpetrators will be presented in secret so that there can be no testing for truth, fabrication, or lie.

Hallett achieved all of this in the hearing lasting 100 minutes on Wednesday. A verbatim transcript of the hearing can be read here. A handful of British reporters attended, most of them by remote audio link. Jane Croft of the Financial Times and Ilya Dmitryachev of Tass were present; neither has yet to report.

On Wednesday, following the backlash regarding the means in which Border Patrol agents moved migrants in Del Rio with horses earlier this week, Representative Maxine Waters slammed the actions of the agents.

"What the hell are we doing here? What we witnessed takes us back hundreds of years. What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery," said Waters.

"Cowboys, with their reins at hand whipping black people, Haitians, into the water where they're scrambling and falling down when allot here trying to do is escape from violence in their country," she continued.

A region in southern Poland has revoked a controversial anti-LGBT resolution over fears of losing funding from the European Union, making it the first to ditch its declaration of being an LGBT-free zone.

On Wednesday, the regional assembly of Świętokrzyskie voted in a special session to scrap the ruling, with 25 ministers voting in favor of removing the declaration. None opposed the notion, but three abstained.

The motion had been passed to mark the region's "opposition to the attempts to introduce LGBT ideology to local government communities and the promotion of this ideology in public life" in 2019.

France's Defense Minister Florence Parly has called for a review of NATO's "strategic concept," stating that "dialogue is non-existent" within the bloc. The remarks come amid the ongoing scandal over the new AUKUS pact.

The defense minister spoke before France's Senate on Wednesday, with talk revolving almost exclusively around the fallout of the AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) deal. The agreement was announced last week, causing an uproar in Paris as it came along with Australia ditching a landmark submarine contract with France and opting to buy US-made nuclear submarines instead.

The hostile move is yet more proof of troubles in the transatlantic cooperation, Parly stated. "I am thinking of Turkish adventurism in the Mediterranean, or of the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan in an uncoordinated manner," she added.

The attitude of the United States toward the submarine program is a further illustration of the observation that we have been making for months: today, political dialogue is non-existent within the Atlantic Alliance.

The French ambassador to the US, recalled recently over the AUKUS row, will return to Washington next week, President Emmanuel Macron has announced after a phone call with his US counterpart Joe Biden.

Biden phoned Macron on Wednesday to discuss last week's announcement of a new security pact between the US, UK and Australia - which resulted in France losing a multi-billion-dollar shipbuilding contract, among other things - and "agreed that the situation would have benefitted from open consultations among allies on matters of strategic interest to France and our European partners," according to a joint statement released by both the White House and the Elysee Palace.

Biden "conveyed his ongoing commitment" to such consultations, the statement said.