USA - If the government is consistent about any one thing, it is this: it has an unnerving tendency to exploit crises and use them as opportunities for power grabs under the guise of national security. It’s all part of the grand plan for total control. The government’s proposed response to the latest round of mass shootings — red flag gun laws, pre-crime surveillance, fusion centers, threat assessments, mental health assessments, involuntary confinement — is just more of the same. These tactics have been employed before, here in the US and elsewhere, by other totalitarian regimes, with devastating results. It’s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you capitalize on it by seizing power. For instance, in his remarks on the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump promised to give the FBI “whatever they need” to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism. Let that sink in a moment. In a post-9/11 America, Trump’s promise bodes ill for whatever remnants of freedom we have left.

USA - If you want to know the real reason why mass shootings are taking place, this is the “inconvenient truth” the media won’t cover. Nearly every mass shooting incident in the last twenty years, and multiple other instances of suicide and isolated shootings all share one thing in common, and it’s not the weapons used. The overwhelming evidence points to the single largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes. Those focusing on further firearms bans or magazine restrictions are clearly focusing on the wrong issue and asking the wrong questions, either as a deliberate attempt to hide these links, or out of complete and utter ignorance.

CHINA - The Chinese Foreign Ministry railed against the United States in its Monday press conference, accusing the US of “conniving with violent criminals” in Hong Kong in an “arrogant” bid to undermine China’s national unity. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying unleashed an anti-US tirade after a reporter asked about US politicians and Trump administration officials speaking out against the “repression” of Hong Kong protesters and refusing to accept China’s framing of their demonstrations as “riots.” Hua looked no more kindly upon new US Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s warning that Chinese aggression is disrupting the stability of the Indo-Pacific region, thundering that America has long been the party “grossly interfering in the affairs of regional countries in the Asia Pacific” and “undermining regional stability.” 

UK - The president of the National Union of Students of the United Kingdom says that she wants to “oppress white people” and have an “Islamic takeover”. In 2012, under the hashtag #IfIWasPresident, Zamzam Ibrahim, a 24-year-old, first-generation Somali immigrant from Greater Manchester, tweeted “I’d oppress white people just to give them a taste of what they put us through!” And if that wasn’t enough, when responding to questions online about what books people should read, Ibrahim said: “The Quraan. We would have an Islamic takeover!” She has also called the UK government’s counter-extremism strategy “racist” and “disastrous”. Ibrahim was elected to the UK’s NUS in 2019 as the union’s third female Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic president in a row. She’s regularly criticized the British media for supposedly depicting her as a “fanatical Muslim and a threat to British society”.

KASHMIR - In a dramatic escalation following a worsening crisis, which over the weekend saw intensive shelling along the Line of Control (LoC) that separates Indian-controlled and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir, New Delhi has revoked the key constitutional article which gives Indian-administered Kashmir special status. The unprecedented move signals India is willing to take greater military action in the disputed border region, which is virtually guaranteed to not only spark severe local unrest, but put India and Pakistan on a direct collision course for war. Pakistan was swift to condemn the drastic alteration to the status quo, saying it will "exercise all possible options" to counter it. "India is playing a dangerous game which will have serious consequences for regional peace and stability," said Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

NIGERIA - Nigeria’s This Day published an extensive, scathing report Sunday on Chinese colonialism in its economy, accusing the Communist Party of “labour casualization, tax evasion, customs duty under-payment, forgery and outright sabotage” and individual Chinese immigrants of irresponsibly impregnating young Nigerian woman and abandoning them. “The reason Chinese corporations are in Africa is simple; to exploit the people and take their resources,” reporter Adedayo Adejobi wrote. “It’s the same thing European colonists did during mercantile times, except worse.”

USA - While ranked ‘only’ 13th in the water scarcity list, India has more than three times the population of all 17 other countries the World Resources Institute found to be facing “extremely high” water stress levels. A quarter of the world’s population residing in seventeen countries is facing “extremely high” levels of baseline water shortages, using over 80 percent of the local renewable supply, updated Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas data compiled by the World Resources Institute (WRI) showed. “Water stress is the biggest crisis no one is talking about,” said Dr Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the World Resources Institute. “Its consequences are in plain sight in the form of food insecurity, conflict and migration, and financial instability.”

USA - When will Americans start to wake up and realize what is happening? At the end of last week, President Trump announced that the US would be imposing a 10 percent tariff on 300 billion dollars worth of Chinese imports, and that marked a dramatic escalation in our trade war with China. This move by Trump came as a total shock to Chinese officials, and global financial markets were thrown into a state of turmoil. Since that announcement, we have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, because we knew that the Chinese would retaliate. But honestly, very few of the experts expected something like this.

USA - The mass shootings that we just witnessed in Ohio and Texas were unspeakably evil, and it is at times such as these that the nation should be able to unite in mourning.  But instead, the mainstream media and prominent Democrats are rushing to blame President Trump for what happened.  Of course presidents have always been targets for criticism all throughout American history, but with Trump things have been taken to an entirely new level that we have never seen before.  Extreme vitriol is being blasted at Trump 24 hours a day, and those responsible seem to take great joy in what they are doing.  But millions upon millions of Americans actually believe what they are hearing and take these accusations very seriously.  In the end, all of this anger and frustration is inevitably going to explode, and nobody will be able to stop it once it is fully released. There seems to be a contest among Democratic presidential contenders to see who can say the most horrible things about President Trump.

USA - Major cover-up underway? Why are mainstream sources and officials reporting only one shooter when eyewitnesses claim that they saw 3 to 4 armed men dressed in all black enter the store and start shooting? Remarkably, several eyewitnesses to the shooting, a mother and her daughter, were captured on video recounting how three men dressed in all black entered through the front doors of the store as the shooting started. Additionally, it is important to point out that El Paso Mayor Dee Margo originally told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer early on after the shooting that three suspects were taken into custody. Not to mention, an image taken from security camera footage reveals a shooter who entered the store may have been wearing different pants than the suspect apprehended by police who was pictured in handcuffs.

USA - Our trade war with China has begun to spiral out of control, and as a result global financial markets have been thrown into a state of turmoil. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 767 points, and that represented the sixth-largest single day stock market decline in all of US history. To put that into perspective, the biggest single day decline during the financial crisis of 2008 was just 777 points. So what we witnessed on Monday was definitely very serious. And the Nasdaq just got absolutely monkey-hammered as well. On a percentage basis, it was down even more than the Dow was, and it has now fallen for six days in a row. We have not seen a losing streak that long for the Nasdaq since President Trump was elected, and some analysts are convinced that even more chaos is on the way. Overall, 1.4 trillion dollars in stock market wealth has been completely wiped out in less than a week… our financial markets are more primed for a crash than they have ever been before.  And we are moving into the season when big crashes tend to happen.

GERMANY - The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has received a groundswell of support in Eastern Germany, leading in polls just weeks before regional elections in three states. Support for major parties is at a historic low. In an outcome sure to unnerve Germany’s more conventional politicians, a series of polls conducted in June and July has demonstrated that the anti-establishment force has moved to the fore in the former Eastern Bloc territory, where they enjoy steady public backing – all ahead of the crucial regional elections, two of which are scheduled in about a month’s time. By contrast, the heavyweights of German politics – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their coalition partners in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) – are facing what might be called a near collapse of popular support in the same eastern regions.

USA - A leading New Testament scholar working at Unified Unity Divinity School has published a paper criticizing Jesus for a lack of diversity among the apostles He chose in the gospel accounts. The woman, Dr Diana T Manger, pointed out that Jesus only chose Jewish males, refusing to implement diversity quotas for his group of disciples.

UK - Boris Johnson has set the UK on an apparent course towards a no-deal Brexit by playing down the likelihood of any talks with the EU unless Brussels agrees to scrap the existing withdrawal agreement and Irish backstop, both of which it has ruled out. The seemingly intransigent tone prompted Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, to warn that a no-deal departure could lead more people in Northern Ireland to seek a united Ireland. Johnson’s spokesman said there were no talks with the EU scheduled, and that if they happened it must be “clear what the basis for those discussions needs to be” – a message the new PM then delivered personally to Angela Merkel. According to No 10, Johnson told the German chancellor in a phone call on Friday that while he would seek a deal, the “only solution” involved entirely scrapping the backstop, and that in the interim the UK must prepare for the prospect of there being no deal.

USA - The high-altitude balloons promise a cheap monitoring platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal. Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois. Travelling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the balloons are intended to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats”, according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, an aerospace and defence company.