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Via 21stCenturyWire.com,

This really should be one of the biggest scandals in public health, but it’s given little attention – mainly because of the high-profile nature of the people and organisations involved.

The United Nations has been forced to admit that a major international vaccine initiative is actually causing the outbreak of the very disease it was supposed to wipe-out.

While international organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO) will regular boast about supposedly ‘eradicating polio’ with vaccines, the opposite seems to be the case. Their decades-long campaign to eradicate polio is now killing scores of innocent young people living in poor countries.

Now it seems that health officials are beginning to admit that their plan to stop ‘wild’ polio is backfiring, as scores children are being paralyzed a deadly strain of the pathogen derived from a live vaccine – causing a virulent of polio to spread.

Health officials administers polio vaccine to children at refugee camp in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Aug. 28, 2016 (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

This latest pharma-induced pandemic has broken out in the African countries of Chad and Sudan, and the culprit has been identified: a vaccine-derived polio virus type 2. Officials now fear this new dangerous strain could soon ‘jump continents,’ causing further deadly outbreaks around the world.

Shocking as it sounds, this Big Pharma debacle is not new. After spending some $16 billion over 30 years to eradicate polio, international health bodies have ‘accidentally’ reintroduced the disease to in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and also Iran, as the central Asia region was hit by a virulent strain of polio spawned by the corporate pharmaceutical vaccine distributed there. Also, in 2019, the government of Ethiopia ordered the destruction of 57,000 vials of type 2 oral polio vaccine (mOPV2) following a similar outbreak of vaccine-induced polio.

It’s important to note that the oral polio vaccine being pushed on to the African population by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a consortium which is supported and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

All of this should be a cause for concern, especially with western governments and transnational pharmaceutical giant all rushing to roll-out their new Gates-funded experimental coronavirus vaccine for the global population.

Currently, the first experimental COVID-19 vaccine is being tested on the African population through GAVI Vaccine Alliance, another organization funded by the Gates Foundation. A large round of human trials will take place in South Africa, locally managed by the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg—yet another Gates-funded institution.

This latest revelation from Africa should prompt media and health advocates to ask hard questions about the efficacy and safety of the much-hyped COVID ‘miracle’ vaccine.

AP News reports…

The World Health Organization says a new polio outbreak in Sudan is linked to an ongoing vaccine-sparked epidemic in Chad –  a week after the U.N. health agency declared the African continent free of the wild polio virus.

In a statement this week, WHO said two children in Sudan — one from South Darfur state and the other from Gedarif state, close to the border with Ethiopia and Eritrea — were paralyzed in March and April. Both had been recently vaccinated against polio. WHO said initial outbreak investigations show the cases are linked to an ongoing vaccine-derived outbreak in Chad that was first detected last year and is now spreading in Chad and Cameroon.

“There is local circulation in Sudan and continued sharing of transmission with Chad,” the U.N. agency said, adding that genetic sequencing confirmed numerous introductions of the virus into Sudan from Chad.

WHO said it had found 11 additional vaccine-derived polio cases in Sudan and that the virus had also been identified in environmental samples. There are typically many more unreported cases for every confirmed polio patient. The highly infectious disease can spread quickly in contaminated water and most often strikes children under 5.

In rare instances, the live polio virus in the oral vaccine can mutate into a form capable of sparking new outbreaks.

Last week, WHO and partners declared that the African continent was free of the wild polio virus, calling it “an incredible and emotional day.”

On Monday, WHO warned that the risk of further spread of the vaccine-derived polio across central Africa and the Horn of Africa was “high,” noting the large-scale population movements in the region.

More than a dozen African countries are currently battling outbreaks of polio caused by the virus, including Angola, Congo, Nigeria and Zambia.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, many of the large-scale vaccination campaigns needed to stamp out polio have been disrupted..

Read more here…

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…