The German Defence Ministry in Berlin has confirmed as genuine a copy of its request to the Swedish Defence Research Agency to test Alexei Navalny's blood, and a partially redacted report of what the Swedes found — and failed to find.

Blacked out in the Swedish report is the evidence of a Novichok chemical because the Swedes failed to identify it. Instead, they told the German Defence Ministry, which paid for the blood testing, that "the presence [blank blank blank] was confirmed in the patient's blood."

The leak of two pages, the German Defence Ministry letter signed by Ernst-Christoph Meier and a page of the Swedish laboratory report, occurred on Twitter on Friday evening.

Meier's letter, dated September 4 and written in English, told the Swedes exactly what they were expected to report back to Berlin. Navalny was suffering from "symptoms of a poisoning due to a substance belonging to the group of cholinesterase inhibitors", the document declared. So that the Swedish laboratory understood what was requested from them, the Defence Ministry added that the German Army laboratory in Munich had reported that "a nerve agent from the so-called 'Novichok group' could be determined as the source of this poisoning." The word "could", a subjunctive not an indicative, was the German expression. The Berlin ministry then "kindly requests the Swedish Defence Research Agency in order to have another OPCW designed laboratory validating our findings".

The word "designed" was a mistake; the German writer meant "designated". But there was no mistaking what the defence ministry wanted. The Swedes were told to "validate" the Munich laboratory report of "Novichok". Novichok was a German order.

"We're run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison Avenue, we're run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche.... As long as we go out and buy stuff, we're at their mercy... We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people's Villages, but we are all prisoners." — Patrick McGoohan

This is not an election.

This is a con game, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko, a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, and a bamboozle.

In this carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, "we the people" are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls.

We are victims of the Deep State's confidence game.

Every confidence game has six essential stages: 1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion; 2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted; 3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they've got a vested interest in the outcome; 4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up; 5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early "wins"; and 6) the "hurrah" — a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency.

In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior — including Donald Trump and Joe Biden — is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.

In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it's the Deep State rigging the outcome.

Terrorist attacks, pandemics, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn't change much in the long term.

No matter who wins this election, we'll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.

We just haven't learned to recognize our prison walls as such.

It's like that old British television series The Prisoner, which takes place in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly idyllic retirement community known only as The Village.

An RT correspondent, at the scene, has discovered that Hadrut, a town in the Armenian-controlled region of Nagorno-Karabakh which Azerbaijan claims to have "liberated," is at least partially still not under Baku's control.

RT's Igor Zhdanov traveled to the small town, which has been the subject of conflicting claims by Azerbaijan and Armenia amid the ongoing flare-up in the breakaway region. It is located in the southeast of the territory that the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic keeps under its control in the wake of the 1990s war with Azerbaijan.

On Friday, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan reported that Hadrut had been "liberated" by the national armed forces. On Sunday, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry insisted the town remained under its control. Nagorno-Karabakh's authorities denied losing the town, and said an Azerbaijani raiding party launched a surprise attack on Friday, but that the "enemy" had been repelled.

Instead of cooperating to defeat Covid-19, Western countries have criticized and attacked Russia's vaccine as part of an ongoing effort to paint the country in a negative light, says the head of Moscow's sovereign wealth fund.

In an interview with US news network CNN, Kirill Dmitriev explained that Russia has come under constant political pressure from a selection of foreign governments and media outlets. He said it has been targeted with accusations of wrongdoing, which constantly change, and are often at odds with each other. Dmitriev is the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).

"It is very fascinating that the West, rather than trying to fight Covid, is really fighting the Russian vaccine all the time with different accusations, and they are self-contradictory," Dmitriev said.

Sweden did not adopt a nationwide lockdown so as to avoid long-term "pandemic fatigue" among the population, according to the director general of the country's National Board of Health and Welfare.

"We did not choose the path of a complete lockdown of society, because we had other arguments for a systematic response to a pandemic," explained Olivia Wigzell. The official was speaking at the conference 'Pandemic 2020: Challenges, Solutions, Consequences' held in Moscow this week.


"We were very afraid, we feared that people would develop such a pandemic fatigue, that people would get tired of restrictions. But in Sweden, practically everyone followed the recommendations," she added.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a case by 29 Senate Democrats who alleged that President Trump violated the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which prohibits self-dealing by federal officeholders.

The lawmakers had asked the court to review a February ruling by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that the senators lacked the legal right to sue the president.

In their brief, the lawmakers had argued that Trump's continued ownership of companies engaged in business with foreign governments amounted to accepting "unauthorized financial benefits from foreign states" in violation of the constitutional restriction.

The court's denial means that Democrats' petition failed to garner support from at least four justices. It also leaves in place the lower court ruling.

Nearly 2 million people in Shenzhen, 15 per cent of the southern technology hub's total population, signed up to take part in the latest trial for China's sovereign digital currency.

Distribution of a total of 50,000 digital "red packets" - gift envelopes traditionally given out during holidays and special occasions - each containing 200 yuan (US$30), began on Monday after Chinese citizens living in Shenzhen were asked to sign up between Friday and Sunday.

But with 1,913,847 people having signed up for the lottery-style giveaway, according to the local authority, only 2.61 per cent of applicants were successful.

In a late August interview with Laura Ingraham for the Fox News network, Trump spoke about the continued rioting and rising crime Americans have been watching with increasing alarm in the blue cities such as Portland Oregon, New York City, Seattle and Chicago. While commenting on this, President Trump said something revealing. He talked about 'very stupid rich people' that are bankrolling & enabling the violent Marxist & anarchistic groups as well as the governors, mayors, and district attorneys who are refusing to prosecute them.

"The money is coming from some very stupid rich people [who] have no idea that if their thing ever succeeded, which it won't, they will be thrown to the wolves like you've never seen before."

That looks like a dichotomy, incredibly wealthy people funding Marxist revolutions. But once you dig into it, it is not a contradiction at all.

The most prominent public figure people think of when it comes to wealthy people funding international Leftist revolutionary causes is billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist, George Soros. Over the course of his life Soros is rumored to have given away as much as $30 billion of his money, something that might look strange for a miser. He is said to be currently "only" worth $8 billion. Since he gives away such a large amount of the money he's made over his life it's clear Soros is far from a miser.

For Soros it's about playing the game to make the money, not the money itself. Once you understand **that** you have an easier time seeing what he's doing.

The Trump administration is pushing to get a nuclear arms control agreement with Russia ready for President Trump and Vladimir Putin to apply their signatures before Election Day.

Where things stand: The U.S. believes the prospective deal has buy-in from Putin — who has discussed arms control on a series of phone calls with Trump — and could be negotiated in as little as a week, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

• The Russians have not yet sounded such an optimistic note, or signaled they're prepared to engage in such expedited negotiations.
• The agreement would involve freezes on both countries' stockpiles of nuclear warheads, as well as a framework for a future multilateral arms control treaty.

The big picture: Election day is not the only deadline driving this process. New START, the last major bilateral treaty limiting the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, is due to expire on Feb. 5.

• Putin wants to extend New START for five years. So does Joe Biden.
• But Trump's arms control envoy, Marshall Billingslea, has said the administration is only interested in extending New START — an Obama-era deal which the Trump administration has repeatedly criticized — in conjunction with a parallel agreement on the future of arms control.
• Otherwise, he says, they'd be willing to see it lapse and gear up for a potential arms race.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Monday once again evaded the question of whether or not he would support efforts to expand the Supreme Court, saying instead that voters should focus on the "court packing" that Republicans are doing in pushing to confirm Amy Coney Barrett ahead of the election.

Biden's convenient change of the definition of court packing came when Ohio's Local 12 news station asked about whether he would add seats to the nine-seat court, and pressed the Democrat to answer for the sake of "undecided voters who want to know your position on expanding the court before they cast their ballot."

The former vice president said he wants voters to focus on "the court packing [that] is going on now."

"Never before when an election has already begun and millions of votes are already cast has it ever been that a Supreme Court nominee was put forward — had never happened before. One of the reasons is the constitution implies that the only shot the American people get to determine who will be on the lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court or federal courts is when they pick their senator and their president.

"I'm not a fan of court packing but I don't want to get off on that whole issue. The president would love nothing better than to fight about whether or not I would in fact pack the court or not pack the court."