Stephen Lendman | The price of goods and services is largely determined by supply and demand. The fundamental market principle especially applies to fungible commodities, virtually identical ones. Capping the price of commodities like oil and natural gas is doomed to fail. | Vladimir Putin, Energy Minister Alexander Novak and other senior Russian officials stressed that nations imposing a cap on Russian oil and/or gas will no longer be sold these commodities. Russia has many willing buyers of its oil, gas and other goods. What hegemon USA and its subservient vassals won’t buy at market prices will be sold to nations unwilling to go along with the harebrained scheme. On Thursday, Sergey Lavrov said the following: 💬 “We have no interest in what the price cap will be.” “We will reach direct agreements with our partners.” (The) ones “working with us will disregard caps and (we) will give no guarantees to those who impose such caps illegally.” Russia is “building a system (that’s) independent from neo-colonial” regimes. ● US/Western sanctions harmed EU member states, their main target, not largely self-sufficient Russia. ● Ahead of the announced price cap, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that 💬 imposing one “poses no threat to Russia’s revenue stream.” A cap will increase the price of oil and Russian revenue. Slamming the policy, Forbes magazine called it 💬 a “complex Rube Goldberg scheme” doomed to fail.

■ G7 prices cap on Russian oil start, Russia will only sell at market price
■ Italy explains why it can't abandon Russian gas
■ Western sanctions on Russian oil come into force
■ Russia won’t accept oil price cap – Kremlin (12/03/22)

Health Authorities in New Zealand are trying to take custody of a 4-month-old baby that needs heart surgery, because the parents don’t want the baby to receive blood from someone who has been vaccinated against COVID-19. | According to an interview with the parents, the parents are not refusing medical treatment, and agree with the doctors who state that their baby needs immediate heart surgery. They just want to donate their own blood from their own donors, and they claim they already have more than 20 pediatric donors who have been screened and could donate their blood for the needed surgery. But doctors are refusing, because they claim the parents’ beliefs are unfounded and that vaccinated blood is perfectly safe. The corporate media in New Zealand is branding the parents as crazy anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists.

An Iranian lawmaker said Sunday that Iran's government is “paying attention to the people’s real demands,” state media reported, a day after a top official suggested that the country’s morality police whose conduct helped trigger months of protests has been shut down. | The role of the morality police, which enforces veiling laws, came under scrutiny after a detainee, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, died in its custody in mid-September. Amini had been held for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress codes. Her death unleashed a wave of unrest that has grown into calls for the downfall of Iran's clerical rulers. ● Iran's chief prosecutor Mohamed Jafar Montazeri said on Saturday the morality police “had been closed," the semi-official news agency ISNA reported. The agency did not provide details, and state media hasn't reported such a purported decision. ■ Iranian prosecutor general indicates suspension of ‘morality police’

Trade unionists and leftists marched after the new government promised more arms for Kiev next year | Left-wing demonstrators took to the streets in Rome on Saturday, demanding higher wages and condemning the Italian government for renewing a decree allowing it to send weapons to Ukraine until 2024. ● Organized by Italy’s USB trade union and backed by a number of leftist political factions, the protest saw thousands of people assemble at the Piazza della Repubblica and march behind a banner reading “guns down, wages up." 💬 “The Meloni government is dragging us further and further into a spiral of war with unpredictable outcomes,” the USB wrote prior to the protest. “Italy is evidently a belligerent and active country in the conflict, despite the fact that the great majority of the population is against the war and the consequent sharp increase in military spending.”

Kiev Forces Strike Residential Area of Donetsk - Shell damages Church
Kiev's Nazis launched another HIMARS attack on Alchevsk

[The above text translated from Russian:] The Ukrainian armed forces shelled a dormitory in the Luhansk people's republic at night, which accommodated IDPs and construction workers rebuilding the city. The head of the administration, Albert Apshev, claimed three dead and 15 wounded. The Emergencies Ministry is working at the site and is still trying to get people out from under the rubble. Preliminary, the shelling also came from HIMARS, with one missile failing to explode. (Translated wit www.DeepL.com)

Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February, after the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian provocations. | Russia began striking Ukrainian infrastructure on October 10, two days after Ukraine's terrorist attack on Russia's Crimean Bridge. ● The strikes are carried out on power, defense industry, military command and communications facilities across Ukraine. Since then, air raid alerts have been issued in Ukrainian regions every day, sometimes throughout the country.

Mike Whitney | Bottom line: Foreign policy elites and their globalist allies have decided that the only way to arrest America’s accelerating economic decline and preserve the nation’s role as the world’s preeminent superpower, is through the use of military force. Clearly, that decision has already been made. What we’re seeing in Ukraine (and soon Taiwan) is further evidence that America’s hawkish powerbrokers are not going to relinquish their exalted position in the world without a fight. They are going to use every weapon in their arsenal to maintain their vice-like grip on power. This tells us that the transition away from the “rules-based system” will not be quick or bloodless. And– despite optimistic predictions to the contrary– there’s nothing inevitable about the “multipolar world”. Its emergence depends entirely on a war that is just beginning and whose outcome is still unknown.