Important Takeaways:
- As the war in Ukraine enters a critical period, the European Union has decided it must take responsibility for what it sees as a security threat in its own neighborhood, and it’s preparing to tackle some of the financial burden, perhaps even without the United States.
- The EU rarely moves ahead on international matters without the U.S., particularly involving major conflicts, but it hopes this decision will encourage others to come forward.
- EU envoys have been working this week on a proposal to provide Ukraine with a loan package worth up to 35 billion euros ($39 billion).
- “Crucially, this loan will flow straight into your national budget,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week. “It will provide you with significant and much-needed fiscal space. You will decide how best to use the funds, giving you maximum flexibility to meet your needs.”
- Zelenskyy wants to buy weapons and bomb shelters and rebuild Ukraine’s shattered energy network as winter draws near.
- Most of the 27-nation EU fears a Putin victory would lead to deep uncertainty. Russia’s armed forces are depleted and currently incapable of another war, but the prospect of a future land grab in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland remains.
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Important Takeaways:
- China said Wednesday that it had successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean, in a rare public test that may raise international concerns as the country builds up its nuclear arsenal at a time of tensions with the United States.
- The Chinese defense ministry said the test was a routine part of the Rocket Force’s annual military training.
- But analysts said this was the first time China had launched an ICBM into international waters since 1980.
- China’s description of the test as routine and annual “seems odd,” Panda said, “given that they don’t do this sort thing either routinely or annually.”
- The Japanese government’s top spokesperson, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said China was rapidly expanding its nuclear and missile arsenal and increasing its defense expenditures without sufficient transparency.
- “These developments in China’s military activities, combined with their lack of transparency, have become a matter of serious concern for Japan and for the international community,” he said.
- ICBMs typically have a range of more than 3,400 miles and are designed to carry nuclear warheads. Analysts say China usually tests long-range missiles over its own land.
- China suspended nuclear arms talks with the U.S. in July to protest U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.
- China’s test on Wednesday comes amid heightened military activity in the Asia-Pacific region, where nuclear-armed North Korea has accelerated its weapons testing since 2022. Last week, North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea for the second time this month.
- North Korea says its weapons tests are in response to intensifying joint military exercises among the U.S., South Korea and others that it sees as a rehearsal for invasion.
- The U.S. also deployed an advanced missile system in the Philippines earlier this year that China sees as a threat.
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Important Takeaways:
- Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” that former President Donald Trump’s politics of “hate and division” put the United States’ security in danger.
- Clinton said, “I’m very hopeful, and even optimistic that Americans who do not want to see a continuation of this politics of hate and division will reject Trump.”
- She continued, “The object in this case is Donald Trump, his demagoguery, his danger to our country and the world. You know, they were merciless about what they saw as President Biden’s problems in the debate and calling for him to withdraw. I believe Donald Trump has disqualified himself over and over and over again to be a presidential candidate, let alone a president.”
- Clinton added, “I do think more and more Americans are rejecting the kind of chaos that he represents. We can’t go back. That’s what the Harris campaign says all the time. We’re not going back. We’re not going back to, you know, what he failed to do to protect American lives during COVID. We’re not going back to the, you know, romance with dictators that puts innocent lives at risk and puts America’s security in danger. We can’t go back and give this very dangerous man another chance to do harm to our country and the world.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has flatly stated that any long-range missile strikes carried out by Ukraine against the territory of Russia will constitute an act of war against the Russian Federation by NATO.
- He warns that if Ukraine is empowered to strike Russia with long-range missiles supplied by NATO, the alliance would be at war with his country:
- Putin notes that Ukrainian drone attacks have already taken place within Russia, most recently in Moscow. However, “When it comes to using high-precision long-range Western-made weapons, it’s a completely different story.”
- “The Ukrainian army is not able to strike with modern long-range precision systems of Western manufacture. It cannot do this. It can only do so using intelligence from satellites, which Ukraine does not have. This is data from [European Union] satellites, or from the United States, in general from NATO,” he said.
- Putin believes only NATO servicemen can enter flight assignments for the missile systems, arguing the real question is whether NATO wants to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine or not.
- Putin’s ominous words come after Biden-Harris Secretary of State Anthony Blinken hinted that Ukraine may get the green light to use long-range missiles against Russia earlier this week.
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Important Takeaways:
- Scientists studying the new mpox strain that has spread out of Democratic Republic of Congo say the virus is changing faster than expected, and often in areas where experts lack the funding and equipment to properly track it.
- That means there are numerous unknowns about the virus itself, its severity and how it is transmitting, complicating the response, half a dozen scientists in Africa, Europe and the United States told Reuters.
- A new strain of the virus, known as clade Ib, has the world’s attention again after the WHO declared a new health emergency.
- The strain is a mutated version of clade I, a form of mpox spread by contact with infected animals that has been endemic in Congo for decades. Mpox typically causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions and can kill.
- Congo has had more than 18,000 suspected clade I and clade Ib mpox cases and 615 deaths this year, according to the WHO. There have also been 222 confirmed clade Ib cases in four African countries in the last month, plus a case each in Sweden and Thailand in people with a travel history in Africa.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia said the West was playing with fire by considering allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western missiles and cautioned the United States on Tuesday that World War Three would not be confined to Europe.
- Ukraine attacked Russia’s western Kursk region on Aug. 6 and has carved out a slice of territory in the biggest foreign attack on Russia since World War Two. President Vladimir Putin said there would be a worthy response from Russia to the attack.
- Sergei Lavrov, who has served as Putin’s foreign minister for more than 20 years, said that the West was seeking to escalate the Ukraine war and was “asking for trouble” by considering Ukrainian requests to loosen curbs on using foreign-supplied weapons.
- Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Putin has repeatedly warned of the risk of a much broader war involving the world’s biggest nuclear powers, though he has said Russia does not want a conflict with the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
- The New York Times reported that the United States and Britain provided Ukraine with satellite imagery and other information about the Kursk region in the days after the Ukrainian attack.
- The Times said that the intelligence was aimed at helping Ukraine keep better track of Russian reinforcements.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korea has warned the United States of “serious consequences” after Washington provided South Korea with military hardware including Apache helicopters.
- Pyongyang’s warning comes in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris branding Kim Jong Un a tyrant at the Democratic National Convention.
- In the statement, published by the Department of Press and Information of the DPRK Foreign Ministry, the Chief of Foreign News said: “We strongly oppose and reject the U.S. and its vassal forces’ arms buildup posing a grave danger to the regional security environment and escalating the military tension and warn them seriously of the consequences to be entailed by it.’
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Important Takeaways:
- “The Council” and everyone and everything that emanates from them, has controlled the United States for the past fifty years for the purpose of extracting our nation’s wealth.
- They use the tools of indictments, obstruction, and government agencies they have weaponized to attack their enemies under false color of law. They alone select who will be winners and losers in politics, business, the economy, media, elections, education, and do so with complete amorality.
- The Council is an “untouchable,” legislatively codified, sui generis[1] organization with tentacles embedded in every government agency and branch of government except for the Supreme Court of the United States.
- From their perspective, they own the United States of America. It is “theirs,” and “they” are its self-appointed stewards. Anyone who is “not them” are “useful idiots,” “useful innocents,” or human chattel to be discarded to necro-politics.[2] The rest of us are expendable “carbon units” assigned positive and negative values depending on our relative usefulness to them. This is their language.
- To this end, “The Council,” in addition to controlling weaponized government agencies through the seventy-four (74) Inspectors General embedded in government agencies, controls a Political Arm, an Intelligence Arm, an Infiltration Arm, a Business Arm, a Propaganda Arm, and an Entertainment Arm.
- “The Council” aka “CIGIE” aka “Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency”
- Every “investigation” of public official malfeasance and corruption falls within the realm of their purview. They unilaterally decide the trajectory of “justice” in the United States, and hence, who is “punished” and who is not. Any appointed or elected public official – including the President of the United States – is ripe for their “investigation,” isolation, smearing, persecution in the guise of prosecution, and destruction at their whim.
- “The Council’s” “Political Arm” are those politicians selected, installed, and protected – by “The Council” – to do their bidding and implement their directives and policy. In return for these politicians’ fealty and submission, they indirectly wield the power of “The Council” with complete immunity from laws and the Constitution. “The Council” is solely responsible for investigating crimes, or obstructing investigations and attacking and disposing of anyone who might attempt to hold them, and their agents, accountable. All federal “whistleblowers” must, as a matter of law, report to their respective Inspectors General, and defacto “The Council.”
- [The depth of this article is longer than what could be posted. To learn more of the Who’s Who follow the link below]
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Important Takeaways:
- After a historically complex, monthslong negotiation involving more than six countries and two dozen prisoners, the Biden administration on Thursday announced it had secured the release of three American citizens from Russia, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Marine veteran Paul Whelan and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, all of whom are expected to arrive on American soil by nightfall.
- Under the terms of the agreement, 12 political dissidents held in Russia have been released to Germany
- In return, Russia will receive eight of its nationals, including three that were being held in U.S. prisons: Vadim Konoshchenok, Vladislav Klyushin and Roman Seleznyov.
- Two Russians held in Slovenia, one in Poland and another in Norway are also headed home. All have known or suspected ties to Russian intelligence, according to U.S. officials.
- The painstakingly choreographed exchange, apparently one of the most complex in history, finally took place on Thursday on a tarmac in Ankara, Turkey.
- Not all Americans currently imprisoned in Russia were involved in the swap. American teacher Marc Fogel, musician Michael Travis Leake, U.S. Army staff sergeant Gordon Black, and Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina remain imprisoned, among others.
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Important Takeaways:
- Today, the United States’s national debt reached another alarming milestone – our national debt is a staggering $35 trillion.
- Background:
- The gross national debt is currently $35 trillion. This equates to:
- $104,497 per person
- $266,275 per household
- $483,889 per child
- The debt one year ago was $32.65 trillion, meaning that the debt has increased by $2.35 trillion over the past 12 months. This rate of increase equates to:
- $196 billion in new debt per month
- $4 billion in new debt per day
- $268 million in new debt per hour
- $4.5 million in new debt per minute
- $74,401 in new debt per second
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