UK - Fears are growing that the huge strikes which militant unions have unleashed at Felixstowe - Britain's biggest container port and gateway to global trade - will trigger widespread disruption to the UK supply chain, interrupt £700 million worth of trade and lead to shortages until Christmas. Around 1,900 members of Unite have begun eight days of industrial action at the port in Suffolk as hardline union bosses play chicken with the UK economy and potentially the living standards of millions of households in a dispute over pay. The unprecedented strike at Felixstowe, which handles nearly half of the containerised freight entering the country, is estimated to disrupt hundreds of millions of pounds in trade and trigger goods shortages, including at supermarkets such as Asda, Tesco and Marks & Spencer. Experts have warned that shortages could put pressure on the price of goods and fuel already-rampant inflation - perhaps even sending it through the roof by Christmas - as Britons face the most severe cost of living crisis in 60 years.

UNITED NATIONS - Small farmers are the world’s primary food providers. It’s imperative for policymakers to listen to them, not the big corporates. Worsening harvests, infertile soil and increasing food poverty are affecting the majority of small farmers across the globe, especially in the Global South. But the climate and food crises are not isolated phenomena. They are the result of a global capitalist system – and a neoliberal agenda – that has prioritised big corporate agricultural profits over people and the planet. “Most farmers can no longer produce adequate food for their families,” says Vladimir Chilinya. “Profit-making entities control our food systems… including the production and distribution of seed.” Wheat prices have surged by 59 percent since the start of 2022.

USA - Today, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) released its latest figures of global drug regulatory agency warnings about psychotropic drug risks, reporting a 34% increase in cautions about violence-related side effects and a 27% increase in self-harm and suicidal effects since June 2017. These figures raise questions about whether the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry has been misleading consumers for the past 30 years about the potential violence- and suicide-inducing effects of psychotropic drugs, in the same way patients were deceived into believing that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental disorders, requiring the drugs to correct it. University College London (UCL) researchers recently disproved the decades-old theory that a brain-based chemical abnormality causes depression. Since the early 1990s, the industry has propagated this fabricated theory, while also denying the drugs used to “treat” it can induce violent and suicidal behavior.

USA - A cemetery just outside the city of Philadelphia revealed that 90 percent of new burials are victims of the city’s burgeoning violent gun crime. Fox 29, a local news station, reported that “grave diggers at Friends Southwestern Burial Ground in Upper Darby can barely keep up with demand.” Fox 29 also noted that cemetery officials said they are “literally running out of room for burial plots.” Located in Delaware County, the cemetery is the final resting place of many of Mustafa Ali’s family and close friends who died due to violent gun crime. Ali told Fox 29 that many of the victims are minors, saying, “It’s a lot of 15, 16, 17-year-olds out here, people who didn’t even live to see 18.” Two men were killed in a shooting this year while they were driving in a funeral procession on their way to Friends Southwestern to honor the life of yet another shooting victim. The city has experienced a whopping 1,193 nonfatal shootings and 313 fatal shootings between the start of 2022 and August 18.

USA - Have you ever wondered what makes a person snap? What causes a normal, quiet, everyday citizen, loving mother, or doting father to lose it all and fight like a caged animal? What can cause a small village to rise up and rebel against an oppressive police force and start killing them? What is the switch that gets flipped that causes a city to pour two million people into the streets, chanting and demanding to be heard by their government?

RUSSIA - The United States has doomed the EU to hunger, cold and isolation by pressuring the bloc to cut its ties with Moscow, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Friday. He wrote on Telegram that Washington would “stop at nothing to cling to its power over the world as it throws under the bus the citizens’ welfare and the economies of European countries to achieve this end.” He noted that natural gas in the US costs $333 per 1,000 cubic meters. “At the same time, Washington sells it to Europe for a price which is 7.3 [times] higher, rendering the EU economy uncompetitive,” he wrote, adding that the eurozone’s annual inflation rate had hit a record 8.9%. The EU’s decision to phase out Russian energy supplies and cut economic ties with Moscow “have been made under Washington’s pressure,” the State Duma speaker claimed.

RUSSIA - The author and holocaust survivor, Victor Klemperer, identified two distinct styles of language that defined Hitler’s propaganda against the Jews: either “scornful derision” of the inferior race or “panic-stricken fear” of their threat to civilisation. Anti-Russian propaganda over the past centuries has similarly produced two contradictory positions – disdain for Russians as an uncivilised and backward people, and simultaneously an immeasurable threat looming over Europe. A state of affairs described by one writer as "Russophrenia: the idea that Russia is simultaneously about to fall apart, and also take over the world."

UK - Millions of people in the UK could find themselves unable to put food on the table and heat their homes this coming winter if the government doesn’t intervene, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Saturday. “We’ve seen nothing like this before,” Khan wrote on Twitter, referring to soaring energy prices and record inflation of more than 10%. “We’re facing a winter where for millions it won’t be about choosing between heating or eating but tragically being able to afford neither,” he warned. “This can’t happen,” the mayor insisted, adding that the British government “needs to step in so that people can meet their basic needs.” While the UK is not directly dependent on Russia for fuel, it’s been hard-hit by soaring prices on the global market.

UK - The outlook for the UK looks increasingly grim. There are few reasons to hope a new government can reverse the mounting consumer fears, stagflation and the growing sense of decline. Yesterday was cold, wet and grey. The sudden end of the glorious summer highlights how dark and bleak the mood in the UK has become.

RUSSIA - A three-day stoppage for repairs will begin on August 31, the Russian energy major supplier says. Russian energy giant Gazprom announced on Friday that transit of natural gas to the European Union via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will be halted from August 31 to September 2 for maintenance. “On August 31, the only working Trent 60 gas compressor unit will be shut down for three days for maintenance,” the company stated, noting that all repairs will be carried out jointly with specialists from the German manufacturer, Siemens. Gazprom added that “Upon completion of work and the absence of technical malfunctions of the unit, gas transportation will be restored to the level of 33 million cubic meters per day,” representing roughly 20% of the pipeline's full capacity.

VENEZUELA - The writing is on the wall for Europe in terms of this coming winter – it’s going to get ugly. With natural gas imports from Russia cut by 80% through Nord Stream 1 along with the majority of oil shipments, the EU is going to be scrambling for whatever fuel sources they can find to supply electricity and heating through the coming winter. Two sources that were originally suggested as alternatives were Iran and Venezuela. Increased Iranian oil and gas exports to the west are highly dependent on the tentative nuclear deal, but as Goldman Sachs recently suggested, such a deal is unlikely anytime soon as deadlines on proposals have not been met and the Israeli government calls for negotiators to ‘walk away.’ Venezuela had restarted shipments to Europe after 2 years of US sanctions under a deal that allows them to trade oil for debt relief. However, the country’s government has now suspended those shipments, saying it is no longer interested in oil-for-debt deals and instead wants refined fuels from Italian and Spanish producers in exchange for crude.

SWITZERLAND - All bets are off if severe blackouts take place, a top official warns. Swiss people may revolt and resort to looting if the Alpine nation is hit by a severe energy crunch this winter, the police chief of one of its cantons told local media on Saturday. Fredy Fassler, the head of the Security and Justice Department in the canton of St Gallen, told German-language daily Blick that a blackout would have “far-reaching consequences.” “Imagine, you can no longer withdraw money at the ATM, you can no longer pay with the card in the store or refuel your tank at the gas station. Heating stops working. It’s cold. Streets go dark. It is conceivable that the population would rebel or that there would be looting,” he said, adding that the country’s authorities should take measures to prepare for such extreme scenarios.

USA - If you tune in to the right frequency, you’ll be sure to hear the voices. Beneath the static of the daily horoscopes (“Your brightness can’t be dimmed because … Leo rising!”), the sound baths on the beach and the vaguely Eastern ambiance of tea “experiences,” the Woo Woo are communicating with the universe on their own terms. Angelenos tend toward the sublime; we seek out perspective. We like to make sense of the mood.

GERMANY - Germany is about to see its highest inflation in decades, the president of its central bank, Joachim Nagel, told the Rheinische Post on Saturday, adding that the country might fall into a recession. “An inflation rate of even 10% is possible in the autumn months,” Nagel told the paper, adding that the latest surge in energy prices caused by reduced supplies from Russia – Germany’s major supplier – is likely to drive consumer prices further up. “Double-digit inflation rates were last measured in Germany more than 70 years ago,” the Bundesbank president added. The nation saw a similar inflation level back in 1951 when it reached 11%, according to calculations made at that time, according to German media. The situation in the national economy is likely to remain tense next year as well, Nagel warned, adding that “the issue of inflation will not go away in 2023” since “supply bottlenecks and geopolitical tensions are likely to continue.”

USA - The US Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Birth. Since the United States was founded in 1776, she has been at war during 214 out of her 235 calendar years of existence. In other words, there were only 21 calendar years in which the US did not wage any wars. Pick any year since 1776 and there is about a 91% chance that America was involved in some war during that calendar year. No US president truly qualifies as a peacetime president. Instead, all US presidents can technically be considered “war presidents.” The US has never gone a decade without war. The only time the US went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression. Indeed, most of the military operations launched since World War II have been launched by the US. And American military spending dwarfs the rest of the world put together. No wonder polls show that the world believes America is the number 1 threat to peace.