The U.S. employs broad economic sanctions with increasing frequency despite their poor record of success and the growing body of evidence that they cause significant harm to the populations of the countries where they are imposed. 

The direct costs of sanctions to the U.S. are often negligible, but their effect on the well-being and health of the nations that suffer under them can be quite severe and ultimately deadly for the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. Some of the most recent uses of broad U.S. sanctions in Iran, Venezuela, and Syria show how policies of economic warfare have predictably worsened economic conditions and intensified humanitarian crises without achieving any stated policy goals. 

Russia is expected to reap its largest grain harvest ever in 2022, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday, citing preliminary data on crops.

“According to experts, the total grain harvest could reach 150 million tons, including about 100 million tons of wheat. This will be a record in the entire history of Russia,” Putin said, noting that previous estimates had ranged from 140 million tons to 147 million tons.

The president recalled that Russia’s biggest grain harvest ever was recorded in 2017 – 135.5 million tons, including 86 million tons of wheat.

“Thus, in the current difficult situation, we are completely guaranteed to cover our own needs for the most important items and receive an additional resource for increasing exports,” Putin said.

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On Monday, Oct. 17, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization kicked off Operation STEADFAST NOON, its annual exercise of its ability to wage nuclear conflict. Given that NATO’s nuclear umbrella extends exclusively over Europe, the indisputable fact is that STEADFAST NOON is nothing more than NATO training to wage nuclear war against Russia.

Nuclear war against Russia.

The reader should let that sink in for a moment.

BY SCOTT RITTER

Larry the Cat, the official chief mouser of 10 Downing Street, has jokingly laid claim to the premiership via Twitter, announcing on Thursday that he had been anointed by King Charles himself.

“The King has asked me to become Prime Minister because this nonsense has gone on long enough,” the account tweeted, accompanied by a photo of himself seated before a miniature podium

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...............

The lights in the bandstand in Adelaide's west parkland
never go away, but it sure beats being wet
May as well buy some ice if you scrape and beg the price
Stay awake for days, and hopefully forget.

You've seen the streets of London and the alleys of L.A.
Do you know what's happening outside your front door?
Adelaide at night, to survive it is a fight
and the faces in the darkness ask for more

Sweetest girl, just five foot two with contact lenses eyes of blue
Dances in men's laps on Hindley St on Saturday night
Makes enough to pay the fee to stay in university
Closes eyes and tells herself her future's looking bright

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Wednesday instituting martial law in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, and indicated that the heightened security measures are being adopted in the face of Kiev’s “openly terrorist methods,” including the shelling of civilian areas, sabotage attacks, and assassinations of officials.

Moscow’s decision to introduce martial law in its four new territories is designed to counter the increasingly “desperate” tactics deployed by the NATO-backed government in Kiev, and together with other recent measures, should dramatically improve Russia’s warfighting capacity, competency, and performance, a pair of veteran US military affairs experts have told Sputnik.

Electricity providers have stung their customers for $10 billion in supernormal profits, despite crying poor to the regulators and despite siphoning out billions, largely free of tax to foreign billionaires and power companies. Mark Sawyer reports on the latest analysis of Australia’s energy sector.

An important report was released at a minute after midnight today. The report, by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), shows that while energy giants have been crying poor, they have ripped off Australian customers to the tune of $10bn in “supernormal profits”.

BY Mark Sawyer

Albanese government out-Barnabys-Barnaby with a big Budget gift for fossil fuel donors to build the Middle Arm port and petrochemicals project just 3k from the Darwin suburb of Palmerston. Michael West reports. 

They leaked the story to Rupert Murdoch’s NT News. As you do. 

Thanks for the scoop. “$2.5bn bonanza for the Territory …”. A glowing report ensued. No word the new Port might be underwater by turn of century, a climate bomb spewing toxic chemicals through the air to residents of the Darwin suburbs nearby.

BY Michael West

'Paranoid' West Has Lost Control of its Future—Prominent Australian Cartoonist….

American 'B57' Bomber Planes Seen Near Alaska Made to Carry Heavy Payloads

UK Passing Off Secret Mobilization as 'Training Sessions': Russia

Joe Biden's 'Terror' Tactics Will Not Help His War

Will the US Use Nuclear Weapons? Thousands Are Betting On It

Biden 'Willing To Do Anything' To Avoid Defeat in Ukraine....

THESE ARE THE MIRROR HEADLINES FROM THOSE IN NEWSWEEK. YOU FIND THEM....THEY'RE UGLY.

MEANWHILE:

The general's remarks come amid Russia's ongoing military operation in Ukraine, which began eight years after a US-backed coup in Kiev overthrew the country's democratically elected government and sparked a civil conflict in the Donbass.

Worried about Australian sovereignty? Don’t bother, it’s gone.’ 

Michael Pascoe, a few days ago, in the New Daily, in an article titled ‘Worried about Australian sovereignty? Don’t bother, it’s gone.’ drew together what Paul Keating, I and others have been saying recently about Australia becoming a proxy even a patsy for the United States.

The signs are ominous on numerous fronts.

Kishore Mahbubani from Singapore has pointed out that Australia looks like a spear-carrier for the United States.

The 16 “most powerful war speeches” by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will be published on December 6 in a book called ‘A Message From Ukraine’, Crown, a division of the multinational publisher Penguin Random House, announced on Monday.    

“The only book officially authorized by President Zelensky, ‘A Message From Ukraine’ includes speeches he has personally selected to tell the story of the Ukrainian people,” the abstract of the hardcover, which is already available for pre-ordering for $16, says.

The book includes an introduction by Zelensky in which he explains what he has learned about himself and Ukrainians since the launch of the Russian military operation in late February.

American National Security Strategies (NSS) are a bizarre hegemonic specie. The latest version is saturated with more than usual hyperbole. The Biden Administration’s obsession that the defining characteristic of international reality is an ontological dichotomy between democracy and autocracy distorts the Strategy’s perspective.

Elon Musk has announced his company will continue to pay for Starlink satellite internet services in war-torn Ukraine a day after suggesting he cannot keep funding the project.

“The hell with it,” the world’s richest man wrote on Saturday on Twitter.

“Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”

Although it was not immediately clear whether Musk’s change of mind was genuine, he later appeared to indicate it was. When a Twitter user told Musk “No good deed goes unpunished”, he replied, “Even so, we should still do good deeds”.

Some bishops think America's second Catholic president should be denied the Eucharist. Are Biden's faith and job title an unworkable mix?

On the matter of faith, President Joe Biden is not shy. 

Liz Truss' premiership is looking increasingly in peril after five weeks of navigating the country through an economic storm. On Friday, she sacked her top finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, and shelved her ambitious plan to reduce corporation tax. Meanwhile, the new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is said to be undoing Truss' other flagship policies.