Measures like GDP are commonly used to understand the overall wealth and size of the economy. However, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley details below, while looking at economic output on an annual basis is useful, there are other metrics to consider when evaluating the wealth of a nation.

Household wealth statistics reveal which country’s citizens are accruing the highest level of money and assets worldwide.

This visual utilizes data from Credit Suisse’s annual Global Wealth Report to break down the latest estimates for household wealth by country.

Household Wealth, by Country

Here’s how the world’s $463 trillion in household wealth is distributed:

As the table above demonstrates, global household wealth is far from being distributed equally.

Country-Level Wealth Concentration

Much of global wealth is concentrated in the biggest economies, with households in China and the U.S. combining to make up half of all personal wealth in the world. This differs slightly from using GDP as a measure, where the U.S. and China make up 24% and 19% of the world economy in nominal terms, respectively.

Today, just 10 countries account for 75% of total household wealth.

One of the biggest changes in recent years is the rise of wealth in China. A decade ago, China’s citizens were estimated to hold just 9% of the world’s wealth. That figure has now more than doubled, while median wealth in the country has skyrocketed from $3,111 to $26,752 between 2000 and 2021.

A Regional Look at Household Wealth

From a regional standpoint, wealth is equally split three ways, between North America, Asia, and everywhere else.

In just one decade, Europe’s share of household wealth dropped by eight percentage points, which is due, in part, to the economic momentum of China.

Surprisingly, the regions of Africa, South America, Oceania, and the Middle East combine only for about 11% of the world’s total household wealth.

Submitted by Alex Madajian, the Federal Affairs Assistant of Gun Owners of America., 

It did not take long for anti-gun activists in the media to make the claim gun control is a winning issue for Democrats, but only if the glaring problems with that picture are ignored.

Abortion, record inflation, large amounts of crime, concerns about democracy, and even climate change and healthcare ranked of higher concern for voters than gun policy according to NBC. Additionally, the New York Times reported last month only 1% of likely voters thought guns were the most important problem. No doubt, if guns were the only issue on the ballot, there would be very different results. The fact is, there were too many factors in play for pundits to make the claim people want more gun control. But there were many glaring cases in which pro-gun elected officials were rewarded for strong pro-gun actions.

Every single governor who signed a Constitutional Carry law, which would allow people to carry a firearm without a permit, won re-election. Brian Kemp won Georgia, Chris Sununu won New Hampshire, Kim Reynolds won Iowa, Kevin Stitt won Oklahoma, Greg Abbott won Texas, and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine also won reelection. All of the aforementioned either signed Constitutional Carry Laws in their current term or a previous term. Additionally, although Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida did not sign Constitutional Carry, he called for such legislation to be sent to him for his signature. If guns really were on the ballot in Florida, then the people of Florida clearly are rewarding him for his pro-gun stance by giving him another term.

Even the people of Uvalde, who suffered the horrendous tragedy of 19 children and 2 teachers murdered at Robb Elementary School in May of this year by a deranged school shooter, decided to vote more than 60% for Governor Greg Abbot, who again, signed permitless carry into law. In addition, a Republican challenger to the State Senator representing the area, won the Uvalde area by more than 17% and boasts support for the “constitutional right to carry” on his website.

People who argue guns are not a good issue to run on may claim Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s narrow race in a supposedly safe Republican district is an example of how proud pro-gun candidates are vulnerable. However, if Representative Boebert’s close margins in a safe red district prove that’s the case, why didn’t that apply to other supposedly “controversial” pro-gun elected officials? Congressman Thomas Massie is also the co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus with Boebert, yet he won by massive margins. What about Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene? She is no stranger to taking stances on a host of issues that are considered “controversial” by the anti-gun Left, and also makes guns a top issue on which to campaign. Plus, she was outspent by her opponent by nearly $5 million, but she still won by massive margins.

The best conclusion to make regarding Boebert’s close race is that there were numerous factors involved not having to do with gun policy. Even her opponent didn’t make it an issue, since he never mentions it on his website. When he was asked about it, he expressed a middle-of-the-road opinion by saying “I’m fully supportive of people having [guns]. Let’s make sure people can hunt as freely as they wish, let’s make sure they can do their target practices and recreational gun firing, and let’s make sure people have the ability to carry the pistol on their belt.”

As it turns out, when Democrats show support for guns, they do fair very well. Perhaps the most egregious anti-Second Amendment piece of legislation put on the floor of the House for a vote was this year’s so-called “Assault Weapons” ban. This ban was far more encompassing than just AR-15s, which would be extreme enough, but would also have banned common items such as Glock handguns. Obviously, opposition to such legislation does not make one a pro-gun hero, but it shows even a few pragmatic Democrats recognize voting for gun bans are a bad idea in tight races. All three Democrat candidates running for reelection in the general who voted against the ban won reelection. Reportedly, two won by nearly 10 points. Democrat Jerad Golden ran in one of the thirteen districts Trump won in 2020 and is projected to win according to the Sun Journal.

Even gun control organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety don’t act as if their actual mission of gun control is enough of an issue to mobilize voters. The Reload reports they ran ads attacking pro-gun candidate’s stances on irrelevant issues to guns like abortion or the security of the 2020 election. They also spent $1 million to defeat two Secretary of State candidates, which is an office that has nothing to do with gun policy.

Declaring voters don’t care about their right to defend themselves because Republicans did worse than expected is a projection of desires rather than a report of facts. Many issues were on voters’ minds, but if appreciation for gun control was one of them, then that’s just clearly not reflected by the results.

*   *   *

Gun Owners for America, the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington.

Did you know that the internet you’re familiar with is only 10% of the total data that makes up the World Wide Web?

As Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, the rest of the web is hidden from plain sight, and requires special access to view. It’s known as the Deep Web, and nestled far down in the depths of it is a dark, sometimes dangerous place, known as the darknet, or Dark Web.

This graphic by Enrique Mendoza provides us a glimpse at this shrouded part of the internet, showing us some of the common items that are sold on there, and how much they typically cost.

A Brief Introduction to the Dark Web

Before diving in, it’s worth quickly explaining what the Dark Web is, and how people typically gain access to it.

Unlike the ordinary web (which is also known as the Surface Web), the Dark Web cannot be accessed through a regular browser such as Chrome or Safari. Rather, users need to access it anonymously via a Tor browser.

Tor, which is short for “The Onion Router,” is a special portal that connects users to Dark Web websites in a complicated way that ultimately protects the user’s identity. This means users can access websites anonymously.

The Dark Web can be a breeding ground for illegal activity, where people can buy things like contract killings, drugs, malware, and other people’s personal information.

Product Price Breakdown

How much is your personal information worth on the Dark Web? This graphic uses data from the 2022 Dark Web Product Price Index to find that out and more.

This annual report by privacyaffairs.com provides insights into some of the most popular products that are for sale on the Dark Web, such as credit card data, forged documents, and hacked info, and lists the average price of each product.

While this list is far from exhaustive and not the only measure of Dark Web prices, the report gives us a glimpse into hidden online territory that’s extremely unfamiliar to many of us. Here’s the top 10 most valuable items…

One of the most expensive items included in the dataset is premium malware, which costs about $5,500 per 1,000 installs. While the cost for premium malware is hefty, there are still billions of malware attacks occurring every year causing huge monetary damage.

On the other end of the spectrum are Paypal account details, Netflix logins, or stolen credit card details (complete with a CVV) all available for less than $20.

How to Protect Your Personal Information

As the line between the digital and physical realm becomes increasingly blurry, it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re protecting yourself and your personal information from identity theft.

According to Privacy Affairs, there are several proactive measures you can take to decrease your chances of getting hacked. This includes using a VPN whenever you access public Wi-Fi, using different passwords for different online accounts, and investing in anti-malware software to combat unwanted visitors.

A large section of the U.S. space shuttle Challenger has been found on the Atlantic Ocean floor, more than 30 years after it exploded shortly after liftoff, killing all seven aboard, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center announced on Thursday. 

The section remains partially buried, but measures at least 15 feet by 15 feet. Judging by the shape of its thermal tiles, NASA believes this piece is from the belly of the shuttle. 

The shuttle piece was originally discovered in March, by divers working on a History Channel documentary series about the Bermuda Triangle. They were looking for World War II aircraft wreckage but were startled to find something very different just off Florida’s Cape Canaveral coast. The documentary will debut on Tuesday, Nov. 22. 

Noting the “modern construction and presence of 8-inch square tiles,” the production team alerted NASA, the agency said in a press release. After studying the video, NASA verified it was from Challenger.   

Challenger exploded on Jan. 28, 1986, just 73 seconds after liftoff. The last command given to the shuttle was “Challenger, go with throttle up.” 

A spectacular explosion followed, and then stunned silence from both TV commentators and NASA launch commentator Steve Nesbitt. That silence ended when Nesbitt said, “Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation…obviously a major malfunction….we have no downlink.” 

Evidence points to a grim conclusion: The astronauts likely survived the initial explosion. Among other indicators, study of wreckage found that at least three astronauts switched their emergency oxygen supply on. 

Since the shuttle was 12 miles up when it exploded, the six NASA crew members and school-teacher Christa McAuliffe may have spent 2 minutes in sheer terror, knowing they were plummeting to certain death. 

An investigation found that unexpectedly cold temperatures led to the failure of O-ring seals in the shuttle’s solid rocker booster segment joints. Flight managers approved the launch despite concerns raised by shuttle program employees.  

Though 118 tons of Challenger’s wreckage have been found so far, that’s still just under half of the total mass that lifted off that day. In 1986, the remains of all seven astronauts were recovered from the shattered wreckage of the crew compartment. As the New York Times reported at the time, the crew compartment was “little more than a pile of rubble on the ocean floor, 8 feet high and 50 feet across.” 

Despite the huge volume of material that’s still unaccounted for, this is the first new section of the shuttle found since 1996, when two portions of the left wing washed ashore. 

What they uncover off the coast of Florida, outside of the Triangle, marks the first discovery of wreckage from the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger in more than 25 years. Don’t miss the premiere of The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters on Tuesday, November 22 at 10/9C. pic.twitter.com/LWUoFXxEnK

— HISTORY (@HISTORY) November 10, 2022

Authored by Adam R. Gebner, a Green Beret and West Point graduate, via Bitcoin Magazine,

The opinions expressed throughout this piece are mine alone, and in no way reflect official policy or opinions of the U.S. Army or the U.S. Department of Defense. Though I am by no means a writer, I hope that by publishing this, more service members consider working in the Bitcoin industry and Bitcoin companies consider expanding their efforts to hire Veterans. Additionally, I am always learning more about Bitcoin, how it works, and the potential value it may bring to our world. Please let me know where I am off base, thanks!

Early in my life, I knew I wanted to be a Green Beret officer. Fighting to liberate oppressed people by working by, with, and through local populations was at the core of my motivations to choose this path. I saw the Special Forces’ mission as a cost and risk-efficient way to prevent large-scale conflict while enabling people to defend themselves and secure their own freedom. After graduating from West Point in 2014 and serving with the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) for three years, I ultimately earned my Green Beret and an opportunity to lead a detachment of America’s Chosen Soldiers. Now that I’ve accomplished what I set out to do with my military career by commanding an “A-team” for two years, I am looking forward to the next mission in my professional life: contributing to the adoption and integration of the best freedom-protecting innovation in modern history — Bitcoin.

Like so many others, I had a few touch points with Bitcoin before seriously considering the validity of the technology. In 2010, during my first year at West Point, I overheard a few Computer Science majors discussing this “internet money” and I foolishly dismissed it without trying to learn anything else. Then in 2013, when I started learning about investing and economics, I stumbled across bitcoin again. I read a little bit more into it, but not enough to understand how it could replace gold as a sound money system (thanks Peter Schiff…).

Finally, in the summer of 2017, when I was deployed to the Republic of Georgia, “number-go-up” piqued my curiosity and I made my first attempt at buying some bitcoin. Unfortunately for me, the exchange I used, Coinbase, didn’t accept my orders because even though I had an American driver’s license and a U.S. Passport, I had an Italian phone number and was in the Republic of Georgia which, apparently, was suspicious. I completely missed that bull run, but I finally started to learn more about bitcoin and the potential of this innovation.

The concepts I learned reading about Austrian economics, personal investing and American history clicked shortly after. My perspective on some of the most persistent problems around the world shifted towards the realization that our global monetary system is corrupt, pricing signals are severely distorted, and the national and global debt is unsustainable. Since then, I have continued to learn about economics, bitcoin, and the growing industry around it, while stacking sats as often as possible.

This year, I completed my time in command and I had to make a career decision: continue serving in the Army or transition out. Service members, especially those who choose to serve for the standard 20-year career, have my deepest respect. Military life isn’t easy, it requires giving up a wide swath of freedoms, volunteering your life in order to protect national interests and persisting through deep uncertainty. The military profession can provide an honorable career, but for a variety of personal and professional reasons, I am called to do something else. I am inspired and encouraged to find work that contributes to a free and prosperous world, work that creates value for others, work that fixes systemic problems. For me, this means taking my experience leading diverse, cross-functional teams to market with the goal of contributing to the continued success and expansion of Bitcoin.

For any service member or Veteran who might be reading this, if you want to develop technical skills, take advantage of the Career Skillbridge Program. I am on my way to enrolling in a Vet Tec program, a Veterans Affairs program to train transitioning service members on a variety of in-demand technical skills, like computer programing and data processing. My experience creating models while studying mechanical engineering has helped with the learning curve, as has some experience working through classes on Code Academy. But anyone with an honest desire to learn will be successful. Not every Veteran or member of the Bitcoin industry needs to have these technical skills, however, for those who want to work in product development, or management, I believe having experience with software engineering, computer science or programming is next to essential and will make you much more marketable to bitcoin-focused companies.

Other vets in the industry have been incredibly helpful. Oftentimes a cold-message over LinkedIn results in an enthusiastic response and a phone call. Veterans currently working with Bitcoin know that as service members leave, they want to continue serving in a principle-based organization, and Bitcoin is arguably the most freedom-preserving industry to work in. For service members on their way out, find people who have already made the switch. They are great sounding boards for your ideas and bump-steering potential career plans. You will only leave the military once (hopefully), talk to as many people as possible who have done it before you and are now working in your targeted industry.

To me, and many other Veterans, serving in an industry with an inspiring, impactful mission is an essential requirement for a post-military career. Out of all the options, I believe that working in the Bitcoin industry and helping spread the adoption of bitcoin is an excellent fit for the dedicated, principled and team-oriented Veterans looking for their next opportunity to contribute to society. To Bitcoin companies, talk with and hire Veterans. There are many ways to provide transitioning Veterans with trial runs with your company, at no cost to you. I think you will find that Veterans are competent members of your team who will remain dedicated to your mission and their coworkers.

I see the potential of a civilian career working with Bitcoin as an incredible opportunity to pursue following the end of a highly rewarding period of military service. I am excited to contribute to the growth of the network and adoption of the technology. Despite the FUD and recent global instability, I am optimistic for our future. As a Green Beret who was trained to foment revolutions in pursuit of the expansion of human freedoms, I have high hopes for what Bitcoiners can do for humanity.

[ZH: Adam’s story was not alone and we thought the following, authored by Luke Groom, a West Point graduate and Army Enginner Officer, offered further insights as to why veterans find bitcoin so compelling.]

The Constitution was the code which enabled the protocol of America, Land of the Free — and Bitcoin builds upon this freedom.

Within the Bitcoin community, U.S. military service members are sometimes viewed with suspicion. I don’t know where this suspicion comes from. Maybe the libertarian elements of the community are against things that remind them of Big Government. Maybe Left elements of the community are against things that remind them of guns and violence. Maybe people think we are infiltrating the Bitcoin ranks to secretly further the interests of the Military Industrial Complex. I can only speculate. For me, the transition from service member to Bitcoiner is obvious. I will outline three reasons: freedom, responsibility and code. Throughout, I will refer to “military service members” and “Veterans” interchangeably, because they are the same people, just at different periods of life.

First, the key value which drives many young men and women to join the military is the same key value that Bitcoin promotes. If you ask someone why they chose to serve in the military, and continue to dig into their answer, somewhere in there is almost always a desire to promote liberty and freedom. At its core, Bitcoin is freedom money. It is free from debasement, free from political influence, free from seigniorage, free from centralization, free from manipulation and free from compulsion. Most people join the military because they value liberty. They value free markets. They want to fight for the “Land of the Free.” Sure, actual results may vary, but the desire is there.

Consider that we have centrally controlled fiat money, capable of debasement, political influence, theft via seigniorage and manipulated pricing via fixing of interest rates. Consider that fiat money is at least half of essentially every transaction. That means that not only do we not have a free market of money; we don’t have a free market of anything! Imagine the disillusionment of a service member who has dedicated their life to fighting for freedom, only to realize that we live in this unfree, manipulated-market world. Then they learn about Bitcoin. Becoming a Bitcoiner means voting with your energy in favor of free markets and all the freedom that Bitcoin represents. They realize that if they put their energy into Bitcoin, whether their purchasing power goes up or goes down, they are fighting for freedom, just like their inspiration to join the military to begin with.

Second, most Veterans crave increased personal responsibility. The military is great for teaching young people responsibility. Get up. Make your bed. Exercise. Go to work. Wear the right thing. Be on time. Be reliable. Be accountable. Lead. Follow. Take care of your buddies. The military has built in forcing functions to teach responsibility.

There comes a time, however, when you want to take the training wheels off. You want to show your personal responsibility without someone looking over your shoulder to make sure you’re doing it right. You want more than five options for your retirement investments. You want to shout, “I’m a peacock, you gotta let me fly!” Bitcoin aligns with that desire. You have to do your own research. You have to take responsibility for custody (or responsibility for counterparty risk). You have to accept the volatility in its conversion rate to fiat. There’s no safety net in the Bitcoin market, and that increased personal responsibility is liberating for many Veterans.

Last, every Veteran swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. As I’ve gone through law school, I’ve developed a greater appreciation for that document. We live in a polarized country. I’ve seen a lot of that country first-hand, living in Chicago, New York, Missouri, North Carolina and Washington. I’ve lived in the city, the suburbs and small towns. I’ve worked with millionaires and with people without a sat to their name. I’ve shared meals with people who have lost friends fighting overseas and with people who have protested at Army bases. Our citizens look different, sound different and have vastly different values. With citizens who are so dissimilar, what is holding this country together?

I would argue that the Constitution holds this country together and defines who we are as a nation. The Constitution is less than 5,000 words of code that set-in motion the protocol that is the United States of America. We have since seen that code soft forked in the form of amendments to the Constitution. We have seen layer upon layer of government built on top of that code, in similar ways that layers are being built upon Bitcoin. Some could successfully argue that we have seen the code ignored or misinterpreted beyond recognition. However, this code is at the heart of our country. Every service member swears to support and defend, not a man, not a military industrial complex, but that Constitution. For Veterans who have already sworn to possibly give their lives for the sake of one code, the step to embrace code-based money is natural.

Finally, my Veterans Day would not be complete without thanking a Veteran or two. Thank you, Anthony Pompliano and Preston Pysh. Without you two, I might still be thinking that Bitcoin was “probably nothing.” Happy Veterans Day.

[ZH: Finally, before we leave the topic of Veterans and Bitcoin, the following brief excerpt from ‘Captain Sidd’s recent note helps explain why adopting bitcoin on Veterans Day can help put an end to forever wars that unnecessarily risk the lives of U.S. soldiers.]

Widespread adoption of bitcoin as a monetary unit, in place of fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, would tightly control or completely eliminate a government’s ability to print money. Just as the gold standard kept U.S. spending largely in check, a bitcoin standard will limit spending on military adventures abroad and costly programs at home. Government programs will need the support of the people to continue receiving funding, or else the increased taxation needed to fund those programs will lead to voting out politicians who support them. The feedback loop of rising spending between government and supported industries — like the arms industry in the U.S. — will largely disappear as public sentiment plays a larger role in allocation of government funds.

I am hopeful we can achieve a bitcoin standard because doing so does not require us to lobby the very politicians who benefit most from the existing monetary system. Achieving a bitcoin standard only requires that we as individuals and communities continue to adopt bitcoin to a greater degree as a savings tool and monetary medium. If we all hold and transact in bitcoin instead of fiat currencies, the fiat money printer has nobody to suck purchasing power from and the politics of money printing will necessarily reform.

Let’s honor our military veterans by only putting soldiers into war when absolutely necessary. Our collective and peaceful actions can end the funding source for unaccountable, brutal and life-destroying forever wars.

As the world moves towards net-zero emissions, sustainable and affordable power sources are urgently needed by humanity.

As Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti details below, one of the most promising technologies, fusion, has attracted the attention of governments and private companies like Chevron and Google. In fact, Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated that the fusion market may eventually be valued at $40 trillion.

In this infographic sponsored by General Fusion, we discuss the benefits of fusion as a clean energy source.

The Ultimate Source of Energy 

Fusion powers the sun and the stars, where the immense force of gravity compresses and heats hydrogen plasma, fusing it into helium and releasing enormous amounts of energy. Here on Earth, scientists use isotopes of hydrogen—deuterium and tritium—to power fusion plants.

Fusion energy offers a wide range of benefits, such as:

1. Ample resources:

Both atoms necessary for nuclear fusion are abundant on Earth: deuterium is found in seawater, while tritium can be produced from lithium.

2. Sustainable

Energy-dense generation like fusion minimizes land use needs and can replace aging infrastructure like old power plants. 

3. Clean

There are no CO₂ or other harmful atmospheric emissions from the fusion process.

4. Scalable

With limited expected regulatory burden or export controls, fusion scales effectively with a small land footprint that can be located close to cities.

5. Safety advantage

Unlike atomic fission, fusion does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. Its radiation profile is similar to widely used medical and industrial applications like cyclotrons for cancer treatment.

6. Reliable

Fusion energy is on-demand and independent from the weather, making it an excellent option in a dependable portfolio for power generation.

Commercializing Fusion Energy

More than 130 countries have now set or are considering a target of reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050. Meanwhile, global energy demand is expected to increase by 47% in the next 30 years.

While renewables like wind and solar are intermittent and need a baseload source of clean energy to supplement them, fusion, when commercially implemented, could deliver clean, abundant, reliable, and cost-competitive energy. 

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

“Democracy” is the new “revolutionary.”

In the old Marxist regimes, anything that displeased the regime was said to be contrary to “the revolution.” For example, in the Soviet Union, national leaders spoke regularly of how the nation was in the process of “a revolutionary transformation” toward a future idealized communist society. Many years after the actual revolution and coup d’état in Russia following the collapse of tsarist rule, the word “revolution” had “positive connotations and was considered a source of legitimacy in official ideology.”

“Revolutionary” became a synonym for “a thing we like,” and it’s no surprise that a 1952 Soviet legal manual lists “counterrevolutionary” activities as among the “political crimes … deemed generally dangerous crimes against the order of the state.” Moreover, in the early 1950s, when Mao Zedong launched new efforts to consolidate Communist power, he called the effort a “campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries.” Other regimes adopted similar practices as well. Fidel Castro’s regime frequently launched investigations and campaigns against “antirevolutionary” dissidents and Ethiopia’s Marxist governments in the 1970s described domestic opponents as guilty of “anti-revolutionary crimes.”

Anything that was deemed “counterrevolutionary” or “antirevolutionary” was assumed to be an awful thing that was a threat to the reliably vague notion of progress toward the fulfillment of the alleged revolution. The vagueness of the term was, of course, an advantage from the point of view of the regime. Consequently, to be a counterrevolutionary required nothing more than to be guilty of thought crime by subscribing to heterodox views on the current ruling party.

Thus, to be a counterrevolutionary was simply to be opposed to the regime, regardless of one’s actual ideological views. This is why communist Emma Goldman (a bona fide revolutionary) could be denounced as “antirevolutionary” for expressing doubts about the virtues of the Soviet regime. One’s support for actual revolution was irrelevant, and “antirevolutionary” could simply be defined or redefined as whatever the regime found objectionable at any given time.

In the year 2022, we find the word “democracy” serving a similar role in political discourse. President Joe Biden has delivered two major speeches this year on how “democracy” will supposedly be abolished if his opponents win. Last week, former president Barack Obama solemnly intoned that if Republicans win in Arizona, “democracy as we know it may not survive.” Indeed, this has become something of a mantra among left-wing politicians and their media allies. One writer at Salon chastised voters for daring to let their votes be influenced by economic concerns when “democracy is under threat.” One New York Times headline bemoaned the apparent reality that voters don’t seem interested in “saving democracy” when it’s supposedly all so clear that “democracy is in peril.”

So why are so many voters allegedly ready to “trade democracy for cheap gas”? The answer probably lies in the fact that most voters can see what is obvious: the only thing actually in peril is the Left’s version of democracy, which is an anything-goes-including-rampant-voter-fraud model for US elections. Moreover, the Left wants a federal takeover of elections, which in the United States have always been at least moderately decentralized. Instead, the “prodemocracy” camp wants federally enforced election regulations prohibiting limitations on voting for aliens, dead people, and frauds. If the Left does poorly in this election, that’s a lot less likely to happen.

Any attempt to limit fraud – such as requiring identification for voters is denounced as “anti-democratic.” Indeed, nothing better shows this than the Left’s complaints about the fact that some law enforcement officers have monitored polling places. As one Georgetown University bureaucrat put it, allowing law enforcement personnel to guard ballot boxes might “intimidate” some people, and sends the message that voter fraud actually occurs. This, she tells us, is “abhorrent.” But at the core of this complaint is simply an aversion to the idea that the presence of police might scare some people away from ballot stuffing and other forms of fraud.

Ironically, by this way of thinking, to be “pro-democracy” is to not care whether the voting process is fraudulent. Thus, just like the term “revolutionary” under the old Communist regimes, the terms “democratic” and “democracy” in the US today cease to have any meaning and really just mean “what our side likes.”

After all, most reasonable people would conclude that democratic institutions exist whenever there are regular elections and generally universal suffrage for citizens. This is clearly the case in every state of the union. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of countries that the Left calls “democracies”—France, Germany, Iceland, etc.—have voter identification requirements, checks against double voting, and similar means of preventing fraud. In the United States, the Left calls all this “antidemocratic.”

The actual details of what it means to be prodemocratic or antidemocratic don’t actually matter when it comes to political discourse. The word “democratic” is an emotionally loaded term, and essentially code for “politically legitimate.” All that really matters is to call one’s allies “democratic” and to denounce the other side as “undemocratic.” In America today, to be labeled “democratic” means one has the approval of the ruling regime. Those who are labeled “undemocratic” are those who, like the “counterrevolutionaries” of old, have been deemed—rightly or wrongly—threats to the status quo.

While the American southwest suffers under a worsening drought conditions, foreign-owned farms have been siphoning water from underground aquifers to grow water-thirsty crops like alfalfa, which ultimately end up overseas in order to feed cattle and other foreign livestock.

“You can’t take water and export it out of the state, there’s laws about that,” Arizona geohydrologist Marvin Glotfelty told CNN. “But you can take ‘virtual’ water and export it; alfalfa, cotton, electricity or anything created in part from the use of water.”

Residents in Arizona’s La Paz County are particularly frustrated at the area’s ‘huge, foreign-owned farms’ which are taking advantage of lax groundwater laws that give agricultural use the upper hand, allowing farms to pump unlimited water underneath property they own or lease.

County supervisor Holly Irwin told CNN that getting the state to take action, or even acknowledge, the state’s dwindling water supply has proven a ‘frustrating’ exercise in futility.

According to Irwin, Middle East agriculture companies “have depleted their [water], that’s why they are here,” adding “That’s what angers people the most. We should be taking care of our own, and we just allow them to come in, purchase property and continue to punch holes in the ground.”

In fact, 80% of Arizona has no laws governing how much water can be drained by corporate megafarms, nor is their any way to track it, according to the report.

“The well guys and I have never seen anything like this before,” said longtime resident of Wenden, Arizona, Gary Saiter, who said a UAE-based company, Al Dahra, had been tapping into an underground reservoir which stores water built up over thousands of years.

[R]ural communities in La Paz County know the water is disappearing beneath their feet.

Shallow, residential wells in the county started drying up in 2015, local officials say, and deeper municipal well levels have steadily declined. In Salome, local water utility owner Bill Farr told CNN his well – which supplies water to more than 200 customers, including the local schools – is “nearing the end of its useful life.” -CNN

According to Saiter, water in the town well has been plummeting – with the depth-to-water level dropping from around 100 feet below the surface in the 1950s to around 540 feet in 2022 – far beyond what an average residential well can reach.

The drought-stricken Middle Eastern expansion into the Southwestern US accelerated after a 2018 Saudi Arabian ban on growing water-thirsty crops like alfalfa and hay to feed livestock and cattle, but they have a ‘national pride’ in the Middle East when it comes to their vast dairy operations. 

“They have all their cows there and they need feeding. That feedstock comes from abroad,” Eckart Woertz, director of the Germany-based GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies, told CNN.

For example, the Almarai Company, which owns around 10,000 acres of Arizona farmland under subsidiary Fondomonte, is one of the largest Middle Eastern dairy supply companies. It also owns around 3,500 acres in Southern California which uses water from the Colorado River to irrigate crops.

Woertz said while most of the company’s cattle feed is purchased on the open market, Alamarai took the extra step of buying farmland abroad, as part of a growing trend in foreign-owned farmland in the US. Foreign-owned farmland in the West increased from around 1.25 million acres in 2010 to nearly three million acres in 2020, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture. In the Midwest, foreign-owned farmland has nearly quadrupled.

…

In the high desert of Arizona, emerald-green fields stretch for miles alongside dry tumbleweeds and Saguaro cactus.

The Fondomonte-owned Vicksburg Ranch near Salome is massive. The company spent $47.5 million to buy nearly 10,000 acres of land there in 2014, and it leases additional farmland from the state. -CNN

“It gives you that sense you’re closer to the source,” said Woertz. “The sense that you own land or lease land somewhere else and have direct bilateral access [to water] gives you a sense of maybe false security.”

As outgoing state House member Regina Cobb asked CNN, “Why are we allowing a foreign company to come into Arizona – which is drought-stricken right now – and have a sweetheart deal [on leases], when we are trying to conserve as much water as we can?”

“It boggles my mind.“

Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

Part one of a series.

Late on an October morning in a quiet neighborhood near Daytona Beach, Florida. FBI agent Steve Friend sits in his kitchen, fidgeting. He’s a wiry, energetic man, built like a marathoner, not muscled up but exuding fitness, not a sitter. This is not a person meant for desk work, much less staying home all day. But as a whistleblower whose name has been all over media after a complaint about statistical manipulation and other problems in the January 6th investigations, this will be his lot for a while.

By that morning, the first rush of news stories about Friend’s case already passed. CNN and MSNBC demonized him, Fox hailed him as a hero, but the furor was beginning to die down. What a whistleblower talks about in this inevitable moment will say a lot about his or her motivation. Looking out a window into the stillness of his suburban neighborhood, Friend shook his head.

“I love my job,” he said, sighing. “I was living my best life as an FBI agent. I was coming home every day, and my kids were my biggest fan club. Like, ‘Daddy, did you put the bad guy in jail?’ And I thought, ‘Man, this is it.’”

It’s not the tone of a disgruntled malcontent, but someone who made a reluctant journey to whistleblower status, beginning with a whirlwind series of events that brought him and his family out of the Midwest to north Florida less than two years ago. He worked a child pornography detail before being transferred to the assignment that would upend his life: investigating J6. The FBI not only took Friend off vital work chasing child predators to pursue questionable investigations of people maybe connected with the Capitol riots (often in some misdemeanor fashion), they used dubious bureaucratic methods he felt put him in an impossible spot.

Essentially, the FBI made Friend a supervisory agent in cases actually being run by the Washington field office, a trick replicated across the country that made domestic terrorism numbers appear to balloon overnight. Instead of one investigation run out of Washington, the Bureau now had hundreds of “terrorism” cases “opening” in every field office in the country. As a way to manipulate statistics, it was ingenious, but Friend could see it was also trouble.

As a member of a dying breed of agent raised to focus on making cases and securing convictions, Friend knew putting him nominally in charge of a case he wasn’t really running was a gift to any good defense attorney, should a J6 case ever get to trial.

“They’re gonna see my name as being the case agent, yet not a single document has my name as doing any work,” Friend says. “Now a defense lawyer can say, ‘Hey, the case agent for this case didn’t perform any work.’ Labeling the case this way would be a big hit to our prosecution.”

Friend ended up refusing the arrangement, which led to his suspension. He followed procedure, making protected disclosures to superiors and the FBI’s Office of Special Counsel (OSG). He then reported his suspension to Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson and whistleblower-whisperer Chuck Grassley of Iowa. They sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, detailing Friend’s procedural objections, including that “agents are being required to perform investigative actions” they “would not otherwise pursue,” at the direction of the Washington Field Office (WFO).

When Friend first complained to his Assistant Special Agents in Charge (ASACs — the FBI is an acronym hell worse than the military), he told them, with regard to J6 suspects: “I’m not a Trump voter. I’m not sympathetic to those people.” The message didn’t get through, however, and leaks from the Bureau have almost universally painted him as an insubordinate MAGA conspiracist.

In fact, most of the press Friend attracted reduced his story to a referendum on the Capitol riots, as if his only complaint was being asked to investigate J6 at all. Big guns were brought out to sell the idea. Former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence-turned-talking-head Frank Figliuzzi blasted Friend on MSNBC as a “self-styled FBI whistleblower” (Figliuzzi, a lawyer, should know better: Friend made protected disclosures by the book and is legally a whistleblower), implying he simply didn’t follow “valid” orders, instead “running to Trump-loving Congressmen” to complain.

But Friend’s complaint is only partially about J6. His concerns began in his first days in Quantico, and continued across years of watching the Bureau collect intelligence or open cases for non-operational reasons. Whether they involve J6 or not, a consistent theme of his stories is the FBI using its authority to “disrupt” or intimidate targets as an end in itself, as opposed to collecting evidence with the aim of prosecuting.

One example involved a British doctor who’d been at J6. The suspect was not exactly Pablo Escobar. He did enter the Capitol, but surveillance showed he meekly stayed behind velvet ropes once inside, and under questioning was practically shaking with guilt over having taken a free Capitol tourist brochure as a souvenir. Though he seemed unlikely to be charged, he was booted from his medical practice after being interviewed, and Friend wondered if this even indirectly had been the point.

“I worried about the process being the punishment,” Friend says. “He lost his job. What does he get from us, if we don’t charge him? ‘Hey, you’re clear? The FBI found no wrongdoing, go pick up the pieces’?”

In the incident that led to Friend’s suspension, the FBI wanted to execute a SWAT raid on a subject who’d been communicating with the Bureau through an attorney and almost certainly would have come in voluntarily. Or, Friend thought, he could have been picked up in another, less dangerous way. The FBI however wanted a show.

“We’re gonna hit this house at six o’clock in the morning and throw flash-bangs and knock the door down and drive a Bearcat up on the front lawn,” recalls Friend, who had extensive SWAT experience and even worked the raid of Michigan militia members suspected of plotting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

He recounts a detail straight out of the movie Idiocracy: the armored Bearcat vehicles the FBI uses in SWAT raids are fitted with special battering-ram-type devices agents call dongers. (No joke. Washington Field Office agents even nickname their Bearcat accessory “DOJ,” for Dong of Justice). Friend describes the lunacy of a federal posse riding into the suburbs to take a door in one of these phallic tanks. “You’re driving down the road with this long extension pole on the front,” he says, laughing. “And I’m thinking, ‘These things were built by the lowest possible bidder.’”

He didn’t laugh so much, however, when he started to get the sense the FBI was opening cases, knocking on doors, and using tactics like SWAT for reasons other than operational necessity.

“I was a little kid and a smart kid in school and I got bullied, bad. That’s one of the reasons I went to law enforcement, and joined the FBI.” He pauses. “My attitude toward the FBI was, ‘You guys are the NFL of police work. You’re supposed to be fighting bullies. I think we might be becoming the bullies here.”

Though he’s been denounced by pundits and Figliuzzi types as an insurrectionist “sympathizer” with nothing legitimate to say, Friend’s complaints in fact track with those of a number of FBI whistleblowers who came before him. Since 9/11, many complain the FBI is hurtling back in time, toward its darkest days under J. Edgar Hoover, when it was a vast, unchecked domestic political spying operation, swinging under a fig leaf of legitimizing law enforcement activity.

The Hoover-era FBI plunged into such infamous excess via snooping programs like COINTELPRO — from trying to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into suicide to opening intelligence files on as many as 500,000 Americans, including a list of 26,000 “to be rounded up in the event of a national emergency” — that Congress in 1975 was forced to intervene. Led by Idaho Senator Frank Church, a Senate oversight committee uncovered deep rot, finding the FBI secretly went “beyond its law” to “disrupt, discredit and harass groups and individuals.”

The Church hearings led to reforms that checked the Bureau’s worst instincts, for a time. Now the beast is back. The FBI not only is deep into the domestic spying game again, it’s accrued broad new powers, including authority to collect intelligence on Americans virtually without limit.

“I would like to think the point of all the intelligence analysis is to create products that are going to help crack a case,” Friend says. “But they’re not. In some cases, there’s no crime. We’re just intelligence, intelligence, intelligence.”

What does an FBI that stresses intelligence, intelligence, intelligence for its own sake look like, in day-to-day practice? No matter your politics, you’ll probably be shocked.

Subscribers to TK News can read more here…

Elizabeth Holmes was convicted earlier this year of defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars following the epic demise of Silicon Valley blood-testing company Theranos Inc. Holmes’ lawyer filed a request to the judge for leniency in the sentencing and requested 18 months of home confinement instead of years in prison, reported Bloomberg.

Ten months after 50 hours of deliberations, the jury of eight men and four women convicted the Theranos founder of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for scamming investors about the innovative technology Theranos allegedly had to revolutionize blood testing with the simple prick of a patient’s finger.

Her lawyer penned a letter ahead of sentencing next week for US District Judge Edward Davila to overlook her fraudster caricature and instead focus on her as a human being. The memo said she deserved 18 months of home confinement rather than prison. 

The memo was accompanied by letters from over 130 friends, family, and even Theranos investors, as well as former company employees who described Holmes as a ‘good person.’ 

Judge Davila has handled her case since the collapse of Theranos after reaching a valuation of $9 billion. Criminal defense lawyers tell Bloomberg that Holmes’ sentencing could send a warning shot to Silicon Valley companies that run on hopes and dreams. 

Another expert said the sentencing of Holmes is to discourage technology startups that blind investors with hype. Holmes’ request subtracts about 18.5 years from the maximum incarceration period she faces for her convictions, with the memo noting that time would be better spent at home than in prison. 

“We acknowledge that this may seem a tall order given the public perception of this case,” her lawyers wrote. 

They added: the judge shouldn’t view Theranos as “a house of cards,” but as the “ambitious, inventive, and indisputably valuable enterprise it was.” 

“The court’s difficult task is to look beyond those surface-level views when it fashions its sentence,” the letter concluded. 

Holmes’s memo also expands on her childhood and years at Stanford University. It also touches on life’s traumas detailed in court, such as the rape of Holmes in college. 

The memo reiterates her ex-boyfriend and a former executive at Theranos, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, of sexual abuse that clouded her judgment. Balwani, 57, was convicted of fraud in July and faces sentencing next month.  

Holmes’ scheme defrauded media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, and Walmart’s Walton family for hundreds of millions of dollars. Defrauding the DeVos family of $100 million in one count alone calls for 9-11 years in prison.