Are strange - nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept,
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky."
- John Clare
About the poet: John Clare (13 July, 1793- 20 May, 1864) was an English poet. He was born in Northamptonshire, England in the family of a farm laborer. Clare's poetic work mostly showcases his celebratory representations of the English countryside. In his time, Clare was commonly known as "Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" His early work delights both in nature and the cycle of the rural year. "I Am" is a commentary on the complexity of existence.
•
“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering - these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for.”
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
"The Hits Just Keep on Coming! - Bad News is Everywhere"
"The bad news doesn’t seem to stop. I am at the site of where the Pacific Airshow was held in Huntington Beach, CA. There was just a massive oil spill on the same beach. Now they closed the beach down and this caused a huge ecological problem to the beach and the entire community."
See 2 Major Wars Start Before The End Of The Year?"
by Michael Snyder
"Historically, the start of most wars has not been a surprise. Usually, there is a very clear build up before hostilities begin, and we are seeing the same pattern today. For example, by now it should be exceedingly clear to everyone that Israel and Iran will be going to war. Both sides have been talking about the coming conflict for years, and everyone knows who has been causing the “mystery explosions” inside Iran and everyone knows who has been attacking Israeli commercial ships. A “shadow war” has already been going on for quite some time, and at some point missiles will start flying back and forth between the two countries. Likewise, by now it should be exceedingly clear that China very much wants to invade Taiwan. “Reunification” is a top national priority for the CCP, and as you will see below, we are being warned that Xi Jinping has apparently decided that Taiwan is “not a problem that will be passed down to the next generation”.
From a U.S. perspective, the goal is to delay these conflicts for as long as possible. But China just keeps getting more and more aggressive with Taiwan. In fact, the Chinese military sent 77 military aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on Friday and Saturday… "Taiwan has reported a record number of incursions by Chinese warplanes into its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) for the second day in a row, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said on Saturday night. The self-governing island said a total of 39 Chinese military aircraft entered the ADIZ on Saturday, one more than the 38 planes it spotted on Friday."
This shocking provocation led one British news source to boldly declare that China and Taiwan “are on the brink of war”, and that isn’t too far from the truth. In response, the head of Taiwan’s government had some very tough words for the Chinese… “China has been wantonly engaged in military aggression, damaging regional peace,” said Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang on Saturday.
And he also referred to the fact that Taiwan is depending on the United States to protect it from China… “The U.S. commitment to Taiwan is rock solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and within the region,” he added. “We will continue to stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity, security, and values and deepen our ties with democratic Taiwan.”
When China finally invades Taiwan, the U.S. and China will instantly be in a state of war, and everyone understands this. At one time the Chinese had hoped to peacefully “reunify” with Taiwan like they did with Hong Kong, but that is out of the picture now. CCP leaders have realized that they are going to have to take Taiwan by force, and so they are looking for an opportunity. With feeble Joe Biden in the White House and with the American people deeply tired of wars, this may be the best chance that the CCP is going to get, and they certainly realize this.
So could they pull the trigger on an invasion in the months ahead? Let’s hope not, because such a conflict would throw the entire globe into a state of chaos. But the clock is ticking, because as I noted above, we are being told that Xi Jinping has determined that Taiwan “is not a problem that will be passed down to the next generation”… "However, President Xi Jinping in China has previously expressed his aims to annex the island by suggesting there is “no room for any form of Taiwan independence.” Dr Nick Bisley, from La Trobe University in Australia said: “Xi Jinping has made a very public and very clear signal that says Taiwan is not a problem that will be passed down to the next generation.”
Meanwhile, the game of nuclear chicken that Iran and Israel are playing is rapidly approaching a moment of truth. Just like his predecessor, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has promised to never allow the Iranians to develop their own nuclear weapons, and everyone agrees that day is now closer than ever. The following comes from an Israeli news source… "In his speech to the UN General Assembly last week, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declared that “Iran’s nuclear program has hit a watershed moment, and so has our tolerance. Words do not stop centrifuges from spinning… We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.”
With quite dramatic candor, meanwhile, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi publicly declared (in January) that the IDF was preparing fresh “operational plans” for a potent military strike; (in August) that Iran’s nuclear progress has prompted the IDF “to speed up its operational plans,” with a fresh budget to do so; and (in September) that the IDF has “greatly accelerated” preparations for action against Iran’s nuclear program."
Needless to say, a full-blown war between Israel and Iran would also throw the entire globe into a state of chaos, and it is coming. In fact, a top Iranian official just said that “war with Israel has already started”… “The war with Israel has already started,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told Maariv. “Israel has carried out attacks that were intended to destroy our nuclear program for peaceful purposes. It murdered nuclear scientists and harmed the Iranian people. Iran is accused of terrorism, but there is no good or bad terrorist. The whole crisis in the region is Israel’s fault.”
If either of the wars that I have discussed in this article were to fully erupt before the end of this calendar year, economic activity all over the planet would be greatly affected and it would make global supply chain problems far, far worse than they are now. In addition, global financial markets would almost certainly go totally haywire.
Much more importantly, in either case the U.S. would find itself involved in a new war. If China invades Taiwan, the U.S. military would instantly be forced into action, and if Iran and Israel go to war the U.S. would definitely not stay on the sidelines. Needless to say, most Americans are not even thinking about war right now. But war is coming, and it won’t be too long before it is here."
"Is this going to be the worst holiday season in modern American history? Some mainstream news outlets are insisting that the upcoming holidays are going to be “ruined” because of the widespread shortages that are being caused by the global supply chain crisis. Of course we should have never allowed any of our holidays to be defined by material goods in the first place. I think that the fact that a “holiday season” can be “ruined” by a lack of goods on the shelves says an enormous amount about where we are as a society. And if we can’t handle some limited shortages during the waning months of 2021, how in the world are we going to handle the severe economic pain that is coming in the future?
No holiday should ever be defined by material possessions, but the vast majority of the population sees things very differently than I do, and so the coming months are going to be a very difficult time for a lot of people. The following comes from a CNN article entitled “How America Ruined Christmas”… "The supply chain nightmare that’s been plaguing the global economy for over a year is about to snarl the holiday shopping season. Think barren shelves, massive shipping delays, and no small amount of sticker shock. Merry Christmas, everyone!"
Needless to say, these conditions are likely to cause millions of Americans to throw wild temper tantrums. And many young kids will be getting very upset as well. There simply is not going to be enough stuff to go around, and we are being told that supplies of toys will be particularly tight… “There is going to be a major shortage of toy products this year,” MGA Entertainment CEO Isaac Larian told CNN Business. “The [shipping] container that cost $3,200 last year is now $22,000,” Larian told the network, blaming Maersk and other shipping giants. Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun, told CNN: “You’re going to find various times during the holiday season where the store shelves are going to have empty holes in them.”
I know that a lot of you are probably quite horrified by this news, but we can survive just fine without enough toys. Personally, I am far more concerned about the food shortages that we are starting to see around the nation. One of my readers noticed that inventory levels are getting extremely low at the local Albertson’s…
"Wanted to let you know that we went to the store today (Albertson’s) and we are now noticing thin and empty shelf spaces. Pretty much every aisle. Didn’t notice anyone one item being very low except chicken. Otherwise the low or out inventory was pretty uniform aisle to aisle. Don’t know if part of it is because locals are starting to take the shortages issue serious and stocking up or shortages are starting to hit our area or both. The store was packed with people. Interesting how quickly it changed around here in a week or two."
And another one of my readers that lives in the middle of the country says that he is starting to see things happen that he has never seen before… "The lack of workers here is getting worse. Sonic in my small town has resorted to blocking off 40% of their car spots because they simply do not have the Car Hops to service them. They have also resorted to hiring a male Car Hop. I ate their yesterday and they had run out of Onion Rings!!! Never, ever had that happen before!!! Also see more and more Help Wanted Signs around town and everywhere I go."
As I have discussed previously, one of the biggest reasons for the shortages is a lack of qualified workers. There are millions and millions of jobs open right now, and we just don’t have enough people to fill them. Companies are starting to get desperate, and in some cases that could be potentially dangerous.
For example, in California they are now training teenagers to be truck drivers… "Inside Edition spoke to a California 17-year-old, named Isabella, as she trained behind the wheel. She’s one of several teens at Patterson High School who are participating in one of the first truck-driving programs for high schoolers in the U.S. “There is a huge need. We’re short about 63,000 drivers today,” instructor Dave Dein said."
Isn’t that strange? "Over in the UK, there is such a shortage of drivers that the UK has called out the military to help deliver fuel… The army started supplying service stations in the United Kingdom on Monday in an effort to end more than a week of shortages that have forced pumps to close and left motorists without fuel. Tanker drivers from the military underwent training over the weekend to deliver fuel across the country starting on Monday. The UK government said in a statement on Friday that almost 100 tanker drivers will be deployed from this week to “further relieve pressure on petrol stations and address the shortage of HGV [Heavy Goods Vehicle] drivers.”
Where did all the drivers go? In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this.
Elsewhere in Europe, an energy shortage has suddenly erupted, and this threatens to send power bills into the stratosphere. Just check out what is happening right now in Italy… "Household electricity bills will rise by 29.8% for the typical family and gas bills will go up by 14.4%, Italy’s energy regulatory authority Arera confirmed in a press release last week. The new national tariffs came into effect on Friday, the start of the fourth quarter of 2021. The increase comes amid surging energy costs across Europe, and beyond. The price rise passed on to Italian consumers could’ve reached 45 percent, Arera said, if the government had not stepped in to cap the new rise in rates."
On the other side of the globe, China is experiencing an unprecedented energy crisis as well. Now we are heading into the cold part of the year in the northern hemisphere, and this will put even more strain on tightening global energy supplies. Even in a best case scenario, things could get really crazy this winter. So let us hope that a major war doesn’t erupt between Israel and Iran, because that would push energy prices much, much higher.
The global economy is teetering on the brink of a complete and total breakdown, and it wouldn’t take very much at all to push us over the edge. So let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst."
"It's Chaos Out There: Millions Of Containers Stuck
Outside US Ports As Supply Chain Crisis Aggravates"
by Epic Economist
"The global supply chain crisis is only getting worse with each passing week, but things are about to get much more nightmarish than most people can imagine. In today's video, we are going to expose what is really driving this unprecedented shipping crisis that is impacting multiple economies across the globe and pushing inflation to record levels. As we move closer to the end of the year and the busy holiday shopping season, we're already witnessing businesses' desperation as supply dries up while consumer demand skyrockets. For their part, consumers are having to deal with increasingly emptier shelves and soaring prices. Meanwhile, government measures seem to only add more fuel to the fire as central banks assume this crisis is only a temporary blip, and continue to announce stimulus plans that are bound to aggravate supply and demand imbalances.
On the flip side of the coin, shipping companies are making massive profits as freight costs hit "stratospheric" levels. On the US west coast, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are facing a backlog of at least 500,000 containers stuck in 75 immense cargo ships waiting for a berth. All of these containers were supposed to be carrying other goods to the other side of the ocean by now. But instead, they're waiting up to a week to get unloaded. Many shipping companies are preferring to make the return trip with empty containers rather than waiting for them to get loaded in US ports and shipped back again.
As Peter Sands from the Baltic and International Maritime Council explained in a recent report, “years of low freight rates resulting in rigorous cost-cutting by carriers have left them in a great position to maximize profits now that the market has turned.” Now that shipping prices rose to sky-highs, this inflated market structure is here to stay.
In normal times, an uptick in consumer demand would be a positive outcome for everyone: raw material producers, manufacturers, carriers, shippers, and retailers alike. But in such troubled times, this was all a death blow to global supply chains. As Rabobank's Michael Every underlined in a recent analysis, "due to misplaced global capacity, high export volumes cannot be moved fast enough, intermediate goods cannot reach processors in time, and everybody is fighting to get a container spot on the ships available”. “Ports cannot handle the throughput given the backlog of containers that are still waiting to be shipped inland or loaded on a delayed boat. It is not by chance that congestion hit record peaks at the same time in Los Angeles – Long beach, and in the main ports in China, the two main poles of transpacific trade,” he added.
At this moment, in Shangai and Ningbo ports there are 154 cargo ships with over one million containers waiting to unload. And now China is facing a widespread energy crisis that is only inflaming this situation. Power-cuts are taking the operations of several Chinese companies down, with many only opening 3 days a week. That is causing a major slowdown in production, shortages, further delays in loading, and making problems worse overall.
If a major conflict between the US and China arises 'unexpectedly', both nations could use their market size to force shipping companies to change pricing, they could hike shipping costs even more, refuse to take goods coming from foreign ships or ports, refuse to export goods for enemy nations, remove navy protections in some trade lines or force the costs of their patrols onto others, and the list of offensives goes on and on. It goes without saying that any of these measures would wreak havoc on global shipping and the global economy. "If history is a guide, geopolitics is a tsunami, and soon things will look very different on both the surface and at the deepest depths of the shipping industry and the global economy. Much we take as normal today could become flotsam and jetsam," warned Every.
If there's something we learned from the health crisis is that global events can escalate very quickly and the most unthinkable scenarios can become a reality faster than people can assimilate what is truly going on. The current shipping crisis is rapidly evolving into a geopolitical issue instead of a market issue, and many ports are likely to be caught up in that storm. What we've seen so far is just the very beginning of a much deeper crisis that will likely result in permanently broken supply chains, a collapsing container market, extensive shortages, prolonged delays, and a lot of turbulence on land and at the sea. Now more than ever it's time to get ready for what is coming next because in the coming months we might not have that opportunity anymore."
"Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries, some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy. Also known as NGC 772, the island universe is over 100,000 light-years across and sports a single prominent outer spiral arm in this detailed cosmic portrait.
Its brightest companion galaxy, compact NGC 770, is toward the upper right of the larger spiral. NGC 770's fuzzy, elliptical appearance contrasts nicely with a spiky foreground Milky Way star in matching yellowish hues. Tracking along sweeping dust lanes and lined with young blue star clusters, Arp 78's large spiral arm is likely due to gravitational tidal interactions. Faint streams of material seem to connect Arp 78 with its nearby companion galaxies."
“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.
Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.
Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.
The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.
In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.
One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.
That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.
He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.
That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality"
- Michael Ellner
○
"Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race - I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 3000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position.
As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, "It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise."
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "This weekend, we hosted a wedding for our daughter. What a production! Your editor gave the customary “Father of the Bride” speech. Here’s a photo of the set-up.
You’re probably eager to hear the details. But that will have to wait…
Money Doesn’t Guarantee Victory: Today, we’re following up from Friday. We were looking at war… and armies… and how they become corrupt and incompetent. And we follow up by looking back to the ancient world. The Achaemenid Empire of Persia was the world’s hegemon – the USA of the 4th century B.C.
Imagine what it must have been like for the handful of soldiers at Thermopylae. They had been sent to defend the pass into Greece. They looked out and saw thousands of gleaming helmets… swords… bright-colored tunics… and wicker shields. Ancient Greek historian Herodotus puts the number of Persians assembled by Xerxes, King of the Achaemenid Empire, at 2.5 million. The real number was surely much, much lower.
Still, the Greeks were outnumbered by at least 20 to 1… including by the legendary Persian “immortals” (roughly equivalent to America’s Delta Force). The Greeks were wiped out at Thermopylae… but they won the war.
The naval Battle of Salamis destroyed the Persian fleet. Then, fearing having his vast forces cut off, Xerxes retreated. Almost all of his soldiers died from starvation and disease as they struggled to get back across the Hellespont.
Money does not guarantee victory in war… or in anything else. Often, it gets in the way. And of all the parasitic, degenerate, incompetent elite groups of the U.S. empire, the military/industrial complex is the biggest… and the most adept at separating the public from its money. Despite spending many times more than any enemy – real or imagined – the Pentagon has a record of failure at least equal to the feds’ other major boondoggles. The War on Poverty… the War on Drugs… or the War on COVID-19 – none can match the military, neither in squandering money… nor in pernicious consequences.
Fiasco War: Wait… You may think… “Ok, it’s such a big organization; it’s inevitable that some money will be badly spent. But it’s better to spend too much on defense than too little.” That’s not the way it works. You get what you pay for. Pay top dollar for a military; you get an army that’s good at getting paid. But soldiers are best when they are lean… not when they are fat. And the officers are best when they are promoted and rewarded for winning wars, not for losing them.
The 20-year debacle in Afghanistan, for example, was a huge defeat for the U.S. But it provided career-long enrichment opportunities for the Pentagon. The brass rotated through the Hindu Kush, punched up their resumes, got their medals and their “combat” pay… boosting their retirement compensation. Meanwhile, they were spending trillions of dollars. So it was not exactly a surprise that when their careers in the military were over, they went to work in cushy sinecures with defense contractors.
In other words, the skills the officers learned had nothing to do with winning a war. Instead, they got to be very good at lobbying Congress and keeping the money headed in their own direction. Which is how they managed to get a $24 billion increase – even after conducting a fiasco war for two decades. And now, always seeking more money, the whole officer corps is super sensitive to political fashions. It no longer even tries to win wars. Instead, it stretches them so as to squeeze out more money… while promising to fight like a lion against racism, global warming, inequality, and other bugaboos!
Real War: Our question for today: What will happen when these people face a real war? We may already know. Last October, the Pentagon conducted a major wargame… apparently trying to model what might happen if the U.S. went head-to-head with China in Asia. In July, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, reported the results. Speaking at a conference sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association, he revealed that the U.S. got its tail whupped.
The Afghanistan adventure not only corrupted America’s armed elite, it also provided a 20-year opportunity for enemies to study U.S. equipment, tactics, and strategy. Hyten reports: "An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us… They knew exactly what we’re going to do before we did it." In short, he added, the Pentagon “failed miserably.”
Complete Annihilation: Our friend, Byron King, former aide to the United States Chief of Naval Operations, elaborates: "Opposing forces wrecked the entire complex of U.S. logistics. Rear bases came under fire, while aircraft and ships at sea were targeted by long-range missiles. There’s just no hiding anymore from people with sufficient technology to find you.
Even worse, most U.S. weapons were outranged by new systems recently deployed by China, much of it based on advanced Russian designs. It’s a long-term U.S. failure in research, development and procurement. When the balloon went up, most U.S. forces near-immediately lost the ability to coordinate attacks and/or return fire. Much of the targeting data was worthless in any event, while systems used for aiming and guiding munitions also failed. To the extent that communications worked at all, much of the data were corrupted or hacked.
It’s not overstating to say that, in this one wargame, far from home, the U.S. lost vast numbers of people and equipment. In real world terms, think of casualty numbers in the tens of thousands. Of entire bases obliterated. Of hundreds of airplanes lost. Of dozens of ships sunk. And that’s just in the first few days. The wargame ended with American forces defeated and devastated. U.S. allies were similarly shredded. And U.S. interests in the Western Pacific and Asia were annihilated."
It was, of course, only a “game.” Real life will come later. Stay tuned."
"Regardless of where you are at there are supply chain issues. Real Estate is about to crash with the glut of properties about to enter the market. We are experiencing Global Economic Chaos and there are no sign of it slowing down."
Millions Of Customers In Lurch At Worst Possible Time"
by Epic Economist
"A systemic meltdown has shaken the financial world this week as dozens of banks started to suffer repeated outages all around the globe. Just this week, banks' system was down in seven countries across five continents, leaving tens of millions of customers extremely frustrated. In the US, thousands of customers reported outages in the Bank of America app on October 1st, right when rent, utilities, and other bills are often due. Many of them revealed that even after the system was allegedly restored, some operations weren't working, which left them late on several bills and forced them to pay credit card interest.
But despite the major inconvenience, things could be a lot worse. For instance, in New Zealand, now in its seventh week of nationwide lockdown, millions were left without access to their money as banking services were down at a time all local branches were closed. One of the country’s largest lenders, Kiwibank, faced a major outage on Tuesday after a DDoS attack on New Zealand’s third-largest Internet provider resulted in IT crashes at a number of lenders, including Commonwealth Bank and Anz Bank.
Of course, New Zealand and the US aren't the only countries facing massive outages within their banking systems in recent weeks. In banks across the UK, South Africa, Venezuela, Japan, and Mexico operating failures were also reported recently. At least 24 million account holders of Mexico’s largest bank, BBVA Mexico, were left unable to use the bank’s ATMs, its mobile app, or make in-store payments for over 20 hours starting in the morning of September 12. Strangely enough, less than a week after the BBVA outage, Santander Mexico also faced an operational crash that left customers across the country unable to use their debit cards at the ATM or in stores. One more time, it was said the problem was related to internal failures.
Some financial analysts argue that the outages are linked to a cyber attack planned by highly professional illegal organizations. Cyber theft has become common in the country due to the lack of enforcement of existing laws and the absence of adequate legal tools to hold attackers accountable for their actions. Meanwhile, in the UK, where the Financial Conduct Authority said to be “deeply concerned” about the increasing number of technology outages over the years, the regulator’s executive director of supervision, Megan Butler, revealed that the number of "incidents of operation resilience breaks” reported in 2021 have surged by 300 percent year-on-year. Butler argued that this is a "growing trend," and the number of reported IT failings continues to increase.
Late in July, the websites of six big banks -- Lloyds, HSBC, TESCO Bank, Bank of Scotland, Halifax, and Barclays -- collapsed allegedly due to a global Internet outage caused by a software update failure at hosting service Akamai. One month later, the apps of five of the six banks went down for days. Several customers faced acute financial losses and consequently saw their credit ratings deteriorate. Millions were unable to make mortgage payments and have fallen behind on their bills. More than 1,300 clients became victims of identity theft.
In Venezuela, 16 million customers of the country’s biggest bank, Banco de Venezuela, recently suffered a five-day outage as the bank’s online platform crashed. At the same time, in Japan, Mizuho Bank, one of Japan’s three megabanks, suffered from its eighth consecutive IT system failure on September 30 - recording almost one disruption every month. During the latest incident, a system error triggered a major delay in foreign exchange transactions.
"Another bank that has been plagued by repeated IT system problems is South Africa’s largest lender, Standard Bank. In late April, the bank suffered “hardware issues” that downed its internet, mobile, and ATM channels for over a week, leaving customers unable to pay their bills or access cash," the writer reported. “If you are a large retail bank, you are probably dealing with legacy systems”, the deputy chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority, Lyndon Nelson, said during the investigation. Nelson mentioned that when fintech companies add new features to their apps, big banks usually do the same even if they don't have enough tech support to do it right. They need to launch similar services “for competitive reasons,” he argued.
The truth is that banking app failures or a sudden crash on IT systems are a recipe for chaos. If things get turbulent when outages crash IT services for a couple of days, just imagine what would happen when these disruptions last for weeks on end. Now more than ever, it's essential to secure your assets in a safe place, because whether it's a power shortage, a bank outage, a cyberattack, or a stock market crash, your assets can be wiped out in a snap of fingers."
