Predatory private equity firms buying up neighborhoods only to rent homes at a premium hints at the real meaning of the World Economic Forum's "sharing economy." Americans never voted for this, but their leaders are loving it.

Owning a home is no longer feasible for Americans coming of age in the 21st century, according to Bloomberg columnist Karl Smith, who smugly suggested in an op-ed that they stop worrying about whether they can afford a house, ignore the asset-stripping investment vultures, and just embrace the depressing reality of lifelong debt peonage under the rule of those same private equity giants.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, the feudalist character of this glorious new "sharing economy" is reflected in one increasingly popular "solution" for the generation currently facing the steep uphill climb to pay off their student loans. Under this scheme, known as Student Loan Asset Backed Securities (SLABs), students are invited to essentially indenture themselves to some corporation, paying off their debts by selling off a percentage of every paycheck they subsequently receive until the balance is zero. Any questions?

Chinese scientists have deleted crucial data from the earliest confirmed Covid patients, it emerged today amid intense scrutiny about the true origins of the disease.


Dozens of test samples from patients in epicentre Wuhan were found to have been wiped from an international database used to track the virus' evolution.

The files could have provided vital clues about how the virus originated and how long it had been spreading before the seafood market outbreak in December 2019.

The American professor who spotted their deletion and managed to recover some of the data said they suggested Covid was circulating long before China's official timeline.

Far from being a war against "white supremacy," the Biden administration's new "domestic terror" strategy clearly targets primarily those who oppose US government overreach and those who oppose capitalism and/or globalization.

In the latest sign that the US government's War on Domestic Terror is growing in scope and scale, the White House on Tuesday revealed the nation's first ever government-wide strategy for confronting domestic terrorism. While cloaked in language about stemming racially motivated violence, the strategy places those deemed "anti-government" or "anti-authority" on a par with racist extremists and charts out policies that could easily be abused to silence or even criminalize online criticism of the government.

Even more disturbing is the call to essentially fuse intelligence agencies, law enforcement, Silicon Valley, and "community" and "faith-based" organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, as well as unspecified foreign governments, as partners in this "war," which the strategy makes clear will rely heavily on a pre-crime orientation focused largely on what is said on social media and encrypted platforms. Though the strategy claims that the government will "shield free speech and civil liberties" in implementing this policy, its contents reveal that it is poised to gut both.

Indeed, while framed publicly as chiefly targeting "right-wing white supremacists," the strategy itself makes it clear that the government does not plan to focus on the Right but instead will pursue "domestic terrorists" in "an ideologically neutral, threat-driven manner," as the law "makes no distinction based on political view — left, right or center." It also states that a key goal of this strategic framework is to ensure "that there is simply no governmental tolerance . . . of violence as an acceptable mode of seeking political or social change," regardless of a perpetrator's political affiliation.

US authorities have seized the web domains of Iran's international media outlets Press TV and Al-Alam, along with the Yemeni TV channel Al Masirah, run by the Houthi faction.

Visitors to the three domains were greeted on Tuesday with a notice that they were seized under US laws that allow civil and criminal forfeiture of property involved in "trafficking in nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological weapons technology or material, or the manufacture, importation, sale, or distribution of a controlled substance."

The seizure notice by the US Department of Justice also invokes a law governing presidential authority in dealing with "unusual and extraordinary threat; declaration of national emergency," which includes the Iran Nonproliferation Amendments Act of 2005 and the ironically named Iran Freedom Support Act of 2006.

Publicly, US authorities have rigidly stuck to the story that no one saw the January 6 Capitol ruckus coming. But the publication of internal documents is casting further doubt on the established version of events.

On June 21, NBC News reported on a recent court filing that raises further questions about whether the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) foresaw what happened in Washington DC on January 6 and, if so, why the agency failed to sound the alarm in good time.

The document in question is an FBI investigative report on social media activity prior to that fateful day, produced in February, showing that enraged Donald Trump supporters were openly talking about bringing firearms to the Capitol in order to instigate a "revolution." The offending posts were used as justification to launch a probe into protest attendee Thomas Webster, a former New York Police Department officer, who was indicted the following month for attacking a Capitol Police officer.

An article by the President of Russia has been published in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit and is timed to coincide with the 80^th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic war.
On June 22, 1941, exactly 80 years ago, the Nazis, having conquered practically the whole of Europe, attacked the USSR. For the Soviet people the Great Patriotic War - the bloodiest one in the history of our country - began. Tens of millions of people lost their lives, the economic potential of the country and its cultural property were severely damaged.

We are proud of the courage and steadfastness of the heroes of the Red Army and home front workers who not only defended the independence and dignity of our homeland, but also saved Europe and the world from enslavement. Despite attempts to rewrite the pages of the past that are being made today, the truth is that Soviet soldiers came to Germany not to take revenge on the Germans, but with a noble and great mission of liberation. We hold sacred the memory of the heroes who fought against Nazism. We remember with gratitude our allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, participants in the Resistance movement, and German anti-fascists who brought our common victory closer.

Having lived through the horrors of the world war, the peoples of Europe were nevertheless able to overcome alienation and restore mutual trust and respect. They set a course for integration in order to draw a final line under the European tragedies of the first half of the last century. And I would like to emphasize that the historical reconciliation of our people with the Germans living both in the east and the west of modern united Germany played a huge role in the formation of such Europe.

China has a choice of either giving in to the Western powers' demand and allowing another WHO-led probe into Covid-19's origin or being ostracized by the international community, Joe Biden's security adviser Jake Sullivan warned.

The US president's national security adviser issued the stern warning to China during an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Asked whether Biden intends to insist that a potential second probe into the origins of the virus must be an "independent" investigation, Sullivan said that the president had convinced Washington's allies in the G7 to pile pressure on Beijing.

"It is that diplomatic spadework - rallying the nations of the world, imposing political and diplomatic pressure on China, that is a core part of the effort we are undertaking to ultimately face China with a stark choice," Sullivan said.

Heavy downpours triggered floods in parts of Flanders last night. In Wallonia, strong gusts of wind caused a lot of damage in the municipality of Beauraing, where there are reports of 17 injured people. Beauraing is talking of a "mini-tornado". As many as 92 houses were severely damaged, 10 have been declared unfit for habitation. Over a dozen cars were damaged.


Beauraing, a town in Namur province, was hardest hit. The local disaster plan was started after what local authorities are labelling as "a small tornado". 17 people sustained light injuries and some 90 homes were heavily damaged, Beauraing announced in a press report. The local cultural centre offers shelter for those that sustained damage.

Several people got injured when an outdoor construction at a café terrace was swept away by a gust of wind. "The wind was incredibly strong. Houses and cars got damaged, trees were uprooted", Beauraing Mayor Marc Lejeune told the Francophone public broadcaster RTBF.

The VRT's weather presenter Frank Deboosere thinks this phenomenon can be either a local tornado or a strong downwind, triggered by the enormous downpour that created a downward air movement.

Of all the questions asked, words spoken, and ink spilled on the so-called "Capitol Siege" of January 6, 2021, none hold the key to the entire event quite like the question Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked of Christopher Wray.

The Democrat from Minnesota asked the Trump-appointed FBI Director: Did the federal government infiltrate any of the so-called "militia" organizations claimed to be responsible for planning and executing the Capitol Siege?

The full segment is available on YouTube.


Christopher Wray is able to uncomfortably weasel his way out of answering the question directly, partially because Klobuchar does him the courtesy of not asking him the question directly. Klobuchar instead asks the FBI director if he wishes he had infiltrated the militia organizations allegedly involved in 1/6 — assuming from the outset that there was in fact no infiltration, thereby providing the FBI director an easy way to avoid addressing the question one way or another.