USA - “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today,” said Admiral Beatty during the Battle of Jutland in 1916, as he watched the battlecruisers HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary blow up. If he were alive today and looking down on the collective Nato and Five-Eyes navies, I reckon he’d say something similar. Everyone with a decent navy is discovering that the budgets and processes they had in place to run, build, sustain and crew their navies during the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ are now insufficient. If we needed proof that even the mighty US Navy is suffering from the same problems, yesterday Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro approved a plan to keep 12 Arleigh Burke class destroyers in service for longer than their originally intended 35-year life span.

USA - It is that time of the year again. The Social Security Administration has finally released the final wage statistics for 2023, and they are quite sobering. According to the report, last year the “median wage” in this country was just $43,222.81. In other words, half of all American workers made less than $43,222.81, and half of all American workers made more than $43,222.81. That is terrible news, because the cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have. More people are being squeezed out of the middle class with each passing day, but most Americans don’t even realize that this is happening because the media isn’t really talking about it. Poverty, homelessness and hunger are all growing all around us, and if we stay on the path that we are on the middle class will continue to be systematically eviscerated. Once upon a time, the vast majority of the country could afford to live a middle class lifestyle. But now those days are long gone.

SPAIN - Barcelona was given a new red alert warning of “extreme danger” on Monday, with the city being hit by rainstorms and floods, causing chaos for road, train and air traffic. Catalonia’s regional government warned of “continuous and torrential” rain across the Barcelona metropolitan area and surrounding areas six days after flash floods devastated the Valencia region, killing more than 200 people.

GERMANY - Dysfunctional German Coalition has put forward three different plans to reboot ailing economy – unpopular Chancellor Scholz trying to keep government from imploding. If you have a three-party coalition and one economic plan, you have at least the semblance of a working government. But if you have a three-way coalition and THREE economic plans, what you have is Germany. ‘The sick man of Europe’ is on an economic slope since it abdicated from cheap Russian oil and began relying on much more expensive alternatives. Chancellor Olaf Scholz leads an ideologically disparate coalition that can never agree on policy measures to ‘drive growth, protect industrial jobs, and reinforce Germany’s position as a global industrial hub.’ If one of the parties exits the coalition, a parliamentary confidence vote takes place, after which the president can trigger elections.

USA - Critical infrastructure in the US is being threatened by the Communist Chinese government and many Americans are both oblivious and underprepared. Check Points Software Technologies recently reported “a 75 percent increase in global cyber-attacks during the third quarter [of 2024], with a 15 percent rise from the previous quarter.” And in the US, Industrial Cyber points out alarmingly that “cyberattacks have risen by 56 percent year-over-year, with a weekly average of 1,300 attacks per organization, 10 percent higher than the previous quarter.” The area with the most attacks was the education and research sector.

USA - A security expert who could advise Donald Trump if he wins the US election has called on Europe to pull its weight on defence. A senior Republican figure in the US has called for the country to "withhold" American forces from Europe to focus on the growing threat from China. The comments were made by Elbridge Colby, a senior Pentagon official in the last Donald Trump administration, according to the BBC. Mr Colby has been vocal about the threat of China and has also been tipped to serve a prominent role in Donald Trump's administration should he win the US election this month. He told Politico earlier this year that China poses an even bigger threat than Russia.

USA - The US military is set to deploy additional forces to the Middle East, including a number of nuclear-capable B-52H strategic bombers, the Pentagon has announced. The deployment was reportedly ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to compensate for the scheduled departure of the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group from the region, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder has said in a statement. The announcement comes as tensions continue to soar in the Middle East, with Iran and Israel remaining locked in a spiral of violence.

USA - New York’s mayor urged residents to take shorter showers, fix dripping faucets and otherwise conserve water, issuing a drought watch Saturday after a parched October in the city and in much of the United States. A drought watch is the first of three potential levels of water-saving directives, and Eric Adams pitched it in a social media video as a step to try to ward off the possibility of a worse shortage in the United States’ most populous city. He ordered all city agencies to get ready to implement their water-conservation plans, and asked the public to do its part by, for example, turning off taps while brushing teeth and sweeping sidewalks instead of hosing them down. The dry weather constrained shipping on the Mississippi River and contributed to wildfires in the midwest and the east.

USA - Back in August, when discussing Buffett's ongoing liquidation of his Bank of America stake, we said that "Berkshire's rising cash stockpiles merely reflect the firm's inability to find deals in today's overvalued and weak economic environment", little did we know just how accurate that would be, because just one day later we and the rest of the market were stunned to learn that far from only dumping Bank of America, the 94-year-old Omaha billionaire had been busy quietly liquidating his most iconic holding in an unprecedented selling spree that sent Berkshire's cash pile soaring by a record $88 billion to an all time high $277 billion at the end of Q2.

USA - The Government is not going to ride in on a white horse to save you when global events hit the fan. Did you know that FEMA is not answering nearly half of the calls that it receives from those seeking disaster relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene? Politico spoke to a man named Mike Toomey in North Carolina that desperately needs help after floodwaters destroyed his home. When Toomey called FEMA last week, nobody answered his call. Instead, he got a recording that informed him that he was 675th in line to be helped… Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina over a month ago. And people like Toomey still can’t get help from FEMA even though they are reaching out. In fact, Politico says that “hundreds of thousands of people” have not been able to get the assistance from the government that they are hoping for…

EUROPE - Households should be prepared for cyberattacks and the use of chemical weapons, a report has warned. EU citizens should start stockpiling three days’ worth of goods in order to be ready for various potential disasters, including a nuclear conflict, a report on the bloc’s civilian and military preparedness has warned. Published on Wednesday by former Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, the initiative is part of the EU’s push to make the bloc more resilient in the face of supposedly mounting threats, ranging from natural disasters to a major military conflict. The report encourages EU households to stockpile “basic self-sufficiency” goods that would last for at least 72 hours for fear of potential shortages in case of “armed aggression through conventional means” or other hostile activities such as “cyberattacks or the use of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons.”

RUSSIA - While people are busy watching the US election news, Russia is making moves in Donbass that the West would rather ignore. Meanwhile, India and China are de-escalating tensions in a disputed border zone, with troop withdrawals and joint patrols following the BRICS summit in Kazan. Don't get distracted by the noises of the Western Media Circus, expect similar events and headlines they'll try and gloss over/sweep under the rug.

NORTH KOREA - The projectile remained airborne for 87 minutes, reaching an altitude of 7,000km, Japanese and South Korean officials have said. North Korea has test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a warning to its regional adversaries, according to the state-run KCNA news agency. In a statement on Thursday, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry in Pyongyang described the test as “crucial,” adding that it was ordered by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The missile launch “updated the recent records of the strategic missile capability of the DPRK and demonstrated the modernity and creditability of its world’s most powerful strategic deterrent,” the spokesman added.

USA - We live at a time when it is expected that chaos will follow virtually every big event. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, there was looting. In the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, there was looting. The war in the Middle East has sparked wild protests and riots all over the country this year. And even if something really good happens, many people just consider it to be an excuse for even more rioting, looting and violence. For example, the Los Angeles Dodgers just won the World Series. But instead of celebrating peacefully, young men in Los Angeles looted stores and threw fireworks at police… When a team wins a major championship, it is basically expected that citizens of that city will start rioting and looting. If this is what they will do when they are “celebrating”, what will they do when they are extremely angry? You might want to think about that. Close to half the country is not going to want to be governed by whoever wins this election. We are headed for unprecedented societal chaos no matter how this election turns out.

INDIA - The world’s 4th-largest military spender is kicking its dependency on foreign weapons. For many decades after independence, the Indian armed forces imported military hardware from long-term friend and strategic ally the Soviet Union, and subsequently Russia. France, too, became a significant source for military aviation supplies to India. Israel emerged as an important source from the 1990s, as did the US after 2008.