Swimming pools and hot tub installations exploded during Covid as homeowners transformed their backyards into private oases. At one point, pool companies had a backlog of two years, but now that has all evaporated. The latest sign the pool bubble has deflated is the largest US retailer of swimming pool supplies and related products has warned about a slowdown in traffic.

In a press release, pool supplies retailer Leslie’s Inc. slashed its annual forecast after reporting a slowdown in consumer traffic in the three months ended July 1. 

“Our fiscal third-quarter results were well below our expectations as low double digit traffic declines in our Residential and Pro businesses drove negative comps across both discretionary and non-discretionary categories. While abnormal weather continued to pressure traffic levels, customer surveys conducted towards the end of the quarter also indicated increased price sensitivity and that consumers entered the pool season with a greater than normal amount of chemicals leftover from last year,” Leslie’s Chief Executive Officer Mike Egeck wrote in a statement. 

“While the update does underscore a softer environment for the pool industry, we believe the issues are largely idiosyncratic to Leslie’s and independent retailers,” Stifel analyst W. Andrew Carter told clients this week. 

The slowdown in pool sales sent Leslie’s shares down 30% on Friday. Other pool-related companies slumped as well on a weaker demand outlook. 

And now, with pool demand sliding, we’ve noticed some hot tub companies are offering as much as a 40% discount for six to eight-person tubs. Another bubble has deflated as financial conditions get tighter and the consumers tap out. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Justice Brett Kavanaugh pushed back this week against claims that Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices are engaged in a partisan war against justices who were appointed by Democrats.

In comments to an audience in Minnesota, Mr. Kavanaugh said that the nine justices often find common ground on a range of issues in their rulings. He delivered those remarks several weeks after the court’s session ended in late June.

“We have lived up, in my estimation, to deciding cases based on law, not based on partisan affiliation or partisanship,” Mr. Kavanaugh, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, told a crowd.

“We don’t caucus in separate rooms. We don’t meet separately. We’re not sitting on different sides of the aisle at oral argument, so to speak, on the bench. We work as a group of nine—as I’ve said before, as a team of nine.”

The justice added that the Supreme Court is “an institution of law” and is not “of partisanship, not of politics.”

“You might hear a lot about one, two, three, four cases a term, but we’re doing 60–70 cases a term,” Mr. Kavanaugh added.

“A lot of them are 9–0, but then there might be a lot of 7–2, 6–3s with all sorts of different lineups. … The relationships withstand that, I think, because we are working together on so many different cases.”

Mr. Kavanaugh also estimated that the nine justices eat lunch together dozens of times per year, saying that there is a “rule at lunch [that] you can’t talk about work.”

“It’s a good rule,” he continued.

“It builds relationships and friendships and then when we have tough cases—and we only really have tough cases—you have a reservoir of good will toward each of the other people.”

The remarks he made in Minnesota are the first public comments that a Supreme Court justice since the court recessed over the summer after making a handful of major decisions. In a 6–3 ruling, for example, the court struck down affirmative action rules for college admissions and also rejected President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.

A number of corporate news outlets, pundits, and Democratic Party politicians assailed the Republican-appointed justices for their decisions in those cases. But Mr. Kavanaugh said that he understands these cases are contentious and that the Supreme Court faces intense scrutiny.

Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh attend the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Feb. 5, 2019. (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

“You shouldn’t be in this line of work if you don’t like criticism,” he said, according to multiple reports. “Because you’re going to get it. And you’re going to get a lot of it.”

He added: 

“I just think the tone of how we do things in the profession has a kind of cascading effect. We live in a very polarized society of course, with a lot of tension, and I think we need as judges and lawyers to be the calm in that storm as best we can.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Kavanaugh only briefly mentioned ethics issues surrounding some of the justices, including Democrat-appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Republican-appointed justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in recent months. Instead, he deferred to a prior statement that was made by Chief Justice John Roberts, who in May said that the justices are continuing to work on the matter.

“That’s accurate,” he said. “I’m not going to add anything to what the chief justice has said on that topic.”

It comes a few days after the Supreme Court issued a rare public statement that defended Mrs. Sotomayor against allegations that her staffers prodded various colleges to purchase her books. Reports, including one from The Associated Press, that cited records claimed that the Obama-appointed justice amassed a net worth of millions of dollars since she took the bench more than a decade ago.

“Judges, including Justices, routinely travel and speak to university, college and law school audiences and affiliated individuals and entities. Judicial staff play an important role in assisting on issues of ethics, travel, and security,” the Supreme Court’s statement said.

“Chambers staff assist the Justices in complying with judicial ethics guidance for such visits, including guidance relating to judges’ publications.”

“For example, judicial ethics guidance suggests that a judge may sign copies of his or her work, which may also be available for sale, but there should be no requirement or suggestion that attendees are required to purchase books in order to attend,” the statement added.

The president of the United States has once again surrendered to his unsettling impulses toward children — weirdly mouthing a little girl in Finland. 

The latest in Joe Biden’s long line of cringe-inducing behavior toward female children came as Biden mingled with US embassy employees in Helsinki, before he boarded Air Force One. 

In video of the incident, a woman is seen holding a very little girl who’s perhaps one or two years old. Biden shuffles up, and proceeds to open his open mouth wide against the girl’s shoulder before vigorously opening and closing his jaw at least a dozen times. 

As she understandably scowls at him in disgust, Biden scowls back for a few seconds — before closing in for his signature juvenile-hair-sniff, only to be denied as his tiny victim squirms away. 

Words can only do so much…this one has to be seen to be believed:  

During his departure from Finland, President Joe Biden bizarrely sniffed and bit at the shoulder of a frightened little girl. pic.twitter.com/Lx23QeGmfD

— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) July 14, 2023

The more you study the video, the more you find wrong with it — and we’re not just talking about Biden.

For starters, observe the unidentified woman holding the toddler. In the video, she’s focused entirely on recording her defenseless child’s encounter with the Sniffer-in-Chief, and then she laughs in the same off-putting way as those horrendous parents who serve their little children up to drag queens. 

Then, there’s the man next to the her. He not only laughs approvingly, but gives Biden a slap on the shoulder as if to say “attaboy!” We can only hope that isn’t the girl’s father. 

Next, contemplate the close presence of the Secret Service. While the little girl was sadly without protectors on Thursday, one can visualize what would happen if a mother or father gave Biden a well-deserved shove to stop him from coating their child with saliva: They’d be planted face-first into the tarmac by the Imperial Guard. 

Finally, in something of a nod to Frédéric Bastiat, who urge you to ponder the unseen: Biden was lavishing (albeit unwanted) attention on a stranger’s little girl as he continues to disown his granddaughter fathered by son Hunter with a then-stripper.

Last week, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd scolded Biden for his heartless stance, which extends to reportedly ordering White House staff to refuse to even acknowledge that little girl’s existence. “Empathy, born of family tragedies, has been his stock in trade,” wrote Dowd. “Callously scarring [her] life, just as it gets started, undercuts that.”

Of course, given Biden’s continued strange behavior toward children, his detachment may in some ways be a blessing. Meanwhile, his inability to restrain his impulses flies in the face of previous declarations:

• In 2011, Biden told students at the University of New Hampshire that “it’s never, never, never, never, never okay to touch [a girl] without her consent.” 
• In 2019, after four women publicly accused him of unwanted touching, Biden said “social norms have begun to change, and the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset…I’ll be much more mindful.”

However, whether it’s the Mexican frontier or a child’s body, Biden continues to demonstrate an utter disregard for important boundaries. 

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

Certain establishment types consider my ideas extreme. They accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist or some kind of kook, way outside the boundaries of acceptable consensus.

That’s fine, I expect that. If you threaten powerful interests, you can expect that they’ll try to discredit you.

The fact is people are conditioned to accept whatever the authorities tell them. It’s a powerful urge that actually goes back to evolutionary biology.

If you challenge what the authorities say, you become a threat to group cohesiveness, and, therefore, a threat to group survival.

In that vein, I’ve been warning my readers for over a year about the dangers of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that are being rolled out by central banks around the world.

In the U.S., I’ve called them “Biden Bucks.” I’ve warned that they could quite possibly lead to a total surveillance state in which the government can track your every purchase — and regulate the most minute aspects of your life.

Total Control

CBDCs are programmable. They allow central banks (or regulated commercial banks) to monitor your purchases.

In conjunction with artificial intelligence (AI), purchases and other uses of money (charitable contributions, political contributions, travel, etc.) can create a profile that identifies you as an enemy of the people as described by the government.

CBDCs can be used to freeze your account, require you to spend money at the risk of confiscation in the form of a “fiscal penalty” or to impose withholding tax on professionals and independent contractors who are not currently subject to withholding.

Your “Biden Bucks” could also be made to stop working at the gas pump once you’ve purchased a certain amount of gasoline in a week. Or you could be banned from buying a steak at the grocery store if you’ve exceeded your weekly quota of meat consumption.

An ad might then pop up on your phone suggesting you try the latest “meatless” meat alternative.

How’s that for control?

Financial Apartheid

Biden Bucks can also allow the creation of a segregated society based on wealth. If you’re in a higher income bracket, for example, you might have to pay more for the products you buy than someone in a lower income bracket.

“Hey, you can afford to pay $10 for a gallon of milk, while the other guy can’t. Why should he have to pay the same price as you? That’s unfair. So guess what? If you want that gallon of milk, it’s going to cost you $10.”

That could apply to any product. And you can be sure that in many cases, “the wealthy” would really mean the middle class.

Or if the government decides you have too much money, it could reduce the amount of interest you receive on your money in the bank.

This is the kind of world that Biden Bucks opens up.

The bottom line is CBDCs would create massive opportunities for social control that the worst tyrants in history would have envied.

That’s why these globalist elites are so enamored of them. It explains why they’re pursuing them so aggressively — even if nations must change their constitutions to accommodate them.

Change the Constitution!

Here’s an excerpt from a recent Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report, which it produced in conjunction with seven leading central banks, including the Fed:

Legislation may need to be enacted or adjusted to specifically authorize the issuance and distribution of a retail CBDC (e.g. changes to central bank charters/statutes, legislation in other areas related to payments or to the constitution itself).

Of course, mainstream news outlets have tried to discredit me as I raise these concerns. For example, The Associated Press tried to “fact-check” me, claiming that my warnings about government control were paranoid.

But as I’ve recently pointed out, even the general manager of the BIS, which is known as the “central bank of central banks,” has admitted that CBDCs would give central banks “absolute control” of everyone’s money — and the “technology to enforce that.”

But maybe you think that all this is years away, that you don’t have to worry about it right now. Well, think again.

We don’t have to wait until then to see how this works in practice. Government control of bank accounts to attack political enemies is already here.

And So It Begins

Nigel Farage is a popular U.K. politician and public figure. He was a member of the European Parliament and leader of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP). Farage is best known as the leader of the Brexit movement that successfully led the U.K. to exit from the EU following a referendum to leave in June 2016.

There can be little doubt that Farage is popular among U.K. voters and despised by the U.K. political elite. Recently, the elites had their revenge.

His bank notified him that his accounts were being closed and he had a deadline to remove his funds.

He then spent weeks trying to open new accounts at other U.K. banks. He was refused time and time again. Clearly this was an orchestrated attack on his financial freedom.

It’s practically impossible to live in a developed economy without access to bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards, savings instruments and the cluster of modern financial services offered through the banking system.

At the end of the day, Farage may have to leave the U.K. and move elsewhere in order to establish banking accounts. That would suit the U.K. elites just fine. They want to force Farage out of the country.

But this isn’t just a story about Nigel Farage. It’s about elites and their plans to stifle dissenters who oppose their globalist agenda. This is a warning shot.

You Could Be Next

If they can do this to Farage, they will do it to you if you oppose them on issues like climate, globalization or immigration.

Here in the U.S., it can include issues such as gun control or election integrity. Or if you support the wrong political candidates like Donald Trump, they could target you.

As far as globalists are concerned, everyday people cannot be trusted to make the right decisions on these fundamental issues. They also can’t be trusted to vote for the “proper” political candidates. Such decisions should be placed beyond democratic control to the greatest extent possible, globalists believe.

To globalists, the moral arc of the universe bends in one direction, and that’s toward increasing globalization. Populism and protectionism are therefore moral evils that must be condemned.

Freezing their enemies out of the banking and financial system is a powerful tool elites can use to punish their enemies and deter dissent.

And when CBDCs arise, it will be easier than ever. Get ready.

Via The Cradle, 

The US is deploying additional F-16 fighter jets to the Strait of Hormuz to “protect ships from Iranian seizures,” a senior Pentagon official told reporters on Friday, adding that Washington is “increasingly concerned” about burgeoning ties between Iran, Russia, and Syria.

The unnamed official told Pentagon reporters on condition of anonymity that the F-16s will provide air cover to cargo vessels moving through the strategic waterway and “increase the military’s visibility” of Iranian operations.

Iran last week attempted to seize two foreign-flagged fuel tankers in Gulf waters that were involved in fuel smuggling operations, and a third Tehran says was involved in a hit-and-run incident.

“On 6 July, Revolutionary Guards’ Navy personnel were inspecting a ship with the name NADA 2 that was involved in smuggling Iranian oil and gas in the Persian Gulf, which the US sought to prevent through a series of unprofessional and risky actions,” Ramazan Zirrahi, a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy told Iranian media earlier this week.

“The Americans flew several aircraft, including two A-10 fighters, and tried until the last moment to prevent the seizure of the vessel, but it was eventually brought to Bushehr port for legal procedures,” Zirrahi added. He also revealed that the crew of the NADA 2 were instructed by US officials to “switch off the engine and wait for the American military forces to come for help.”

Besides deploying a new fighter jet squadron to the Gulf, the Pentagon official said Washington is “considering a number of military options to address increasing Russian aggression in the skies over Syria,” adding that the US occupation army “will not cede any territory”.

Over the past several months, Pentagon officials have bemoaned the Russian air force’s increased activity over US occupation bases and their “harassment” of US warplanes and drones.

The most recent incident occurred on Friday morning when a Russian aircraft flew over Washington’s Al-Tanf base in eastern Syria, where US forces train extremist groups to fight against the Syrian government. The Russian An-30 aircraft was reportedly collecting intelligence on the base.

France last week also accused Russia of conducting a “non-professional interaction” with two Rafale fighter jets flying near the Iraq-Syria border.

These events took place days after the Syrian and Russian armies launched the latest round of joint drills to “exercise control” over Syria’s airspace and examine “the effectiveness of Russian air defense means in the country.”

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

As Ukraine’s manpower on its frontlines starts to dwindle, military leaders are becoming increasingly desperate to locate new recruits to propel its counteroffensive against Russia forward; however, the number of young people volunteering for such a challenge has plummeted.

Recent videos of young Ukrainian men being conscripted across the country have circulated in popular encrypted messaging apps in Ukraine, and those fearful of being sent to the front are actively engaging in evasive and, in some instances, illegal tactics to avoid such a fate.

The brutal mobilization by Ukrainian military recruitment officers of young men has been occurring for a year and a half now, Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet reports.

“Many conscripted men are taken straight off the street by uniformed men,” it states. “Most recently in Subcarpathia, a surveillance camera recorded the overreach of the authorities as a man trying to go to a store was kidnapped from his bicycle in broad daylight.”

The man was abducted right on a street during the day by police and conscription officers in a small village in the Municipal District of Munkács, with his bicycle left in the road.

Another video showed footage of a young man being pushed against his will into a burgundy army minibus in Mukachevo, Transcarpathia.

Similar videos have been posted from other major cities across Ukraine, including Kyiv and Odessa.

Videos of such instances are going viral on messaging apps such as Telegram and Viber, which can to an extent bypass the freedom of information restrictions that are now very evident across both Ukraine and Russia.

Some of the accounts posting this content have an increasingly large number of followers — upwards of 100,000 — with some accounts geotracking recruitment patrols in real time to help others evade what is known colloquially as the “love letter.”

Other young people are simply refusing to leave their homes due to an increasing number of unannounced mobile checkpoints in regions across Ukraine where military recruiters seek to catch Ukrainian men of military age off guard and conscript them into the forces.

However, excesses are not limited to Transcarpathia. In Vinnytsia, which is located between Kyiv and Odessa, for example, a video is also circulating of employees of the local military auxiliary command forcefully stuffing their victims into a luxury vehicle. 

“Many young people no longer leave their homes. There’s always a risk. You have to be really careful and look around in case there’s any danger. It’s really stressful,” said one young Ukrainian man in an interview with broadcaster France 24.

“Why don’t young people want to be drafted into the army? Because they know the price of holding the frontlines. It costs thousands of lives,” he added.

Andrii Novak, a Ukrainian lawyer and specialist in military affairs, said that corruption among military recruiters remains rife, and some conscripting officers are playing the system to get rich quick.

“Because of corruption, there are illegal methods (to avoid the war), such as paying off the people from the armed forces commissary, or paying for a false certificate of disability,” he told the French broadcaster.

It is well known that military recruitment offices have become a hotbed of corruption over the last year and a half. In Ukraine, it is no secret that mobilization can be avoided for an average of €7,000. Officers can make incredible fortunes and some do not hide their newfound wealth, arriving at work in new luxury cars.

Most recently, one Odessa military commander, Yevgeny Borisov, was found to have spent nearly €4 million over the past year on a luxury mansion on the Spanish coast, as well as nearly €200,000 on a luxury car.

He also bought his wife a chain of shops on the Costa del Sol. If all this was not enough, Borisov was able to holiday in his Spanish palace despite the fact that the borders have been closed to conscripts for a year and a half.

Yevgeny Borisov, commander of Odessa’s auxiliary

Yevgeny Borisov’s villa in Marabella.

Borisov’s case caused such a public outcry that, after nearly two months of complaints, President Volodymyr Zelensky had to declare that such figures had no place in the army. He even promised that all military offices would be reviewed.

Ironically, it is precisely in Odessa that Ukrainian conscripting soldiers are the most aggressive and underhanded; the region also features the highest number of conscriptions.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

At the end of June government leaders and think-tank power brokers from around the world met at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris. Participants include United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and World Bank President Ajay Banga.

The supposed purpose of the summit was to find financial solutions to the goals of tackling poverty while simultaneously curbing “planet-heating emissions.” As with all climate change related events the discussion in Paris inevitably turned to international centralization of power and the formation of a global consortium to fix the problems that they claim sovereign nations cannot or will not fix.

However, what I’m seeing more and more in the past couple years is a convergence of narratives – Central banks and international banks are now suddenly more concerned with carbon taxation and global warming than they seem to be concerned with stagflation and economic collapse. Likely because this was the goal all along and economic collapse is part of the plan.

Globalists are now combining the climate change issue with international finance and monetary authority. In other words, they aren’t hiding the fact that the climate change agenda is part of the “Great Reset” agenda anymore. They are even suggesting that the threat of climate change be used as a springboard for giving global banks more power to dictate the circulation of wealth and for deconstucting the existing system so it can be replaced with something else.

French President Emmanuel Macron told delegates at the Paris summit that “the world needs a public finance shock” to fight global warming while also creating “equity” for less wealthy nations. He also argued that the current system was not well suited to address the world’s challenges.

Presenters at the event noted that the international economic framework had been battered by a number of crises, including the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but focused on “the spiraling cost of weather disasters intensified by global warming” as a reason for the ongoing destabilization of financial systems.

This is obviously nonsense, but it fits with the narrative programming that globalists are trying to engineer by linking economic decline to climate change. In reality, there is ZERO evidence that global weather events are any worse today than they were over a hundred years ago before carbon producing industries were widespread. There is no proven connection between carbon emissions and any specific weather phenomenon. The claim is a fraud. There is no man-made climate crisis, as I have outlined and evidenced in previous articles.

But how many people will be fooled into thinking that there is a climate crisis, and what can that hysterical fear be exploited for?

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley (like many globalists) advocated for re-imagining the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in an era of climate dangers. She argues: “What is required of us now is absolute transformation and not reform of our institutions…”

UN leader Antonio Guterres said the global financial system, which was conceived at the end of World War II under the Bretton Woods Agreement, was failing to rise to modern challenges and now “perpetuates and even worsens inequalities.” In other words, he is angling for a new woke Bretton Woods.

“We can take steps right now and take a giant leap towards global justice,” he said, adding that he has proposed a stimulus of $500 billion a year for investments in sustainable development and climate action. There was also a plan presented to use the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket as a mechanism to boost global liquidity.

Keep in mind that the fiat stimulus measures of central banks and the interest rate policies of global bankers are what caused the current economic crisis to begin with. It wasn’t covid, it wasn’t the war in Ukraine and it certainly wasn’t climate change. It was the banks and their use of monetary manipulation that triggered 40 year high inflation, and this has led to central banks hiking interest rates into economic weakness.  This strategy has consistently caused debt implosion and stock market disasters in the past. The bankers and the globalists are the source of the problem, they should not be put in charge of fixing it.

Yet, here they are, trying to take control and institute a sweeping Reset plan for the calamity they created. But where is all of this leading?

Last year the UN suggested that developed and emerging economies like the US and China would have to pay a kind of wealth/emissions tax of at least $2.4 trillion a year into a fund for climate change developments, and this wealth would be redistributed to poorer nations.  Redistributed by who?  Well, the globalists, of course.

Other ideas on the table include taxation on fossil fuel profits and financial transactions to raise climate funds. Meaning, they plan to tax oil and gas until prices become so high that the general public will not be able to afford them.

Macron in particular backed the idea of an international tax on carbon emissions from shipping, ostensibly to make overseas freight more expensive in order to reduce manufacturing demand.  This expands on the strict carbon rules already being implemented on European agriculture.

These all seem like disjointed plans to simply inflate prices through different forms of taxation and force the public to consume less goods, but there is a much bigger scheme at play here. It’s important to understand that climate change is nothing more than a vehicle to deliver a fully centralized global economic system, likely under the control of the IMF, BIS, World Bank and the UN.

The annual payments by wealthier nations into global institutional coffers is an act of tribute, a show of fealty. It’s also a way for groups like the IMF to create a system of greater interdependency. If vast sums of money are flowing through globalist institutions and they become the arbiters of how that wealth is redistributed, they can also build a system of rewards and punishments. They can punish countries that don’t follow their dictates and they can give advantages to countries that toe the line.

In terms of a new Bretton Woods, I suspect that this is all culminating in a currency crisis which the globalists will use as an opportunity to finally introduce their CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) model. And once CBDCs are implemented their ability to dominate the populace will be complete. A cashless system with no privacy in transactions and the ability to shut down the buying power of individuals and groups at will? It’s a totalitarian’s dream scenario.

It’s no mistake that the public is being constantly bombarded with global warming propaganda these days – The powers that be need an existential crisis as a fear generator. When people are afraid they don’t think rationally and will often turn to the worst possible leaders for relief. And a global threat requires a global response, right?

Climate change disaster narratives (if the public embraces the propaganda) will allow for a wide array of systemic changes that have nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with financial dominance.

National wealth taxation and redistribution. The imposition of the IMF and World Bank as a mediator for global funds. The use of the IMF’s SDR basket as a defacto global currency umbrella. The injection of CBDCs and a cashless society. None of these things would have any bearing on climate change even if it was a legitimate threat.

But what about the scorched earth model?  If  the ultimate intent is to destroy the economy to the point that most industry dies, trade retracts and the population plummets because survival becomes untenable, then one might argue that the globalists are “saving the planet” by getting rid of people.  I suppose if you think keeping the population in perpetual third-world status will save us from global warming, then you might support such an agenda.

Whether the goal is simply economic micro-management or the forced liquidation of production, the outcome would be more power for internationalists and less freedom and prosperity for everyone else.

They can spin it however they want, but when the elites call for a “financial shock” they are really calling for a dramatic throttling of the system so that it can no longer maintain the existing populace. When they call for global taxation and tribute in the name of “equality” they are not trying to make everyone equally rich, they want everyone equally poor.

And when they call for the centralized oversight of nations for the sake of saving the planet, what they really want is global governance.

*  *  *

If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a revolutionary force with the potential to transform many aspects of our daily lives.

So understanding how the average person feels about this technology is essential as it integrates further into society. 

In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist’s Alan Kennedy and Sabrina Fortin, using data from Lloyd’s Register Foundation, we explore the findings of the World Risk Poll 2021: A Digital World.  

The World’s Opinion is Divided

In the poll, which had 125,000 respondents in 121 countries, people were asked if AI would ‘mostly help’ or it would ‘mostly hurt‘ people in their home country over the next 20 years.

We’ve looked at the ratio of these responses below.

A higher ratio above 1.0 indicates that more people think AI could ‘mostly help’, while a ratio below 1.0 suggests that the population has more skepticism towards the technology.

Globally, the average ratio is 1.4, but significant differences can be seen when looking at each individual region.

Notably, public opinion among the biggest economies appears split.

When we dug into the data, we saw that the U.S. showed skepticism towards AI with a ratio of 0.9. In this case, the potential loss of jobs could possibly be the leading cause of apprehension.

On the other hand, China expressed a ratio of 4.5, meaning for every 1 respondent that believes AI will ‘mostly harm’, 4.5 said AI would ‘mostly help’.

Why is AI So Polarizing? 

AI has always been a divisive subject, and even the media can’t settle on whether AI is akin to the chaotic and malevolent Ultron or the caring and cat-obsessed Lt. Cmdr Data.

Consequently, it’s not just a person’s nationality or media consumption that impacts their stance on AI. A person’s life experience may also play a role in their perception of AI, more notably when it comes to religious views or access to the internet:

Artificial intelligence has many philosophical ramifications, so it’s no surprise that only 32% of those who consider religion important believe AI will help. Conversely, 48% of non-religious people believe AI will ‘mostly help’.

In 16 countries, the percentage of people who say AI will ‘mostly harm’ was higher among those who had experienced discrimination based on their race/nationality, skin color, or sex, compared to those who had not. Notably, these include three Northern European countries where overall perceptions of AI are among the most positive in the world: Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.

An Uncertain Future

Even though 39% of global respondents believe AI will ‘mostly help’ in the next 20 years, only 27% of those people believe they would feel comfortable behind the wheel of a self-driving car. This suggests that while people may be ready for AI as a tool, they may not be ready for it to control large parts of their life.

With this in mind, understanding public opinion is crucial for policymakers and industry leaders to then shape the development and deployment of AI technologies in a manner that addresses these concerns. 

Lloyd’s Register Foundation has created the World Risk Poll 2021 to help engineer a safer world, but the scope of this study goes beyond AI and personal data. In part two of this series, we’ll explore the World Risk Poll 2021: Safe At Work and unearth some startling trends regarding workplace harassment.

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

Earlier this year, Gun Owners of America leaked internal ATF documents, highlighting an unprecedented rate of Federal Firearms Licenses revoked by the Biden administration’s ATF. 

In fact, since the enactment of ATF’s Zero Tolerance policy, there has been a 200% increase in FFL revocations. This is due to the agency’s new interpretation of the word “willful.” 

Congress has made clear that, when revoking a license, ATF is required to prove that an FFL “willfully” violated the law before the statutory punishments can be levied. 

This deliberate addition to the law by Congress presented a problem for ATF, as virtually all gun dealers are well-intentioned, law-abiding people who always attempt to comply with the law.  

Therefore, to claim “willfulness” to violate the law by people who almost uniformly try to follow the law — ATF had to get creative.  

Now, ATF claims that a single manual, potentially given to an FFL decades ago, proves that the FFL knew the law and thus “willfully” decided to violate it. 

Whereas prior to the adoption of the Zero Tolerance policy, ATF would give a warning conference to firearms dealers who made mistakes on forms. Now, according to the new policy, the default action is to revoke the dealer’s license.  

In other words, under the Biden Administration, ATF has changed its focus from regulating the gun industry to destroying it by whatever means possible — eliminating access to firearms by putting as many gun dealers as possible out of business.  

In 2022, GOA & Morehouse Industries, a firearms business from North Dakota, filed a lawsuit against the ATF’s Frame and Receiver rule.  

Not long after that, ATF initiated its first-ever inspection of Morehouse’s FFL. 

The ATF agent assigned to the Morehouse inspection, Jacob Temp, mentioned to the licensee that around his office, the other agents joked about how the inspection would look like retaliation for the lawsuit.  

The ATF’s inspection resulted in ATF issuing a notice of license revocation to Morehouse Industries. 

It’s important to note that the supposed violations being used as cause for revocation did not in any way impact public safety, risk the transfer of a firearm to a prohibited person, or harm law enforcement’s ability to trace any gun. 

So, in response to ATF’s egregious abuse of power, Gun Owners of America and Morehouse Industries are suing the agency again — this time, over their illegal zero-tolerance policy.  

Erich Pratt, GOA’s Senior Vice President, issued the following statement:  

“This zero-tolerance policy towards lawful commerce guaranteed by the Second Amendment is just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing federal agencies against their political enemies. It also is just one more compelling piece of evidence to support gun owners’ demands that Congress defund the ATF.” 

Sam Paredes, on behalf of the Board for GOF, added:  

“It’s ridiculous that good people trying to make an honest living are facing this assault on their livelihoods simply over inconsequential paperwork errors. GOF is proud to be lending our support in defense of Bridge City Ordnance and all of those small businesses facing devastating consequences if this Administration’s hostility towards firearms is permitted to go unchecked.”  

Gun Owners of America has had major success in the courts fighting against Biden’s executive actions. In May, GOA won a preliminary injunction against ATF’s pistol brace rule, making GOA members immune from enforcement.  

*   *   * 

We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.