On September 13, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) announced that it was appointing Victoria Nuland to its Board of Directors, effective immediately.

Covert Geopolitics has called Nuland the “queen of chicken hawks” and “Lady Macbeth of perpetual war,” as she has “promoted a foreign policy of intervention, coups, proxy wars, aggression, and occupation…in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.”

Germany's economic downturn deepens with a projected contraction in 2024, marking its second consecutive year of decline. Manufacturing struggles and global competition, especially from China, highlight structural issues. Growth is expected to return in 2025.

 

Germany's economic woes are continuing, with the country now facing the spectre of closing 2024 in recession.

On Wednesday, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck announced that the economy is expected to shrink by 0.2% this year, down from earlier forecasts of a 0.3% growth and marking the second consecutive year of contraction. 

While elsewhere the China discourse in the Australian media may have been on geopolitical tensions and defence and security concerns, community leaders, students and academics from seven universities in Australia and 15 universities in China and Taiwan met in Parramatta on the campus of Western Sydney University a few days ago.

 

While you weren’t looking: Meeting China in Sydney   By Jocelyn Chey

 

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded this year’s Peace Prize to a Japanese anti-nuclear-weapons organization, citing the threat of such weapons being used in current conflicts. Japan is the only country in the world that has suffered a nuclear strike.

Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, received the Peace Prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons,” the Committee said in a statement on Friday. Witness testimony provided by the group has demonstrated that “nuclear weapons must never be used again,” it added.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s criticism of the way CBS edited its interview with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris is a threat to free speech and democracy, the head of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has stated.

Trump had accused CBS of perpetrating “the Greatest Fraud in Broadcast History” by rearranging the ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Harris, aired earlier this week, to make her look more coherent. He called for the network to lose its license.

Doorstep statement by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte outside Number 10 Downing Street

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte: Good to see you. I had very good talks with, of course, the trilat together with President Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Starmer, and then after that, my bilat with the Prime Minister.

And can I say again that when we discuss Ukraine, we know it's tough, because Russians are more making small advances in the east, by the way, at a considerable loss of life on the Russian side. So they lose a lot of people, people dying, people getting seriously wounded. But still, the Russians are making those small advances.

News OFF the day… news you have to believe…

News without delay… news from the CIA…

On the hour or twenty-four-seven screen play

An old woman crushes Weet-Bix on TeeVee

In a bowl as she’s done for a short eternity

Morning show with a vacuous nothing to say

Cool music band Cold Chisel is turning fifty

A felon without a face is arrested

For impersonating a pseudo-celebrity

And killing his wife it was attested

A horse talks about the Melbourne Cup

with panache in tail and a betting buck

Mount panorama sacred cow for petrol heads

Readies racing for a thousand thousand metres

While Global Warming is ignored on the day

Spinning them out of gas by end of this century

And nothing changes, everything is distressed

Unimportant, lamentable, painful, gross or fake

Gaza gets more bombed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br-95JWgPkM

Howard Stern is Very Mad at SNL For Gently Making Fun of Kamala Harris, with Batya Ungar-Sargon

 

KAMALA IS KACUOUS... MEANING VACUOUS AN CAKLING LIKE A CHOOK ABOUT TO GET HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF IN AN ABBATOIR...

AS PRESIDENT, SHE WOULD DO WHAT THE DEEP STATE REQUIRES... OBEY THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE MENU.... AND DIDI HAS BEEN A GREAT SUPPORTER OF THE DEMOCRATS — HENCE THE DEEP STATE....

 

Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico has accused journalists from major media outlets of being “possessed by the devil” and threatened to establish a national media watchdog, along with introducing professional qualification exams to rein in the “hate” they spread through their articles.

Fico made these comments during a press conference on Tuesday, where he became visibly agitated when asked about tensions within his three-party governing coalition.

 

U.S. SPECIAL OPS FLIGHTS TO ISRAEL FROM UK’S CYPRUS BASE SURGE UNDER STARMER
Secrecy surrounds unmarked American military planes going from UK territory to Israel, but new information could further implicate Labour ministers in war crimes.

Paris has played a highly active role in NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, delivering billions of euros-worth of war materiel and repeatedly threatening to deploy ground troops.

France will need to prove its ability to wage war with Russia in large-scale exercises planned for next year, a senior commander has said.

“We used to play war. Now there’s a designated enemy, and we train with people with whom we’d actually go to war,” French Land Forces Commander General Bertrand Toujouse told European media, commenting on France’s plans to deploy a brigade’s worth of troops to Romania for the Dacian Spring 2025 drills next May.

CNN — Yet again, the federal government spent far more than it collected in revenue, racking up a budget deficit of $1.8 trillion for fiscal year 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Netanyahu cancels defense minister’s US visit
The Israeli PM reportedly insists that he first needs to agree a response to Iran’s attack on the Jewish state with President Joe Biden first, according to Axios

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blocked his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant from visiting the US, the Pentagon has confirmed, with multiple sources speculating the PM wanted first to speak with US President Joe Biden.

Gallant’s trip to Washington was arranged last week after Iran fired over 180 ballistic missiles at targets inside Israel. The strike was said to be a reaction to the assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah.

NIMA: So nice to have you back, Richard and Michael. And let me just manage this. And let’s get started with the main question here that would be: Why is the United States not interested in putting an end to the conflict in the Middle East and in Ukraine? Which we know in both of these cases, they’re capable of doing this.

And before going to the answer of this question, I’m going to play a clip that the foreign minister of Lebanon is talking with Christiane Amanpour about his point of view and why they couldn’t reach a ceasefire.

 

Pope Francis has just ‘created’ (appointed) twenty-one new cardinals, twenty of whom under the age of 80 will elect his successor. Among them is a bishop in Australia.

Dear O dear! The Australian’s Dennis Shanahan (7/10/24) is “confused” by Pope Francis’ appointment of 44-year-old Mykola Bychok, bishop of the Ukrainian Eparchy (diocese) of Australia, as a cardinal. The Eastern rite Catholic bishop is one of twenty-one new cardinals named last Sunday by Francis.

 

Pope Francis’ latest ‘creations’   By Paul Collins