IRAN - Iran reportedly has around 20 types of ballistic missiles, some of which are copies of missiles developed in North Korea, or have origins in Russian and Chinese missiles. Iran held a military parade on Thursday and unveiled what it claimed to be a new ballistic missile. The missile is a medium-range ballistic rocket capable of traveling around 1,400km, according to Iranian media. Called “Rezvan”, the missile was shown during a parade that marks Iran’s victory over Iraq in the 1980-1988 war. With a range of 1400km, the missile would be capable of striking anywhere in the Middle East as well as in parts of Europe.

USA - Have you noticed that people seem to be going completely nuts all around us? Of course there have always been a few people with mental health issues in our society, but these days it seems like some sort of a collective insanity has descended upon our entire nation. I was curious, and so I decided to look up the dictionary definition of “insanity”. According to Merriam-Webster, the top definition is “a severely disordered state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder”. When I read that, I thought that “a severely disordered state of the mind” sounds just about right. Front the White House all the way down, we are witnessing things that we have never seen before. Vast numbers of people in our society can’t seem to think straight, and that is a major problem.

USA - Social engineering is the intentional use of propaganda and other manipulative techniques to influence public attitudes and behavior on a mass scale with the goal of arriving at whatever outcomes have been specified by the social engineers. Because technocracy originally labeled itself as the “science of social engineering,” we should not be surprised that today’s technocrats and their allies are still practicing this dark skill for the purpose of achieving their own ends. During the pandemic, the world has been overtaken by these social engineers, who seem to slither out of the woodwork. Their carefully constructed propaganda, spewed nonstop all day, every day, has convinced many millions of frightened people to wear face masks, practice social distancing, stay locked in their homes, shut down their businesses, close schools, and, finally, obediently submit to being injected with FDA-unapproved, experimental mRNA shots. How could this have happened? Has the world gone mad?

USA - Sharply rising cases of some sexually transmitted diseases, including a 26% rise in new syphilis infections reported last year, are prompting US health officials to call for new prevention and treatment efforts. “It is imperative that we… work to rebuild, innovate, and expand (STD) prevention in the US,” said Dr Leandro Mena of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a speech Monday at a medical conference on sexually transmitted diseases. Infection rates for some STDs, including gonorrhea and syphilis, have been rising for years. Last year the rate of syphilis cases reached its highest since 1991 and the total number of cases hit its highest since 1948. HIV cases are also on the rise, up 16% last year. And an international outbreak of monkeypox, which is being spread mainly between men who have sex with other men, has further highlighted the nation’s worsening problem with diseases spread mostly through sex. David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, called the situation “out of control.”

TURKEY - Berlin does not believe that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization aids global peace, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said. Turkey’s plans to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) have sparked an angry reaction in Berlin, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz slamming Ankara’s decision to seek membership in the Russia and China-led economic and security bloc. “I'm very irritated about this development,” Scholz told journalists in New York following his meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The chancellor said he believed the SCO was “not an organization delivering an important contribution to a good global coexistence.” Earlier on Tuesday, the Turkish president also said he didn’t want to choose between the East and the West, adding that he does not owe the EU an explanation for all of his decisions. Erdogan slammed Brussels for keeping Turkey “out for 52 years.”

PUERTO RICO - More than a half million people in Puerto Rico remained without water service three days after Hurricane Fiona slammed into the US territory, and many spent hours in lines Wednesday to fill jugs from water trucks while others scooped water from mountain runoff. The situation was maddening for many people across an island once again left without basic services following a storm. “We thought we had a bad experience with Maria, but this was worse,” Gerardo Rodríguez said in the southern coastal town of Salinas, referring to the 2017 hurricane that caused nearly 3,000 deaths and demolished the island’s power grid. Swelled to Category 4 force, the storm was on a track to pass close by Bermuda early Friday and then hit easternmost Canada early Saturay, according to the US National Hurricane Center. The storm played havoc with Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, which had been patched but never fully rebuilt after Maria caused a blackout that lasted 11 months in some places.

UK - For decades, attempts have been made to use climate change to justify radical policy changes. But “The Great Reset” is the most ambitious and radical plan the world has seen in more than a generation. In June 2020, the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) and then-Prince Charles (“Charles”) launched The Great Reset. In an article announcing its launch, Klaus Schwab wrote that “all aspects of our societies and economies” must be “revamped,” from education to social contracts and working conditions. “Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed… In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

USA - Approximately 1,300 DOE employees took a year’s unpaid leave, including benefits, agreeing that, by September 5, they would show proof of COVID vaccinations in compliance with New York City’s vaccine mandate or be “deemed to have voluntarily resigned.” Only 450 teachers and paraprofessionals are returning to work, having complied with the order. With the school year having started, some COVID restrictions were eased for students and staff, but not vaccine mandates. Councilman Joe Borelli, a Republican, believes it’s time to lift the order, calling it “absurd,” according to SI Live.

GERMANY - German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Germany has a chance of getting through the winter "comfortably" despite the lack of Russian gas. Germany is on track to meet a 95% storage capacity target by November. "If everything goes well, savings in Germany are high and if we have a bit of luck with the weather, we will have a chance at getting through the winter comfortably," Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday. "That means, however, that the storage facilities will be empty again at the end of the winter — in this case really empty, because we are going to use the gas," he added.

GERMANY - Germany’s ruling class is using NATO’s war in Ukraine against Russia to aggressively reinvigorate militarism both at home and abroad. Recent speeches by Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht and Chancellor Olaf Scholz (both Social Democrats, SPD) leave no doubt about this. The return of German militarism has been long prepared behind the backs of the population and was publicly announced as early as the 2014 Munich Security Conference. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), as foreign minister at the time, declared that Germany was “too big and economically too strong for us to comment on world politics only from the sidelines.” History is returning with a vengeance. Almost 70 years after the crimes of the Nazis and its defeat in World War II, the German ruling class is once again adopting the imperialist great power politics of the Kaiser’s Empire and Hitler. The speed of the escalation of the war propaganda against Russia recalls the eve of World War I and World War II.

UNITED NATIONS - The world’s problems seized the spotlight Tuesday as the UN General Assembly’s yearly meeting of world leaders opened with dire assessments of a planet beset by escalating crises and conflicts that an ageing international order seems increasingly ill-equipped to tackle. After two years when many leaders weighed in by video because of the coronavirus pandemic, now presidents, premiers, monarchs and foreign ministers have gathered almost entirely in person for diplomacy’s premier global event. But the tone is far from celebratory. Instead, it’s the blare of a tense and worried world. “We are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, adding that “our world is in peril — and paralyzed.”

RUSSIA - Clash of the two systems of governance, as George Soros formulated it in his remarks to the World Economic Forum conference in May, seems to have reached a phase transition. Russian President Vladimir Putin has returned from last week’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference in Samarkand with a palpable sense of confidence and determination, and it does appear that he has obtained reassurances of support from all the key leaders during the event, including China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi, and even the new PM of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif.

EUROPE - Bloc “clearly” lacks leadership, vision and strategy, Alexis Tsipras claimed. Aside from Ukraine, the second biggest loser in the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe, both economically and geostrategically, is the European Union, according to a former prime minister and current leader of the opposition in Greece. “The US is not losing, neither economically nor geostrategically,” Syriza party leader Alexis Tsipras said during a lengthy press conference on the sidelines of the Thessaloniki International Fair on Sunday. “Economically, Russia is not losing either,” he said, arguing that the “ruble has become one of the strongest currencies,” while Moscow, due to record high prices of natural gas, has become a “regulator” capable of “opening and closing the tap” at will. While expressing his solidarity with the people of Ukraine and saying “we must do everything to put an end to the war,” Tsipras claimed that apart from innocent civilians the “biggest loser” is the European Union, which is in “turmoil,” and “clearly lacks leadership, vision, strategy.” “We need to re-evaluate the sanctions. Were the measures correct or are we shooting ourselves in the foot?”

VATICAN - Putin says he will not 'bluff' on using all means amid reversals. It is madness to think of using nuclear weapons, Pope Francis told his weekly general audience in the Vatican on Wednesday after Russian President Vkladuimir Putin said he would not bluff on using all means in Ukraine amid recent reversals.Recalling his recent visit to Kazakhstan, the pope said "we must recognize that Kazakhstan has made very positive choices, like saying No to nuclear weapons". "In this it was brave, at a time when this tragic war (in Ukraine) leads some people to think about nuclear weapons, that madness!" Pope Francis said he spoke yesterday to Cardinal Konrad Krajewski who was in Ukraine on his fourth humanitarian and pastoral mission to the nation.

RUSSIA - Vladimir Putin has threatened the West with nuclear weapons over Ukraine, telling leaders: 'I'm not bluffing'. Desperate despot also announced mobilisation of 300,000 reservists, first Russian mobilisation since WW2. Occupied Ukrainian territories will be annexed to Russia, he said, and 'all means' will be used to defend them. Ukraine dismissed the threat, saying it is 'predictable' and shows the war is not going as Putin had planned. He vowed to use 'all means' to defend the regions, saying: 'If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will use all available means to protect Russia and our people - this is not a bluff... I shall stress - by all means available to us. Those trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the tables can turn on them.' Putin's gambit comes after Ukraine routed a large part of the Russian army last week, leaving him backed into a corner of his own making and facing the possible collapse of his so-called 'special military operation'.