Central banks gobbled up gold over the summer and the buying spree has continued into the fall.

Globally, central banks added another net 42 tons of gold to their reserves in October.

China continues to be the biggest gold purchaser. The People’s Bank of China added another 23 tons of gold to its hoard in October as it expanded its official reserves for the 12th straight month.

Since the beginning of the year, the People’s Bank of China increased its reserves by 204 tons, and it has added 255 tons since it resumed official purchases in November 2022. As of the end of October, China officially held 2,215 tons of gold, making up 4% of its total reserves.

Most people believe the Chinese hold even more gold than that off the books.

Just days after it was reported that Jeff Ubben would be shutting down his "green" Inclusive Capital fund, the former ValueAct manager isn't pulling any punches with what he thinks about green investing. 

In a new Bloomberg report, Ubben spoke out about what he is calling the “echo chamber” of traditional climate summitry. After shuttering his sustainability fund, which he said was not "rewarded" by markets, Ubben has joined a chorus of voices speaking out about "green" energy advocates who, in the name of virtue, the climate and the environment, are creating more division than they solve. 

“It’s been this echo chamber of diplomats going to these conferences and putting out flowery language and goals, but it doesn’t have traction,” Ubben said, talking about climate conferences. 

Tesla's Scandinavian labor disputes may intensify, as Denmark's most prominent union announced its workers will stop offloading and transporting Tesla vehicles to Sweden. This comes amid Tesla's ongoing labor disputes in Sweden. Elon Musk has labeled the industrial actions threatening to disrupt operations in Europe as "insane." 

According to Bloomberg, the Danish union 3F plans to direct dockworkers and truck drivers to stop offloading and transporting Tesla cars to Sweden in about two weeks. This action will prevent Tesla from bypassing a blockade by Swedish dockworkers who've already blocked sea shipments. 

Tesla has been in a labor dispute with Swedish unions for over a month. It has refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement with the union IF Metall. 

Germany’s Welt newspaper, perhaps the most popular publication in the country, is well known for its pro-Ukraine stance and ran numerous articles in the past about the likely success of Ukraine’s military offensive against Russia.

However, in a column published yesterday by the paper’s chief correspondent, Sascha Lehnartz, the assessment of Ukraine’s chances in the war is decidedly bleak.

Entitled “Has Kyiv already lost?” the article describes Ukraine’s military growing increasingly despondent to the point that the country’s commander-in-chief admits there is a “stalemate” at the front.

“Winter is just around the corner. The counteroffensive seems to have failed. The allies are weary. And since the beginning of November at the latest, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has a new opponent who was not necessarily to be expected: his own commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzhny,” writes Die Welt.

The urgent need to expose the corruption within the Biden family is undeniable; it's a cover-up we all acknowledge. A call echoes for more Republicans to exhibit the same level of outrage and tenacity as demonstrated by Byron Donalds. The revelation of Hunter Biden receiving a staggering $4.9 million from Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris over three years, unearthed by an IRS whistleblower, marks a significant escalation in the known financial ties between Hunter and his so-called "sugar brother."

Israel dominates the global media to an almost unseen extent. Only almost, because one event 22 years ago surpassed everything else in terms of media hype: 9/11. What both events have in common is that politicians and the media ruthlessly exploit people’s shock to achieve their goals or to generate clicks and thus rake in money. Most articles have one thing in common: they are based on emotions. We write about geopolitics. Geopolitical analyses must be based on facts. If the basis is emotionally charged, the analysis is worthless, regularly leads to false results and gives culprits and masterminds tools to work with, which they should not have under any circumstances.

In this second part of our series, we discuss this and more based on the most publicized terrorist attack of the 21st century.

In Part 1, we established that President Truman lied through the teeth not only to his own people but to the entire world by dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not as claimed to save hundreds of thousands of American soldiers’ lives, but to show the world and Stalin who would be the master of the house after World War 2. 

For this marketing stunt, Truman cold-bloodedly sacrificed 200,000 Japanese, most of them civilians. His own people were emotionally well prepared for this atrocity. Since the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the American government and the media poisoned the soul of the Americans with the most vicious racist propaganda. This hate speech against everything Japanese allowed the American state, among other things, to put hundreds of thousands of American citizens with Japanese roots into concentration camps: American citizens, mind you.

Recent conversations about climate change, emissions, and health have put a spotlight on the world’s energy sources.

As of 2021, nearly 90% of global CO₂ emissions came from fossil fuels. But energy production doesn’t just lead to carbon emissions, it can also cause accidents and air pollution that has a significant toll on human life.

Visual Capitalist's Freny Fernandes introduces this graphic by Ruben Mathisen uses data from Our World in Data to help visualize exactly how safe or deadly these energy sources are.

Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, is positioning Anduril Industries, his Southern California startup defense firm, to challenge military-industrial complex giants such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics. 

Luckey revealed on X that Anduril Industries has developed an affordable vertical takeoff and landing drone that can be reused on surveillance or kamikaze missions.

Anduril told Forbes that the US Special Operations Command signed a $12.5 million contract last year for the autonomous jet-powered drone called "Roadrunner. "

As of Q1 2023, the annualized GDP of the U.S. sits at $26.5 trillion.

Of this, 88% or $23.5 trillion comes from private industries. The remaining $3 trillion is government spending at the federal, state, and local levels.

Here’s a look at the largest private industries by economic contribution in the United States:

Some US officials are criticizing the Biden administration for deliberately downplaying the threat from Yemen’s Houthis on US naval forces, Politico reported Tuesday. The criticism follows an attack on Sunday on several commercial vessels in the Red Sea, which forced a US Navy warship to scramble to respond.

The Yemeni resistance movement launched missiles and drones against three separate commercial vessels. The USS Carney fired back, taking down three unmanned aerial drones. It is unclear whether the US Navy ship was also a target of the attack or was simply coming to the aid of the commercial vessels. 

Defense Department and Biden administration officials, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, have said the US "cannot assess" whether the USS Carney was the target of the attacks. 

Have you heard about Joe Biden’s historic presidency? Or about the historic accomplishments of Joe Biden’s first term?

I have. Repeatedly. Of course, I force myself to watch “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Jake Tapper on CNN, and Jonathan Karl on ABC, so I’m well-informed about the thinking of left-wing elites and their game plan for keeping Donald Trump out of office. Apparently, part of the plan is to convince the American public that Joe Biden has been a great president, mostly when you weren’t looking.

In a sense, this is the political equivalent of the recent cleanup of San Francisco by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to make the dangerous and dirty city look better for the arrival of the Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping. I’m not sure who Newsom thought he was fooling. The residents surely know that the city is an open sewer, and a two-week makeover wasn’t going to change that. Xi Jinping himself was also not fooled. He probably reads the papers or has someone else read them for him, and he probably got a chuckle out of the governor’s groveling.

Zelensky did sort of get screwed, if we’re honest.

This is one of the most important news items ever.

Or, rather, it will be if Bibi is able to turn this thing into a world war, which is clearly what he is trying to do by committing this slaughter in Gaza.

Don’t expect this story to get much play in the media.

The Biden administration is moving to impose sanctions on Israeli settlers involved in attacks on Palestinians, which will involve banning them from traveling to the United States.

Fresh Axios reporting on Tuesday has cited government officials who specify that multiple dozens of known Israeli settlers will be impacted by the visa ban, expected to be implemented by the State Department.

The US government has not sanctioned Israeli settlers going all the way back to the Clinton administration, but Washington has consistently condemned settler expansion in the West Bank, at least as far as public policy and rhetoric goes.

Gaza sources have said the death toll in the Strip has reportedly surpassed 15,200. Meanwhile the White House has come under increased international pressure to impose limits on Israel's military operations as well as usage of US-supplied bombs.

An air force colonel has said that Israeli airstrikes may have intentionally killed Israeli captives rather than let them be taken to Gaza.

Speaking in Hebrew about the airstrikes, Colonel Nof Erez told a Haaretz podcast in November, that “the Hannibal Directive was apparently applied” and that 7 October “was a mass Hannibal.”

After weeks of claiming that 1,400 “civilians” were killed that day, Israel last month revised its death toll down to about 900 civilians plus around 300 soldiers and police. An official Israeli account posting to X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday appeared to lower the death toll even further to “over 1,000.”

It felt like we were on the way to hell.

We had to walk 14 kilometers. It took us six hours.

There were elderly people, pregnant women, children, including many babies.

There were people with cancer and other serious diseases.

There were people with disabilities, forced to carry their bags as they held white flags.

Nobody dared to demonstrate any curiosity about what was going on. We were all afraid that we would be struck with a bullet in the back of our heads.

Israeli authorities banned a Palestinian NGO after it reported the rape of a Palestinian child by Israeli forces to the US State Department in 2021, former official Josh Paul said in a CNN interview on Monday.

Paul, who resigned in October in protest over arms sales to Israel, said in an interview with Christiane Amanpour that Israeli forces had raided Defense for Children International- Palestine’s offices and designated it a terrorist organisation.

That followed a complaint made by the US State Department about the rape of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in Al-Mascobiyya detention centre in West Jerusalem.

“[They] removed their computers and declared them a terrorist entity,” Paul said.

Israeli forces launched a devastating assault on the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Tuesday, in one of the most violent days since the military launched a ground offensive on the besieged enclave in October. 

Israeli air strikes hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis overnight, killing at least 30 people.

Israeli tanks entered the area for the first time, taking up positions in the town of Bani Suhaila and in Hamad City, a Qatar-funded housing development. 

At least 43 dead Palestinian bodies were brought to Nasser Hospital - Khan Younis's main medical facility - on Tuesday morning, according to Palestinian health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra. 

You might as well face it, markets are “addicted to gov.” Government monetary interference, that is. Government money printing and massive Federal spending.

The Washington Post has produced a long, two part piece, about the failed 'counter-offensive' in Ukraine. It dispenses equal blame on the U.S. and British planning of the whole mess and the Ukrainian execution of it.

Israeli occupation forces have arrested more than 3,580 Palestinains across the occupied West Bank since 7 October, according to a joint statement issued by the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club yesterday.

The detainees were taken from their homes, or while passing through military checkpoints or were ordered to hand themselves in, noting that while some of them were later released, a majority remained behind bars, held without charge.

The Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades announced yesterday that its fighters have targeted 25 Israeli military vehicles in various areas in the city of Khan Yunis in the besieged Gaza Strip, the Safa news agency reported.

In a statement, the Palestinian resistance group said its fighters targeted eight Israeli military vehicles, three tanks, a military bulldozer and an army personnel carrier with Yasin 105 shells in the eastern part of the city of Khan Yunis, and killed a number of Israeli soldiers there including a special unit which included eight soldiers.

The group’s fighters also targeted six Israeli soldiers with homemade Ghoul rifles, in the Al-Zana area in eastern Khan Yunis, injuring a number of them, while in the northern part of the city the fighters targeted three military bulldozers, a tank and a personnel carrier with Yasin 105 missiles.

Webmaster addition: Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." -- Leading Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials before he was sentenced to death

Internal Revenue Service agent Joseph Ziegler told the House Ways and Means Committee in closed-door testimony Tuesday that Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, received almost $5 million in loans from a donor for personal expenses.

"Hunter appeared to follow a pattern of attempting to avoid paying taxes on relevant income. This first started with Hunter not reporting the Burisma income in 2014 and allegedly falsely claiming that it was a loan to him," Ziegler said in his testimony.

"He, again, tried to claim the millions in income earned from Hudson West III was a loan to him, which was refuted by the evidence and was not allowed by his tax accountants. This continued into 2020, 2021 and 2022, in which Hunter received approximately $4.9 million in payments for personal expenses, again in the form of a loan and gift from Democratic Donor Kevin Patrick Morris," he added.

Ziegler also said that Morris paid Hunter's delinquent taxes.

In a high-stakes hearing today, FBI Director Christopher Wray faced intense questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee members regarding the potential renewal of key surveillance powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

These powers, allegedly crucial to the bureau’s national security operations but controversial for their overreach, are set to expire this month amidst a swirling debate over privacy rights and government oversight.

Senator Kennedy (R-LA) steered the discussion towards a more contentious topic: the FBI’s handling of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“Why didn’t the FBI just say, hey, the laptop’s real?” Senator Kennedy asked. “Why didn’t you just tell everybody the laptop’s real. We’re not vouching for what’s on it, but it’s real. This isn’t a fiction.”