USA - California conservatives are leaving the state in droves over what the LA Times describes as their "disenchantment with deep-blue California's liberal political culture," not to mention "high taxes, lukewarm support for local law enforcement, and policies they believe have thrown open the doors to illegal immigration." According to new Census Bureau migration data for 2018, 691,145 Californians left for other states last year, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Between earthquakes, seasonal fires, high taxes, poo-covered streets, the worst homeless crisis in the nation, and transgender summer camp for children as young as four, what's not to love?

EUROPE - The European Union is facing a mounting wave of problems and challenges, is increasingly divided and unable to solve them. From the outside, China and the United States are ramping up pressure on Europe, which feels the objective need to restore a constructive dialogue with Russia. From within, the basic foundations of European unity continue to be attacked by "populists and supporters of authoritarianism."

KUWAIT - Slavery is one of many industries made more efficient by Silicon Valley, and specifically, Facebook-owned Instagram. A new BBC investigation reveals the widespread online sale of human beings in the mideast for domestic labor. The buyers and sellers use services from Instagram, Facebook, Apple, and Google to facilitate slavery transactions. Housekeepers and nannies are purchased and sold as slaves through Instagram, promoted using hashtags, and promoted on other apps in Google Play and Apple's App Store. These workers live their lives in Kuwait mostly behind closed doors, invisible and with no rights to protest abuse by their employer/enslavers.

USA - Women and girls are being sucked into the sex change industry by reckless clinics that give out “testosterone like candy,” says Andrew Sullivan, the sometimes-conservative gay activist. Sullivan’s break from the transgender movement comes after he met with a group of women who have walked away from their teenage claims of being transgender.

USA - Why is the mainstream media being so quiet about all of the seismic activity that has been happening all across the United States? During the last 7 days, there has been an earthquake swarm directly along the New Madrid Fault zone, Kansas and Oklahoma have been hit by a very unusual number of significant quakes, and there have been several sizable seismic events in the vicinity of the Yellowstone supervolcano. But of course the west coast is getting hammered more than anyone else. According to Cal Tech, there have been more than 1000 earthquakes in California and Nevada over the last week, but of course most of them have been very small. Overall, the latest USGS numbers tell us that there have been more than 2,000 earthquakes nationally during the last 7 days, and apparently we aren’t supposed to be alarmed by that. But could it be possible that all of this seismic activity is leading up to something really big?

USA - Pelosi’s proposed resolution authorizes proceedings for an “existing investigation”.

- There is no existing investigation.

- No Committee has been authorized to conduct an impeachment inquiry.

- No Committee has been authorized to conduct any inquiry incidental to an impeachment inquiry.

- The proposed resolution does not authorize any investigation.

The proposed resolution does not make legitimate recent hearings.

Pelosi’s sore losers have been acting lawlessly. Their hearings lack authority. Don’t Fall For Pelosi’s Putsch! The proposed resolution authorizes committees to conduct proceedings for an existing inquiry. The resolution does not authorize any committee to conduct an inquiry. To date, no committee has been authorized to conduct any investigation.

USA - Nancy Pelosi’s Coup Resolution against President Trump Undermines the Constitution. The House of Representatives’ impeachment resolution vote this week endorses an abusive process that rolls over the rights of President Trump and undermines the rule of law. This was no impeachment resolution – it was a coup resolution. This coup attack was corruptly formed and corruptly pursued. The US Senate should rule out a trial on any so-called impeachment arising from the Pelosi-Schiff abuse of the US Constitution.

GERMANY - A city in eastern Germany has declared a "Nazi emergency", saying it has a serious problem with the far right. Dresden, the capital of Saxony, has long been viewed as a bastion of the far-right and is the birthplace of the anti-Islam Pegida movement. Councillors in the city - a contender for the 2025 European Capital of Culture - have now approved a resolution saying more needs to be done to tackle the issue. But opponents say it goes too far. Pegida supporters say people need to "wake up" to the threat of Islamist extremists. They want Germany to curb immigration and accuse the authorities of failing to enforce existing laws. The movement has spurred large counter-rallies in the city.

USA - The federal government's outstanding public debt has surpassed $23 trillion for the first time in history, according to data from the Treasury Department released on Friday. Growing budget deficits have added to the nation's debt at a speedy rate since President Trump took office. The debt has grown some 16 percent since Trump's inauguration, when it stood at $19.9 trillion. It passed $22 trillion for the first time just 10 months ago. “Reaching $23 trillion in debt on Halloween is a scary milestone for our economy and the next generation, but Washington shows no fear," said Michael A Peterson, CEO of the fiscally conservative Peter G Peterson Foundation. "Piling on debt like this is especially unwise and unnecessary in a strong economy," he added.

MIDDLE EAST - As the last of the Middle Eastern summer fades away, is the region slipping into a new Arab spring? In Iraq, demonstrators are being shot dead in the streets. In Lebanon, protesters have paralysed the country and seem set to bring down the government of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. In recent weeks the Egyptian security forces crushed attempts to protest against the police state of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

GERMANY - Anti-immigrant populists beat Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) to second place in an election in the east German state of Thuringia yesterday, building spectacularly on their steady momentum since first entering the Bundestag two years ago. According to exit polls, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) took nearly 24% of the vote, beating the centre-right CDU by one percentage point but, as expected, failing to oust incumbent leftwingers Die Linke. The AfD more than doubled its share of the vote. Despite that, it has no chance of entering power yet, as other parties have ruled out joining it in a coalition. But the party’s national standing is boosted by the result, which was closely watched in Berlin, as is the status of its state leader Björn Höcke, considered Germany’s most controversial politician, who has been accused of stoking hatred with anti-Jewish rhetoric.

USA - For only the third time in the history of the modern presidency, the US House of Representatives voted on Thursday to formalize impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States. In a largely party-line vote of 232-196, the House embarked on a path that seemed likely to lead to Donald Trump’s impeachment – if not necessarily his removal from office. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, presided over the vote and marked it with a bang of her gavel. Republicans held ranks to vote uniformly against the process, while two Democrats crossed party lines to join them. The House’s sole independent, former Republican Justin Amash of Michigan, voted to advance the resolution.

CANADA - Nobody has done more to sink the claim that climate change is endangering polar bears than zoologist Susan Crockford — and she may have paid for it with her job. After 15 years as an adjunct assistant professor, Ms Crockford said the University of Victoria rejected without explanation in May her renewal application, despite her high profile as a speaker and author... Ms Crockford accused officials at the Canadian university of bowing to “outside pressure,” the result of her research showing that polar bear populations are stable and even thriving, not plummeting as a result of shrinking Arctic sea ice, defying claims of the climate change movement. Her dismissal, which she announced Wednesday in a post on her Polar Bear Science blog, has spurred alarm over the implications for academic freedom and the rise of the “cancel culture” for professors and scientists who challenge climate catastrophe predictions.

USA - It isn’t supposed to be this cold in October. All-time record lows for the month of October are being set in city after city, and this extremely cold air is going to push into the Midwest by the end of the week. Temperatures in the heartland will be up to 50 degrees below normal, and unfortunately about half of all corn still has not been harvested. Due to unprecedented rainfall and extreme flooding early in the year, many farmers faced extraordinary delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were hoping that good weather at the end of the season would provide time for the crops to fully mature and be harvested. Unfortunately, a nightmare scenario has materialized instead. A couple of monster snow storms have already roared through the Midwest, and now record low temperatures threaten to absolutely wreck the rest of the harvest season.

USA - Listening to recent commentaries about the repo failures in New York leads one to suppose there is insufficient money in the system. The fiat money quantity is the amount of fiat money (in this case US dollars) both in circulation and held in reserve on the central bank’s balance sheet. Before the Lehman crisis, it grew at a fairly constant compound growth rate of 5.86%. Since the Lehman crisis, it has grown at an average of 9.45%, even after the slowdown in its rate of growth that started in January 2017. If there is a shortage of money, it is because the process of debt creation to fund current expenditure is spiralling out of control.