"Brace Yourself For Catastrophic Change In American Standard Of Living As Prices Hit New Levels!"

Full screen recommended.

"Brace Yourself For Catastrophic Change In 

American Standard Of Living As Prices Hit New Levels!"

by The Atlantis Report

"Natural Gas Prices up 215% since Joe Biden took office. You can thank Joe Biden for shutting down/curtailing American oil and gas production. One of the WORST Decisions in US History. And let's deplete our natural gas supplies and ship LNG to Europe, circle back, and then empty out the rest of our strategic reserves for a temporary .05 cent reduction in price, while taxes are at least 25% of the total price. Then go to war with our domestic reserves at zero.

And if China invades Taiwan, oil will spike to $200 a barrel. Where will the US military get their oil if Biden depleted the reserves? Everything this administration does harms the citizens in America. Before this is over everyone will wish they had the grain back to feed cattle. Everyone better quickly develop a taste for eating fried cockroach Klaus bars. I'm betting in Washington, DC it's the beef that will be served. The cockroach bars will be for the rest of us.

Ultimately, and perhaps sooner rather than later, it will become (even more) painfully obvious, that too much land is being utilized for the purposes of distilling alcohol for fuel. And some of that land will be reverted back to broader crop production. Then, too, the idea of driving giant vanity vehicles (giant SUVs and enormous pick-up trucks - so often for no reason than to look like a 'big man') that get horrid MPG will become frowned upon by society.

Stagflation and a deflationary depression for the next 8 years. The FED will tighten and then reverse and go back to trillions of QE. But this time it will not work. They will have a new game. A new currency.

Now the middlemen will have to get a real job. The currency has always been people. This new thing is just physical digital bondage, like leg irons. The Fed is going to try to expand the money supply even more aggressively to try to stimulate it, which is why we’re going to have more inflation during the next recession. What's another 10 trillion at this point? This whole thing is like a tree that is still standing but hollow inside from termites.

If China captures Taiwan then semiconductors will be first on our list of concerns. It will be a while before we have sufficient capacity in the USSA to make our own in sufficient numbers. Everything today is run by microcomputers, guided by electronic sensors, etc. I've read of large farming equipment that is computerized to the max. Fabs just don't spring up overnight.

The US doesn't manufacture anything it's major trading partners need. The Central Banks with loose fiscal policy wasted decades of GDP on fake growth in areas that are irrelevant. While the US was declining and wholesaling itself to its adversaries they gained significant industrial and technological capabilities. The economic decline and resulting wars will be used as an excuse to implement an openly acknowledged world government digital currency and digital passport based on social credit that can be revoked to force everyone into bondage to a global hegemony and a resulting dissolution of national and human sovereignty."

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRWXiM7afFM

"I Remember..."

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more, the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort, to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires, and expires too soon, too soon, before life itself."

- Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, English writer

Freely Read Online: Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”

"Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope.

Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.

In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until dawn.”

- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”

“Shantaram”

by Gregory David Roberts

“Crime and punishment, passion and loyalty, betrayal and redemption are only a few of the ingredients in “Shantaram,” a massive, over-the-top, mostly autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name given Mr. Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means “man of God’s peace,” which is what the Indian people know of Lin. What they do not know is that prior to his arrival in Bombay he escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence. He served two years and leaped over the wall. He was imprisoned for a string of armed robberies performed to support his heroin addiction, which started when his marriage fell apart and he lost custody of his daughter. All of that is enough for several lifetimes, but for Greg Roberts, that’s only the beginning.

He arrives in Bombay with little money, an assumed name, false papers, an untellable past, and no plans for the future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker right away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediately, eventually introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. When they return to Bombay, they take up residence in a sprawling illegal slum of 25,000 people and Linbaba becomes the resident “doctor.” With a prison knowledge of first aid and whatever medicines he can cadge from doing trades with the local Mafia, he sets up a practice and is regarded as heaven-sent by these poor people who have nothing but illness, rat bites, dysentery, and anemia. He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in love. Theirs is a complicated relationship, and Karla’s connections are murky from the outset.

Roberts is not reluctant to wax poetic; in fact, some of his prose is downright embarrassing. Throughout the novel, however, all 944 pages of it, every single sentence rings true. He is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is judged criminal behavior, but a basically decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His story is irresistible. Stay tuned for the prequel and the sequel.”

– Valerie Ryan

○

“But I couldn't respond. My culture had taught me all the wrong things well. So I lay completely still, and gave no reaction at all. But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no color or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can't be stilled. I clenched my teeth against the stars. I closed my eyes. I surrendered to sleep. One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.”

- Gregory David Roberts, "Shantaram"

○

Freely read “Shantaram” online, by Gregory David Roberts, here:

- https://www.readanybook.com/online/565858

There is a download option for registered users.

"All Of The Available Data..."

"All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about

as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo."

- Morris Berman

Apologies to armadillos for the comparison...

The Poet: Carl Sandburg, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

“The past is a bucket of ashes.”

1

"The woman named Tomorrow 

sits with a hairpin in her teeth 

and takes her time 

and does her hair the way she wants it 

and fastens at last the last braid and coil 

and puts the hairpin where it belongs 

and turns and drawls: Well, what of it? 

My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone. 

What of it? Let the dead be dead. 

2

The doors were cedar

and the panels strips of gold 

and the girls were golden girls 

and the panels read and the girls chanted: 

We are the greatest city, 

the greatest nation: 

nothing like us ever was. 

The doors are twisted on broken hinges. 

Sheets of rain swish through on the wind 

where the golden girls ran and the panels read: 

We are the greatest city, 

the greatest nation, 

nothing like us ever was. 

3

It has happened before. 

Strong men put up a city and got 

a nation together,

And paid singers to sing and women 

to warble: We are the greatest city, 

the greatest nation, 

nothing like us ever was. 

And while the singers sang

and the strong men listened 

and paid the singers well 

and felt good about it all, 

there were rats and lizards who listened... 

and the only listeners left now... 

are…the rats…and the lizards. 

And there are black crows 

crying, “Caw, caw,” 

bringing mud and sticks 

building a nest 

over the words carved 

on the doors where the panels were cedar 

and the strips on the panels were gold 

and the golden girls came singing: 

We are the greatest city, 

the greatest nation: 

nothing like us ever was. 

The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,” 

And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways. 

And the only listeners now are…the rats…and the lizards. 

4

The feet of the rats 

scribble on the door sills; 

the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints 

chatter the pedigrees of the rats 

and babble of the blood 

and gabble of the breed 

of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers 

of the rats. 

And the wind shifts 

and the dust on a door sill shifts 

and even the writing of the rat footprints 

tells us nothing, nothing at all 

about the greatest city, the greatest nation 

where the strong men listened 

and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."

- Carl Sandburg

"How It Really Is"

 

"We Are Left Alone..."

"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, it's not a choice but a calling. Sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter from the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monster without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness."

- Fox Mulder, "X-Files"

"Staring Into the Abyss"

"Staring Into the Abyss"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"The global economy is perched on the edge of an abyss, and averting our gaze doesn't actually lessen the risk, it increases it because problems which aren't faced directly and addressed directly fester and rot the system from within. This is why we're collectively staring into the abyss: all the big problems have been dismissed, ignored or papered over with PR-happy-talk "solutions" that only make the problem worse. There are three basic techniques that our "leadership" (public and private) have used to avoid dealing directly with our pressing problems:

1. Appear to address the problems by doing more of what's failed spectacularly.

2. Propose magical-thinking happy-happy technological "solutions" that are appealing but impractical.

3. Keep the status quo glued together to maximize quick-buck gains for the elite while guaranteeing long-term catastrophe for the entire society / economy.

Doing more of what's failed spectacularly is one of the phrases you've seen here over the years. This generates an illusion of control because the tried-and-true Band-Aid makes it look like the problem is being addressed. Since doing more of what's failed spectacularly doesn't break the system immediately, everyone incorrectly assumes it's benign or actually helping.

The Federal Reserve's blowing of serial speculative credit-asset bubbles is a good example. With the bogus goal of generating a "wealth effect" that only rewards the already-rich, the Fed has exacerbated socially fatal neofeudal inequality and created guaranteed-to-pop bubbles that each collapsed with devastating consequences for the credulous who believed the Fed's poisonous assurances that a) this isn't a bubble and b) bubbles never pop.

The Fed's "solution" - blowing an even bigger bubble to paper over the catastrophic losses when the previous bubble popped - has finally reached the endgame: three bubbles and you're out (2000, 2008-09 and 2021-22). Sorry to disappoint the beneficiaries of the three Fed bubbles, but there won't be a fourth bubble. Bubbles don't inflate at the bottom of the abyss.

Magical thinking abounds in finance, energy and and economic policy. Examples include substituting nuclear power for hydrocarbons, conveniently sidestepping the reality that we'd need to build a new reactor a week for years to make a difference, and the really inconvenient reality that the U.S. has built a grand total of two new reactors in the past 25 years and the world has a few dozen under construction - a scale roughly 1/100th of what's needed.

In finance, magical thinking appears across the entire spectrum from the fanciful delusions of Modern Monetary Theory (we can't go broke because we can always print more money - uh, sure, that will work just fine, guaranteed) to the Fed's "if we just make the already-rich even richer while bankrupting the bottom 90%, everything will work out just peachy." Peachy for whom? That question is never answered because the billionaires are so charmingly bashful.

The New Nobility elites reckon that if they can keep the crumbling cliff edge from collapsing for a few more years, they can maximize their private gains and then escape to their New Zealand bunkers when the consequences of their plunder send the global economy into the abyss. The elites are in effect selling seats in the Titanic's lifeboats to the highest bidders. The ship is doomed and they see this tragedy as a terrifically profitable opportunity.

Another analogy is polluting your nation and people so a handful of industrialists and party hacks can get super-rich. The land, water and air are all poisoned and the people sick and dying, but who cares once you're secure in your fortified villa?

None of humanity's most pressing problems have been addressed by any elite, any where. So sorry, but "you'll own nothing and be miserable - oops, we mean happy, yes, deliriously happy" doesn't count as a solution. Every elite is pursuing the same self-serving agenda of maximizing their private plunder and hoping - perhaps vainly - to escape the consequences of their obsession with short-term gains at the expense of the planet and its people.

Watch your step while peering into the abyss. The cliff edge is crumbling faster than we realize."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

"We Got Big Trouble - Stock Market Crushed Today; Party Is Over; Bank Collapse; Economy Unraveling"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 4/22/22:

"We Got Big Trouble - Stock Market Crushed Today;

 Party Is Over; Bank Collapse; Economy Unraveling"

"Oh No... A New Phase Has Begun"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, "Oh No... A New Phase Has Begun"

"Sleeper cells are activating, the food is burning down, Russia targeting NATO, the markets are crashing, and the elites are running for their bunkers, Taiwan accidentally scares the hell out of its population, everything is falling apart... If you see something on a shelf... buy it now."

"Rent Price Bubble Trigger Housing Crash As Mortgage Rate Hikes Push Prices To Explode"

Full screen recommended.

"Rent Price Bubble Trigger Housing Crash 

As Mortgage Rate Hikes Push Prices To Explode"

by Epic Economist

"An impending housing market crash is leaving economists, real estate experts, and policymakers increasingly worried as home price appreciation continues to balloon at unforeseen levels and mortgage rates continue to soar. Millions of homeowners are waking up to the fact that their monthly housing payments are getting significantly more expensive. At the same time, millions of potential buyers are getting entirely priced out of the market. For that reason, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported many signs indicating a “brewing U.S. housing bubble," and researchers concluded that as affordability worsens and impacts people’s purchasing power, home prices are set to collapse as they finally readjust to our economic reality.

Last month, when rates went above the 4% mark, the number of buyers applying for mortgages dropped considerably. Home prices have already jumped by a staggering 19.2% nationally. In some markets, that increase was well above the 30% mark, and according to new estimates released by the National Association of Realtors, in March alone, at least 9 million more buyers were priced out of the market.

The breath-taking pace of home price appreciation has started to raise fears that a real estate bubble could be setting the stage for another burst, which led economists with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas to publish a note warning about the consequences of the growing U.S. housing bubble, and explain that even though today’s fundamentals are different than the ones that led to the previous bubble, the risks are still very real.

As market conditions remain volatile, Americans are feeling increasingly pessimistic about the future of their own housing options. A recent article shared by The Hill showed that more and more Americans are losing confidence they will ever own a home. A new survey by the Federal Reserve of New York uncovered that only 43.4% of renters believe they’ll ever own a home, the first reading below 50% in the survey's history. Compared with last February, the drop amounted to a decline of 10 percentage points.

The latest increase in rates means that buyers all around the nation are paying nearly 42% more in their monthly mortgage payments for the same house today than they did a year ago. The combination of rising home prices and escalating mortgage rates has added hundreds, in some cases thousands, of dollars a month to those mortgage bills.

And that’s coming on top of what all of those potential buyers are spending on everything else. With inflation running at 8.5%, and gas prices soaring 40%, millions of people out there are completely tapped out. This is not what a healthy market looks like. Considering the many supply and demand imbalances, the growing inequality gap in net household wealth, and worsening work conditions in today’s labor market, most buyers don’t have enough cushion to stay afloat when the real estate market breaks.

With wages failing to keep pace with the rise in house prices and mortgage rates, a meaningful decline cannot be ruled out. And if even those who swore up and down that there was nothing wrong going on in the market over the past two years are now admitting that there are serious risks of a bubble burst, we should start bracing for another disaster in the months ahead."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

"Empathy Triggers"

"Empathy Triggers"

by John Robb

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”

- E.O. Wilson

"Empathy triggers are used to mobilize network swarms, which is, as we have seen with the response to the invasion of Ukraine, a key element of network warfare. Let’s figure out how they work. What does an “empathy trigger” look like?

Here’s a widely shared picture that shows a pregnant Ukrainian woman on a stretcher in front of a building shattered by a Russian bombardment (both she and her baby died).

Pictures with descriptions like this are something we have seen in traditional media (TV, newspapers, magazines, etc.) for a century, and although they have an impact on us, that impact is muted. It feels slightly removed due to the nature of the medium.

However, everything changes when that picture and description of a victim are in a social media post. Due to the nature of the medium, instead of simply evoking sympathy or sadness, it can often trigger a strong empathic reaction. For example:

Empathy triggers like these, distributed to tens of millions of people online, can mobilize millions into action for protest or war. An excellent example of this is the smartphone video of George Floyd:

Social networking has rewired us. “Empathy triggers” work so well because social networking and smartphones have fundamentally changed how our brains process news. It has rewired us. Here’s how:

Scan. We can’t read all the news we receive, there’s too much of it, and it would be impossible to make sense of it all even if we did. Instead of reading it, we scan it, looking for novelty and patterns.

Social cue. We don’t simply read the news and form opinions in isolation anymore. Online, the news is packaged as a social cue that lets us figure out what other people are thinking.

Addiction. The news isn’t just a one-way flow of information anymore. Online, it’s interactive, with social feedback loops and induced hormone release (cortisol in fear of getting it wrong and dopamine for getting it right) that make it addictive.

Addictively scanning our news feed for social cues doesn’t just make us more vulnerable to empathy triggers; it encourages us to seek them out.

Another contributing factor is that empathy isn’t simply sympathy; it’s a powerful pre-verbal form of communication. A form of communication that humanity has only recently learned to mitigate with reason in large group settings. Here’s how empathic communication works: "Empathic communication is an involuntary process if you are not actively resisting it. As a result, this form of communication is usually limited to children (it’s critical for socialization) and for intimate groups (family).

In empathic communication, we build an internal model of the other person's feelings based on cues (face, body, screams, etc.). We feel what the victim feels: their fear, anger, and pain. Our faces grimace in pain like the victim, and we can feel the knee on our necks (George Floyd). We connect at a deep level. When we empathize with victims, they are no longer strangers; we form a fictive kinship with them. They are now part of our tribe, and they are being threatened. When we combine these elements - addictive social cue scanning and involuntary connections that produce fictive kinship - we get a powerful tool for mobilizing a networked swarm."

- WigginSessions@email.5minforecast.com

"An Explosion Is Coming"

"An Explosion Is Coming"

by Jeffrey Tucker

“You know, I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've 

been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country.” 

- Gore Vidal.

"Did you catch the absolute frenzy about Elon Musk’s proposed takeover of Twitter? Employees at Twitter were falling on their fainting couches repeatedly. The Washington Post warned of the grave danger to democracy. Now think about this. This is a highly censored platform. They ban you for raising questions about vaccines. You are dinged for wondering a bit about Zelenskyy’s war drums. They body-bag you if you say that the virus is not what they claim it is. Not so democratic, is it? It’s certainly not in the democratic spirit.

Imagine dialing back the censorship just a bit. Imagine a hole the size of a nail in a major dam. This is precisely what “they” do not want. It would expose the strangest fact about our world today, namely that the oppressions and wreckages all around us are the products of just a few hundred people around the world. Forget the 1%. It’s more like the 0.0001%. It’s a small group with wildly outsized influence. It feels wrong. It is undemocratic. Plus they have proven their incompetence on every subject from economics to monetary finance to virus control. They are effectively discredited. Now there is one goal: Keep the masses from rising up.

What Is Forgivable? Social science and psychology have produced a large and very interesting literature about what the human mind can forgive and get over, versus that which people can remember for a lifetime or many generations. Some things are bad but one moves on. The death of a parent is painful but we recover. Stock market losses are bad luck but we wait it out. Even job loss, as bad as it is, eventually recedes in our memory once we have a new job that makes us happy. Relationships can go wrong but the next good relationship heals the pain.

What is the most salient, pressing, burning and possibly permanent form of hurt? Things that harm our children. Actions that steal our patrimony (as Machiavelli said) and external forms of intervention that rob us of our social status. Those things we do not forgive. Instead, we seethe. In any case, this is what the literature has explained and it seems right.

Now consider the last two years. Perhaps half the country thinks that the president found his way to power through illicit means of some sort. Forget the ballot-counting issues. It’s all about the manipulation of democratic process via mail-in ballots and so on. I tend to be rather moderate on such questions but I’m an outlier here: Multitudes believe the election to have been outright stolen.

An Unfair Race: So much for credibility at the top. Now consider what has happened to children over two years. Many in the middle class have faced the grim reality that their kids learned next to nothing online. They are massively behind. Meanwhile, the rich kids in private schools are far ahead of them. Keep in mind: These are schools for which people pay with VERY high property taxes. The unions and the germophobes shut them down for two years! Did people get refunds? Nope. They were robbed.

Also millions of people over two years were denied access to funerals and even hospital visits for loved ones like parents and grandparents. We can deal with death. We cannot deal with politicians and bureaucrats who barred us from providing comfort to the dying and then grieving ourselves.

This is utterly unforgivable.

Now consider vaccine mandates. Most people never wanted their skin to be stuck with a needle and have their bodies pumped full of some untested substance, generated by tax-funded medical labs, operating without liability. Those who went along are still furious to this day. This anger will last a lifetime. And to top it off, none of these goofy and truly evil strategies achieved anything in terms of disease mitigation, much less in cushioning the economic blow of the lockdowns.

Inflation: The most remarkable form of robbery came in the form of the seemingly wonderful stimulus checks. Wow, the government is giving me something… and then the government took it away in the form of inflation.

And let’s talk about inflation and public fury. Some people in some countries get used to it. Americans are not that way. We’ve been through 40 years of relatively tolerable levels. The Fed assured us that it had it all under control. For a year now, all of the top experts said that prices would settle back and everything would be fine. Of course, it wasn’t true.

Now people feel it very intensely: Their standard of living is falling. Fast. There is nowhere where money makes money. Nothing feels safe. We are being secretly robbed at every turn. We seek explanations. They blame Putin. They blame business. They blame you and me. They blame everyone but themselves. This is unbearably obvious.

The pace of increase has cooled a bit for now, down from 13.5% to 12%, according to real-time measurements. That’s still very high. Plus, there is plenty of room for these numbers to get out of control very quickly as we approach the end of the summer months and into fall.

The Explosion: In 2016, I gave a speech in which I said that people who hate Trump should feel gratitude for him. Compared with the real mood in the country, Trump really did represent a moderating force. That was six years ago, and long before lockdowns, inflation, a sketchy election and vast social and economic wreckage.

The administrative state is right now as angry at us as we are at them. There is a peaceful solution here but it doesn’t seem to be on the table. Will governments have learned their lessons? Look around! We live in a world burdened by extremely stupid public agencies that have lost public trust.

If I’ve learned anything new over the last two years, it’s about the strange way in which the ruling class is impervious to the will of the people, even when it shows up in devastating polls. They seem not to regard this as a corrective but a challenge. Are the elites right to fear a world of free speech? They certainly are. In a digital age with the potential for mass communication and action, a genuine platform that allows people to actually share information and say what they really think could be truly revolutionary.

This sounds exciting and like something we should welcome. Maybe. My actual worry is deeper, namely that we have traveled too far down the path for this to end in peace and tranquility. The powder keg is growing more combustible by the day. Now consider the present situation and add recession/depression on top of it all. There is no precedent in our lifetimes for what this could mean. Hang in there, my friends! An explosion is coming."

- dailyreckoning.com

"Yet Now..."

“Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it?”

- Arthur C. Clarke, “Glide Path”

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Deep Space, Ambient Meditation and Sleep Music from Soothing Relaxation"

Full screen recommended.

Peder B. Helland, "Deep Space, Ambient Meditation

and Sleep Music from Soothing Relaxation"

Be kind to yourself, relax and enjoy this beautiful video...

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.

Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."

- http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080512.html

"Reflect On What Happens..."

“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age breakdown. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impassible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a secular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.”

– Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”

"Humanity On The Brink: 'Everyone Will Be Dead' If Both Sides Continue To Escalate World War 3"

"Humanity On The Brink: 'Everyone Will Be Dead'

If Both Sides Continue To Escalate World War 3"

by Michael Snyder

"In all of modern history, the world has never had a worse group of leaders than it does right now, and the fate of civilization is literally in their hands. If both sides continue to escalate matters, the proxy war in Ukraine will eventually become a shooting war between the United States and Russia. And once a shooting war between the United States and Russia starts, it will only be a matter of time before it goes nuclear. It is often said that there are no winners in a nuclear war, and that is certainly true. But if a nuclear war becomes inevitable, you definitely want to be on the side that strikes first. Because a devastating surprise first strike may not enable you to “win” a nuclear war, but it will certainly give you the best chance of surviving one.

Donald Trump can see where things are heading. This week, he penned the most ominous statement that he has ever issued… “It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement. If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage. This is a war that never should have happened, but it did. The solution can never be as good as it would have been before the shooting started, but there is a solution, and it should be figured out now - not later - when everyone will be DEAD!”

Like Trump, I am desperately hoping that a negotiated agreement can be reached somehow, because if a full-blown nuclear war erupts billions of people will die. We must not allow that to happen.

Unfortunately, officials in the U.S. are not taking this threat seriously. In fact, I have been seeing talking heads all over cable news downplaying the threat of nuclear war. These experts assure us that Russia “would never use nuclear weapons”, but meanwhile Russia continues to feverishly prepare for a potential nuclear war with the United States.

In fact, the Russians just conducted a test of the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile… "Russia has test launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile, raising fears of a further escalation of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. The Russian leader said the Sarmat missile, also known as Satan-2, will provide ‘food for thought for those who try to threaten Russia’ and will make his enemies ‘think twice’."

It is being reported that the Sarmat has a range of 11,000 miles and can hit any target on the entire planet. It can carry up to 15 independently targetable warheads, and the Russians are bragging that the collective power of those warheads could destroy an area the size of Texas or France. Remember, this is just one missile that we are talking about. Ultimately, the Russians are planning to put vast numbers of these missiles into service.

According to Vladimir Putin, nobody in the world has anything like these new missiles… “The new complex has the highest tactical and technical characteristics and is capable of overcoming all modern means of anti-missile defense. It has no analogues in the world and won’t have for a long time to come,” Putin said. “This truly unique weapon will strengthen the combat potential of our armed forces, reliably ensure Russia’s security from external threats and provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country.”

Sadly, he is right. The U.S. doesn’t have anything even close. Minuteman III missiles that went into service in the 1970s are still the backbone of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal, and they are not scheduled to be replaced by something new until about 2030.

Needless to say, the test of the new Sarmat missile was intended as a message to anyone that is attempting to aid the Ukrainians… "Russia notified the US of the ICBM test launch in accordance with the New Start treaty, but its rhetoric and choice to go ahead with the treaty stands in stark contrast to the US, which had canceled an ICBM test-launch in March not long after Russia began its war on Ukraine. Putin and his aides have repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons in what experts believe to be a ploy to warn powerful countries like the UK, Germany and the US from coming to Ukraine’s aid."

This missile test represents yet another escalation by the Russians, and that is extremely alarming. But U.S. officials are escalating matters as well. On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced another round of sanctions against Russia… "The United States on Wednesday unveiled its latest round of sanctions going after Russia over its war on Ukraine, this time targeting a key commercial bank and “a global network of more than 40 individuals and entities led by U.S.-designated Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev.”

In a news release, the US Treasury Department said it was also targeting “companies operating in Russia’s virtual currency mining industry, reportedly the third largest in the world,” noting it was the first time it has “designated a virtual currency mining company.”

And the Biden administration is also telling us that another “military aid package” will soon be sent to Ukraine… "The Biden administration is preparing to announce another substantial military aid package for Ukraine this week, five U.S officials tell NBC News. Three officials said the package is expected to be similar in size to the $800 million one the administration announced last week. Two officials said the package is expected to include more artillery and tens of thousands more artillery rounds, which will likely be critical to the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region."

At this point, we are providing most of the weapons and ammunition for the Ukrainian military, we are constantly providing them with battlefield intelligence, and we are even training their troops on our own soil.

Yes, that last part is actually true. As I have discussed previously, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has publicly admitted that Ukrainian troops are actually being flown to the United States to be trained how to fight the Russians… “This morning, I had the pleasure of speaking with Ukrainian troops training in the U.S. who are returning home to Ukraine today. Their bravery and skill are amazing. I made clear the U.S. will continue to provide them with the assistance they need.”

Like I said at the beginning of this article, this is a proxy war between the United States and Russia. If the American people truly understood the implications of what our leaders are doing, there would be massive protests in the streets of every U.S. city right now. So when will everyone finally wake up? Hopefully it will be before we get to the “everyone is dead” part of the story."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com

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Related, must read:

"USA Targeting of Moskva Ship is Russia's "Pearl Harbor"...

 Retaliation is Next"

"Oh S#!%... "SATAN" Nuclear Missile is Being Prepared"

"The Test..."

 

Gregory Mannarino, "STOCKS DIVE! War, Inflation, Recession Fears, Crisis Economy, Bank Warnings, Shortages, Is It Over?"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/22/22:

"STOCKS DIVE! War, Inflation, Recession Fears, 

 Economy, Bank Warnings, Shortages, Is It Over?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Gerald Celente, Gregory Mannarino: "Crisis Economics, Prepare for the Worst"

Full screen recommended.

Gerald Celente, Gregory Mannarino:

 "Crisis Economics, Prepare for the Worst"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Argyle, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Dow Undergoing Catastrophic Decline, The Dow Is Now Down 1,003+ Points, Storm Coming!"

April 22, 2022 3:58 PM EST: "Dow Undergoing Catastrophic Decline, The Dow Is Now Down 1,003+ Points. The Average Stock Is Now -40% Off 52 Week Highs. Storm Coming!"

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data

Presented without comment, you should be aware of this

 and further developments, and consider the consequences.

"Food Production Is Going To Be Substantially Lower Than Anticipated All Over The Globe In 2022"

"Food Production Is Going To Be Substantially Lower 

Than Anticipated All Over The Globe In 2022"

by Michael Snyder

I don’t think that people realize how severe this crisis will eventually become. Never before in modern history have we seen global food production being hit by so many major problems all at once. It truly is a “perfect storm”, and hundreds of millions of people are going to deeply suffer as a result. I would very much encourage you to share this article with as many people as you can, because everyone needs this information. As I discussed previously, things may be somewhat bad right now, but conditions will eventually get much worse as the months roll along.

I am going to share a lot of statistics in this article, and each number is important. But ultimately it is the collective impact of all of these factors together that is really going to hammer us.

Let me start by talking about rice. According to Bloomberg, the global fertilizer crisis is going to result in a loss of production worldwide that is the equivalent of enough food to feed “500 million people”… "From India to Vietnam and the Philippines, prices of crop nutrients crucial to boosting food production have doubled or tripled in the past year alone. Lower fertilizer use may mean a smaller crop. The International Rice Research Institute predicts that yields could drop 10% in the next season, translating to a loss of 36 million tons of rice, or the equivalent of feeding 500 million people."

We don’t eat that much rice in the western world, but in Asia it is a core staple of their diets. How will all of that food be replaced?

Well, they could eat more wheat, but there is going to be a lot less wheat produced in 2022 as well. In fact, one agricultural commodity expert is warning that the war in Ukraine alone could mean that “between 19 million and 34 million tons of export production could disappear this year”… "Globally, there are six breadbaskets that together supply roughly 60 to 70 percent of global agricultural commodities. The Ukraine–Russia region is responsible for roughly 30 percent of global exports of wheat and 65 percent of sunflower, in a context where those markets are increasingly tight and interconnected - so a slight disruption in supply creates some impact on price."

Of course, we don’t know what the length and scale of this conflict will be. We ran some scenarios, and from our perspective, between 19 million and 34 million tons of export production could disappear this year. If we fast-forward to 2023, the figure could be between ten million and 43 million tons. To translate, that represents caloric intake for 60 million to 150 million people.

I don’t know about you, but I regularly eat a lot of things that contain wheat, and so do hundreds of millions of others. So this is going to be a huge issue. And we are already seeing wheat prices go completely insane. From early March to early April, the price of wheat jumped almost 20 percent… "Global food prices rose to their highest-ever level in March, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported April 8, with wheat prices up nearly 20% from a month earlier."

Unfortunately, the outlook for the months ahead is very troubling due to bizarre weather patterns all over the planet. Here in the United States, much of our winter wheat has been devastated by persistent drought… "According to the USDA, 69 percent of total U.S. winter-wheat production is in an area experiencing drought, including hard-red winter, soft-red winter and soft white. That includes 82 percent of the production area in Kansas, 82 percent in Colorado, 99 percent in Texas and 99 percent in Montana."

On the other side of the globe, parts of northern Africa are experiencing their “worst drought in decades”… "Morocco’s agriculture minister said the North African country would likely lose 53 percent of its cereals harvest after experiencing the worst drought in decades. Rainfall was 41 percent less than average this season."

So how will all of that food be replaced? Well, I suppose that we could all eat more corn, but the outlook for corn is not good either. Russia and Ukraine are normally two of the largest global exporters of corn, but now the war has changed everything, and there have been very serious planting delays here in the United States… "Chicago corn was largely unchanged on Wednesday and near a decade-high scaled in the previous session, as traders fretted over planting delays in the United States and a lack of supplies from war-torn Ukraine."

On top of everything else, there will be a lot less eggs produced this year, there will be a lot less chicken meat produced this year and there will be a lot less turkey meat produced this year because of the nightmarish bird flu pandemic which just keeps getting worse. According to NPR, the total death toll has now risen to “more than 28 million”… "More than 28 million poultry birds, like chickens and turkeys, have been lost in the U.S. because of a new bird flu. The virus either made the birds sick or they were culled to prevent its spread. Unlike previous bird flus, this one is also affecting a lot of wild birds. As NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce explains, that could keep the virus in circulation for a long time."

The vast majority of the time, most of us never even think about where our food comes from. But that needs to change, because food production systems are collapsing all over the world. For years, we have been warned that a global food crisis was coming, and now it has officially arrived. And with each passing day, more things are happening which threaten to make it even worse.

For now we are still eating food that has already been produced. The real problem will come in the months ahead when total global production of food drops well below total global demand for food."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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Not for long...

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Related:

- https://www.breitbart.com/tag/food-security/

"The Fierce Urgency Of Now..."

 

"Things Are Bad Now, But You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 4/22/22:

"Things Are Bad Now, But You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet"

"Things are bad in the economy and they’re about to get much worse. The FED is talking about inflation slowing in place and down by raising interest rates a month from now. How will this help global inflation?"

"Our Dilemma..."

"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time;

what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better."

- Sydney J. Harris

Jim Kunstler, "Daddies in Mommie-land"

"Daddies in Mommie-land"

by Jim Kunstler

"Welcome to the season of everything losing ground, at least for Western Civ. Sore-beset with idiots and scoundrels running things, the West stumbles backwards into neo-medieval darkness and superstition, hurling garlic bombs of objurgation against the supposedly wicked Putin along the way.

Your “trusted news sources” in our corner of the world will not tell you this, but the mythologized golem of the West’s collective sick mind, The Putin, mounted Operation Z in Ukraine at our country’s foolish behest. It was a twisted variation of the old head-trip Let’s You and Him Fight - described so well in psychologist Eric Berne’s classic book "Games People Play." It’s a game instigated generally by women. The West detests the actual Mr. Putin for systemically and doggedly having to correct the mischief that the USA set in motion there in 2014 - putting out a dumpster fire we kept feeding for eight years.

Mainly we hate the Russian president for doing what he said he would do, acting like a man, literally having to set boundaries for the unruly children, like Daddy used to do. America hates daddies. To America, all daddies are monsters (rapists!). That’s why America wants to turn all daddies into mommies. Anyway, we barely remember what daddies used to do. The context for daddies - the family - has been obliterated in America by every agency and institution in the land. The only role available these days is the chimerical creature known as a “baby daddy,” which is as much a baby as a daddy, developmentally speaking. Real daddies are men, which is to say: not babies. Mr. Putin acts like a man, especially having to do a dirty job that needs doing, without complaint. America can’t stand that.

If the USA and its NATO allies actually cared about Ukraine, we would have just left the place alone to slowly settle into the de-industrialized agricultural backwater it was becoming. And if we wanted to prevent widespread devastation once Operation Z got underway, we would have promoted peace talks, with an emphasis on our previous declaration that Ukraine would not be a candidate to join NATO. Instead, we set up Ukraine as a launching pad for annoying Russia (while also using Ukraine as a money laundromat for public officials and arms-makers).

America is a drama queen, like the Queen Bee in one of those Real Housewives shows on cable TV, whose entire purpose in life is creating colorful conflicts within her circle of sisters. Daddy is not needed around that house, except offstage maybe as the wide-receiver for a multi-million-dollar paycheck courtesy of the NFL (a rival entertainment). When one of America’s drama queen stunts goes wrong, the Queen Bee melts into a puddle of tears - boo hoo - tripping the empathy toggle.The sisters cluster around her, beating their wings. Somebody, please, help her feel better… fetch her a glass of pino grigio or a Xanax!

Drama Queen Bee America does not like how the Ukraine drama is playing out. The mean old Daddy Putin is rocking the joint, cleaning out the place like Gary Cooper in some Long Branch Saloon of the Eurasian steppe - heaving all those Azov Nazis through the swinging doors out into the dusty street. The other sisters in the NATO circle were induced to acting as cheerleaders for the Azov boys, and now Mr. Putin has gone and turned off Europe’s gas. Western Civ is about to be sent to bed without dinner - the ultimate daddy trick. Now the sisters are all going boo hoo. Nothing is working for the sisterhood.

America’s president, “Joe Biden,” suits the current national script perfectly. He’s a mere prop for the drama queens. No one mistakes him for “Daddy.” He’s the old, impotent, intemperate, often confused “Grampy,” a figure of bathos and derision, a shell of a man who, in his prime, lived just to work his official positions for millions in grift. How, otherwise, do you account for his fortune? The Ukraine money laundromat was one of his favorite stops, managed carefully by cheerleaders Victoria Nuland, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and NSC official Fiona Hill, America’s foreign policy establishment there back in the day.

But who, exactly, is managing Grampy now backstage in the White House? My guess would be Susan Rice because you never hear anything about Susan Rice or her role there: Director of the Domestic Policy Council of the United States. Wow! Sounds weighty. When was the last time you saw her name in The New York Times or cable TV news? You’d think they’d be interested in her doings. Yet I doubt that one-in-a-hundred US citizens could tell you who Susan Rice is and what she does. (Was that her the other day in a bunny suit at the White House Easter Egg Roll, assisting a confused Grampy offstage?)

Somewhere in the White House there must be phone logs that record how many times a day Ms. Rice makes and receives phone calls across town to and from the Kalorama neighborhood of DC. Does that make Barack Obama America’s secret daddy? Or is he playing a somewhat different role… like, head of a cartel?"

- https://kunstler.com/

"How It Really Is"