Putin warns of nuclear catastrophe; U.S. steams carrier to Iran; French students revolt and the barbaric U.S. death penalty. Ray McGovern, Patrick Henningsen. Sunday 9 a.m. EDT.
This week:
1. Putin’s Warning;
2. New US Warship to Iran;
3. The Crisis of Europe: French Students Burn Their Schools
PLUS: America’s Barbaric Death Penalty.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the world could face nuclear catastrophe if the West attacks the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Putin told the Valdai Club outside Moscow Thursday humanity has entered a “completely new and unprecedented reality.”
The historical changes underway aren’t fully understood, he said. But over the long run, the erosion of corrosive Western hegemony should create a more stable, democratic, and multipolar world order — but the transition is fraught with danger.
Putin said exceptional, narrow Western interests fuels the peril. The West forced Russia into a defensive war against Ukraine, its tool against Moscow. The war has escalated into NATO-backed attacks on Russian soil.
Putin warned that a direct attack on Kaliningrad, which is separated from mainland Russia by a land corridor, would immediately put “all the weapons” at Russia’s disposal.
“If it comes to direct attack on the Russian Federation, in this case, we mean Kaliningrad, maybe some other territories as well, of course, naturally, immediately, what will be on the agenda is the use by the Russian Federation of all weapons that are at the disposal of our country. It is unavoidable.”
Putin pointed to a Russian foreign ministry statement on Kaliningrad does not mention nuclear weapons. “It mentions, as I have just said, the use of all means and all forces at the disposal of our country and we’ll decide what it is,” Putin said.
“This escalation is based on arrogance and self conceit, and this is what pushes us to the edge of the abyss,” he said.
Putin also knows that the West will twist this warning into a threat. “What’s a different way to stand up to an aggressor? We’re not threatening anyone, but we’re just saying that we don’t have many tools of self defense.”
Iranian Quicksand
Meanwhile, Trump keeps making maniacal threats to destroy Iran, this time, if Teheran had anything to do with the attempt to hijack the Dubai-Tel Aviv jet. He talks a big game on Iran because he’s losing the big war with Iran with mid-terms a month away.
He’s in danger of also losing both Houses and of being impeached, if not convicted. He’s in danger of being humiliated before the whole world as a Big ‘L’ Loser.
So he sticks his chest out, Duce style, and proclaims: “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll kill you all or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll decide to spare you.” A rank and unstable amateur coming to terms with ultimate power.
So he sends another aircraft carrier to Iran to keep up the illusion the U.S. has the upper hand in the conflict. That Trump can dictate to Iran. The Nov. 3 election will tell how many Americans are gullible enough to believe that.
Aux Barricades!
They are not so gullible in France, which has more or less kept the revolutionary spirit alive since 1789, give or take half the country’s collaboration with the Nazis. This week, Europe’s crisis of cutting off cheap gas from Russia to spite its face; of spiraling out of the control of the establishment parties; of mongering ever more loudly for war with Russia by 2030 – a Europe that sees the consequences of neglecting the most basic functions of government, such as providing education to its children.
So the students of France sat down in front of their schools, because they are falling apart, aren’t cooled aeren’t heated, don’t have enough teachers or books. They are defying a decrepit, corrupt, ancien Macron regime, the vain banker’s garcon.
And then the police were sent in with their teargas against teenagers. And the kids burned their schools so the stench reaches the nostrils of Monsieur Macron.
Meanwhile back in the U.S.A., there’s a woman on a ventilator, artificially being kept alive by the state after the state tried to artificially kill her. Their lethal injections, administered under the laws of Tennessee, failed to carry out the state’s official revenge, years after the crime.
To discuss all this are Patrick Henningsen, editor of 21st Century Wire, and former C.I.A. analyst Ray McGovern.
Forget Face the Nation. Get ready to face the facts on The World This Week.
Guests: Ray McGovern, Patrick Henningsen. Host: Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan.
I have not yet, read the article. But just what to say on behalf of those of us who do not have tons of data to mess with that, I really appreciate that you keep In writing, those things that are most important to us. Hang on, hang on, I’m getting there. I hope that’s there aint going
Tot bella per orbem,
tam multae, scelerum facies, non ullus aratro dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem.
hinc movet Euphrates, illinc Germania bellum;
vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes arma ferunt;
saevit toto Mars impius orbe.
Publius Vergilius Maro
70-19 B.C
There’s so much war in the world, Evil has so many faces, the plough so little honour, the labourers are taken, the fields untended,
And the curving sickle is beaten into the sword that yields not.
There the East is in arms, here Germany marches:
Neighbour cities, breaking their treaties, attack each other:
The wicked War-god runs amok through all the world.
thank you very much again!
for your so well-informed, and good-humored, assessments.
they help me, too, keep my sanity — a challenging endeavor
these days. to think, for instance, that NATO, of all entities!,
was recently awarded the ‘westphalian peace prize‘ in muenster,
germany.
concluded in 1648, the westphalian peace ended europe’s 30-year war.
its spirit is about promoting peace through dialogue: the exact opposite
of what NATO stands, or rather, keeps expanding for.
yet another occasion for all fear and war mongers plus war profiteers to
congratulate each other + make us believe: “we’re so on the right track!“
a few thoughts re. good vs evil:
we’ve been accustomized to war crimes being committed
– ad nauseam – almost daily and almost all around the globe.
nobody is being held accountable IN DUE TIME.
very few perpe_traitors are, only decades after the events.
hasn’t this led to what i’d call “moral exhaustion“?
if so, is “the lack of moral outrage!“ any wonder?
also: so many occasions call for our indignation that we
feel overwhelmed into … speechless silence … at times.
The ask, “How many times does Vladimir Putin have to repeat himself, “Ya want a piece of this, Kaliningrad, maybe some other territories as well?” Hence, IMO, Russia’s double f/dawg dare to Trump-Vance, Inc., Israel, Ukraine, the US Congress, “Come & Get It!”
September 28-October 1, 2026, The 23rd Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.
…“Thank you, for your attention to this matter”…* “Vladimir Putin spoke at length of “the many threats and dangers which are inextricably intertwined w/opportunities & prospects” for the world today, including those which impact “the moral nature of human beings.” Likewise, Joe Lauria & Ray McGovern, called it! TY, Gentlemen!!!
“Decision-makers in this *“polycrisis” carry an “immense” weight of responsibility, for the situation is such that a mistake could have a “dire cost” for humanity’s future.” Vladimir Putin.
….. “of course, naturally, immediately, what will be on the agenda is the use by the Russian Federation of all weapons that are at the disposal of our country. It is unavoidable.” Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hence, IMO, Trump-Vance, Inc., Israel, Ukraine, the US Congress are NOT @ the table; they’re on the Menu.
Hence, the Valdai Discussion Club’s 2026 theme: “Responsibility for the Future: Limits of the Possible, or Limitless Possibilities?” for the Future: Limits of the Possible, or Limitless Possibilities?” W/o a doubt, the Valdai Discussion Club’s Annual Meeting is a Big F/Deal! i.e., “some 120 people from 40 countries—including Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the [Divided $tates of Corporate America]—spent three days discussing, “No One Is Safe!”
Hence, discussions on “embracing responsibility, looking to the future”; AND, “how to stay optimistic in the ruins of the old world,” particularly the “USA.” In the 21st Century, daily, weekly, yearly POTUS is “on the road” ranting, raving, rallying his followers to embrace how he’s gonna “Shove it up their a$$!”
Hence, Memo To: POTUS. Fm: LeoSun, “Who’s IT?” Fascism, Elections, BRICS, Rally’s of Trump’s relentless $elf-Promotion? ‘Listen you fkng ba$tard’!!! “There’s a whole new world being formed, and the catalyst of it is the misjudgment that occurred about Ukraine and the effort to try to control Ukraine that began in 2014….And what’s happened is this is being twisted, and suddenly Ukraine becomes a bloodbath of a chess board where these innocent people are just being used as pawns in a game of nations. And I resent that. I mean, I resent that on behalf of every decent person who’s trying to keep their family together in Ukraine and who doesn’t want to be dominated by anybody, US, Russia, anybody, and they just want to live their lives. But because there’s a game of nations going on and the US was concerned about Russia’s pivot to Asia, well, guess what? This whole thing is blowing up in the face of the West. We forced Russia to pivot to Asia, and now Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia.” Dennis Kucinich.
The ask, “Save the Planet!” F/“the orthodoxy which is now part of politics that says, [“Well, Keep THAT War GOING] for whatever reason. We’re going to beat the Russians. We’re going to beat the Chinese.” [WTF] “We’re beating ourselves.” Hence, “Pray for Birdies.” TY!
Reliable Sources:
* hxxps://valdaiclub.com/events/23rd-annual-meeting-of-the-valdai-discussion-club
* hxxps://www.weforum.org/stories/health-and-healthcare-systems/polycrisis-adam-tooze-historian-explains/
* hxxps://therealnews.com/dennis-kucinich-how-the-war-machine-took-over-the-democratic-party… (Anti-war positions used to be possible within the Democratic Party. What happened?)
“US steams carrier towards Iran.”
Two previous carriers have been forced to return to US ports for lengthy repairs after receiving such orders. Will the USS “Bully Bully” have a different fate?
I wonder if the US Navy has beefed up anti-suicide enforcement on the USS “Bully Bully”?
PS … as an aid to those who do not know American history, the nuclear-powered and -armed carrier heading to Iran is the USS Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt had a signature saying …. he went around saying “Bully Bully”. Ends up being quite fitting that the latest bully President is sending the USS “Bully Bully” to go try to bully another nation. But unfortunately, Trump reverses Teddy’s famous formula as Trump speaks incredibly loudly but carries a limp, little stick.
When are we going to wake up? At times it feels as though the world is being run by children playing ‘cops and robbers’, while the rest of us are left dealing with the consequences.
Perhaps the real awakening begins when we stop mistaking theatre for reality.
thank you very much again!
for your so well-informed assessments, they help me, too,
keep my sanity – quite a challenging endeavor these days.
to think, for instance, that NATO, of all entities, was recently
awarded the “westphalia peace prize” in muenster, germany.
the westphalian peace, concluded in 1648, ended the 30-year war,
its spirit is about promoting peace through dialogue, i.e. the exact
opposite of what NATO stands, or rather, keeps expanding for.
yet another occasion for all fear-/war mongers and war profiteers to
congratulate each other & make us believe: “we’re so on the right track!“
and a thought re. good vs evil:
we have become accustomed to war crimes being committed
– ad naUSeAm – almost daily and almost all around the globe.
nobody is being held accountable IN DUE TIME. [very few are,
only decades later.] is “the lack of moral outrage!“ any wonder,
in the face of almost permanent impunity?
also, there are so many events that call for our indignation
that we feel overwhelmed into … speechless silence at times.
The real reason in 1953 would likely be for U-2 bases for flights over the USSR.
The problem with the Shah and Saudis likely was the OPEC oil embargo.
We were on a roll with religious states to oppose the USSR in Afghanistan and Iran and Iran tricked us.
Then they took embassy hostages to get military arms to fight the Iraqis we set to war on them and Bush/Casey out bid Carter and then allowed us to be stricken with Reaganite still plaguing us today and coming back at Iran for a third helping to a state sanctions dinner.
I know it shocks Americans, but it is quite possible that the Iranians took the embassy for the reasons they say they took it. It was a massive CIA base, and Jimmy Carter had welcomed the deposed Shah to come to America.
America always likes to come up with conspiracy theories to cover up the basic fact that America acts with great evil and is often hated by the people it oppresses. This contradicts America’s fantasies about itself. The US CIA base in Tehran was taken in November 1979. The western-backed Saddam Hussein war against Iran began in September 1980. The dates appear to indicate that the cause and effect are the opposite of what you indicate.
Saddam was using western chemical weapons to attack the enemies of the West after ‘those people’ threw out America’s appointed Shah and the torturers of Savak. Saddam apparently got these western weapons after the CIA lost its big base in Tehran. Thus, it is more likely that the arms and chemical weapons aid to Saddam were in response to Iranian people’s actions, and not the other way around. I’d have to go back and reread some non-official histories of that time, but I think Reagan/Casey/Bush were the only ones offering weapons to the Iranian revolutionaries.
The Soviets came to the rescue of the Socialist government of Afghanistan which was supporting women’s rights and education in the socialist tradition. This was in December 1979. Carter’s National Security Adviser Brzezinski was arming the conservative fundamentalists against the outrage of women being educated. The Soviet intervened in Afghanistan to support this government against the western plots. The lying capitalist pigs refer to this as the “invasion of Afghanistan”. America’s imposed Shah had fled Iran at the beginning of the year in January. Thus, Iran was not following Uncle Sam’s orders in Afghanistan, but I don’t think that can be referred to as ‘tricking’ the USA.
It does help to have lived through those times. Especially when nothing in America can be trusted these days except one’s own memory. The former CIA base in Tehran is now a museum exhibiting what the people found when they got in there. And unlike the Smithsonian, the exhibits are not controlled by the President of the United States.
So this all comes from GWB administration and preemptive war. Imagining a threat as a fact for preemptive war versus a reality in fact of nuclear response is a warning of fact not some day dream of mushroom clouds on the horizon in Iraq and now Iran requiring preemptive escalation from a non threat from nonexistent weapons in our crystal ball.
This is the bushwhacking world we have created.
The great run-out-of-ammo pickle born of a sense of entitlement, hubris & supremacy. U.S. aggressors begin their Shock ‘n Awe bombardment in the belief that they could bomb Iran “back to the stone age” in a few days. Doesn’t work quite as expected so they double-down, blow off beaucoup more ammo trying to protect the Zionist state only to fail again.
Zio-Nazis skulk into the shadows to lick their wounds with their main objective achieved. Big Uncle Shemuely is newly blooded & committed to the cause of destroying the Iranian state & its civilization. Turns out they’re willing to destroy the global economy to boot.
Hey, could this be an example of “wagging the nuke”? S’what happens with cheese dicks in charge.
What you describe in your first paragraph is an excellent description of Bill Clinton’s war against Serbia. It began with official lies about seeing mass graves in satellite photos. This prompted the Clintons’ to invent the oxymoron of a ‘humanitarian war’. As always, the US Air Force thought they could bomb the enemy into destruction and surrender in just a few days. And, as always in the history of air warfare, it doesn’t work any better than Goering’s Blitz against London. So, then Bill Clinton doubled-down by expanding the target list to include civilian targets. This is the usual USA war plan of torturing the people to force them to change their government. The target list eventually included, IIRC, the war-crimes of bombing a passenger railroad train full of civilians, a TV station, and the Chinese embassy.
This is the USA, regardless of whether ‘Zionism’ is involved or not. And it is definitely bi-partisan, supported by every President from Reagan to today. In fact, Big Uncle Sam got ‘blooded’ back in the 19th century when he was wiping out Indian villages for the crime of getting in the way of Manifest Destiny and all the money to be made with railroad monopolies. This has had bi-partisan support across the decades, except for those damn radicals of the 1960’s who hated America.
I suspect it’s fairly paranoid, but not ceasing our involvement forthwith, and not giving Ukraine enough incentive to do likewise sometimes makes me wonder if our empire’s side of the thing continued secretly to make a little bevy of neutron bombs. I mean, in spite of the MICIMATT’s great love of war profits, it’s extremely hard to explain all this we-can-win-hype [but if Russia still had some too, it wouldn’t mean this kind of advantage on our part would be such an ace up our sleeve].
“there’s plenty of money to be made, from selling the Army the tools of the trade.”
-Country Joe McDonald, ‘Vietnam Rag’, as performed at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
The making of money by the Merchants of Death is always accompanied by the ‘we-can-win-hype’. Except when greater profits can be obtained by the ‘oh-my-gawd-we-are-losing hype’. In these times, the ‘reconstruction contracts’ after all the destruction are yet another source of profit for the warmongering corporations and the bankers who loan the funds.
War is a Racket. It used to be the only racket where the profits were in dollars and the losses were in lives. But then the For-Profit Health Care Racket came along.
Thank. you!
we need and love you both more than we have words to express. Thank you for holding, for being a lighthouse on the dark shores of these times. May your warmth, good humor, and allegiance to truth waken, confront, arouse the many to ACTION.
Can any purportedly civilized nation-state be regarded as humane; having a death penalty in its laws, and thereby adjudicating killing (by lethal injection, or any other means of extermination) other human beings?
The recent botched ‘legal’ execution of a person who was hardly more than an adolescent when the crime was committed, has not only in life, further condemned this person; but this cruel and unusual punishment has actually turned another living soul into a vegetable in the name of so-called justice.
The parents of the murdered adolescent, after thirty years of unbearable grieving still seek their retribution and vengeance, believing their satisfaction will set them free.
So much for Christian compassion, love and forgiveness!
Execution methods have always been a form of public torture, designed to intimidate the people into subservience to a King. It is quite obvious that the Prison-Industrial-Complex demands that executions remain a form of torture.
I am old and have had several surgeries. If a drunken doctor accidentally cut an artery and I bled out on the table, I doubt I’d know anything about it. I get put under before surgery, and awaken later in a recovery room. Knowing this, I look at all the modern execution methods as sadistic prison wardens trying to make the process as horrible and painful as possible.
There are very few Christians in America.
Go to war with Russia. That will make everything better.
The “final” diversion.