USA - Thursday, during an interview with FBN host Maria Bartiromo, Representative Michael Waltz (Republican for Florida) warned if China were to successfully gain control of the waters around Taiwan, they would control the shipping routes for Japan, South Korea and partially Australia, which he estimated to be about 50% of the globe’s gross domestic product. “And what they’re betting on is if they have to use military force to take Taiwan, yes, they are developing the military capability to take out our planes and ships and the United States’ ability to intervene, but they also are betting that if they turn off our pharmaceuticals, our food supply, the solar panels, and the wind turbines, that the left are demanding that we buy, if they turn that off from Americans, then they’ll demand that we don’t get in the way. And they’ll essentially do what Sun Tzu, the famous military — Chinese military philosopher, always said, which is, subdue your enemy without firing a shot. So this is about an economic war way before it becomes any type of military conflict."

WALES, UK - Sab Samuel remembers looking in the mirror as a child and saying to himself: "Please don't be gay." The 27-year-old tours the UK as the role model he wished he had when he was growing up. His Drag Queen Story Hour events see him perform as Aida H Dee, reading stories to children in libraries. These events bring warmth and laughter — but recently many have been hijacked by small groups of demonstrators gathering outside the libraries and shouting homophobic slurs. The reading at Cardiff Central Library on Friday morning is no exception. Around a dozen people yell offensive words about drag queens, but they are dwarfed by a 50-strong counter-protest on the other side of a line of police officers. The counter-protesters wear colourful outfits, hold Pride flags and chant: "Say it loud, say it clear, drag queens are welcome here." As a child Sab was rarely shown gay role models, which meant he looked up to the strong women in his life. "The school nurse was someone I related to. Some of my nice English teachers were women I related to because I felt safe around them. Drag is also about celebrating these strong female roles."

SWITZERLAND - Yuval Noah Harari, historian, futurist, and World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser, said, “We just don’t need the vast majority of the population” in the early 21st century given modern technologies’ rendering human labor economically and militarily “redundant.” Harari’s remarks were made in an interview with Chris Anderson, the head of TED, published on Tuesday. He assessed widespread contemporary disillusionment among “common people” as being rooted in a fear of being “left behind” in a future run by “smart people.”

NETHERLANDS - If you have followed my reporting you probably know about the protests happening in the Netherlands. Tens of thousands of farmers have taken to the streets to protest against new climate goals which will force farmers to shut down their farms. They have set hay bales on fire on motorways and dumped manure and even blocked supermarket distribution centers. According to calculations done by the Finance ministry, a whopping 11,200 livestock farmers will be forced to shut down by the government to reduce nitrogen emissions in order to meet European environmental rules. Another 17,600 farmers would need to reduce the amount of animals they keep to meet these climate goals.

USA - Banks [Republican representative for Indiana], the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), released a memo detailing that, although the Inflation Reduction Act pales in comparison to the size of the $1.9 trillion Build Back Better Act, it remains a “transformative” bill that is “just as radical and destructive” as the Build Back Better bill.

GERMANY - It is unsurprising that German efforts to reverse its foreign policy are a slow process. This is a huge undertaking — but it is happening. Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed that a new era, or Zeitenwende – had begun for Germany. With it, one sacred cow after another of German foreign policy – on defense spending, arms deliveries, and more – were slaughtered. Yet such a reading ignores the sheer enormity of the task Germany faces and the difficulty with which it handles rapid change. After all, more than 30 years have passed since East and West Germany were reunified in 1990, and yet the economic, political, and personal scars remain. While the possibility of reunification was at least foreseen — Germany’s constitution, adopted in 1949, was originally meant to be temporary pending the ratification of an all-German constitution — the invasion that led to Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech was a surprise (at least for the German elite) that completely upended Germany’s view of the world.

USA - Fresh off her tour of Asia, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat for California) touted China as “one of the freest societies in the world.” While speaking with NBC “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, Pelosi emphasized the importance of her bipartisan trip to Taiwan, that was met with threats from the Chinese Communist Party. The speaker also described China as a “strong democracy.” “You know what? Why don’t we just show China that we support Taiwan? It is part of the US — the Taiwan Relations Act,” Pelosi stated. “We didn’t go there to change our policy. We still support the One China Policy. We go there to acknowledge the status quo is what our policy is. There was nothing disruptive about that. It was only about saying China is one of the freest societies in the world. Don’t take it from me. That’s from Freedom House.” “It’s a strong democracy; courageous people,” she continued. “I don’t know why it is — except there’s some commercial interests who would like to diminish the relationship."

UK - by Archbishop Cranmer: As the Lambeth Conference drew to a close, the Archbishop of Canterbury waded into ecumenism, declaring he believed that most Anglicans in England now recognise the Pope as “the father of the Church in the West”. If most Anglicans believe the Pope (of Rome) to be “‘the father of the Church in the West”, what’s the point of Anglicanism? If most members of the Church of England believe the Pope (or Rome) to be “the father of the Church in the West”, what’s the point of Anglo-Catholicism? Honestly, if Pope Francis is “the father of the Church in the West”, why is the Church of England faffing around with sisters, cousins and aunts? Why not just abandon all Anglican doctrine, formularies and liturgy and crawl back to the father in sackcloth and ashes so he can rejoice and kill the fatted calf?

INDIA - An Indian army post in the disputed Kashmir region was the site of a militant attack, with New Delhi's only Muslim majority area seeing three soldiers killed while two attackers died in the shootout. The incident on Thursday came just days after the third anniversary of the revocation of constitutional autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir by New Delhi and shortly before India is set to celebrate the 75th anniversary of independence from British colonial rule. India has struggled for decades to dampen secessionist sentiments in what had been its only Muslim-majority state. Many Kashmiris saw the loss of special autonomy in 2019 as another step in the erosion of the rights of Muslims by India's Hindu-nationalist government.

USA - Why is this happening? Each week, it seems like there is another new outbreak somewhere in the world that the experts are deeply concerned about. Prior to 2020, it was never like this. In the old days, the vast majority of us never even thought about when the “next pandemic” might happen because such a scenario seemed so improbable.

USA - Monday evening, news broke that the FBI conducted a raid on former President Donald Trump’s personal residence, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida. The legal justification for the raid is still somewhat hazy — with some indicating that it stems from the alleged mishandling of classified information — but as Joe Biden’s support plummets, the political reason for it has never been more clear. On July 28 in Compact Mag, Michael Anton, a former National Security Council staffer in the Trump administration, said, “The people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again.” In the same piece, Anton suggested the January 6 committee is laying the “groundwork for an indictment of Trump” and that the Justice Department might charge the former president with “seditious conspiracy.”

USA - Last month, legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong said the time to prepare is now for the chaos that is coming in 2023. The destabilization of America has been kicked into high gear early with the FBI raid on President Trump’s Florida home this week. Armstrong explains, “This really is unprecedented. In the United States, we are supposed to have civilized transfer of power. That’s all coming to an end. I am not being dramatic here. From a legal perspective, this is completely unprecedented. The danger of this is once they have done this, if the Republicans are ever allowed to get back into power, they would only end up doing the same thing to the Democrats… It’s striking a real deathblow to the very idea of a democracy. We are not, at least we were not until today, someplace like Guatemala where you throw the opposition in jail, kill them or whatever you do. This is what’s going on. They are so afraid of Trump running in 2024 that this is just over the top. Once they did this, there is no end.” Armstrong says the Democrats are in “dire straits” at the polls – and they know it. “We basically are sitting here in the middle of the collapse of Western civilization."

USA - The corruption is right out in the open now. The whole world was stunned by the vicious raid on Mar-a-Lago, and it is quite obvious why it was ordered. Even though close to half of the country wants Donald Trump to run for president again, the Washington establishment is going to do whatever it takes to keep that from happening. If the Washington establishment is successful, will our system of government be able to survive? I think that is a legitimate question at this point.

UNITED NATIONS - UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has voiced concerns over a potential disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear power station, after Russia accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the plant in the country’s southern Zaporozhye Region on Friday. Kiev claims that Moscow – which holds the area – is using the facility as a “shield” for its soldiers. “Any attack to a nuclear plant is a suicidal thing. I hope that those attacks will end, and at the same time I hope that the IAEA will be able to access the plant,” Guterres said at a press conference in Tokyo on Monday morning, without blaming either side. The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant in the country’s south was seized by Russian forces in late February, when Moscow launched its military campaign in Ukraine. The facility continues to operate with Ukrainian staff under Russian control.

USA - The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act over the weekend brings the total amount of spending in the pipeline by congressional Democrats to around $3.5 trillion since President Joe Biden took office, with the imposing tally coming as Americans struggle with an inflationary cost-of-living crisis. Senators passed the sweeping bill, estimated at $740 billion, in a 51–50 vote on August 7, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. The package, which Republicans have panned as a tax-and-spend bonanza and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said would have a negligible impact on inflation, next goes to the House for consideration. Assuming the bill clears all remaining legislative hurdles and gets signed into law by the president, this would bring the total amount of big-ticket spending by congressional Democrats under Biden’s watch to nearly $3.5 trillion.