Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic revealed on Saturday that American and British leaders, including President Bill Clinton, urged Hungary to invade Serbia by land in 1999.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who told Vucic of the request, allegedly refused.

In a televised address, Vucic said that the US and UK wanted Hungarian forces to push south into Serbia in order to split the Yugoslav military between the front in Kosovo and a new front with Hungary.

"Clinton and the British asked [Orban] to attack Serbia from the north so that they could extend our forces from Kosovo and Metohija to Vojvodina," he explained. Orban, who at the time was one year into his first term in office, refused, and with the help of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, pushed back against the "pressure from the White House."

The title is here has been placed within quotation marks for a reason, because Russian President Vladimir Putin made no nuclear threat unless one considers that a threat to respond to nuclear threats or to respond to a hypothetical nuclear attack amounts to a threat to use nuclear weapons. The West has attempted to spread the impression that Putin made an unprovoked nuclear threat, the same way it has asserted that Russia undertook an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth, sort of. Yes a repeated lie can become a virtual truth, and in our virtual times the virtual reality is having a profound impact of actual reality and not in any positive way. Quite to the contrary.

The quote that is said to have constituted Putin making a threat to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and/or its NATO allies came in Putin's September 21 announcement regarding his decision to begin a partial mobilization of reservists. In his TV speech, Putin did not mention nuclear weapons per se, and alluded to 'different types of weapons' in Russia's possession that could counter the nuclear weapons that Western leaders have explicitly threatened to use. Putin said on September 21:

It should now be quite clear to any reasonable person that the Biden administration is hell-bent on destroying Russia and will risk nuclear war in doing so. It has already started World War III with its use of Ukraine to light the final match.

The problem is that reasonable people are in very short supply, and, as Ray McGovern recently wrote in "Brainwashed for War with Russia," the Biden administration and their media lackeys

... will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China .... Most Americans are just as taken in by the media as they were 20 years ago, when they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They simply took it on faith. Nor did the guilty media express remorse - or a modicum of embarrassment.

Many good writers - all of whom are banned from mainstream media - have made clear why the corporate media propaganda about the US/NATO war against Russia via Ukraine is false and egregiously dangerous. The government of the USA is led by morons in the demonic grip of the "The U.S. Should Rule the World" ideology. It is nothing new.

I don't wish to debate the facts, for that is a fool's game created to suggest there is something to debate. For the evidence is clear, except to the public in the grip of propaganda-induced ignorance or those elites who never learned from the ancient Greek goddess Nemesis that dark Furies will destroy those who in their hubris push the limits.

The Biden administration has already done that, while President Biden mutters inanities as if he were a mafia boss wandering the streets in his pajamas and slippers.

The recent sabotaging of Nord Stream 2 is another example of the treacherous road we are traveling, as Diana Johnstone makes clear in her recent article, "Omerta in the Gangster War."

For years, the US-run NATO has moved military forces and bases into countries encircling Russia. This includes weapons that can very quickly be converted to nuclear use. This, as I've pointed out before, is tantamount to Russia doing the same in Mexico and Canada, and let's add Cuba as well.

We know what the US response would be, but when President Putin and his government objected and said this is a betrayal of previous agreements, he was dismissed as if he were a child making things up.

In 2014, when the U.S. engineered a coup in Ukraine, bringing into power neo-Nazi elements, and Russia protested this coup on its western border, Washington mocked such concerns. Every time Russia has complained about such provocative moves, the U.S. has dismissed them as inconsequential.

For years the U.S. has supported the Ukrainian killing of the Russian speaking peoples of eastern Ukraine, and finally, when Ukraine had amassed forces to invade the Donbas region, the Russian government had had enough and sent troops into the region to defend this area.

Thus the hypocritical West played at outrage that what they had created was finally backfiring. Russia was cast as the guilty party for invading Ukraine. And now a full-fledged US war against Russia is out in the open and it will become more dangerous as it continues. Nuclear annihilation becomes a very real possibility as the Biden administration continues to push the envelope.

I keep trying to write serious articles about serious issues, but current events keep injecting minutiae into my train of thought, which I then have to spend time on. If I didn't, many of my readers would think I am ignoring them, and that would be bad (in their esteemed opinion) because these current events are sooo important! Several large-diameter pipes get blown up at the bottom of the Baltic, which weren't being used in any case. A truck bomb exploded on the bridge that links Crimea with Krasnodar, shutting it down for almost a whole day. Oh, and before we forget, Krasny Liman, a railroad junction in Donetsk was temporarily surrendered to the relentlessly attacking Ukrainians (mostly Polish mercenaries, actually) who drenched it in their blood and festooned it with their billowing entrails in the process. These and other less significant events have caused some small but noisy part of Russian social media to explode in consternation, baying for revenge and generally acting dissatisfied with the progress made since the Special Operation was declared on February 22, 2022. Sure enough, plenty of these hysterical voices are actually paid Ukrainian agents tasked with spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt and, sure enough, the Special Operation will proceed regardless, so this is all just a temporary annoyance. But I will comment on it because I feel that I have to, and then move on to more important things.

New missile strikes targeting Ukrainian military command and control sites and the country's energy infrastructure were conducted on Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported during a daily briefing. The attacks hit all intended targets and "achieved their goals," the military claimed.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian officials and media reported more Russian long-range attacks in a rerun of Monday's strikes.

Andrey Sadovoy, the mayor of the city of Lvov in western Ukraine, said his city faced another blackout due to the damage inflicted by Russia. "A missile strike at a critical infrastructure object" had left some 30% of Lvov without power, the official reported on social media. He added that there were issues with the water supply in the city and urged residents to stockpile for possible cuts.

In Vinnitsa Region in central Ukraine, the head of the administration, Sergey Borzov, reported drone attacks on a local power station, but later edited his post to a more neutral report of "explosions" in his region. The operator of the Ladyzhin coal-fired power plant confirmed damage to its equipment in a drone raid on Tuesday morning.

"You know, when police start becoming their own executioners, where's it gonna end? Pretty soon, you'll start executing people for jaywalking, and executing people for traffic violations. Then you end up executing your neighbor 'cause his dog pisses on your lawn." — "Dirty Harry" Callahan, Magnum Force

When I say that warrior cops — hyped up on their own authority and the power of the badge — have not made America any safer or freer, I am not disrespecting any of the fine, decent, lawful police officers who take seriously their oath of office to serve and protect their fellow citizens, uphold the Constitution, and maintain the peace.

My concern rests with the cops who feel empowered to act as judge, jury and executioner.

These death squads believe they can kill, shoot, taser, abuse and steal from American citizens in the so-called name of law and order.

Just recently, in fact, a rookie cop opened fire on the occupants of a parked car in a McDonald's parking lot on a Sunday night in San Antonio, Texas.

The driver, 17-year-old Erik Cantu and his girlfriend, were eating burgers inside the car when the police officer — suspecting the car might have been one that fled an attempted traffic stop the night before — abruptly opened the driver side door, ordered the teenager to get out, and when he did not comply, shot ten times at the car, hitting Cantu multiple times.

Mind you, this wasn't a life-or-death situation.

It was two teenagers eating burgers in a parking lot, and a cop fresh out of the police academy taking justice into his own hands.

This wasn't an isolated incident, either.

The Democratic Party could get handled in the upcoming midterm elections if oil prices shoot back up!

Last Wednesday, the OPEC+ group announced that it will cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day, citing the "uncertainty that surrounds the global economic and oil market outlooks." The move will likely see fuel prices in countries like the US soaring back to highs from earlier this year - and the White House is reportedly irate over the decision.

From OPEC+'s perspective, they're clear that oil-consuming countries shouldn't be making demands from their suppliers. They're also upset about the G7-proposed cap on Russian oil, which would set a poor precedent for oil-producing countries and their ability to flourish in the market. And finally, they're also ticked about the US ramping up competition with them by tapping into the country's strategic oil reserves to ease domestic fuel prices.

Apparently, the angriest of the cartel's countries was Saudi Arabia, as the state-owned Aramco company announced on Thursday that it would lower oil prices for Europe, keep them the same for Asia, but raise them again for the US. This was a huge snub - yet again - for the White House after it accused OPEC+ of "siding with Russia" in its decision to slash oil production.

China began severely restricting the export of personal protective equipment (PPE) months before notifying the world of the outbreak of COVID-19, it has emerged. The Telegraph has the story:

PPE exports to the U.S. fell by around 50% between August and September of 2019, in a significant drop which raised alarm bells at key U.S. Government agencies. China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts said.

The fall in PPE supplies exiting China, the world's biggest manufacturer of PPE, raises new questions about the true timeline of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. An altered timeline would significantly challenge the theory that the pandemic originated from a seafood market in Wuhan, where the first cases emerged in December 2019.

The anomaly was uncovered by former U.S. Government officials including Dr. Tom McGinn, a Senior Health Advisor at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Colonel John Hoffman, a Senior Research Fellow with the Food Protection and Defence Institute whose career spans decades in U.S. Government and military. The pair were unconvinced that the virus had started at the Wuhan Wet Market in December 2019, and began looking for an alternative theory...

The restricting of PPE exports came around the same time that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) removed a database of bat virus gene sequences, which has never been restored.

Two FBI officials who briefed Facebook ahead of its decision to censor news stories about Hunter Biden's laptop donated to Democrats in 2020, according to court filings and campaign finance records.

Laura Dehmlow, the unit chief for the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, the head of the FBI's San Francisco cyber division, were "involved" in the communications between the FBI and Facebook that led to the social media giant's "suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story," according to a court filing on Thursday. The FBI's interactions with Facebook have been of interest since Mark Zuckerberg said in August that Facebook blocked access to an October 2020 New York Post article about Biden's laptop because the FBI had earlier warned the company to be on "high alert" for Russian efforts to release derogatory information about the Bidens before the election.

According to campaign finance records, Dehmlow gave $60 to the Democratic National Committee in 2020. Chan contributed $50 each to Democratic Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock for their runoff campaigns in November 2020. According to the court filing, Facebook parent company Meta identified Dehmlow and Chan in response to a subpoena for records of interactions with the Biden administration. The filing, released by the Missouri attorney general's office on Monday, does not detail Dehmlow and Chan's interactions with Facebook or any other social media companies. The attorney general's office is suing the Biden administration for allegedly colluding with social media companies to "censor free speech."

September opinion polls in Russia continue to show Putin maintaining high popularity and trust ratings, despite slow progress and significant setbacks such as in Kharkiv. Nevertheless, those ratings have taken a hit in response perhaps to that taken by NordStream, and they are only likely to fall further as a result of October 7^th attack on the Crimean bridge. Putin's best opinion survey performance came in the Foundation for Public Opinion (FOM) survey for September, which showed Putin's approval rating falling from 80 percent before declaration of the partial military mobilization (September 18) to 75 percent in its immediate wake (September 25). The survey registered a fall in trust in Putin from 77 percent to 74 percent.

Before the 'special military operation, Putin's approval and trust ratings ranged between 58 and 63 percent, according to FOM. Perhaps, most disturbingly, the percentage of Russians who expressed "concern" over developments grew from 35 percent to 69 percent. This latter shift means a fertile field now exists for further downward trending in Putin's ratings. The Levada Center recorded a decline among survey respondents in Putin's approval rating from 83 percent in August to 77 percent in September and a decline of respondents who feel Russia is moving in the right direction from 67 to 60 percent in the same period. The exception to this new downward trend was in the September 26 - October 2 VTsIOM polling, which found slight boost for Putin's approval and trust ratings of approximately one percent to around 80 percent. It seems to this observer that the first two surveys are more reliable for this general period. Taking into account that this downward trend was registered before the Kerch bridge attack, we can expect perhaps a further decline to come, with the caveat that the damage to the bridge turned out to be relatively limited and failed to cut off the Crimea supply line.