Here is a number the White House would prefer you not memorize: 99.259 million barrels. That is how much distillate, meaning diesel, heating oil and the like, the United States had in storage at the end of October. It is the lowest weekly level since May 2003. Diesel inventories are now 17.8 percent below where they stood on February 27, the day before Operation Epic Fury, and roughly 13 percent below the five-year seasonal average.

Full Refineries, Empty Tanks

by Larry C. Johnson

President Donald Trump responded to this week’s GOP drubbing by initially suggesting that he might soften his approach, expressing openness to collaborating with Democrats. But after growing increasingly agitated by the midterm results, Trump abruptly changed course, replacing chief of staff Susie Wiles with longtime aide Stephen Miller amid encouragement from allies to ramp up the fight.

The agenda to demonize Russia has been in place for more than a decade in the Western world, as the push for war intensifies. The NATO leaders have calculated that the only way out is to escalate the war into a much larger regional conflict, but this won’t hide their crimes. The energy war is upon the world.

Russia is now being set up to replace China in the lab-leak fairytale being sold to the public, but the world has questions about the story’s authenticity and the narrative managers selling it. Are we on the verge of another COVID-style overreaction, or will the pneumonic plague quietly go the way of monkeypox? All we know is that Russia is not the real enemy.

#690: From Russia With Love

BY CHARLIE ROBINSON. INDEPENDENT MEDIA ALLIANCE.  MACROAGGRESSIONS

The modern fairy tale has taken an Artificial Intelligent rejuvenation. It looks like a few innovative studios with barely a few bucks can use AI to make stories that are simple and probably more popular than Disney can now make… This is the new challenge... 

Disney plundered the old Fairy Tales and illustrated them in the Disney style… But for whatever reason, Disney lost the thrust of the original message and rammed a few “modern” concepts such as the Woke ideology rather than the human rights of all. This has been a difficult sale to the “general public”… 

Some intelligent dude “asked” AI to rework the old tales of the princess being dungeoned and saved by a prince in disguise… or just passing by....

Barnaby Joyce was planning to make the pilgrimage to the Mar-a-Lago shrine to Donald Trump midyear. He’d been invited on an all-expenses-paid trip. His wife, Vikki Campion, had another idea. Woolbrook Public School was due to hold its community barbecue at the local Bunnings and Barnaby and Vikki were rostered to work it.

“Your children go to Woolbrook Public School,” Barnaby recounts Vikki telling him. “You’re not going.” He cancelled the trip to the US.

Trump is a false idol and his local franchisee is dumping the brand

Peter Hartcher

Successive governments have quietly deepened the US military footprint across Australia. Communities near proposed submarine and marine bases face risks they have never hears about. The window to push back is closing fast according to Carmen Lawrence and Julie Macken.

Carmen Lawrence, Julie Macken

After a bruising 2024 loss, Democrats are still searching for a clear path forward — but the party’s next generation of national contenders is already beginning to take shape.

Who Will Lead the Democratic Party in 2028?

The list of potential presidential hopefuls includes everyone from Kamala Harris to AOC.

By Tess Bonn

It took less than 24 hours after the polls closed for the Vice President of the United States to say what the President would not. “The reason we lost is the war,” JD Vance posted on X on Wednesday. Donald Trump, meanwhile, told Fox News he did not view Tuesday’s rout as “a hit on me” and congratulated the Democrats on doing “a good job.” Gracious in defeat, and serene in denial.

While Washington argues over who lost the midterms, Moscow and Tehran are doing something more interesting. They are talking, at length and at the top. And Israel may be about to change governments. Put the three stories side by side and you can see the outline of what comes next.

There has been much debate in Britain in recent years about symbols of empire – pulling down statues, or returning museum artefacts. 

But we rarely talk about the fact that British foreign policy is still run by the same institutions which ran the empire. 

The Secretary of State for Business and Trade is still called ‘President of the Board of Trade’, referring to an institution involved in the triangular slave trade.

HOW BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY IS FROZEN IN THE RUINS OF EMPIRE

The impact on people who live under dictators propped up by Britain is immense. British voters have almost no say in what’s going on.

ADAM RAMSAY

Shoalhaven Council has forced Nowra Art Gallery to limit the display of the ‘Wall of Tears’ exhibit commemorating the deaths of 18,745 Palestinian children by the IDF.

The scam is that former Liberal candidate Andrew Constance, now Manager at Shoalhaven Council, decided to reduce the number of days of the display from ten to two, citing risk to the ‘safety of his staff’.

In total agreement with staff from the gallery, the Shoalhaven Friends of Palestine (SFOP) had arranged for the Wall exhibit, a 15 metre long art installation and memorial, to be opened on November 4 and displayed for a further nine days.

Lieutenant General Christian Freuding has been appointed as Germany’s highest military commander, the Defense Ministry said. Having previously led Germany’s Land Forces, Freuding is known for his ardent support for Ukraine and his hardline stance on Russia.

Freuding will take over as inspector general of the armed forces – the highest post a German career officer can occupy – in February 2027, replacing another prominent Russia hawk, General Karsten Breuer, who is moving to head the NATO Military Committee, a senior advisory body that guides the bloc’s leadership on matters of military strategy.

NATO is developing a defense strategy that would allow its forces to strike military targets deep inside Russia, rather than limiting attacks to areas near the alliance’s borders. According to The Wall Street Journal, potential targets include Russian military bases, supply depots and industrial facilities that support the country’s armed forces.

The former Soviet administrative unit that emerged as independent Ukraine in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union was bounded by the exact borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). That is, it comprised a wholly unnatural polity whose borders and population had been assembled by successive Soviet leaders for the administrative convenience of their brutal communist dictatorship.

by David Stockman 

Australia’s rooftop solar and battery boom shows the energy transition is accelerating, yet anti-renewables politics is gaining ground. Rebuilding regional trust and countering misinformation is now critical.