US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called out for a congresswoman who had died in a car crash in early August – apparently forgetting his own statement of condolence to her family, or the tribute video that reportedly aired before the event. 

“Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie,”he said, looking at the people attending the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. “She was going to be here,” he added, according to NPR. Others quoted Biden as saying “She must not be here,” based on video footage from the event.

Biden was looking for Jackie Walorski, a Republican congresswoman from Indiana who had co-sponsored the bill to fund the conference.

Washington may not be able to support Ukraine in the conflict against Russia “for as long as it takes” due to a shortage of the industrial capacity needed to replenish munitions and weapons it sends to Kiev, CNBC reported on Wednesday, citing military analysts.

“There is a point where… the Ukrainians will need to be cautious about their rate of expenditure and where they prioritize those munitions, because there isn’t an infinite supply,”Jack Watling, an expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London, was quoted by the news network as saying.

The problem reportedly stems from the structure of military production in Western nations, particularly the United States, which was tailored for peacetime and cannot sustain a protracted draw on stockpiles during a major armed conflict, such as the one in Ukraine.

Ignorance is the opiate of the poor, a cordial, administered by the gracious hand of providence.

                                 Soame Jenyns

Our familiar system of global political and economic alliances is shifting, and nothing has made this change clearer than the varied reactions to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While the United States and its closest allies in Europe and Asia have imposed tough economic sanctions on Moscow, 87 percent of the world's population has declined to follow us. Economic sanctions have united our adversaries in shared resistance. Less predictably, the outbreak of Cold War II, has also led countries that were once partners or non-aligned to become increasingly multi-aligned.

BY MICHAEL GFOELLER AND DAVID H. RUNDELL

Nowhere is the shift more apparent than in energy markets where, unlike with currencies, governments cannot simply print what they need. Here the web of sanctions becomes a sieve.

The New York Times, which consistently supports every American war, has published an op-ed by a neoconservative think tanker titled “Biden’s Cautious Foreign Policy Imperils Us“.

GUS WASN'T SURPRISED TO SEE WALEED ALI PARROTING US PRESIDENT, SENILE JOE BIDEN, ABOUT THE REFERENDUMS (REFERENDA) IN THE INDEPENDENT REPUBLICS OF THE DONBASS. HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER. HIS INTERVIEW WITH THE UKRAINIAN AMBASSADOR IN AUSTRALIA WAS A SHAM AND A FARCE THAT UNFORTUNATELY EDUCATES YOUNG PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN CRAP...

ALI DID NOT ASK ANY OF THE HARD QUESTIONS REGARDING THE MINSK AGREEMENTS, NOR ABOUT THE BOMBING OF DONBASS BY UKRAINE SINCE 2014 THAT HAD KILLED MORE THAN 14,000 PEOPLE... NOR DID ALI HAD THE COURAGE TO CHALLENGE THE UKRAINIAN AMBASSADOR ABOUT THE BANNING OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AND OF THE RUSSIAN CULTURE IN UKRAINE WHEN NEARLY 40 PER CENT OF THE "UKRAINIANS" ARE OF RUSSIAN ORIGIN. NOR DID ALI ASKED ABOUT THE CORRUPTION IN UKRAINE, NOR ANY OTHER PERTINENT QUESTIONS. WALEED ALI IS A SHAM. HE IS A FARCE ON TV. HE DESERVES HIS LOGIES... 

Washington has no objections to Kiev using Western-supplied weapons to target territories that may decide to join Russia, as the US considers the vote to do so illegitimate, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday. 

The US and its allies have supplied Ukraine with a variety of weapons, including tube and rocket artillery. At a joint press conference with his Indian counterpart Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Washington, Blinken was asked if the US had any objections to Ukraine using those weapons to attack targets in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson, which just wrapped up a vote on joining Russia.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the elections a “sham” and “a flagrant violation of international law and an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that underpin the international system.”

And she underscored that “the United States will never recognize this territory as anything other than part of Ukraine because it belongs to the people of Ukraine.”

Jean-Pierre also commented on the ongoing anti-government protests and unrest in Iran over the death of a young woman who was being held by the morality police.

The six policy priorities of the von der Leyen Commission: State of play in autumn 2022

Written by Etienne Bassot.

In 1974 in Kingston, Jamaica, aboard her yacht The Britannia, the Queen told me that ‘your Prime Minister had been ‘rude’ to my family.’ I was the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet at the time.

BY JOHN MENADUE

Forgive me for mentioning it but when you read down you will understand.

Prior to that meeting between the Queen and Gough Whitlam he had told me one of the matters he intended to raise with the Queen.

He was concerned that some state premiers, particularly Charles Court from WA and Joe Bjelke Petersen from Queensland were making a habit of inviting princes and princesses to visit their state. These ‘lesser royals’ were only too keen to have a free trip to Australia.

The situation is very serious. Since 1700 three people have tried to take Moscow: Karl XII who lost his Swedish empire, Napoleon who lost his, Hitler who lost his… and now NATO / AUKUS, in which we are mindlessly participant. The US budget year begins with 830 billion for defence, 600 billion for nuclear refurbishment. Not news in Australia.

BY Caitlin Johnstone

The Ukrainian government is being heavily supported with American money, with Washington contributing $1.5 billion per month to the budget, Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky has revealed.

The sum was mentioned by the Ukrainian leader during an interview with CBS host Margaret Brennan for the ‘Face the Nation’ program, which was aired on Sunday.

Currently Kiev runs “a deficit of $5 billion in our budget,” Zelensky said, adding that “the United States gives us $1.5 billion every month to support our budget to fight” against Russia.

Zelensky argued that arming and otherwise helping Ukraine militarily is a “win-win” for the US. He pledged that once Russia is defeated, the Ukrainian people will return to their home country and start paying taxes there, relieving the burden on American taxpayers.

As Democrats attempt to depict their newly-released energy permitting bill as a climate “win,” they are being boosted by a “clean power” lobbying group with ties to the fossil fuel industry.