Manchester City may face severe punishment if its financial breaches are upheld on appeal. But the people who will live with the consequences had no say in the decisions that brought the club here.

Football fans: who amongst us hasn’t wished for untold success for our club? To lift countless trophies, win handsomely against the strongest opposition, sign the world’s best players, and achieve glory year after year? Whatever the challenge, the club will have the funds, influence and clout to put an elite 11 players on the field each week. Success will only ever be just around the corner.

Martyn Pearce

Brussels is steering Europe toward totalitarianism and a “Euro-Gestapo” while lecturing Russia on democracy, Slovak MEP Lubos Blaha has warned.

Blaha made the remarks during a European Parliament debate on Tuesday, responding to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who denounced Russia’s recent parliamentary elections as undemocratic.

The politician questioned why Brussels was focusing on Russia while cracking down on dissent within the bloc.

He cited arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters in Germany and the imprisonment of Estonian opposition figures, who he claimed were jailed for opposing war with Russia.

“Are you going to set up the Euro-Gestapo here, Mrs. Kallas, and lock up everyone who wants peace?” he asked.

The Slovak lawmaker also questioned why Brussels was debating Russia’s elections while Europe faced mounting unrest.

News reports that next year’s U.S. military budget will top out at $1.5 trillion if President Donald Trump gets his way are misleading at best. The true total, if Trump’s proposal passes, could be at least $1 trillion higher.

A statue of US President Donald Trump was put on exhibit in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France.

The 2.5-meter satirical statue, by Danish artist Jens Galschiot, is called "Orange Plague," and it shows the US leader naked, holding a long gold club and sitting on the shoulders of a smaller man.

The artist said it is coated with 23-karat gold. The statue is also known by the name "King of Injustice."

Europe’s leaders have grand plans – spend more on weapons, prepare for war, and tighten citizens’ belts. The people have more immediate concerns however, like finding somewhere to live, keeping their jobs, and getting an education. Across France, Germany, Spain, and other EU states, the widening rift has started to spill into the streets.

Recent weeks have seen housing marches across Spain, student riots and public-sector strikes in France, and demonstrations against military recruitment and industrial job cuts in Germany. Immigration has added to the anger over housing and overstretched services, while the prospect of conscription has young Germans asking whose wars they are expected to fight.

Higher interest rates hit younger mortgage holders far harder than everyone else, making monetary policy both inequitable and inefficient. Inflation control should be spread more fairly across the economy.

Let me be the last to tell you: the Reserve Bank’s decision to raise the official interest rate for the fourth time this year, taking it to 4.6 per cent, will hurt people with mortgages. That rate’s the highest since 2011, and there may be another rise to go in a month’s time. But it will hurt more today than it did 15 years ago.

Australia's former ambassador to the United States, Joe Hockey, has issued a damning indictment of the US political system on 7.30.

Asked if corruption had been allowed to "flourish" in Washington DC, he said: "Yeah, there's no doubt."

Military representatives from all of NATO's 32 members have gathered in Kiev. Ukraine has been trying to join the expansionist military-bloc for years, but has been consistently rejected. 

The visit by the members of the so-called Military Committee, takes place just a day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said possible Ukrainian membership of NATO – one of the central issues at the heart of the Ukraine conflict – “is not on the table as we speak.” 

Moscow has long opposed the US-led military bloc’s eastward expansion and has made Ukrainian neutrality a key condition of any settlement, arguing that NATO’s presence there would pose a direct threat to Russian national security.

THE ARTICLE BELOW NIBBLES AT THE INCONVENIENT PROBLEM OF PROPAGANDA... IT NEARLY SITS WHERE IT SHOULD BUT IT IS NOT EXPLAINING THE CORE ISSUES AT THE SOURCE OF THE UKRAINE/RUSSIA CONFLICT.

IN ORDER TO HIDE THE TRUE ORIGIN THAT PROVOKED RUSSIA INTO ACTION, THE WEST HAS BEEN DUSTING OFF "IMPERIALIST RUSSIA" AND THAT RUSSIA IS PREPARING TO FIGHT EUROPE. 

RUSSIA HAS NOT INTENTION OF FIGHTING AGAINST EUROPE, THOUGH RUSSIA WOULD KNOW THAT IT HAS A FAR SUPERIOR MILITARY AND WEAPON ARSENAL THAN EUROPE.

RUSSIA WANTS PEACE ON ITS OWN STRICT TERMS — AFTER ALL DECENT OVERTURE FOR PEACE HAVE BEEN REJECTED BY THE WEST IN 2021. IN 2022, THE PEACE TREATY — THAT BORIS JOHNSON SCUTTLED — WAS STILL VERY FAVOURABLE TO UKRAINE.... AFTER THIS BETRAYAL, RUSSIA HAS NOT BEEN PREPARED TO HAVE A CEASEFIRE, UNTIL TRUE PEACE IS ACHIEVED — DIPLOMATICALLY OR MILITARILY.

MOST SPIDERS HAVE A VERY STRONG SENSE OF SPACE, A SENSE OF PROBABILITY [TO CATCH PREYS], A SENSE OF UP AND DOWN, A SENSE OF GEOMETRY AND ANCHORAGE — AND OF REPRODUCTION. THEY DO NOT HAVE TO LEARN ALL THESE FROM A SOCIAL NETWORK. THEIR KNOWLEDGE IS INNATE. FOR EXAMPLE, THE EGG NEST OF THE ST ANDREW'S* SPIDER ABOVE [*MY GUESS] IS COMPLETELY SPHERICAL AND 10 MILLIMETRES EXACTLY IN DIAMETRE.

DOES ONE CAN SPIN SOMETHING SO AMAZING WITH EIGHT LEGS? OR TEN FINGERS? OR A MACHINE?....

The gap between US exports and imports hit its highest level since March 2025, undermining the Trump administration’s 17-month effort to redress trade imbalances and perceived ‘unfair treatment’ by the US trade partners using measures like the “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Figures released by the Commerce Department Tuesday revealed that imports had shot up by 4.3% to $420.8B in August, while exports climbed only 1.4%, to $315.2B. The gap between them was $105.6B.

The deficit jumped 13.7% from the month before, with US business media attributing the double-digit increase to spiking costs of crude oil, gold, and semiconductor imports.

France is experiencing a rare moment of hypocrisy and deceit. On one hand, the national press encourages the public to applaud Pope Leo XIV during his pastoral visit; on the other, it does its utmost to conceal the involvement of French armed forces in horrific conflicts—conflicts in which we should not be involved and which betray our national ideals.

How President Macron is plunging France into a new religious war on the Arabian Peninsula

by Thierry Meyssan

Quietly, President Emmanuel Macron has aligned his foreign policy with that of the Anglo-Saxon powers. This was the price to pay for securing joint command of NATO following the US withdrawal from Europe. As a pledge of commitment, he unilaterally decided to send our troops to participate in a religious war against the Yemeni people.

Ian Proud’s arrest by secret police at a London airport marks a new low in how far the deep state can go to control a false narrative. But it also shows a new level of fear.

As mad as it sounds, it does appear that Western European nations at least are preparing themselves to go to war with Russia at some point in the not-too-distant future. What is particularly worrying is there seems to be a distinct vacuum in all areas of what we could broadly call “media” in questioning this narrative.

Benjamin Netanyahu likes to translate Israel’s grief into American. At the United Nations last month, he took the dead of October 7 and multiplied them by the ratio of America’s population to Israel’s. The 1,200 Israelis killed that day, he said, were “equal to 40,000 innocent Americans slaughtered in less than 24 hours. That’s 16 times 9/11.”

by Larry C. Johnson