Author: admin

For decades, a majority of Americans have been able to climb the economic ladder by earning higher incomes than their parents. These improving conditions are known as upward mobility, and form an important part of the American Dream.

However, as Visual Capitalist’s Marcu Lu explains below, each consecutive generation is finding it harder to make this ascent. In this graphic, we illustrate the decline in upward mobility over five decades using data from Opportunity Insights.

Understanding The Chart

This graphic plots the probability that a 30-year-old American has to outearn their parents (vertical axis) depending on their parent’s income percentile (horizontal axis). The 1st percentile represents America’s lowest earners, while the 99th percentile the richest.

As we move from left to right on the chart, the portion of people who outearn their parents takes a steep decline. This suggests that people born into upper class families are less likely to outearn their parents, regardless of generation.

The key takeaway, though, is that the starting point of this downward trend has shifted to the left. In other words, fewer people in the lower- and middle-classes are climbing the economic ladder.

Declines can be seen across the board, but those growing up in the middle-class (50th percentile) have taken the largest hit. Within this bracket, individuals born in 1980 have only a 45% chance of outearning their parents at age 30, compared to 93% for those born in 1940.

Stagnating Wage Growth a Culprit

One factor behind America’s deteriorating upward mobility is the sluggish pace at which wages have grown. For example, the average hourly wage in 1964, when converted to 2018 dollars, is $20.27. Compare this to $22.65, the average hourly wage in 2018. That represents a mere 11.7% increase over a span of 54 years.

However, this may not be as bad as it sounds. While the prices of some goods and services have risen over time, others have actually become more affordable. Since January 1998, for example, the prices of electronic goods such as TVs and cellphones have actually decreased. In this way, individuals today are more prosperous than previous generations.

This benefit is likely outweighed by relative increases in other services, though. Whereas inflation since January 1998 totaled 58.8%, the costs of health and education services increased by more than 160% over the same time frame.

Income Distribution

While wages have been stagnant as a whole, it doesn’t paint the full picture. Another factor to consider is America’s changing income distribution.

Like the data on upward mobility, the middle class takes the largest hit here, with its share of U.S. aggregate income falling by 19 percentage points. Over the same time frame, the upper class was able to increase its share of total income by 20 percentage points.

Is It All Bad News?

Americans are less likely to earn more than their parents, but this doesn’t mean that upward mobility has completely disappeared—it’s just becoming less accessible. Below, we illustrate the changes in size for different income classes from 1967 to 2016.

The upper middle class has grown significantly, from 6% of the population in 1967 to 33% in 2016. At the same time, the middle class shrank from 47% to 36% and the lower middle class shrank from 31% to 16%.

The data suggests that some middle class Americans are still managing to pull themselves up into the next income bracket—it’s just not an effect that was as broad-based as it’s been in the past.

Does The American Dream Still Exist?

The American Dream is the belief that upward mobility is attainable for everyone through their own actions. This implies that growth will be continuous and widespread, two factors that have seemingly deteriorated in recent decades.

Researchers believe there are numerous complex reasons behind America’s stagnating wages. A decline in union membership, for example, could be eroding employees’ collective bargaining power. Other factors such as technological change may also apply downwards pressure on the wages of less educated workers.

Income inequality, on the other hand, is clearly shown by the data. We can also refer to the Gini-coefficient, a statistical measure of economic inequality. It ranges between 0 and 1, with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 representing perfect inequality (one person holds all the income). The U.S. currently has a Gini-coefficient of 0.434, the highest of any G7 country.

Long story short, the American Dream is still alive—it’s just becoming harder to come by.

Authored by Steven Guinness,

A few weeks after the World Economic Forum launched their ‘Great Reset‘ initiative, it was followed up with the release of a new book titled, ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset‘, authored by the executive chairman of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, and Senior Director of the Global Risk Network at the institution, Thierry Malleret.

Having read the book I wanted to share with you some initial thoughts on the potential significance of the publication.

As touched upon in my last article, there are 5 planks to the Great Reset – economic, societal, geopolitical, environmental and technological – all of which the book covers in detail. But I want to focus largely on the conclusion, as it is here where the author’s motivations and rationale for championing a Great Reset, in the wake of Covid-19, become clearer.

Schwab and Malleret characterise the future direction of the world as ‘The Post Pandemic Era‘, a phrase that is repeated ad nauseam throughout. Rather than define it to a particular outcome, the authors opt instead to ask whether this new era will be marked by more or less cooperation between nations. Will countries turn inward resulting in the growth of nationalism and protectionism, or will they sacrifice their own interests for greater interdependence?

No firm prediction is made either way, but we do manage to gain a degree of insight into the authors’ way of thinking when they discuss what they call ‘the direction of the trend.’ They write that concerns over the environment (primarily through the prism of climate change) and the advancement of technology (integral to the Fourth Industrial Revolution) were pervasive long before Covid-19 entered the picture. With the economic and health implications of the lockdowns now ingrained within society, Schwab and Malleret contend that long established worries amongst citizens ‘have been laid bare for all to see‘ and ‘amplified‘ because of the pandemic. In other words, if minds were not concentrated on the problems and threats the world faced before Covid-19, then they certainly are now.

And whilst the direction of these trends on the environment and technology may not have changed, with the onset of Covid-19 it ‘got a lot faster.’ It is why Schwab and Malleret believe that these two issues in particular ‘will force their way onto the political agenda‘ due to increasing public pressure. A movement such as Extinction Rebellion is one example. Another is the rapid growth of the Fintech community which is leading people to question what constitutes money ‘in the digital age.’

As for where they see things going in the future, the suggestion is that current trends are pointing towards a world that will be ‘less open and less cooperative than before the pandemic.’

Effectively, the WEF have presented the world with two potential outcomes. The first is that the Great Reset can be achieved relatively peacefully with nations acquiescing to the objectives being pushed by global planners. The second outcome, they warn, would be far more disruptive and damaging. It would come about through countries failing to address the ‘deep rooted ills of economies and societies‘, which could see a reset being ‘imposed by violent shocks like conflicts and even revolutions.’

And, apparently, we do not have much time to decide our fate. What we have now, according to the authors, is ‘a rare and narrow window of opportunity to reflect, re-imagine and reset our world‘. If a ‘proper reset‘ is to be realised, it can only occur through an increased level of collaboration and cooperation between nations. As Schwab and Malleret see it, the alternative is a world entrenched in perpetual crisis which would eventually lead to the disintegration of the post World War Two ‘rules based global order‘ and a global power vacuum.

There is, therefore, a very real risk of the world becoming ‘more divided, nationalistic and prone to conflicts than it is today.’

One thing the authors do write on from a position of clarity is that never can the world return to normal. Or more to the point, be allowed to return to normal. Their view is that before Covid-19 took hold, a ‘broken sense of normalcy prevailed‘. The situation now is that the virus ‘marks a fundamental inflection point in our global trajectory.’ In a very short space of time it ‘magnified the fault lines that beset our economies and societies‘.

If it was not already obvious, then the authors confirm over the last few pages of the book that the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development programme is intertwined with the Great Reset. This is evident when studying the WEF’s Strategic Intelligence unit. Sustainable Development and the Great Reset go hand in hand.

For Agenda 2030 to be implemented successfully, Schwab and Malleret offer an alternative to the possibility of countries failing to come together. As you might expect, it revolves around collaboration and cooperation. In their eyes no progress can otherwise be made. Covid-19 offers the opportunity to ‘embed greater societal equality and sustainability into the recovery‘. And, crucially, this would ‘accelerate rather than delay progress towards 2030 Sustainable Development Goals‘.

But it does not end simply with the full implementation of Agenda 2030. Schwab and Malleret want to go further. Their aim is that the open exposure of weaknesses within existing global infrastructure ‘may compel us to act faster by replacing failed institutions, processes and rules with new ones that are better suited to current and future needs.’ To convey the importance of this statement, the authors state that this alone is ‘the essence of the Great Reset’. What they appear to be seeking is global transformation where systems and the age of the algorithm take precedent over political institutions. We are already beginning to see moves by major global institutions like the Trilateral Commission, the World Trade Organisation and the European Union to ‘reform‘ and ‘rejuvenate‘ both their work and membership. Covid-19 has undoubtedly straightened the hand of global planners and their quest for reformation.

As ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset’ was published, it was accompanied by an article written by Schwab and Malleret. Called, ‘COVID-19’s legacy: This is how to get the Great Reset right‘, they stated plainly that not only will a lot of things change forever, ‘the worst of the pandemic is yet to come’:

We will be dealing with its fallout for years, and many things will change forever. It has wrought (and will continue to do so) economic disruption of monumental proportions.

Indeed, no industry or business will be able to avoid the impact of the changes ahead. Either they adapt to fit in with the Great Reset agenda (assuming they have the resources to do so), or they will not survive. According to Schwab and Malleret, ‘millions of companies risk disappearing‘, whilst only ‘a few‘ e.g. corporate monoliths, will be strong enough to withstand the disruption. It is your smaller companies and independent run businesses that are faced with ruin, opening the door to a new era of mergers and acquisitions that will further erode consumer choice and competition.

Schwab and Malleret tell us that the worst of the pandemic is yet to come, and from an economic standpoint I would not doubt them. But let’s look at the health aspect for a moment. Global media coverage of Covid-19 has characterised it as a deadly virus that kills with impunity, and without the antidote of a vaccine could devour communities whole.

Perhaps surprisingly, the authors offer up a little fact based logic. They admit that Covid-19 is ‘one of the least deadly pandemics in the last 2000 years‘, and barring something unforeseen ‘the consequences of the virus will be mild compared to previous pandemics.’ At the time the book was published, 0.006% of the global population were reported to have died from Covid-19. But even this low figure is not altogether accurate.

In the UK for instance the way the death rate has been calculated has meant that people who have been diagnosed with the virus and then succumbed to an accident within 28 days of being tested will have their cause of death marked as Covid-19.

To quote Professor Yoon Loke, from the University of East Anglia, and Professor Carl Heneghan, from Oxford University:

Anyone who has tested COVID positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE COVID death figures.

Schwab and Malleret could not be clearer when they write that Covid-19 ‘does not constitute an existential threat or a shock that will leave its imprint on the world’s population for decades‘. As it stands the Spanish Flu and HIV/AIDS have a larger mortality rate.

It was not an uncontrollable spread of Covid-19 that caused governments around the world to shut down their national economies, but the data modelling of unaccountable technocrats like Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London that predicted hundreds of thousands of people were at immediate risk of dying without the imposition of social restrictions, which we now know to be a combination of social distancing and lockdown measures.

When Schwab and Malleret talk about Covid-19 leaving it’s imprint on the world, the truth of the matter is that it is the measures imposed in the name of Covid-19 that have caused widespread economic destruction, not the virus itself. That distinction is one that mainstream outlets in particular refuse to engage with.

In summary, if we are to take the authors at their word, then they see a rise in nationalism and protectionism off the back of Covid-19 as a detriment to the quest for a Great Reset. The much coveted Sustainable Development Goals could even be at risk should nations turn inward. IMF Managing Director has said the world has a choice between the Great Reset or the Great Reversal (the Great Reversal being ‘more poverty, more fragmentation, and less trade‘) I would argue that there is another way of looking at it.

In the book Schwab and Malleret describe how in an interdependent world – which is precisely the kind of world that global planners have been championing since at least the end of World War Two –  ‘risks conflate with each other, amplifying their reciprocal effects and magnifying their consequences‘. When nations are interdependent, ‘the systemic connectivity between risks, issues, challenges determines the future.’ It is the old cliche of dominoes falling. Once one falters it sets off a chain reaction, which was evidenced back in 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed.

The scale of change that globalists are calling for through the vehicle of a Great Reset, which by definition is global in nature, will in my view require the implosion of the current world order to lay the foundations for a new world order. The old must make way for the new. And the one method for how that could be achieved is through increased kickback against interdependence. Sustained crises offer many opportunities for global planners. The potential for a contested U.S. election, an upcoming no deal Brexit and warnings of ‘vaccine nationalism‘ are three eventualities that if brought to bear could be exploited and used to advance the cause for a Great Reset. I would say that the further the world appears from collaboration and cooperation, the more people are going to call for those very same things if they become increasingly desperate.

The authors say that there is only a narrow window of opportunity for the Great Reset. Let’s keep in mind though that so far it is only global institutions like the WEF that are promoting the initiative, not national administrations. When it starts to permeate politics is when you know the agenda is advancing. But what exactly will the economic and societal conditions be when the Great Reset becomes part of the global conversation? Has what we have seen up to now been enough to compel people to call for change on a global scale? Has there yet been enough degradation and material change to living standards for citizens to implore global institutions to take action? I would argue not.

Already ‘solutions‘ like Universal Basic Income have been touted. But as yet there is not a widespread clamouring for change.

But that time is coming.

Whether it be in the name of Agenda 2030 (aka Sustainable Development), The Green New Deal or The Great Reset, it would amount to largely the same outcome – the subjugation once and for all of national sovereignty where the nation state is subordinate to global governance.

It’s amazing what a little Fed intervention during a stock market pullback can do for the extremely wealthy, isn’t it?

In addition to her ex-husband’s wealth eclipsing $200 billion, MacKenzie Bezos (now known as MacKenzie Scott) has now become the world’s richest woman, with Amazon reaching a valuation of over $1.7 trillion in recent weeks. 

Bezos/Scott has tacked on a stunning $30.3 billion to her net worth in 2020 so far as a result of Amazon – and the overall market – moving higher despite depression-level macroeconomic realities caused by Covid-19.

She now has a net worth of about $67.4 billion, which pushes her past heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, who sports a net worth of $66.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

This makes Bezos/Scott the 12th richest person in the world. Recall, she received 20 million shares of Amazon as a condition of her divorce with ex-husband and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The couple’s combined fortune today would be worth over $270 billion. 

Scott has given away $1.7 billion to 116 organizations “that included four historically Black colleges and universities” this summer and has also “signed onto the Giving Pledge initiative, founded by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates,” according to CNN.

Recall, last week we also noted the ballooning wealth of billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Bill Gates as a result of the market’s rigged V-shaped recovery. 

Although both Mackenzie and her ex-husband had a tough week, losing billions…

Submitted by South Front,

On September 3, an explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) targeted a convoy with equipment of the US-led coalition in the southern Iraqi province of Dhi Qar.

Iraqi troops that were escorting the convoy suffered no casualties. According to local sources, no significant damage was caused to the equipment. Following the incident, security forces detained 2 suspects near the explosion site. The investigation is ongoing.

However, it is no secret that the attack was likely conducted by one of multiple pro-Iranian Shiite groups that surfaced in the country following the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and several prominent Iraqi commanders by a US strike in Baghdad in January.

Earlier, the Guardians of Blood (also known as Islamic Resistance in Iraq) released a video showing an IED attack on another convoy with US equipment. The attack took place near Camp Taji, north of Baghdad on August 23. During the last few months, such attacks became a regular occurrence across Iraq.

Pro-Iranian forces not only created a wide network of active cells that carry out these operations, but also successfully track movements of US forces and their equipment. According to local sources, a large number of Iraqi security personnel involved in the guarding of US forces and facilities in fact support the Iranian-backed campaign against the United States as well as the public demand of the full US troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Despite loud statements and the handing over of several US bases to the Iraqi military, Washington is not reducing its military presence in the country. Rather it’s regrouping its forces and strengthening the security of the remaining facilities. Tensions are on the rise not only in Iraq.

On September 3, Israel’s ImageSat International released satellite images showcasing the impact of the recent Israeli strikes on Iranian-linked targets near the Syrian capital of Damascus, and in the province of Homs. The report claimed that the strike on the Damascus International Airport destroyed a headquarters and a warehouse used by Iranian forces. The same area was the target of an Israeli attack in February. The strike on the T4 airport in Homs damaged the main runway and an apron. As a result, the air base was temporary placed out of service.

A few days earlier, the Israeli Defense Forces claimed that they had hit approximately 100 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in August. This supposedly included 35 hits on Hamas weapons manufacturing sites, along with 30 underground sites, 20 observation posts and 10 sites linked to the group’s aerial capabilities such as drones. According to the Israeli side, these strikes were a response to rocket and other attacks from the Gaza Strip. Palestinian groups claim that they just retaliate to permanent pressure and acts of aggression from the Israeli side.

Taking into account the war in Yemen, a large part of the Middle East has been turned into a battleground of the conflict between the Israeli-US bloc and the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance.

Social media has seeped into virtually all aspects of modern life. The vast social media universe collectively now holds 3.8 billion users, representing roughly 50% of the global population.

With an additional billion internet users projected to come online in the coming years, Visual Capitalist’s Aran Ali notes that it’s possible that the social media universe could expand even further.

How the Networks Stack Up

To begin, let’s take a look at how social networks compare in terms of monthly active users (MAUs)—an industry metric widely used to gauge the success of these platforms.

Here’s a closer look at individual social platforms, and their trials and tribulations:

Facebook

To put it mildly, Facebook has had its hands full. A flurry of companies are boycotting Facebook’s ads, while the platform struggles to fend off the spread of misinformation.

Yet, its stock price continues to advance to new highs while the traditional economy faces less than rosy forecasts. Facebook still possesses the largest cohort of users, inching closer to the 3 billion MAU mark—a breakthrough yet to be achieved by any company.

Snapchat

Snapchat and founder Evan Spiegel have had a bumpy road since their IPO in 2017. The stock price reached its nadir near $4 in 2018, reflecting investor concerns tied to the introduction of Instagram Stories. In recent times, the stock has advanced past the $20 mark, although there is still long-term unclarity around monetization and profitability.

YouTube

YouTube competes head on against traditional television and streaming programs for eyeballs. The platform raked in revenues of $15.1 billion in 2019, nearly double their figures in 2017.

Parent company Alphabet has invested in YouTube with new rollouts like YouTube Music (merged with what was once Google Music) and YouTube Premium—a bundled subscription-based platform providing music, ad-free content, and YouTube Originals. By the looks of it, the future of YouTube will be much more than just videos.

WeChat

The biggest social platform in China, WeChat has flourished, now holding a whopping 1.2 billion MAUs. As part of the Tencent Holdings conglomerate, they belong to the BATX group that is seen to lock horns with America’s Big Tech.

Reddit

There have been whispers of a Reddit IPO on Wall Street for some time now. While such an event has not yet materialized, Reddit’s success certainly has. With 430 million MAUs relative to 330 million in 2018, the company continues to attract a larger audience. The notion of community has taken on a different meaning in the digital age, and Reddit represents this transition with their ever-growing network of users.

Instagram

Instagram has been vital to Facebook’s success, since its $1 billion acquisition in 2012. The platform attracts a younger audience compared to Facebook and it has demonstrated an ability to remain versatile, specifically by implementing Instagram Stories and Reels.

Twitter

Busy schedules don’t seem to faze Jack Dorsey who has not one, but two CEO jobs in Twitter and Square. Twitter has been able to achieve profitability in the last two years, reporting net income figures of $1.2 and $1.5 billion in 2018 and 2019 respectively. They no doubt have their work cut out for them as they continue to combat fake news and similar controversies on their platform.

TikTok

If any publicity is good publicity, then 2020 has been TikTok’s year. Headlines include privacy breaches with alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party, a banning of the app by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and now, talks of a partial U.S. acquisition. Potential acquirers include leaders Microsoft, Twitter, and Oracle.

Social Media Under Trial?

Despite the list of headwinds social media has faced, about half of the world is now on it—and there seems to be no end in sight for future growth.

How have companies with exposure to the social media universe fared in 2020 so far?

Widespread participation in social media comes with its fair set of problems. Some companies such as Facebook have found themselves in the crosshairs on both sides of the political spectrum. As concerns grow around privacy and data, social media will be front and center in shaping the future of government, business, and politics.

Only time will tell just how high user counts will reach. The long-term trajectory suggests there’s more room left in the engine. There are still parts of the world that are just beginning to possess the technological infrastructure for social media to be a possibility. It’s plausible future growth will come from that avenue.

If stock prices of companies linked to social media are of relevance, their performance this year paired with the fact that they are trading near all-time highs supports such a growth thesis.

Authored by Pat Buchanan, op-ed via Townhall.com,

When U.S. cities erupted after the death of George Floyd, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was in the vanguard of the protests, renaming a section of downtown Black Lives Matter Plaza, and painting the name in letters on the street so huge they could be seen from space.

Thursday, however, Bowser awoke to those same BLM protesters yelling outside her home, denouncing a “D.C. police murder of a Black Man,” and demanding the mayor fire Police Chief Peter Newsham.

18-year-old Deon Kay had been shot and killed Wednesday afternoon in an encounter with cops. While this was the fifth shooting by D.C. cops this year, it was the first fatality.

There have been 130 other homicides in D.C. in 2020, mostly of Black folks that involved other Black folks, and not the cops.

“We believe the suspect had a gun at the time,” Newsham told reporters.

Witnesses challenged the chief’s claim.

But this is only the latest problem bedeviling Bowser.

While she has been blaming “outside agitators” for the mayhem in the city, the Washington Times reports that 82 percent of the 541 people arrested for riot-related crimes were residents of D.C., Maryland or Virginia.

On Tuesday, the mayor’s office made national news by releasing a list of monuments and memorials in Washington that should be “removed, replaced or contextualized.”

Among them are the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial and Columbus’ statue at Union Station.

The name of Alexander Graham Bell should be erased from Bell Multicultural High School, Bowser’s working group said. Like Winston Churchill and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the inventor of the telephone believed in eugenics.

Presidents James Madison, author of the Constitution, John Tyler, who annexed Texas, and Zachary Taylor, who led the U.S. army to victory in the Mexican-American War, are also candidates for having their memorials and monuments “replaced, removed or contextualized.”

Woodrow Wilson’s name should be removed from Wilson high, and the names of Founding Father Ben Franklin and author of the national anthem Francis Scott Key should be erased from buildings named in their honor.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the D.C. nonvoting representative in Congress, explained that the working group formed by Bowers to look into monuments and memorials did not mean the statues were to be pulled down but that plaques should be added informing visitors that these sites are dedicated to men who had a perverted view of human rights.

Norton wants the Emancipation Proclamation statue featuring Abe Lincoln and an unshackled slave, unveiled at an 1876 ceremony attended by President Grant, at which Frederick Douglass spoke, removed. She also wants the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square removed.

Yet, it was General Jackson who saved the Union from being torn apart at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, while the defenders of Washington and the White House fled from the attacking British, letting the nation’s capital be burned in August of 1814.

D.C. officials are today running away from the plans of the mayor’s working group, but those plans testify powerfully to what an act of folly and a capitulation to political correctness it would be for the Congress to vote statehood for D.C., as Nancy Pelosi’s House did this year.

D.C. is unrepresentative of America and undeserving in any way to be raised to statehood.

Since given the franchise 60 years ago, it has never voted Republican for president. Its three electoral votes have gone to the Democrats in every election since LBJ in ’64. Republican nominee Donald Trump got 4 percent of the D.C. vote. Hillary Clinton got 90 percent, a margin of 22-1.

Moreover, D.C. has a smaller population than 19 other American cities and is smaller in geographic size than 150 other U.S. cities. Rhode Island, our smallest state, is geographically 20 times the size of D.C.

The D.C. government has been in the headlines countless times for personal scandals and financial crises. One four-term mayor, Marion Barry, was sent to prison and returned to be reelected to office.

As for D.C. public schools, the problem is not that they are named for presidents but that they produce some of the lowest test scores in the nation.

More significant, as the protests, attended by riots since May, have shown, the D.C. government, a hostile province when a Republican is in the White House, is the domicile of a permanent regime of leftist and radical media, tens of thousands of federal and city bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists, all yoked to big government.

As the “peaceful protests” of June and July showed, with Georgetown sacked and statues demolished, D.C.’s government is an incompetent custodian of the nation’s historic monuments and memorials, and incapable of protecting the White House.

What does Joe Biden, who approved of the removal of statues of Confederate soldiers, generals and statesmen, think of D.C.’s scheme to “remove, replace or contextualize” the statues of so many men who held the office he now seeks?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a new report warning about a “potential” electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the U.S. 

DHS’s warning published Thur. (Sept. 2), or about 60 days until the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, indicates there are “evolving threats against the American homeland, most recently highlighting efforts to combat an Electromagnetic Pulse attack which could disrupt the electrical grid and potentially damage electronics.” 

The department released an EMP status report via the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that said the “key actions to address known EMP-related vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure.” 

CISA said an EMP attack could “disrupt, degrade, and damage technology” embedded in critical infrastructure systems. Widespread blackouts could be seen if an EMP was to damage the nation’s electrical grid, resulting in additional flare-ups of socio-economic turmoil. 

“EMP attacks are part of the emerging threats against our nation and demand a response,” said Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli.

“That is why DHS is taking these contingencies very seriously, working diligently to mitigate our risks and equipping our state and local partners with the resources they need to do the same. We’ve made significant progress and look forward to work ahead,” Cuccinelli said. 

CISA Director Chris Krebs said top priorities of the agency is to mitigate threats associated with EMPs: 

“Over the past year, we have worked with interagency and industry partners to identify the footprint and effects of EMP threats across our National Critical Functions, and are developing sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective approaches to improving the Nation’s resilience to EMPs,” Krebs said.

To combat these emerging threats, President Trump signed an executive order in March 2019, delegating power to the White House for EMP preparedness. 

We recently quoted Peter Vincent Pry, ex-chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, who wrote an op-ed that said the virus pandemic from China has “exposed dangerous weaknesses in U.S. planning and preparation for civil defense protection and recovery, and those weaknesses surely have been noticed by our potential enemies: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and international terrorists.”

Pry warned that “China has been planning to defeat the U.S. with an EMP and cyber “Pearl Harbor” attack for a quarter-century.” 

DHS nor CISA gave any more information on ‘evolving EMP threats’ on the American homeland. There was not mention of whether the threat could be from a solar storm or EMP weapons. However, the EMP status report did mention DHS is currently running EMP pilot tests to assess EMP vulnerability on infrastructure: 

“Finally, DHS is partnering with other federal departments and agencies, state, local, tribal, and territorial entities and the private sector to field test a more resilient critical infrastructure. There are a number of field demonstration (or pilot) projects planned and underway by both DHS and DOE to assess EMP vulnerability and then deploy, evaluate, and validate EMP mitigation and protection technologies.

“One such pilot is the San Antonio Electromagnetic Defense Initiative, designed to show how an entire region can become resilient against an EMP. These pilots are multisector, multifunction efforts, seeking to ensure key capabilities continue to function in a post EMP environment and that by maintaining those key functions we can expedite a full recovery. Working with federal interagency partners, DHS will play a major role in ensuring communications systems remain operational and, by ensuring key systems which are protected against EMP, are also protected against other threats such as cyber-attacks.” – EMP status report

One EMP-expert and friend-of-the-site summed up the report perfectly:

“We recognize the threat and we’re working on it and you don’t need to know any more than that, thank you for asking…”

The warning comes just two months before the U.S. presidential election…

Authored by Tom Luongo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The Black Revolution is in full swing in the U.S. Over the next sixty days we will be treated to the greatest political show on Earth as the Democrats and their handlers in The Davos Crowd pursue the biggest lie since Climate Change.

The events of 2020 are lining up for a climax to this story that ends with only one outcome, a contested election which fuels a coup attempt after the election results come in on November 3rd.

And because of this now obvious plan, setting up a false flag around the election is the most likely means to produce election results close enough to support this course of action.

I’m not the only one thinking in these terms at this point. Joaquin Flores, writing for Fort Russ, mused similarly last week.

As the polls shift towards Donald Trump and the Democrats run around concocting fairy tales after allowing Joe Biden out of his gimp cellar long enough for people to see how far he has fallen mentally, I’m nearly convinced this is likely.

Color revolutions unfold in predictable stages. The first stage is destroying the local economy. Usually this means the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury pull back on available dollars through tight monetary policy and sanctions to create mass unemployment in the target nation.

Then foment violence from the youth who are disproportionately affected by the economic destruction after NGO’s lay the ideological foundation for revolution. Use the most convenient pretext. In the U.S. it means stoking racism and hatred of ‘the rich.’

Pick a color under which to unite them, in this case black and blame the leader for every single bad thing that happens, which is usually the work of agent provocateurs who amplify the organic frustration into targeted attacks which are then amped up by the media into a news story.

If the leader is stupid he acts like any garden-variety paranoid dictator by clamping down on the violence making him easy prey for the media to brand him a dictator.

Then bringing a mob to the capital is easy, because now there are too many people to be effectively policed and the potential for violence to boil the whole thing into a coup is very real.

All of this works if the oligarchs who run the political system of the target country are on board with this. In the U.S., it’s obvious from the response from all major corporations they approve this message. Note how it failed in Belarus recently for lack of this corporate sponsorship.

Looking at the way the Democrats have positioned themselves for this election it is clear that they are preparing the field for this outcome after election day.

They used the lockdowns to create an army of ready-made protestors with nothing else to do and little hope for the future.

They structured all aid to the middle class the run out during the height of the election campaign while blocking any further assistance even though the Treasury Dept. raised nearly $2 trillion to deploy as support and stimulus.

The media endlessly stoked fear over COVID-19 to push as many voters to consider mailing their votes in (or create the illusion that is what will happen) to delay certification of the election on election night.

But to his credit, President Trump hasn’t acted the way he was supposed to. He has governed this chaos exactly the way a majority of Americans want him to, as a Federalist. Even though he has the authority to do so, he’s refrained from sending Federal troops into rioting cities, laying bare just how much local authorities are aiding the violence.

He didn’t institute national lockdowns and draconian restrictions due to COVID-19, instead offering aid and allowing the data to eventually vindicate him to the point where even the CDC is now backtracking on how dangerous the virus actually is.

And his opponents in New York, for example, now look like out-of-touch, lying grandma murderers.

Eventually crisis fatigue sets in, people adjust to the new circumstances and the worst parts of their fear abates. And even if they don’t look at the new data, they realize enough costs have been born and it’s time to move on with our lives.

That’s what is now showing up in the polling data, even though it is still highly suspect. And this puts Trump in the driver’s seat for the election on November 3rd. As of today, the election looks like it is his to lose.

And yet the Democrats insist that the election will not be resolved on election day. In fact, it’s obvious they are prepping the narrative that Trump will only appear to win on election night but, in fact, the torrent of mail-in ballots will change the outcome of the election over the next few days.

Of course, this would fly in the face of decades of electoral statistics where the outcome of the election is almost certainly decided by the time 25% of the votes have been counted and a run-rate to completion can be calculated.

A report from Axios outlines what we can expect.

A top Democratic data and analytics firm told “Axios on HBO” it’s highly likely that President Trump will appear to have won — potentially in a landslide — on election night, even if he ultimately loses when all the votes are counted.

Why this matters: Way more Democrats will vote by mail than Republicans, due to fears of the coronavirus, and it will take days if not weeks to tally these. This means Trump, thanks to Republicans doing almost all of their voting in person, could hold big electoral college and popular vote leads on election night….

… By the numbers: Under one of the group’s modeling scenarios, Trump could hold a projected lead of 408-130 electoral votes on election night, if only 15% of the vote by mail (VBM) ballots had been counted.

And that’s what concerns me most. Because if all of this prep work has failed and Trump clearly wins an electoral college victory, but they are planning to harvest votes for days afterwards, how do they shift the dynamic back in Biden’s favor between now and then to keep the election close enough for them to steal?

More violence is how.

We are two weeks away from White House Siege beginning on September 17th. Organized by Adbusters, which is a front for George Soros’ partner in crime, David Brock and Media Matters For America, White House Siege is a planned 50-day protest in Lafayette Square in Washington D.C., ostensibly to protest President Trump ‘stealing the election.’

This is a ready-made recipe for a Maidan-like orgy of violence in the nation’s capital to create a false flag event which reflects badly on Trump. Think snipers on rooftops shooting both protestors and cops similar to what happened on the Maidan square in Kiev in 2014.

D.C. is not a state. It’s not governed by the same rules as the states, where the Governors are in charge.

Trump can, and in my mind should, as a matter of strategy, take control over D.C. to keep to possibility of violence to a minimum. D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser is trying to walk back her support of the protests after the violence after the Republican National Convention by urging U.S. Attorneys in D.C. to charge the people the police arrest.

This is Bowser trying to publicly keep Trump from doing exactly what I just said he should do. Because with cities looted and burned, with Democrat politicians losing the respect of their constituencies they have no political legs left to stand on.

Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York said in a press conference Trump better bring an army if he plans to set foot in his state. This is tantamount to sedition, for which a case can be made by nearly every major Democrat for statements made in the past six months.

“He better have an army if he thinks he’s gonna walk down the street in New York. New Yorkers don’t want to have anything to do with him,” the Democrat said, all but threatening the commander-in-chief.

Meanwhile Cuomo is now the target of a Dept. of Justice investigation into his handling of the COVID-19 crisis while Trump withholds Federal funds from the state, which prompted Cuomo’s bravado.

Between this and Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling Republicans “domestic enemies of the state” is the kind of language you don’t come back from. The Democrats and the U.S. Deep Stat are all in on removing Trump from office by any means necessary.

I don’t think the worst of the violence is behind us after Kenosha. I think the worst is still in front of us.

The great reset could be underway as a “social-bomb” explodes across American cities due to the virus pandemic, depressionary unemployment, and social unrest. Much of the destabilization is happening in Democratically controlled metropolitan areas as residents flee for suburbia and or rural communities.

About five months into the exodus, city dwellers are continuing to leave big cities. We’ve noted this trend could be red hot for a couple of years. 

As the outbound migration from cities gains momentum, people are now leaving in groups, pooling capital together, buying land, and building towns of their own. This is precisely what’s happening in Georgia. 

Georgia-based realtor Ashley Scott started The Freedom Georgia Initiative with her investor friend, Renee Walters, calling the movement to purchase land an opportunity to build a safe town for black people to thrive.

In total, 19 black families pooled together funds and bought nearly 100 acres in Toomsboro, Georgia, with plans to create a “new black Wall Street” and a community where black people aren’t murdered by police.

“We figured we could try to fix a broken system, or we could start fresh,” Scott wrote in a post on the about section of the initiative’s Facebook page. 

“Start a city that could be a shining example of being the change you want to see. We wanted to be more involved in creating the lives we really want for our Black families, and maybe, just maybe, create some generational wealth for ourselves by investing in the land. Investing in creating a community that is built around our core values and beliefs,” she continued. 

Scott encouraged black families to ‘build the town for ourselves’, but while doing, tap into the US municipal bond market and “go get all the money” the US has to offer.

“Now is the time to organize ourselves on the local scale and build new cities. Now is the time to vote locally and nationally. Now is the time of the new Black Independent Party. Now is the time for you and your Black families and friends to go build independent private assets, residuals, trusts and yields.

“Amass land, develop affordable housing for yourself, build your own food systems, build manufacturing and supply chains, build your own home school communities, build your own banks and credit unions, build your own cities, build your own police departments, tax yourselves and vote in a mayor and a city council you can trust. Build it from scratch! Then go get all the money the United States of America has available for government entities and get them bonds. This is how we build our new Black Wall Streets. We can do this. We can have Wakanda! We just have to build it for ourselves!” – The Freedom Georgia Initiative

The initiative shared a Facebook post on Monday afternoon updating the status on their new land. 

The group wrote in a post:

“This is how one family out of 19 decided to enjoy their Sunday on the unincorporated land of what’s soon to be known as Freedom Georgia.” 

Is the great reset where people flee major cities and construct micro-communities of their own? 

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Since the pandemic lockdowns were first implemented in the US I have been more concerned with the government and central bank response than the virus itself. As I have noted in past articles, the pandemic restrictions and subsequent economic and social crisis events they help to create will cause far more deaths than Covid-19 ever will. Not only that, but the actions of the Federal Reserve continue to con the American public into believing that there is some kind of “plan” to stop the crash that THEY engineered.

The only agenda of the Fed is to increase the pain in the long term; they have no intention of actually preventing any disaster.

This is evidenced in comments by voting members of the Fed, including Neel Kashkari who recently argued for the enforcement of hard lockdowns for at least six weeks in the US, all because the US savings rate was going up. Meaning, because Americans are saving more in order to protect themselves from economic fallout, Kashkari thinks we should be punished with an economic shutdown that would force us to spend whatever we have been able to save.

Do you see how that works?

Fed members and government officials demand hard lockdowns, depleting public savings and destroying small businesses. Then, the public has to beg the Fed and the government for more and more stimulus measures so that they can survive. The people and the system become dependent on a single point of support – fiat money creation and welfare. Yet, the evidence suggests that this strategy is failing to do much of anything except stall the inevitable for a very short time.

If the goal was really to reduce the pain of the pandemic as much as possible, then the strategy should be to keep the economy as open as possible and let the virus run its course.  By initiating lockdowns, all we are doing is extending the economic damage over the span of years instead of months.  We can deal with the comparatively minimal deaths associated with the virus; we cannot handle the disaster that is about to befall the financial system.

The small business sector appears to be the most fragile element of the economy right now. The PPP loans that were supposed to shore up small businesses failed miserably, with data showing only 13% to 19% of applicants getting a loan of any kind. Over 64% of small businesses that received a loan are also worried about being approved for loan forgiveness. In other words, of the few small business owners that got a PPP loan more than half do not have the ability to pay the loan back if they end up not qualifying for exemption.

This problem does not seem to be affecting the corporate sector, however. International companies are enjoying incredible cash infusions from the Fed through overnight loans as well as Fed stimulus propping up stock markets (at least for now). Tech companies in particular are enjoying a rush of investment as the assumption in the daytrading world is that the central bank will not allow these companies to fail.

Maybe they are right, but stock markets today DO NOT reflect the health of our system in any way. Stock tickers are a placebo, a Pavlovian trigger for the public, a tool to make people believe that the situation is improving merely because share values are going up. This is not the case.

Small businesses in the US account for around 50% of all employment and job creation. They are a vital part of the economy. Yet, government and central bank measures seem to have left them out in the cold to die.

To be sure, the $600 weekly unemployment enhancement created through the CARES Act passed in March did boost consumer spending, primarily on durable goods such as computers, TVs, cellphones, etc. Spending on services declined though, which is where the majority of small businesses make their money. And, considering the fact that most durable goods are manufactured overseas, this means that the majority of stimulus dollars that went to consumers did not go into the US economy, but foreign exporters like China.

Now, the unemployment enhancement has ended and its return is in question. It will be interesting to see if the boost to purchases of goods will continue without that extra $600 weekly stimulus. Consumer spending rose in July by 1.9%, but this was already a weak print compared to the increases during the previous two months.

Unemployment numbers have declined due to soft reopenings in numerous states, and at the very least some part time jobs appear to be returning, but nowhere near the level needed to erase the millions of jobs lost since February after the initial lockdowns began. If you count U-6 measurements and unemployed people who have been removed from the rolls for being jobless for too long, the REAL unemployment rate is closer to 30% of working age Americans. This is essentially Great Depression levels of joblessness.

US GDP has continued to decline by 32% according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (despite statistical rigging by the Fed and government agencies), and while it’s possible that stimulus slowed the effects of GDP loss, there is no indication what the trillions of dollars created by the Fed have actually bought other than a few months of time and a massive bubble in the stock market.

The economy cannot survive extreme lockdown conditions for any length of time, let alone almost two more months. And, if you want to know what it means when elites in government and central banking call for a “hard lockdowns”, just look at Level 4 restrictions in places like Australia and New Zealand, where only one person can leave home at any given time, can only travel 3 miles from home and only for food and supplies, and anyone caught not wearing a mask is subject to arrest or a $10,000 fine.

This mother in Melbourne, Australia was arrested because of a Facebook post calling for protests over the lockdown restrictions.  She later had to take the post down and offered an apology, saying she did not know it was illegal to post such statements on social media:

Yeah, this kind of Orwellian response will do wonders for any economic recovery, and this is what Kashkari is calling for in the US.  It’s almost as if the Fed and certain politicians WANT a financial collapse in America…

The REAL solution is to stop the lockdown restrictions altogether. If the goal is truly to protect as many American lives as possible for the “greater good”, then the pandemic response must stop. Luckily, it seems that more and more people are beginning to see through the facade and are rejecting the restrictions. Even in Europe and Australia there have been some signs of protest and rebellion. The problem is that, at least in terms of the economy, it may be too late.

We have to consider the fact that once a large portion of the business sector (like small businesses) takes a massive hit like the one they have suffered over the past several months, many such businesses and jobs will simply not come back. There are many reasons for this, but primarily it’s a matter of debt. The average small business owner carries almost $200,000 in debt for 3-5 years before he reaches profitability or breaks even. This is assuming that there are no major economic catastrophes in that time.

With the pandemic, the riots, the restrictions, etc., businesses will have to take on much more debt with little guarantee of recovery in the next few years let alone the next few months.  Chapter 11 business bankruptcies in the US rose over 26% in the first half of 2020 alone.

Even if lockdown restrictions were completely eradicated tomorrow, a large number of businesses would go bankrupt anyway.  The “Retail Apocalypse” has been growing over the past decade, LONG before the coronavirus was on issue.  Thousands of businesses shut down last year and tens of thousands more are slated to close this year.   The virus and lockdowns simply accelerated the existing decline.

This is why large banks are cutting off loans to business owners and consumers right now; they know exactly where all this is headed.

Banks act as middlemen for the PPP loans financed by the Fed, yet those loans are not getting to most businesses. Banks have also cut credit card lending in the past few months, and general lending has crashed. All of this despite low interest rates for banks receiving stimulus injections from the Fed. Where is all of the money going? They are keeping it for themselves, buying up hard assets as well as propping up the stock market. As noted above, the elites have NO INTENTION of saving the economy, only themselves.

If the stimulus is not getting to the main-street economy then the only purpose it serves is to give the public a false sense of comfort.  The people who gain the most from the ongoing pandemic chaos are establishment elites that want severe restrictions on personal liberty.  Not to mention, the virus and lockdowns offer a convenient scapegoat for the financial crisis that was already brewing due to central bank mismanagement of stimulus, inflation and interest rates. The bottom line is, the banks do not want the crisis to end.  Why would they?  The longer the panic continues, the more they benefit.

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