USA - On Friday, Michael Moore went on Bill Maher’s HBO show and suggested that the US military would side with progressives in a civil war against Donald Trump.  You can watch Moore make these comments on YouTube.  The very next day, Antifa thugs violently clashed with pro-Trump conservatives that had gathered for a prayer rally on the streets of Portland, Oregon.  Flash-bang grenades were thrown by Antifa activists, the police confiscated “mace, clubs, gloves with reinforced knuckles, batons, knives and handgun clips”, and many were injured and had to be taken to the hospital. 

CHINA - The authorities issued a plea for calm after another day of dramatic moves on foreign exchange markets and the Shanghai bourse. The yuan has plunged by 5 percent since mid-June when trade conflict erupted and investors awoke to deepening slowdown in the Chinese economy. Foreign funds have since been rushing for the exits, taking advantage of open flows under the Hong Kong-Shanghai Connect scheme to withdraw capital. Yi Gang, the governor of the People’s Bank (PBOC), acknowledged that the currency slide risks turning malign.

USA - There is a lot of buzz that Amy Coney Barrett is going to be President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, and that is causing many progressives to totally freak out. The reason that they are freaking out doesn’t have anything to do with her credentials. In fact… Barrett is exceptionally qualified to be on the Supreme Court. She is sharp, intelligent and has a sterling reputation.

IRAN - Iranian Member of Parliament Behrouz Bonyadi criticized Tehran’s allies Russia and Syria in unusually harsh terms during a speech on Wednesday, essentially agreeing with the Iranian protest movement that the nation has spent too many resources in propping up Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. He also warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot be trusted. “Bashar Assad, with full impudence, has cozied up to Putin. Russia will not be a trustworthy friend for us,” warned Bonyadi, as related by Radio Farda. “Why we should constantly live in fear of war, sanctions, and bad news?” he asked of Iran’s interventionist foreign policy, noting that the money spent on adventures like Syria was more urgently needed at home.

SWITZERLAND - Another country is betting on physical gold. Switzerland's pension fund has boosted its investments in bullion, switching from the paper-backed securities in US dollars. The Swiss government Pension System decided to change from paper gold the amount of 700 million CHF into physical gold and store it in Switzerland.

KYRGYZSTAN - China’s neighbor Kyrgyzstan has been piling up gold reserves as a hedge against a possible trade war between Beijing and Washington. The country is seeking to boost the share of gold in its $2-billion international reserves to 50 percent from its current 16 percent. “The rules of the game are changing,” Kyrgyz Central Bank Governor Tolkunbek Abdygulov told Bloomberg in an interview. “It doesn’t matter what currencies we have in our reserves; dollars, yuan or rubles all make us vulnerable.” Gold is Kyrgyzstan’s largest export. Since 2014, the country’s central bank has been buying up as much of the country’s gold as possible, Abdygulov said. “If we decide to sell gold, then we can easily sell it and convert into the currency we need,” Abdygulov said.

AUSTRALIA - The Palestinian Authority will no longer received direct financial aid from Australia because donations could increase the self-governing body’s ability to financially reward terrorist violence. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Monday that funding to a World Bank’s trust fund was cut after she wrote to the Palestinian Authority in late May seeking assurance that Australian funding was not being handed directly to the families of deceased terrorists. She said in a statement she’s concerned that providing further funds allows the authority to use its own budget to spend on anti-Israel terrorist activities that “Australia would never support.”

USA - Cell phone manufacturers have actually been warning their shareholders – not customers – that they may eventually be held liable for the harm they have caused. In the meantime though, they want to keep the rest of us confused about harm from exposure and excited about new digital, electronic, and wireless technology.

UK - Senior Conservative MPs have made clear they are preparing to bring down Theresa May’s government if she compromises on Brexit. Ahead of a crucial summit with her warring cabinet on Friday to finalise policy, pro-Brexit MPs including, crucially, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended Jacob Rees-Mogg after he warned Mrs May will face a coup unless she sticks to her Brexit red lines. The backbencher was criticised by several Tories, including Mr Johnson's Foreign Office deputy Sir Alan Duncan who accused Mr Rees-Mogg of "insolence". But Mr Johnson openly supported his fellow Brexiteer, Tweeting: "It's vital that all MPs are able to air their views on Brexit. Whatever your position, I hope we can all agree that Jacob Rees-Mogg is a principled and dedicated MP who wants the best for our country."

GERMANY - Some 600 AfD representatives gathered in Augsburg for the start of a two-day congress of the German populist party on Saturday, as left-wing protesters staged demonstrations in the Bavarian city.  Addressing the delegates, senior AfD lawmaker Jörg Meuthen slammed multiculturalism as a "quixotic ideology" and "the great ideological fallacy of the early 21st century."  Meuthen also pushed for a new immigration policy that would turn the EU into "Fortress Europe."  As potential allies in this endeavor, Meuthen named Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, his populist vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, Italian right-wing leader and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, and Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.  The AfD "wants to, has to" cooperate with these leaders, Meuthen said.

ITALY - Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy's right-wing League, said Sunday he wanted to expand its success to create a pan-European association of nationalist parties, as Italy again refused to accept a boat of migrants stranded in the Mediterranean. In a keynote speech at the League's annual gathering in countryside north of Milan, Mr Salvini predicted the League would govern Italy for the next 30 years, receiving rapturous applause from thousands of flag-waving supporters. "To win we had to unite Italy, now we will have to unite Europe," Mr Salvini said. "I am thinking about a League of the Leagues of Europe, bringing together all the free and sovereign movements that want to defend their people and their borders."

GERMANY - Angela Merkel has held onto power as the German Chancellor secured an agreement in a humiliating compromise with her Bavarian ally who threatened to quit and bring down her government in a row over the EU migrant crisis. Angela Merkel said transit centres will be created in Germany to process migrants to return to previous countries. The German Chancellor said she has “found a really good compromise on migration” with Horst Seehofer’s (Christian Social Union) CSU party. The Germany Chancellor said the compromise would secure the principle of freedom of movement within the EU while allowing Germany to take "national measures" to limit migrant arrivals.

UK - Boris Johnson has publicly backed the MP who warned Theresa May of a rebellion if she failed to deliver on her Brexit promises as a fresh Tory row over Europe took hold. The Foreign Secretary said the Eurosceptic MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who told the Prime Minister that she could face the collapse of her Government if she concedes too much ground to Brussels, "wants the best for our country". It came as Mrs May was accused of treating her Cabinet like "idiots" after Downing Street trumpeted a "third option" for Britain's customs arrangements with the EU but failed to tell a single minister what it was. Senior Cabinet ministers were “deeply sceptical” yesterday about the viability of any new plan...

USA - We haven’t seen anything like this since the financial crisis of 2008.  Investors are taking money out of global stock funds at a pace that we haven’t seen in 10 years, and many believe that this is a harbinger of tough times ahead.  Global stocks lost about 10 trillion dollars in value during the first half of 2018, and an even worse performance during the second half of the year will almost certainly push the global financial system into panic mode. 

USA - The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.