GERMANY - Germany is the fourth largest economy in the world. They should not have to be defended by the United States. They can defend themselves. Trump threatened to pull the US out of NATO. It would not have mattered if he did. The threat of Russia is more than a bit exaggerated and Friedman made that point as well. Whether or not Germany and the EU contribute 2% to their defense as Trump wanted, US troops do not belong in Germany or Europe in general. The US cannot afford and should not try to be the world's policeman. If the EU believes Russia is a threat, it should do something about it. As long as the US provides all the military support the EU needs, why should the EU do anything? Right or wrong, Germany is more than willing to make natural gas deals with Russia and telecommunication deals with China. Why should the US be defending Germany and the EU in this setup?

TAIWAN - In the statement, United States spokesperson and former CIA intelligence officer Ned Price warned China that the US was “very concerned” by its “provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations, and undermines regional peace and stability.” Claiming the US had “an abiding interest in peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” Price said it would “continue to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability” and affirmed that its commitment to Taiwan was “rock solid.” “We will continue to stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity, security, and values, and deepen our ties with democratic Taiwan,” the statement concluded. Claiming the US had “an abiding interest in peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” Price said it would “continue to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability” and affirmed that its commitment to Taiwan was “rock solid.” “We will continue to stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity, security, and values, and deepen our ties with democratic Taiwan,” the statement concluded.

AFGHANISTAN - There have been multiple reports of military planes arriving at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, just hours after images emerged showing that power was restored to the base for the first time since US forces evacuated the stronghold in July. Images circulating on social media appear to show the airbase's floodlights blazing in the distance, amid reports that several military planes have taken off and landed at the base in recent hours. Several sources suggest that the aircraft are Chinese, given the Taliban are not thought to possess the expertise needed to power the base or maintain and fly several military aircraft. It comes after Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center think tank, said China would likely be very interested in occupying the airbase following the US pullout. US forces in Afghanistan abandoned their main base at Bagram airport overnight in July - shutting off the lights and slipping away into the night without telling government forces who were supposed to take it over. A move to occupy Bagram airbase would go towards strengthening relations with the Taliban and further embarrassing America.

Twenty banks (some suffering repeated outages), six countries (one in lockdown), five continents, tens of millions of unhappy customers. There’s never a good time for your bank’s IT system to go down. But few can be worse than in the middle of a lockdown. It’s difficult to leave home, your local branch may not be open, and as a result you are more reliant than ever on digital banking services. In New Zealand, now in its seventh week of nationwide lockdown, one of the country’s largest lenders, Kiwibank, went down on Tuesday, leaving many of its customers in the lurch. It is one of a string of IT outages the bank has suffered over the past three weeks, after a DDoS attack on New Zealand’s third largest Internet provider caused IT crashes at a number of lenders, including Commonwealth Bank and Anz Bank. In a DDoS attack hackers overwhelm a site by getting huge numbers of bots to connect to it all at once, rendering it inaccessible. Servers are not breached, data is not stolen but it can still cause plenty of disruption.

USA - Now even the mainstream media is admitting that the shortages are going to get even worse. Earlier this year, the talking heads on television were assuring all of us that the US economy would be “booming” by the end of 2021, but obviously that hasn’t happened. Instead, we are facing growing shortages and rampant inflation. In fact, one measure of inflation just hit the highest level in nearly 40 years. But of more immediate concern is the fact that shortages are intensifying all over the nation. We have never seen anything like this before, and the mainstream media is openly telling us that the worst is yet to come.

USA - With a potential default looming for the US in October, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday she would just as soon see the power over debt limits taken away from Congress. A bill introduced in May would repeal the national debt ceiling, and Yellen said “yes, I would” when asked during a House hearing if she backs the effort. She noted Congress makes the decisions on taxes and spending, and should provide the ability to pay those obligations. “If to finance those spending and tax decisions, it’s necessary to issue additional debt, I believe it’s very disruptive to put the president and myself, the Treasury secretary, in a situation where we might be unable to pay the bills that result from those past decisions,” she said in response to a question from Representative Sean Casten (Democrat - Illinois).

USA - Did you ever imagine that we would be facing an epic shortage of workers all over the globe in the second half of 2021? Right now, thousands upon thousands of large companies all over the world are absolutely desperate for workers. They are raising wages, they are throwing in extra vacation days and they are even doing away with drug tests, but they still can’t find enough able-bodied people to hire.

GERMANY - High demand and the transition to green power has left much of Europe at risk of blackouts. In Germany, state authorities are teaching the public to heat their homes with candles and get used to “cooking without electricity.” State authorities in North-Rhine Westphalia will hold their first ‘Disaster Protection Day’ on Saturday, with instructors in the city of Bonn teaching citizens how to get by “in the event of a long power failure.” An advert by the federal Civil Protection Office gives a hint of what’s in store, and features an elderly woman wearing several layers of clothing, heating her apartment with candles burning under an upturned flower pot and sealing her windows with reflective foil. The Civil Protection Office on Friday unveiled an ad campaign focusing on all aspects of crisis preparation, and will soon release a targeted strategy addressing “stockpiling, extreme weather, power failure and emergency baggage.” Meanwhile, officials will present a new book entitled ‘Cooking Without Electricity’ at the event in Bonn on Saturday.

USA - An endless tsunami of illegal drugs is turning the streets of our major cities into desolate wastelands, and yet our politicians seem powerless to do anything about it. In fact, in some of our biggest cities the politicians actually don’t seem interested in doing anything about it. As I will discuss below, open air drug markets are operating freely right in the heart of New York City at this moment. Dealers and addicts go about their business without the slightest fear that the police will do anything. Meanwhile, the national death toll just continues to rise. An all-time record 93,000 Americans died as a result of a drug overdose last year. That was an increase of nearly 30 percent from the year before, and authorities are already warning that there will be another huge jump when the final numbers for 2021 come in. If you are searching for meaning in life, our society doesn’t have any answers for you.

USA - Dozens of cargo ships anchored off the coasts of Los Angeles [100 ships] and New York face shocking wait times of up to four weeks and railyards and trucking routes are hopelessly clogged due to the lack of manpower to unload goods – with an expert warning that the government needs to intervene or face spiraling inflation and unemployment. The backlog of billions of dollars of toys, clothing, electronics, vehicles, and furniture comes as the demand for consumer goods hit its highest point in history as consumers stay home instead of spending money on travel and entertainment. Supply chains have lagged far behind consumer demand due to a lack of manpower at American ports and the restrictions that came with the COVID-19 outbreak early last year. These constraints, which include social distancing and mandatory quarantines, have severely limited the number and ability of port workers to do their jobs. That’s what we’ve heard on the mainstream media!

CHINA - What would happen if the country where most of America’s manufacturing base was outsourced back in the days of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were to shut off the industrial power supply? The world is about to find out. China, reports indicate, has slashed the electricity supply to 16 of its 31 provincial jurisdictions in recent days. Many of these jurisdictions are factory-heavy, meaning everything that has a “Made in China” label slapped on it is now at risk of seeing shortages. Beijing has suddenly decided that the energy it has been using for decades to power all of the world’s outsourced manufacturing is “unclean” and must be limited. This has created waves of rolling blackouts that are interfering with production at a time when the supply chain is already suffering due to Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) restrictions. Is anyone really buying that China is suddenly worried about the environment?

UK - Laura Becker was female until 18, male at 20 and female again at 22. She feels there needs to be more awareness of the mental health issues many young ‘trans’ people face, before others damage their body needlessly as she did. In recent times, liberals’ desire to embrace the burgeoning trans movement has meant that if someone says they’re trans, people have been encouraged to support them unconditionally.

USA - Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all wake up someday and the pandemic is finally behind us? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go back to a world with no masks, no restrictions and no mandates? I know that is what so many of you want. I want it too. Just like millions of others, we are ready for this long nightmare to finally end. Unfortunately, we are now being told that this crisis is never going to have an end. COVID is apparently going to be with us indefinitely, and that means that we will be talking about masks, restrictions and mandates for years on end. I know that must sound extremely depressing, because it sounded extremely depressing when I wrote it. We are supposed to be “the land of the free”, and people should be able to make their own health decisions without any government oppression. Unfortunately, we are seeing a trend toward authoritarianism all over the globe, and many believe that it will only get worse in the years ahead. We desperately need change, because right now officials all over the world are telling us that there will never be a return to “normal”, and that would be a very bleak future indeed.

EUROPE - French President Emmanuel Macron was right when he said Tuesday that Europe should stop being naive and quit relying primarily on the United States for its defense. Indeed, it’s in the interests of both the United States and Europe to realize that. In one sense, this is nothing new from Macron. He has previously called for Europe to aspire to “strategic autonomy” and has argued for a “true European army” for years. Macron evidently believes that Europe weakens itself by relying on US arms and military might for its defense, and thus is unable to push for its own interests even in its own neighborhood. The recent announcement that Australia was ripping up a deal with France to build new submarines to pursue a new deal with Britain and the United States was thus only the spark that lit the fire. The kindling of fundamental strategic disagreement was laid long ago.The United States and Europe would both benefit from an alliance of true equals rather than maintaining the current imbalance. We are both stronger together if we are both strong separately.

RUSSIA - For the past 500 years European nations—Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, Britain, France and, briefly, Germany—were able to plunder much of the planet by projecting their naval power overseas. The ultimate inheritor of this naval imperial project is the United States, which, with the new addition of air power, and with its large aircraft carrier fleet and huge network of military bases throughout the planet, is supposedly able to impose Pax Americana on the entire world. Or, rather, was able to do so... But now this imperial project is at an end.