The EU is having a full-blown existential crisis. Someone has really screwed up its economy, and the culprit is conspicuously absent from a new report outlining the carnage. Are there no mirrors in Brussels?

Has the EU suddenly realized how much it has screwed itself over?
Mario Draghi’s ‘competitiveness report’ says the bloc’s economic situation is dire… but shies away from pointing out the culprit

Former European Central Bank president and Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, has published a new “economic competitiveness” report after a year of work at the request of unelected ‘Queen’ Ursula von der Leyen’s ‘Royal’ European Commission. And it’s a real page-turner, one of the great mysteries of our times.  

In the Intellectual Self-Defense Manual (special edition of Le Monde Diplomatique), the media philosopher MICHEL ONFRAY gets his ears rubbed by Benoît Bréville, director of Le Diplo.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced Wednesday that it will not endorse any candidate for president, amid polling which shows that its membership favors former President Donald Trump.

The decision comes as a blow to the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris; until this year, the influential 1.3 million–strong labor union had endorsed the Democratic nominee for president in every cycle since 1980. 

The Biden White House and the Democratic Party machine trying to advance Kamala Harris from No. 2 in the regime to No. 1 gets more interesting by the week, I have to say. 

The Harris campaign has at last, two months after the party’s elites and financiers railroaded her candidacy past any semblance of a democratic process, published a platform it calls A New Way Forward, and I will get to this in due course.

On March 7, 2022, two weeks after Moscow entered the civil war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS News from Moldova that the U.S. would give NATO-member Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to enforce a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft. 

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

Sergei Kirienko, a former prime minister of Russia and currently the Number-2 man in charge of President Vladimir Putin’s staff, believes Russia can win the information war against the US and its allies.

In his meetings behind closed doors at the Kremlin, Kirienko has revealed that he thinks Americans are so trusting in their press like the Washington Post, CNN, and Fox News,  that if fake Post, CNN, Fox,  and other dummies of the US media can be created to report positive propaganda about Russia, instead of the negative propaganda these media usually run, Americans will be convinced to switch sides in the war to destroy the Russian army on the Ukrainian battlefield, and the war of US sanctions to destroy the Russian economy.

The weapons stockpile shortages will likely force Washington to delay the shipments of promised military aid to Ukraine, CNN reported on Friday, citing two US officials familiar with the matter.

The report comes as Kiev has been asking foreign backers to speed up the delivery of arms and to lift the remaining restrictions on the use of longer-range missiles for strikes deep into Russia territory.

According to the Pentagon, the US has $5.9 billion left in the special congressionally approved mechanism (PDA) aimed at fast-tracking aid for Kiev. However, the aid packages have been getting smaller in recent times as the weapons stocks are dwindling, CNN said.

A US intelligence source has said that the suspected Mossad “supply chain interdiction” operation behind this week’s explosive pager attacks in Lebanon took 15 years or longer to plan. Sputnik asked FSB counterterrorism vet Andrei Popov how the attack was pulled off, and what Hezbollah could do to prevent it from recurring.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has urged citizens not to be alarmed if they see German soldiers arriving in their towns as the country continues to deal with devastating floods. The deluge this week has wrought havoc across central Europe, reportedly killing at least 22 people and leaving a trail of destruction.  

Speaking on Thursday at a crisis meeting in the western city of Wroclaw, which has faced rising floodwaters, Tusk stated that US troops were already providing support to communities in southern Poland and that Türkiye and Germany had offered similar assistance.  

“If you see German soldiers, please do not panic. They are here to help,” Tusk said, apparently suggesting that the arrival of German troops could trigger associations with World War II.  

Prime Minister Keir Starmer is under fire after media revelations that he failed to disclose pricey gifts of clothing to his wife from longtime Labour megadonor Waheed Alli. Who is the mysterious businessman, and what’s behind his ‘generosity’ to the Starmers?

Born in Croydon, England to Indo-Trinidadian and Indo-Guyanese parents in 1964, 59-year-old Baron and Lord Waheed Alli was described in a gushing 2000 BBC profile as a member of a “new generation” of Blairite “New Labour working peers appointed to revolutionize the House of Lords,” the UK’s upper chamber of parliament – “young, Asian and from the world of media and entertainment.”

Hundreds of Russian researchers working at the particle physics laboratory CERN in Switzerland will have to leave the Alpine country later this year, the journal Nature reported on Wednesday.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) plans to end its cooperation agreement with Russia on December 1, banning all scientists affiliated with the nation from its premises, the journal said. The scientists will also be stripped of any French or Swiss residency permits they currently hold, according to the report.

Washington’s new plan to control the Global South...
Not satisfied with banning RT in most Western countries nearly three years ago, the US and its allies have unveiled a new plan to bully the rest of the world into following suit...

When US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced a new “joint diplomatic campaign” to be implemented in concert with Canada and the UK last week, he clearly set out the initiative’s goal – “to rally allies and partners around the world to join us in addressing the threat posed by RT and other machinery of Russian disinformation and covert influence.”

The head of the University of Sydney has apologised to Jewish students and staff, admitting he "failed them" in his handling of a pro-Palestinian student encampment on campus.

Vice-chancellor Professor Mark Scott is fronting a Senate inquiry into anti-Semitism on campus, set up following the establishment of protester tent cities on several university campuses earlier this year.

The inquiry has received submissions from Jewish students at the University of Sydney who reported feeling unsafe and unwelcome on campus during the eight week Students for Palestine protest.

Mr Scott has defended his decision not to forcibly remove the encampment earlier, and apologised to students who were upset.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - NATO has transformed its eastern flank from having no combat-ready troops in place in 2014 to tens of thousands now, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.

"We have, over these ten years [since 2014 that he took over], undergone the biggest transformation in a generation. We have strengthened our defenses, from having zero to tens of thousands combat-ready NATO soldiers on our eastern flank, from thousands to half a million troops on high readiness and from 3 to 23 allies spending at least 2% of GDP on defense," Stoltenberg said during a session named "Reflections on a Challenging Decade," hosted by the German Marshal fund in Brussels.

Something absolutely stupefying is happening in Germany: its iconic auto company, VW, the darling of every Chancellor from Adolf Hitler to Olaf Scholz, appears to be in a death spiral. At the end of this story I’ll draw a link to the salutary lesson countries like Australia and New Zealand need to draw from the German experience if we are to survive and thrive in the coming world.