"Lots of people don't know what happened yesterday. To put it simply, Biden has forced all Americans working in China to pick between quitting their jobs and losing American citizenship. Every American executive and engineer working in China's semiconductor manufacturing industry resigned yesterday, paralyzing Chinese manufacturing overnight. One round of sanctions from Biden did more damage than all four years of performative sanctioning under Trump. Although American semiconductor exporters had to apply for licenses during the Trump years, licenses were approved within a month.

With the new Biden sanctions, all American suppliers of IP blocks, components, and services departed overnight - thus cutting off all service [to China]. Long story short, every advanced node semiconductor company is currently facing comprehensive supply cut-off, resignations from all American staff, and immediate operations paralysis. This is what annihilation looks like: China's semiconductor manufacturing industry was reduced to zero overnight. Complete collapse. No chance of survival."

Posted at Jordan Schneider's Twitter account @jordanschnyc from a translated thread at @lidangzzz

The Biden administration intensified its war on China last week when it detonated a thermonuclear bomb at the heart of Beijing's booming technology industry. In an effort to block China's access to crucial semiconductor technology, Team Biden announced onerous new export rules aimed at a "comprehensive supply cut-off" of essential semiconductor technology which - according to one analyst - led to an "immediate operations paralysis." The terror unleashed by the announcement was aptly summarized in a thread posted at Jordan Schneider's Twitter account from a translated thread at @lidangzzz (See above quote)

Elon Musk got in hot water again on Twitter — for proposing peace. On Monday, Musk proposed a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, for which he was denounced as a pro-Putin puppet by the Twitter mob that has formed to police the discourse on all things related to Ukraine.

The Federal Reserve Board has announced that six of the nation's largest banks will participate in a pilot climate scenario analysis exercise. This is designed to enhance the ability of supervisors and firms to measure and manage "climate-related financial risks."

The pilot exercise will be launched in early 2023 and is expected to conclude around the end of the year. At the beginning of the exercise, the Board will publish details of the climate, economic, and financial variables that make up the climate scenario narratives.

The banks in the pilot exercise are Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. In the coming months, the Board will provide additional details on how the exercise will be conducted and the scenarios that will be used in the pilot, according to The Federal Reserve's official government website.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has become a fundraising machine for himself and the Republican Party in general, outpacing other governors who, like him, are running for reelection in November.

According to a report by The Center Square, which cited data from Transparency USA, as of Sept. 2, DeSantis had raised $166,578,634, with the top donor being the Republican Governors Association, with a donation of $17.35 million.

"DeSantis is running for his second term against Democrat Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor of Florida who switched parties to run for Congress as a Democrat. According to an Oct. 5 Mason-Dixon poll, DeSantis is projected to beat Crist by a vote of 52%-41%. A RealClear Politics average of polls has him leading by 11 points."

None of the other six governors running for reelection evaluated by Transparency USA have raised anywhere near the amount that DeSantis has.

Former US congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has called on Democrats to leave the party, which she said is controlled by "woke, fanatical ideologues." Gabbard herself left last week, calling the leaders "an elitist cabal of warmongers."

Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Friday, Gabbard said that she experienced "a lot of backlash and anger" from the "woke, fanatical ideologues that are in control of today's Democratic Party" when she announced her decision to leave the party earlier in the week.

Gabbard, who Democrats have long accused of siding with their Republican adversaries, said that she decided to leave due to her former party's support for "anti-white racism," open borders, persecution of their political opponents, and stoking of foreign conflicts.

The FBI was so desperate to topple Donald Trump that it secretly dangled an exorbitant reward of $1 million to disgraced ex-British spy Christopher Steele if he would corroborate his dossier that the bureau already knew was phony. It was the equivalent of a bounty on the head of Trump — an outrageous financial incentive to a notorious fabulist to spin even more lies.

That is just one of shocking revelations in the federal trial of Igor Danchenko — Steele's primary source — who is charged with lying to the FBI about the dossier. In the grand scheme of the elaborate and despicable Russia Hoax, it matters little whether the defendant is convicted by special counsel John Durham. Danchenko is merely the facade. Behind it, the FBI is on trial for its corruption, malfeasance, and malevolence.

Steele, who was already on the FBI payroll to target Trump, was double-dipping. He was also being paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign to create the dossier, which was nothing more than a collection of rumors, innuendo, multiple hearsay, and outright lies. The FBI knew this. By early October of 2016 it had largely debunked the specious document. But then-FBI Director James Comey and his cronies were frantic to falsely incriminate Trump as a supposed Russian asset or, at the very least, convict him in the court of public opinion. They exploited the fictive dossier in an attempt to frame the Republican candidate and eventual president for unidentified crimes he did not commit.

The new "EU Political Community", an invention of French President Emmanuel Macron consisting of the 27-nation bloc and 17 other countries, most of which aspire to join the EU, recently wrapped up its inaugural PR exercise in Prague. The whole point of this event at Prague Castle seemed to be to convince onlookers of European unity, particularly in favor of Ukraine and against Russia, while papering over any other cracks in the solidarity façade.

All eyes have been on the newest addition to the class: Italian prime minister-elect Georgia Meloni. Her right-wing populist coalition had just been elected and already the knives were out. Actually, they were out even before the election, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned, in response to a query about the far right being on the cusp of power in Italy, that the bloc had "tools" to deal with member states whose governments drifted away from Brussels' agenda. So despite von der Leyen and other EU leaders' ridiculous claims of fighting for democracy in notoriously corrupt Ukraine, apparently by flooding it with endless Western weapons, von der Leyen can't even bother to pay lip service to the most basic respect of the democratic will of the citizens of Italy.

Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has told Germany's Bild am Sontag newspaper that EU leaders must pursue a "peaceful solution" to the conflict in Ukraine, as "losing is not an option" for Russia.

Kurz, who resigned last year amid corruption charges that he insisted were politically motivated, argued:

"Everyone rightly wants a victory for Ukraine, but losing is not an option for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. In the face of the nuclear threat, the EU must press ahead with the path of negotiation. At the moment, the most important thing is to end the bloodshed and achieve a peaceful solution at the negotiating table in order to prevent a total escalation on our continent."

Kurz is far from the only public figure to cite Russia's supposed "nuclear threat." US President Joe Biden warned earlier this month of a "direct threat" of nuclear "Armageddon" from Russia, while his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, threatened Russia with "dire consequences" should it use an atomic weapon in Ukraine. As Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky called for pre-emptive strikes on Russia, EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell declared on Thursday that Moscow's forces would be "annihilated" if Russia struck first.

Saudi Arabia has expressed its interest in joining the Brics bloc.

This was revealed by President Cyril Ramaphosa during his two-day state visit to the kingdom on Sunday.

"The Crown Prince (prime minister Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud) did express Saudi Arabia's desire to be part of Brics and they are not the only country," said Ramaphosa.

He confirmed this on Sunday during an engagement with the media.

President Xi Jinping's 1h45min speech at the opening of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing was an absorbing exercise of recent past informing near future. All of Asia and all of the Global South should carefully examine it.

The Great Hall was lavishly adorned with bright red banners. A giant slogan hanging in the back of the hall read, "Long Live our great, glorious and correct party".

Another one, below, functioned like a summary of the whole report:

Hold high the great flag of socialism with Chinese characteristics, fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, carry forward the great founding spirit of the party, and unite and struggle to fully build a modern socialist country and to fully promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

True to tradition, the report outlined the CPC's achievements over the past 5 years and China's strategy for the next 5 - and beyond. Xi foresees "fierce storms" ahead, domestic and foreign. The report was equally significant for what was not spelled out, or left subtly implied.

Every member of the CPC's Central Committee had already been briefed about the report - and approved it. They will spend this week in Beijing studying the fine print and will vote to adopt it on Saturday. Then a new CPC Central Committee will be announced, and a new Politburo Standing Committee - the 7 that really rule - will be formally endorsed.

This new leadership line-up will clarify the new generation faces that will be working very close to Xi, as well as who will succeed Li Keqiang as the new Prime Minister: he has finished his two terms and, according to the constitution, must step down.

There are also 2,296 delegates present at the Great Hall representing the CPC's over 96 million members. They are not mere spectators: at the plenary session that ended last week, they analyzed in-depth every major issue, and prepared for the National Congress. They do vote on party resolutions - even as those resolutions are decided by the top leadership, and behind closed doors.