USA - Big Pharma and mainstream media are largely owned by two asset management firms: BlackRock and Vanguard. Vanguard and BlackRock are the top two owners of Time Warner, Comcast, Disney and News Corp, four of the six media companies that control more than 90% of the US media landscape. BlackRock and Vanguard form a secret monopoly that own just about everything else you can think of too. In all, they have ownership in 1,600 American firms, which in 2015 had combined revenues of $9.1 trillion. When you add in the third-largest global owner, State Street, their combined ownership encompasses nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms. Vanguard is the largest shareholder of BlackRock. Vanguard itself, on the other hand, has a unique structure that makes its ownership more difficult to discern, but many of the oldest, richest families in the world can be linked to Vanguard funds.

UK - Brexit leader Nigel Farage has had harsh words for England’s national football (soccer) team taking the knee for the Black Lives Matter movement during the belated UEFA European Football Championship 2020. “Look, you cannot separate taking the knee from the Black Lives Matter movement,” said Mr Farage during an interview with the newly launched GB News network. “It is an avowedly, openly Marxist organisation that wants to defund the police and wants to bring down the whole of Western civilisation — don’t take my word for it, just read the website — and you can’t separate the two,” explained the former UKIP and Reform UK party leader.

GERMANY - A majority of German citizens believe that freedom of expression is in danger, the latest poll shows. ‘Patriotism’ and Islam were named among topics one should be particularly careful about. Only 45% of Germans still believe they can express their political opinion freely, says a survey conducted by the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy – one of Germany’s oldest and most respectable polling agencies. That is the lowest figure since 1953, when the institute started conducting such polls. Just a few years ago, two-thirds of Germans believed that nothing stops them from expressing their opinion freely. Most believe that their freedom of expression is in danger, while 44% feel one had better be careful about what one says, according to the survey published in Germany’s FAZ newspaper on Wednesday.

SWITZERLAND - President Joe Biden gave Russian President Vladimir Putin almost everything he could have wanted at their Geneva summit. He elevated Putin above other leaders, including American allies; and failed to force any real concessions on Russian policy. The degree to which the summit was a disaster became evident when Putin emerged for his press conference — alone with a forum all to himself. The Biden team did not want to appear with Putin at a joint conference after the meeting– both because Biden would look frail next to Putin, and because of the media dogma that President Donald Trump had somehow done something terrible by behaving cordially when appearing alongside Putin in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018. Putin fielded softball questions from Russian news agencies, but he also welcomed hostile questions from the US media. In fact, Putin, an enemy of press freedom, was more polite than Biden would be, and took far tougher questions.

UK - A Woke campaign that seeks to bully advertisers into boycotting GB News has been slammed by many Brits. The channel launched earlier this week promising to “lend an ear to some of Britain’s marginalised and overlooked voices”. This rhetoric appears to have gone down well with viewers as chairman Andrew Neil and host Dan Wootton helped it attract higher figures than both the BBC and Sky News channels on its launch night. Despite the mainstream channel clearly having a wide appeal, woke lefties determined to silence any opinions other than their own seem out to get it. A website called Boycott GB News has adopted a similar campaign to Stop Funding Hate - by publishing the names and contact details of the channel’s advertisers. It then urges people to bombard them with messages urging them to stop advertising with the channel. Kopparberg, Grolsch, Nivea and the Open University have since announced that they are pulling their advertising.

VATICAN - Joe Biden’s entourage requested permission for the president to attend Mass with Pope Francis during his European visit, which the Vatican “nixed,” according to a Wednesday report from Catholic News Agency (CNA). The Vatican’s refusal stemmed from “the impact that Biden receiving Holy Communion from the pope would have on the discussions the USCCB [US Conference of Catholic Bishops] is planning to have during their meeting starting Wednesday, June 16,” the report stated, citing an unnamed Vatican source. Tuesday’s report corrects a prior CNA story alleging that the president would meet with the pope on June 15, which will apparently not occur.

HUNGARY - A law prohibiting the sharing of content portraying homosexuality and transgenderism to those under the age of 18 has been passed by Hungary’s National Assembly. The vote passed on Tuesday by a vote of 157-1. The law was included in a larger bill cracking down on pedophilia by creating a register of child sex offenders, implementing stricter punishments for child pornography, and barring pedophile offenders from jobs where they would encounter children. It also singled out the promotion of LGBT affairs in schools. Sex education in schools “must not be aimed” at “promoting homosexuality” or “changing gender,” said Fidesz, the ruling party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in a press release following the vote. Additionally, those under the age of 18 cannot be shown pornographic content, or any content, deemed as promoting homosexuality or transgenderism – with television shows, movies, and advertisements included.

USA - There was plenty of talk about China at the latest meeting of NATO, a country far removed from the North Atlantic. Do we need any more proof that the organization is now just a vehicle for promoting American hegemony? Following the weekend’s G7 meeting, the NATO summit followed on Monday and predictably adopted a similar theme: China. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg denied that the West was in a “Cold War” with Beijing, but nonetheless proceeded to say China presented “systemic challenges” due to its rising capabilities, which posed a threat to the security of the alliance. Beijing hit back by claiming NATO was obsessed with the “China threat theory” and stirring up trouble, urging it to view the country’s “development rationally.” What is obvious is that NATO is not so much a security organization for European states as it is a vehicle to prop up American hegemony. If this logic is taken at face value, is China really the threat it is being depicted as? Who is really seeking global domination here?

USA - After 55 years of special privileges and special pleading for black Americans, where do we stand? Integration has failed. Black Americans, or more correctly, those who speak for them, want black-only towns, black-only college dorms, black-only dining halls, and a black national anthem. Except for the black anthem, that’s what they had a half century ago prior to “affirmative action.” How is it that when blacks demand segregation, it is not racism? asks the leading political economist and author, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, a regular at The Herland Report. As Lawrence Stratton and I demonstrated in our book The New Color Line, racial quotas were strictly prohibited by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Nevertheless, the law was stood upside down and quotas were imposed. As a result many young whites, especially males, had their careers foreclosed. Less qualified people took their place in universities, in employment and in promotions. New wrongs against whites were justified by white liberals as compensation for past wrongs against blacks. The sins of the fathers were visited upon the sons. This is the New Justice.

USA - New satellite images reveal how badly western US reservoirs have been depleted as a result of the mega-drought plaguing much of that region, impacting millions. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Sentinel-2 satellite captured alarming images of the reservoirs stretching from California to Utah and up to Oregon this year, along with shots from 2020 that shows a dramatic decline in water levels. Lake Shasta, California's largest reservoir, is filled only to 42 percent capacity, while Lake Powell sits below 35 percent.

USA - Texas power grid operator struggles to provide power in heat, just as it did in cold. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) called for Texans to conserve electricity on Monday afternoon. For the second time this year, the council blamed “a significant number of forced generation outages” and record demand for the “tight grid conditions” that are expected to last until Friday, June 18.

CHINA - Beijing has dismissed the notion that G7 nations can chart the trajectory of global affairs, arguing that decision-making by small clubs has been replaced by genuine multilateralism. Washington has described the Group of Seven summit in Cornwall, south western England, as an opportunity to reinforce the so-called “rules-based international system” – an assertion that China disputes. “We always believe that countries, big or small, strong or weak, poor or rich, are equals, and that world affairs should be handled through consultation by all countries. The days when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone,” a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in London said on Saturday in response to the rhetoric coming from Cornwall. Attempts to “gang up” on Beijing will fail, the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, calling for a more “objective and rational” approach to international relations. China has long maintained that Washington’s influence over global affairs is waning.

USA - The Founding Fathers were wary of institutional threats to liberty and the citizenry's sovereignty, which included centralized concentrations of power (monarchy, central banks, federal agencies, etc) and the tyranny of corruption unleashed by small-minded, self-interested, greedy grifters who saw all elected offices and positions of government influence as nothing more than a means to increase their own private wealth.

USA - As people return to the subway system in New York City, they are finding more trash and filth, according to a new report. There has been a rise in soiled train cars this year according to Daily News including cases of feces, vomit, and blood. An increase in used syringes is also being found amid growing drug use in the subway system. "Incidents like this are unfortunate. They’re unsanitary for our customers and deeply unfair and disturbing for transit cleaners. They’re also a reminder of the need for more mental health outreach and social service support in the city and throughout the system," MTA spokesperson Andrei Berman said in a statement to the paper. Rising crime in the subway system is also a problem. Last month, Governor Andrew Cuomo said people just don't feel safe riding trains.

USA - A long time ago, the left decided that one of the best ways to transform US society would be to take over the education system, and that conquest is now complete. From the very top to the very bottom, the left completely and utterly dominates our system of education, and at this point our schools are little more than public indoctrination centers. I spent more than a third of my life in those schools, and so I know what I am talking about. Unfortunately, things have continued to spiral downhill since I received my last degree in 2003. If you don’t want to believe me, perhaps you will believe a North Korean defector that recently attended a major US university.