GERMANY - The AfD now finds itself once again a pariah within the halls of power, as Germany’s other parties in parliament refuse to partner with a faction linked to far-right extremism. Their place in German politics is “not a danger for democracy,” Hajo Funke, a German academic who focuses on right-wing extremism, told my colleagues. “They will remain completely isolated.”

USA - Doconomy’s vision is Technocracy’s first-born as their website states: “Our understanding of impact is reshaping all commercial activity on earth.” Your life will be data-mined for carbon footprint and your Mastercard will stop working when you exceed the CO2 limit they set for you. The company that created a credit card to track your purchases’ CO2 emissions is set to launch a “premium” version of the card that cuts off your spending as soon as you hit your “carbon max.” This is the latest of many schemes to force major changes in human behaviour to allegedly lessen global warming. Social scientist and author Steven Mosher has called the global warming movement a “giant propaganda effort” and “the biggest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on the family of man.”

USA - Host Brian Stelter made the mistake of allowing former NYT Editor Bari Weiss on air to discuss examples of why the world has gone mad. Stelter's first mistake, of course, was having Weiss on his show. His second mistake was assuming she didn't have receipts when she said the world has gone mad.

USA - A senior Biden health appointee who made history when she became the nation's highest-ranking openly transgender official has also become its first openly transgender four-star officer. Rachel Levine, the US assistant secretary for health, was sworn in Tuesday as an admiral of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a 6,000-person force that responds to health crises on behalf of the federal government, including administering coronavirus vaccines and delivering care after hurricanes. Levine is also the organization's first-ever female four-star admiral. The move was hailed by advocacy groups like the gay rights organization GLAAD, and health care leaders who called it a breakthrough moment.

USA - Opimas CEO: ‘Supply chain issues are a cover for the inflation the Fed has created’. Central banks are struggling to know how to respond to inflation right now since much of it is out of their control. It's hard to tell just how much is driven by a resurgence of demand versus supply strains & labor shortages.

USA - It is a dream for some and a nightmare for others – but could living forever become a reality within our lifetime? The answer coming out of the scientific labs in Silicon Valley is a resounding “Yes”. In the wake of the summer space race between Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the world’s richest men are taking on a new challenge – immortality. Amazon boss Bezos, 57, is one of the main backers of Altos Labs, which has raised £200million and just opened a new laboratory in Cambridge.

GERMANY - Refreshingly Honest Billionaire Says Media Purchase Will Be Used For Propaganda. The billionaire CEO of the multibillion-dollar corporation that recently purchased the news media outlet Politico has said that its newly acquired employees will be required to support Israel and the capitalist world order. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the German publisher Axel Springer, said that Politico staffers will be required to adhere to a set of principles which include “support for a united Europe, Israel’s right to exist and a free-market economy, among others.” “These values are like a constitution, they apply to every employee of our company,” Mr. Döpfner told WSJ. People with a fundamental problem with any of these principles “should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly,” he said. I mean, how refreshing is that? How often does a billionaire corporation buy up a media property and just straightforwardly tell you they’re going to be using it to push propaganda? They even say what the propaganda will be. It makes you feel like your intelligence is being respected.

USA - DeSantis’ comments in part seemed to be a response to coordinator of the Florida legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research, Amy Baker, who recently told lawmakers that high inflation is transitory. “Whenever you flood that much money into the economy, it always has some perverse effects with it, but that would be transitory, too,” Baker told the Florida legislature. “I believe within the year we should see it come back to some more normal, stable level.” DeSantis disagrees. “This inflation is real,” DeSantis said on Friday. “This inflation is upending a lot of things.” “They said it was just going to be transitory, the governor added. “It’s not transitory. It’s real.”

AUSTRALIA - A recent Australian court decision sends a chilling message to parents who transgress the new gender orthodoxy: Refusing to validate a child’s “transgender” identity may be “emotional abuse” and put parents at risk of losing custody of their child. There’s a larger message here too: If parents are no longer free to acknowledge biological reality, speak the truth to their children, or refuse consent for ideologues to experiment on their children, then gender ideology has put freedom and truth on the chopping block — for everyone. As gender ideology permeates law and culture across the globe, vulnerable teens and their families will continue to suffer devastating harm, defenseless against the power of states captured by a poisonous ideology.

USA - They insist everything will be fine as we face shortages of chicken, coffee, diapers, fish sticks, frozen meals, carbonated drinks, etc. Officials in Washington continue to assure us that we don’t have anything to be concerned about, but meanwhile the shelves just continue to get even emptier. On Friday, #BareShelvesBiden was the number one trending topic on Twitter, and I am sure that the Biden administration must have been thrilled by that.

POLAND - Poland’s prime minister has penned a letter to the European Union warning that the bloc is at risk of becoming a “centrally managed organism, run by institutions deprived of democratic control”. PM Mateusz Morawiecki on Monday wrote to EU leaders, institutions and member state governments claiming that “unfortunately, today we are dealing with a very dangerous phenomenon whereby various European Union institutions usurp powers they do not have under the Treaties and impose their will on Member States”. The Polish PM also listed several major challenges that the EU faces, including Brexit, a financial crisis “that threatens to weaken or even collapse the euro area”, and the gas and energy crisis which “threatens poverty for millions”. “The fate of our Union in recent years is not a chronicle of success. If we want to avoid further crises, we must change our ways,” Morawiecki warned. Last week Morawiecki lashed out with accusations that EU institutions impinge on the rights of its member nations, remarking that “democracy is being tested” and that “we are at a crossroads” in the bloc’s history.

USA - Service members from all five branches of the US military, federal employees, and federal civilian contractors have joined in a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Defense over its COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The 24 plaintiffs “face a deadline under the Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate to receive a COVID-19 vaccine that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs, and have been refused any religious exemption or accommodation,” according to Liberty Counsel, the Christian legal firm that filed the lawsuit.

USA - A crowd of 100 people wreaked havoc in downtown Portland, Oregon, this week – smashing storefront windows, lighting dumpsters on fire and causing at least $500,000 in damage – but police officers didn't stop them. Portland Police Bureau officials say that's because of legislation passed by Oregon lawmakers this year, which restricts the tools they can use to confront people vandalizing buildings and causing mayhem. “The reason that we did not intervene goes back to what we talked about last month with House Bill 2928 and the restrictions placed on us in a crowd control environment,” KOIN reports that Portland Police Lieutenant Jake Jensen said in a neighborhood meeting Thursday. “The law clearly allows Portland Police to use effective tools necessary to control violent crowds,” House Minority Leader Christine Drazan told The Associated Press on Friday. “However, activist attorneys are deliberately misinterpreting legislation to prevent police from intervening. They have no business putting law enforcement and community safety at risk.”

CHINA - China has fired a hypersonic missile around the globe with the US left reeling by the terrifying display of military strength. US intelligence and military officials were reportedly left stunned after China launched a rocket in space carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle which circled the globe before before speeding towards its target. The nuke-capable missile missed its target by about two-dozen miles when it was secretly launched in August, intelligence sources told the Financial Times. But the chilling test has alarmed US officials and shows how China has made astonishing progress on the development of its hypersonic weapons, sources said.

USA - Since the dawn of civilization, humans have had only one world in which to live: the real one. But tech visionaries say we’ll soon have an alternative: a virtual world where our digital avatars and those of people in our communities and around the globe come together to work, shop, attend classes, pursue hobbies, enjoy social gatherings and more. Immersive videogames and virtual concerts have given us a taste of this world. But visionaries say the metaverse, as this world has been dubbed, will be far more engaging and robust, not only mirroring the real world in all its three-dimensional complexity but also extending it to allow us to be and do what previously could only be imagined. Walk on the moon in your pajamas? Watch a baseball game from the pitcher’s mound? Frolic in a field of unicorns—or be a unicorn yourself? In the metaverse, tech visionaries say, just about anything will be possible.