There's never a dull moment when former high-ranking State Department official Victoria Nuland goes on the record for a new tell-all. She's certainly never shy about broadcasting her role in anti-Moscow covert maneuvering and machinations.

Indeed, many already know her as Victoria-'Fuck the EU'-Nuland and for essentially running foreign policy in Europe stretching back through the Obama years as then Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, where many of the problems which sparked the disastrous and tragic Russia-Ukraine war were first set in motion.

Exiled Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar recently sat down with her for a new interview published to YouTube earlier this month. The most interesting part of the interview was when he pressed Nuland on widespread reports saying that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson actively encouraged President Zelensky to back out of a potential peace deal with Moscow early after the Feb.2022 Russian invasion. There was a possible chance to end the war and perhaps avoid hundreds of thousands of deaths. But the West apparently convinced Zelensky to fight it out.

By now, you've probably heard enough debate about The Debate, so I'll spotlight only a few points everybody else left out. You might know this, but Hollywood plays a larger role in the Kamala campaign than just stuffing the endorsements of celebs such as George Clooney, Taylor Swift, and John Legend into the corporate media tank. In fact, much bigger playas, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg, are producing and directing things backstage at Kamala Central, so what gets in the Kamala news plays as a Spielberg movie like The Color Purple. Just so you know. . . .

Ms. Harris had the advantage Tuesday night of being able to speak in declarative sentences, while her opponent, Mr. Trump, is given, shall we say, to a more choppy, telegraphic speech delivery. It lent Ms. Harris the appearance of being intelligent. The catch was, everything she said was disingenuous or an outright lie.

One whopper — more significant than you might realize — was her stating that she was in the US Capitol building when the J-6 riot happened. You'd think she'd want to be on-hand there, seeing as a joint session of Congress was about to certify her as the first female veep in US history — a chance to be joyful and shine! But, in fact, at 11:15a.m. on 1/6/21 — hours before protesters breached the Capitol — Kamala Harris was spirited away a few blocks to 430 South Capitol Street, the headquarters building of the Democratic National Committee, where a pipe bomb (or facsimile of one) had been planted hours before by some DC law enforcement person (Capitol police? FBI? DC Metro Police? A paid "contractor" to the preceding outfits?). The exact identity of the culprit has never been released by the FBI, though they have all the perp's cell phone data and closed circuit TV footage.

Sweden plans to boost payments to up to US$34,000 to immigrants who leave the nation that has been a haven for the war-weary and persecuted, the right-wing government said Thursday.

The Scandinavian country was for decades seen as a "humanitarian superpower", but over the years has struggled to integrate many of its newcomers.


Immigrants who voluntarily return to their countries of origin from 2026 would be eligible to receive up to 350,000 Swedish kronor (US$34,000), the government, which is propped up by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, told a press conference.

Polish MEP and leader of the Confederation Party Grzegorz Brown, during the visit of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Warsaw, called on the US Secretary of State to go home as soon as possible.

"Blinken, go home as soon as possible. Disappear! We don't want you here. We don't want the Poles to pay and die for your the war " said the Polish MEP, addressing the head of the American foreign policy department.

In turn, French politician Florian Philippot, commenting on Brown's statement, admired the bold rhetoric of the Polish MP. In his account on one of the Western social networks, Philippot wrote that the French are in complete solidarity with the Poles on this issue and do not want them to pay and die for wars waged in the interests of the United States.

By allowing Ukraine to hit Russia with their missiles, NATO members are enacting a cruel sacrifice to wind down the war

The predictable and predicted is happening again. Despite the coyly teasing dance of seven veils performed by, mostly, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to those who ignored the noise and focused on the signal, it's always been clear that Washington and London would decide to - officially and openly - allow and help Ukraine to use their missiles for attacks even deeper into Russia than before. And of course, it's been obvious to Moscow as well, as Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, made clear as early as September 11.

That the West is escalating is no surprise. It has a well-established pattern of continually ratcheting-up the stakes in its proxy war - including (but not restricted to) the supply of intelligence, mercenaries, 'advisors', various tanks, armored vehicles, missile systems, and recently F-16 fighter planes. Now it's time to fully unleash Storm Shadow and then, if perhaps a little later, long-range ATACMS missiles. What we can safely disregard is the pretext of Iran allegedly shipping short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. It's either simply untrue or irrelevant.

Tehran denies the American claim. Those ready to scoff at that should recall that the West has a rock-solid record of making things up, from Iraqi WMDs to Israel's legally strictly non-existing 'right' to defend itself against those it occupies and genocides. And even if Iran has handed over missiles - as, by the way, it would have an actual right to do as a sovereign state - that is not why this specific Western escalation is occurring now.

The US and Western European establishment know how to interfere and influence elections abroad, which is why they fear what's happening now

There's a reason why 2024 has been called the year of the big elections. More than half of the world's population will be called to the ballot boxes, but this time it goes deeper than normal. Voting has always been important, of course, but in calmer - or rather more orderly - times, not every election was considered crucial. Now, on the contrary, consequential elections are routine. Almost every contest is capable of shaking up, if not changing, the course of events. And it's not just about who wins. More important is the sense of legitimacy, and the recognition by citizens that the results themselves are legitimate.

This should be a well-established, self-evident truth. Firstly, it has always been the case, and secondly, political institutions exist to ensure it. The era of rule by force alone is long gone, and even openly authoritarian regimes have to take account of the interests and demands of the population. And entrenched democracies have to find sophisticated ways to maintain stability and continuity in the face of mistrust of procedures.

USSS preparing to brief Congress soon about lessons learned from Trump assassination attempt on July 13

A high-ranking leader within the United States Secret Service (USSS) has been encouraged to retire nearly two months after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, a source involved at the highest levels of the internal investigation told Fox News.

The official, Assistant Director Michael Plati of the agency's Office of Protective Operations, led the section in control of planning for protection of Trump, President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. JD Vance and others, and is ending his tenure there this Friday, his 27th anniversary at the agency.

The Secret Service responded in a statement Tuesday that Plati "was not asked to resign or retire by anyone. This was a personal decision that he has made and we thank him for his 27 years of dedicated service to the federal government." Still, others involved in the investigation have not disputed the underlying narrative that he was encouraged to resign following the July 13 security failure in Butler that has sent shock waves through all levels of the agency.

Around a dozen Polish soldiers descended on a village in the country's south during a botched airborne exercise on Monday, just days after NATO praised its paratroopers as a "strategic asset."

The 2nd Reconnaissance Regiment based in Hrubieszow was conducting a "scheduled" parachute training exercise when a sudden change in wind speed and direction forced them off course, according to local media reports. As a result, at least 12 personnel landed several hundred meters from their intended target, causing damage to crops and private property in the village of Chechlo, in the province of Lesser Poland Voivodeship.

For years, the US executed Israel's regional destabilization program using phantom terrorists as justification for the 'War on Terror.' But 7 October 2023 killed Washington's never-ending war project - with a flip of the switch, US adversaries have now turned the 'Long War' on Israel.

Colonization ... is the best affair of business in which the capital of an old and wealthy country can engage ... the same rules of international morality do not apply ... between civilized nations and barbarians.

- John Stuart Mill, quoted by Eileen Sullivan in "Liberalism and Imperialism: JS Mill's Defense of the British Empire," Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 44, 1983.

The events of 11 September 2001 were intended to impose and enshrine a new Exceptionalist paradigm on the young 21st century. History, though, ruled otherwise.

Cast as an attack on the US Homeland, 11 September 2001, immediately generated the Global War on Terror (GWOT), launched at 11 pm on the same day. Initially christened "The Long War" by the Pentagon, the term was later sanitized by the administration of Barack Obama as "Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO)."

The US-manufactured War on Terror spent a notoriously un-trackable eight trillion dollars defeating a phantom enemy, killed over half a million people - overwhelmingly Muslims - and branched out into illegal wars against seven Muslim-majority states. All of this was relentlessly justified on "humanitarian grounds" and allegedly supported by the "international community" - before that term, too, was renamed as the "rules-based international order."

Cui Bono? (who stands to gain) remains the paramount question related to all matters related to 11 September 2001. A tight network of fervently Israel-first neocons strategically positioned across the defense and national security establishments by Vice President Dick Cheney - who had served as secretary of defense in the administration of George W Bush's father - sprang into action to impose the long-planned agenda of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). That far-reaching agenda had waited in the wings for the right trigger - a "new Pearl Harbor" - to justify a slew of regime-change operations and wars across much of West Asia and other Muslim states, reshaping global geopolitics for the benefit of Israel.

US General Wesley Clark's notorious revelation of a secret Cheney regime plot to destroy seven major Islamic countries over five years, from Iraq, Syria, and Libya all the way to Iran, showed us that the planning had already been done in advance. These targeted nations had one thing in common: they were resolute enemies of the occupation state and firm supporters of Palestinian rights.

The sweet deal, from Tel Aviv's perspective, was that the War on Terror would have the US and its western allies fighting all these serial Israeli-profiting wars on behalf of "civilization" and against the "barbarians." The Israelis couldn't have been more happy or smug about the direction this was going.

It's no wonder that 7 October 2023 is a mirror image of 11 September 2001. The occupation state itself advertised this as Israel's own "11 September." Parallels abound in more ways than one, but certainly not in the way Israel-firsters and the cabal of extremists leading Tel Aviv expected.

Update (1230ET): Putin says not so fast...

First, here's a UK Times report within the last hour:

Britain and the United States are on the verge of allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles against targets in Russia after accusing President Putin of "escalating" the conflict by accepting ballistic missiles from Iran.

David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, and Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, said they would return to their respective countries to inform their leaders of the "operational details" surrounding Ukraine's use of weapons such as Storm Shadow missiles after meeting President Zelensky in Kyiv.

Blinken promised to work quickly on Ukraine's requests to ease the restrictions, saying he would take what he had learnt "back to President Biden."

— Putin escalating conflict, say western allies as missile approval moves closer

President Putin is currently speaking at the St. Petersburg International United Cultures Forum, which addresses current events related to Russia. He issued the following red line while speaking to a reporter on the sidelines of the conference Thursday:

Long-range arms for Kyiv would mean 'NATO countries at war with Russia'