Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Free Download: George Orwell, “1984″

“What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold,
is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be
granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect.”

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.”
George Orwell, 
“Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel” (1949)
Freely download “1984″, by George Orwell here:

"Oceania Has Always Been At War With Russia" (Excerpt)

"Oceania Has Always Been At War With Russia" (Excerpt)
by Doug “Uncola” Lynn

"We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." – William J. Casey, 1913-1987, Director, CIA (Republican), Statement at his first CIA staff meeting, 1981

"And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars…"
– King James Bible, Matthew 24:6

"In the years prior to the new millennium, most readers of George Orwell’s novel “1984” would have considered the book to be a stark warning to mankind. However, in light of world events over the last 22 years it appears Orwell’s book was, instead, an instruction manual for the world’s financial elite. The setting of 1984 took place in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Great Britain which was a part of “Oceania”, a world super-state alternately engaged in never-ending warfare with two other global powers: Eurasia and Eastasia.

The INSOC Party was a totalitarian regime led by a figurehead known only as “Big Brother” and the “Ministry of Truth” promoted war hysteria to unite the citizens of Oceania by continuously broadcasting propaganda that simultaneously subverted autonomous thought and action.

Today, it appears the U.S. Military Industrial Complex of which President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his 1961 farewell address, has assumed the role of Orwell’s Oceania; along with the other English-speaking nations that comprise the “Five Eyes” global surveillance network: Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. In endless propaganda purveyed to rile and unify the masses, this Anglo intelligence apparatus ostensibly wages war against Islamic terror, Russia, China, and Covid-19, alternately, contingent upon which puppet politicians are appointed to rule at any given time."
Please view this complete, most highly recommended, article here:

Gregory Mannarino, "The Next Engineered Crisis: Prepare Now For Food Shortages And Skyrocketing Energy Prices"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/8/22:
"The Next Engineered Crisis: Prepare Now 
For Food Shortages And Skyrocketing Energy Prices"

The Daily "Near You?"

Ravena, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Life Of Man..."

"The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair."
- Bertrand Russell

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "The Far Field"

"The Far Field"

I
"I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.

II
At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery,-
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found it lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.
I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes,- 
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean,- 
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless, 
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.

Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.
I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.

III
The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent
And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland,- 
At first a swift rippling between rocks,
Then a long running over flat stones
Before descending to the alluvial plane,
To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.
The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers,- 
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

IV
The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around,- 
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude: 
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, 
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree: 
The pure serene of memory in one man,-
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world."

- Theodore Roethke 

"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

"Ukraine & Nukes"

"Ukraine & Nukes"
by Steven Starr

"The New York Times recently published an article by David Sanger entitled “Putin spins a conspiracy theory that Ukraine is on a path to produce nuclear weapons.” Unfortunately, it is Sanger who puts so much spin in his reporting that he leaves his readers with a grossly distorted version of the what the presidents of Russia and Ukraine have said and done.

Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent statements at the Munich conference centered around the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which welcomed Ukraine’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in conjunction with Ukraine’s decision to return to Russia the nuclear weapons left on its territory by the Soviet Union.

In other words, the Budapest Memorandum was expressly about Ukraine giving up its nukes and not becoming a nuclear weapon state in the future. Zelensky’s speech at Munich made it clear that Ukraine was moving to repudiate the Budapest Memorandum; Zelensky essentially stated that Ukraine must be made a member of NATO, otherwise it would acquire nuclear weapons.

This is what Zelensky said, with emphasis added: “I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world’s third nuclear capability [i.e. Ukraine relinquished the Soviet nuclear weapons that had been placed in Ukraine during the Cold War]. We don’t have that weapon. … Therefore, we have something. The right to demand a shift from a policy of appeasement to ensuring security and peace guarantees.

Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. . . I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt. . .

I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.”

Sanger’s Times article implies that it was a “conspiracy theory” that Zelensky was calling for Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons. Sanger was not ignorant of the meaning of the Budapest Memorandum, rather he chose to deliberately ignore it and misrepresented the facts.

President Vladimir Putin, along with the majority of Russians, could not ignore such a threat for a number of historical reasons that The New York Times and ideologues such as Sanger have also chosen to ignore. It is important to list some of those facts, since most Americans are unaware of them, as they have not been reported in the Western mainstream media. Leaving parts of the story out turns Putin into just a madman bent on conquest without any reason to intervene.

First, both the provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region voted for independence from Ukraine in 2014 in resistance to a U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the elected president Viktor Yanukovych in February of that year. The independence vote came just eight days after neo-Nazis burned dozens of ethnic Russians alive in Odessa. To crush their bid for independence, the new U.S.-installed Ukrainian government then launched an “anti-terrorist” war against the provinces, with the assistance of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which had taken part in the coup. It is a war that is still going on eight years later, a war that Russia has just entered.

During these eight years, the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Azov have used artillery, snipers and assassination teams to systematically butcher more than 5,000 people (another 8,000 were wounded) - mostly civilians - in the Donetsk Peoples Republic, according to the leader of the DPR, who provided these figures in a press conference recently. In the Luhansk People’s Republic, an additional 2,000 civilians were killed and 3,365 injured. The total number of people killed and wounded in Donbass since 2014 is more than 18,000.

This has received at most superficial coverage by The New York Times; it has not been covered by Western corporate media because it does not fit the official Washington narrative that Ukraine is pursuing an “anti-terrorist operation” in its unrelenting attacks on the people of Donbass. For eight years the war instead has been portrayed as a Russian “invasion,” well before Russia’s current intervention.

Likewise, The New York Times, in its overall coverage, chose not to report that the Ukrainian forces had deployed half of its army, about 125,000 troops, to its border with Donbass by the beginning of 2022.

The importance of neo-Nazi Right Sektor politicians in the Ukraine government and neo-Nazi militias (such as the Azov Battalion) to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, also goes unreported in the mainstream corporate media. The Azov battalion flies Nazi flags; they have been trained by teams of U.S. military advisers and praised on Facebook these days. In 2014, Azov was incorporated in the Ukrainian National Guard under the direction of the Interior Ministry.

The Nazis killed something on the order of 27 million Soviets/Russians during World War II (the U.S. lost 404,000). Russia has not forgotten and is extremely sensitive to any threats and violence coming from neo-Nazis. Americans generally do not understand what this means to Russians as the United States has never been invaded.

So, when the leader of Ukraine essentially threatens to obtain nuclear weapons, this is most certainly considered to be an existential threat to Russia. That is why Putin focused on this during his speech preceding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sanger and The New York Times must discount a Ukrainian nuclear threat; they can get away with doing so because they have systematically omitted news pertaining to this for many years.

Sanger makes a very misleading statement when he writes, “Today Ukraine does not even have the basic infrastructure to produce nuclear fuel.” Ukraine is not interested in making nuclear fuel - which Ukraine already purchases from the U.S. Ukraine has plenty of plutonium, which is commonly used to make nuclear weapons today; eight years ago Ukraine held more than 50 tons of plutonium in its spent fuel assemblies stored at its many nuclear power plants (probably considerably more today, as the reactors have continued to run and produce spent fuel). Once plutonium is reprocessed/separated from spent nuclear fuel, it becomes weapons usable. Putin noted that Ukraine already has missiles that could carry nuclear warheads, and they certainly have scientists capable of developing reprocessing facilities and building nuclear weapons.

In his Feb. 21 televised address, Putin said Ukraine still has the infrastructure leftover from Soviet days to build a bomb. He said: “As we know, it has already been stated today that Ukraine intends to create its own nuclear weapons, and this is not just bragging. Ukraine has the nuclear technologies created back in the Soviet times and delivery vehicles for such weapons, including aircraft, as well as the Soviet-designed Tochka-U precision tactical missiles with a range of over 100 kilometers.

But they can do more; it is only a matter of time. They have had the groundwork for this since the Soviet era. In other words, acquiring tactical nuclear weapons will be much easier for Ukraine than for some other states I am not going to mention here, which are conducting such research, especially if Kiev receives foreign technological support. We cannot rule this out either.

If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia. We cannot but react to this real danger, all the more so since let me repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons may help it acquire these weapons to create yet another threat to our country.”

NATO-US Refuse Binding Nuclear Treaties: In his Times piece, Sanger states, “American officials have said repeatedly that they have no plans to place nuclear weapons in Ukraine.” But the U.S. and NATO have refused to sign legally binding treaties with Russia to this effect. In reality, the U.S. has been making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO, while training and supplying its military forces and conducting joint exercises on Ukrainian territory. Why wouldn’t the U.S. place nuclear weapons in Ukraine - they have already done so at military bases within the borders of five other European members of NATO. This in fact violates the spirit of the NPT, another issue that Sanger avoids when he notes that Russia has demanded that the U.S. remove nuclear weapons from the European NATO-member states.

For years the U.S. proclaimed that the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) facilities it was placing in Romania and Poland, on the Russian border, were to protect against an “Iranian threat,” even though Iran had no nuclear weapons or missiles that could reach the U.S. But the dual-use Mark 41 launching systems used in the Aegis Ashore BMD facilities can be used to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, and will be fitted with SM-6 missiles that, if armed with nuclear warheads, could hit Moscow in five-to-six minutes. Putin explicitly warned journalists about this danger in 2016; Russia included the removal of the U.S. BMD facilities in Romania and Poland in its draft treaties presented to the U.S. and NATO last December.

I wonder if Sanger has ever considered what the U.S. response would be if Russia placed missile launching facilities on the Canadian or Mexican border? Would the U.S. consider that a threat, would it demand that Russia remove them or else the U.S. would use military means to do so?

30 Years Ago: Sanger states that today Russia takes a “starkly different from the tone Moscow was taking 30 years ago, when Russian nuclear scientists were being voluntarily retrained to use their skills for peaceful purposes.” Russians would reply that 30 years ago NATO had not moved to Russian borders and was not flooding Ukraine with hundreds of tons of weapons and the U.S. had not yet overthrown the government in Kiev to install an anti-Russian regime.

While the Times is still considered the U.S. “paper of record,” during the last few decades it has devolved into the primary mouthpiece for the official narratives coming from Washington. There is a real danger to the nation when a free press is replaced with corporate media that stifles and censors dissent. Rather than a free press, we now have a Ministry of Propaganda that acts as an echo chamber for the latest diktats from the White House. The systematic creation of false narratives by corporate media, designed to serve the purposes of the federal government, have so misinformed the American public about world events that we find the nation ready to go to war with Russia.

This is suicidal course for not only the U.S. and the EU, but for civilization as a whole, because this would likely end in a nuclear war that will destroy all nations and peoples."
Related:

"How It Really Is"

 

"People Borrowing Money at Record Pace - Hundreds of Thousands of Houses in Pre-Foreclosure"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 3/8/22:
"People Borrowing Money at Record Pace - 
Hundreds of Thousands of Houses in Pre-Foreclosure"
"We have hundreds of thousands of houses in Pre-foreclosure. People are borrowing money at a record pace just to pay their bills. Credit cards and home equity are being used as an ATM. Oil is at an all time high and so are wheat prices."
Related:

Bill Bonner, "The 'R' Word"

"The 'R' Word"
by Bill Bonner

San Martin, Argentina - “Nowhere else does an economy work like this.”Argentines have been living with inflation for a long time. It was 2,000% in 1990. It’s 50% now. If they don’t know how to survive it, no one does. Can we learn from them? We might have to. Here’s Business Insider: "US stocks fell on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 800 points and the Nasdaq ending lower by over 3% as investors weighed the impact of surging oil prices and eyed possible new sanctions on Russia's energy sector."

The geopolitical turmoil has sent commodities reeling, as wheat, nickel, gold, and oil all soared during Monday trading. A nearby news item shows regular gasoline at $6.95 a gallon. And the price of oil itself rose to $139 a barrel. Both experience and ‘the experts’ say a recession is stalking us.

Meanwhile, Congress is working on a bill to exclude Russian oil from the US market. Thus is the US attacking the three key elements of modern prosperity all at once – energy, money, and trust. It cuts off supplies of oil; it undermines the dollar with sanctions on honest savers and investors; and inflation and sanctions erode trust in the whole US-dominated financial system. Where this leads is anybody’s guess. But somewhere, faintly in the distance, we hear a tango beat.

El Fin del Mundo: “You look around,” continued our man in Buenos Aires, “you see people living fairly normally. You see people with new cars – although there aren’t many of them. You see houses being built. You see people out and about, having a nice dinner or shopping.

If you had 50% inflation in the US, it would be another story. It would be a hellacious disaster. You’d have a revolution. (Our contact used to live in Miami.) People depend on credit. They have mortgages to refinance. They have debts to pay. The system depends on credit. Everything is sold on credit. If interest rates go up, the whole economy collapses.

That doesn’t happen here, basically because the economy already collapsed long ago. People don’t have mortgages. They don’t have debt. Nobody cares about interest rates, because they can’t borrow money anyway. As soon as people get money, they spend it.”

Seems simple enough. When you have money, don’t try to save it. But what do you spend it on? “Real estate,” says our friend. “Prices are low here. People buy now… and then they wait for them to go up again. That’s another part of the formula. Here, we go in Biblical cycles. Seven good years. Then, seven bad years. Sometimes we are the cheapest country in the world; then we’re the most expensive. Right now, we’re in bad years. So people take their money and add on to their houses… or buy an apartment. The rents are low too, so yields are poor. But prices will probably go up in the 7 good years.

And by the way, there’s a political cycle too. The Peronists (nationalist, socialist, populist) are in power now. But they’ve made such a mess of things, voters will probably turn away from them in the next election, in November. Then, we’ll see some good times, before the bad times come back.”

Buenos Aires is a treat. Lively. Sophisticated. Cheap. The food is good. The weather, this time of year, is delightful. The cafes and restaurants are busy. People seem to live well. But there is more to the story. Here, the economy only works because people have learned to cheat.

Money Caves: “The nice thing about living here,” continued our friend, “is that the government does the dumbest things. But they are intentionally incompetent. The rules and regulations are never well enforced. There are always ways around them. Take a look over there.” He motioned to a place across the street. “There’s a ‘cueva’ [a black market money exchange… literally, a ‘cave.’] It’s illegal. But the government knows it it there… and they’ve put a policeman out front so you know it’s safe to go in there.

We’re supposed to be having an economic crisis here. But I have a hard time hiring good workers because they can earn more by working remotely for a European or American company. Then, they get most of their pay transferred in cryptos… which is converted to pesos by these cuevas. No trace. No taxes.”

Were it not for the black market, Argentina would be an even bigger mess than it is now. The cuevas are tolerated because they attract foreign currencies… and the country needs foreign currencies to pay its foreign debts. The result is that there are people with money to spend. Of course, in the poor neighborhoods it’s another story. There, people are trapped. They have no bank accounts in Miami. Nor do they receive cryptos via the internet. Their incomes, sometimes pitifully small, come from normal jobs and are paid in pesos. Government handouts, too, are in pesos – and lose value rapidly.

“It really creates two separate economies,” our friend concluded. “One of them is miserable and desperate. The other enjoys a very high standard of living. But I don’t think the US is ready for this kind of thing… Americans still trust the government. They don’t know how to duck and dodge. And the government would never tolerate a black market like this.”

Gregory Mannarino, "Another Super-Tsunami Of Inflation Is About To Hit; US To Ban Russian Oil Imports"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/8/22:
"Another Super-Tsunami Of Inflation Is About To Hit;
 US To Ban Russian Oil Imports"

Monday, March 7, 2022

"Commodity Catastrophe! The Ukraine War Has Thrown Global Markets Into A State Of Complete And Utter Chaos"

"Commodity Catastrophe! The Ukraine War Has Thrown
 Global Markets Into A State Of Complete And Utter Chaos"
by Michael Snyder

"There are some people out there that thought that global financial markets would be largely unaffected by the war in Ukraine. Those people were wrong. This week, investors have received a very rude wake up call. Stock prices are plunging, commodity prices are going completely nuts, and a very thick cloud of fear has descended upon Wall Street. The fact that this war has permanently changed economic and financial conditions is starting to sink in, and it is likely that the level of panic will continue to rise in the days ahead.

At this point, even average people on the street are having discussions about the price of oil. Just a few hours ago, it briefly spiked to 139 dollars a barrel… "US crude futures jumped 6% to trade at $123 a barrel. Brent crude, the global benchmark, briefly spiked as high as $139 a barrel before easing back to $125. That’s still a leap of more than 35% in just one month. We all knew that the price of oil was going to be going up, but very few of us expected this sort of dramatic movement so soon."

And as the price of oil goes up, so does the average price of gasoline in the United States. According to Gas Buddy, the all-time record was just broken for the very first time since 2008… "The national average price of gasoline in the U.S. today broke the existing record, rewriting the all-time high to today’s $4.104 per gallon, according to GasBuddy, the leading fuel savings platform saving North American drivers the most money on gas. The previous all-time high was set back in 2008 at $4.103 per gallon, just ahead of the U.S. Great Recession and housing crisis. The national average price of diesel is also nearing a new record, now at $4.63 per gallon, likely to break the record of $4.846 per gallon in the next two weeks."

If you can believe it, some investors are anticipating that things will get much, much worse in the weeks ahead… "Prices to buy call options at higher prices surged Monday as the market assessed the possibility of a supply cut-off from Russia, one of the world’s biggest exporters. More than 1,200 contracts for the option to buy May Brent futures at $200 a barrel traded on Monday, according to ICE Futures Europe data. The options expire March 28, three days before the contract settles. The price to buy them jumped 152% to $2.39 a barrel."

A $150-a-barrel call option for the June Brent contract doubled from Friday, according to ICE, while the cost of $180 call options jumped 110%. It may not happen immediately, but I do believe that we will eventually see oil trade for $200 a barrel. Of course the Russians are even more pessimistic. They are telling us that it could actually reach $300 a barrel.

Instead of doing something to fix this crisis, the Biden administration continues to act as if we are living in some sort of a fantasy world. On Monday, Vice-President Kamala Harris was trotted out to encourage everyone to transition to electric vehicles… ‘We are all in the midst of a turning point. We have the technologies to transition to a zero emission fleet,’ Harris said during the announcement. ‘We can address the climate crisis and grow our economy at the same time.’ Perhaps someone should explain to Harris that the vast majority of Americans can’t afford to purchase a new electric vehicle at this moment.

Most of us are just going to have to get by with the vehicles that we have right now, and filling up those vehicles with gasoline is going to become really, really painful. Meanwhile, wheat futures closed “limit up” once again on Monday… "Among other commodities, the type that actually matter when considering social unrest and revolutions, wheat futures closed limit up again at a record $1,425 translating into an all time high $12.94 per bushel on fear Ukraine and Russian output will be cut off." The price of wheat has been going higher and higher and higher.

Yesterday, when I warned that we were headed into an unprecedented global food crisis, I was not exaggerating one bit. The era of cheap bread is over. It won’t be too long before five dollars for a loaf of bread is considered to be a bargain, and so I would encourage you to stock up now.

I warned about a coming global famine in "Lost Prophecies", and I warned about it again in "7 Year Apocalypse". This is not a game, and the things that so many of us have been warning about are starting to come to pass right in front of our eyes. Other commodities are going up even faster than the price of wheat.

If you can believe it, the price of nickel had risen by 82 percent at one point on Monday… "Nickel prices soared as much as 82% to $52,700 a metric ton, the highest in the 35-year history of the contract trading on the London Metal Exchange, as fears over Russian supplies triggered a historic short squeeze according to Bloomberg. The metal added more than $22,700 to trade at a record-high $52,700 a metric ton. That builds on nickel’s 19% surge last week as banks cut exposure to Russian commodity suppliers because of Western sanctions and shippers, such as Maersk, stay clear of Russian and Ukrainian ports." 82 percent in one day! Nickel is used in countless products. You will find it in batteries, in stainless steel, in coins and even in guitar strings.

And it turns out that Russia is a significant player in the global nickel industry… Russia is a large producer of nickel, supplying about 6% of global demand, according to Bloomberg. Over 70% of the nickel production is used in stainless steel. And 7% goes into EV batteries, where demand is growing in leaps and bounds. But EV batteries use highly pure “Class-1” nickel, of which Russia’s MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC produces 17% of the supply."

As commodities soar, stock prices continue their alarming plunge. On Monday, we actually witnessed the worst day of the year for both the Dow and the S&P 500… "Stocks fell again on Monday, following four straight weeks of declines, as investors grew increasingly concerned higher energy prices stemming from the Russia-Ukraine conflict would slow the economy and raise inflation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 797.42 points to close at 32,817.38, dragged down by a nearly 8% loss in American Express. The S&P 500 declined close to 3% to 4,201.09, falling deeper into correction territory. The 500-stock average sits more than 12% from its record close. The Nasdaq Composite lost 3.6% to 12,830.96, and now sits in bear market territory, more than 20% from its all-time close."

The fact that the Nasdaq is now in bear market territory doesn’t tell the whole story. At this point, there are quite a few tech stocks that are already down more than 75 percent from their all-time highs. There is carnage everywhere that you look on Wall Street, and many are wondering if the big crash is finally upon us. I don’t have an answer to that question, but things certainly don’t look good. The markets have been teetering on the brink of a precipice for a long time, and now the war in Ukraine may finally be the event that pushes us over the edge."

"The Gang of Weasels Just Lost Another Conflict Because They Are Tone Deaf"

"The Gang of Weasels Just Lost Another 
Conflict Because They Are Tone Deaf"
by Bob Moriarty

"The world is in an epoch battle between the forces of evil represented by the Gang of Weasels led by Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, George Soros, all of the Davos clowns, the MSM and the Young Global Leaders on one side and the 99% yearning for freedom from unlimited government on the other. The battle has been planned and in progress for many years. The Gang of Weasels want you to believe that all you need to do to change the climate is to increase taxes and hand the money to them.

Klaus Schwab and his minions were the driving factor behind the BLM and ANTIFA riots. We were treated to videos with a breathless reporter standing in front of a burning building talking about “a mostly peaceful protest”. The riots from the “mostly peaceful protest” cost over two billion dollars and resulted in the deaths of twenty-five people. The American people owe a vote of thanks to George Soros and the WEF. The purpose was to overthrow a popular president and when the most corrupt election in US history ended picking the opposition candidate, the riots went away overnight.

The entire Covid bullshit story was a deliberate invention. Moderna patented part of the virus DNA three years before Covid got a name. Fauci and the US paid for the Gain of Function done at the Wuhan lab before the virus either escaped or was deliberately released. It was a bad flu. Even the CDC admitted two cheap and effective safe drugs in common use could have cured it. They did that in April of 2020.

The lockdowns created far more hardship but the bad flu didn’t care. The masks didn’t work. Dr. “Follow the Science” Fauci came up with five different and conflicting rules for wearing masks. Which of the five ways was “Following the Science?” Then he lied in sworn testimony to Congress about the gain of function.

Social Distancing changed nothing. Shutting down the economy had no effect on the virus but the Gang of Weasels kept telling the world through their MSM mouthpieces that they were winning.

Finally the barely tested “vaccines” arrived and the Gang of Weasels began the clamor for everyone to take the jab even though the companies making the “vaccines” knew all about all of the deadly effects. The EUA required by law was always illegal because the CDC knew and hid the fact that two different drugs were more effective. The entire purpose of the Covid mass hysteria was to get a worldwide “vaccine” passport that is nothing but a mass ID plan so the Gang of Weasels can seize financial assets from the 99% once they wake up and start to complain.

Insurance companies and pathologists began reporting that something deadly was killing people. Excess deaths are up 40% in the 18-65 age group and autopsies are showing bizarre blood behavior in those who had taken the jab.

In the book “The Fourth Turning” written in 1997 the authors predicted a Crisis Stage starting about 2005 where either tyranny ensues or the public wakes up and begins to demand freedom. In any revolution most of the masses stand aside to see who will determine their future. In the just now starting worldwide revolution perhaps ten to fifteen percent of people care enough about freedom to fight for it. The counter-revolution seems to have begun in Canada with totally peaceful protests from Canadian truck drivers. In Canada the only time anyone riots is after an ice hockey game.

The truck drivers crossing Canada to land in Ottawa in front of their Parliament was a sight to see with thousands of ordinary citizens standing on overpasses cheering and waving giant Canadian flags as the truckers passed. Anyone who actually wanted to understand what the issues were only had to watch Trudeau speaking in Parliament and watching the protest outside.

According to Trudeau the protestors were evil and the worst people in the world who wanted to overthrow the government. It was interesting to me that during pretty much a month, not a single legislator went outside to talk to the protestors as if talking to them would somehow validate their cause. The legislature was entirely tone deaf and finally Trudeau, at the suggestion of his master in the WEF evoked The Emergencies Act of Canada, similar in form and function to The Enabling Act passed in Germany in March of 1933 giving total control to the government.

Another WEF puppet in the form of Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada promptly told the banks to seize the accounts of all of those who contributed to support the truckers. People who had contributed as little as $50 found their accounts closed and the money stolen by the government. This of course has always been the intent of Klaus Schwab and the WEF to gain total control of an economy. Bear in mind that when the person behind the $50 donation made it, protests were perfectly legal in Canada and the donation was perfectly legal.

Those elites who have never held a real job or worked for a living or created anything of value via a business not only believe they are better and smarter than the rest of the 99% but far more powerful. Chrystia Freeland discovered much to her dismay that she didn’t have the power that she thought she had. The remaining people who had made donations beat it to the bank and withdraw their money and transferred their accounts before the government could steal it. That of course caused the entire Canadian banking system to freeze.

If you have a cat and it claws you, you have the power to take said feline and hurl it against the wall but power is only useful when used in moderation. Trudeau and Freeland found out the hard way the limits of power and after being informed that Canada was about to shut the doors on a permanent basis because of their stupidity, they promptly backtracked.

Covid and the truckers had their day and the WEF needed a new chapter of fear porn. So the US and Nato pushed Ukraine into attacking Donbass secure in the belief the US had their backs. Of course Nato and the US are willing to fight Russia in Ukraine to the last drop of Ukrainian blood. Putin responded by repeating again and again that attacks on Donbass, Ukrainian nuclear weapons and Ukraine joining Nato were all lines in the sand that he would not tolerate them crossing. But the WEF and the neocons in Washington were determined to have their little war with Russia.

Wars are easy to start and hard to finish. No one ever wins any war; all that happens is that one side loses more than the other. We have that war now that the US and Nato began. A stalemate will guarantee a nuclear exchange. Russia will not be defeated.

The US is in an interesting position with the weakest leadership in US history. The president is senile and should be at home in front of a fire counting the money he was paid in bribes from Ukraine through his crack head son. The VP shows the ultimate result of selecting people for positions strictly on the basis of sex and being a minority.

Kamala Harris is truly a stupid woman. She even challenges Justin Trudeau for stupidity. The last real decision Trudeau ever made was the selection of what kind of shoe polish he should use for his costume for a party. Should he use black or would brown be a better color?

World diplomacy has morphed into what is little more than mass mob hysteria with the Pope, Switzerland and most of the world treating this war as if it is some minor football match where you dress up in the jersey of your favorite star. How on earth did Switzerland come to the conclusion they needed to speak up on behalf of the Nazis in Ukraine? They didn’t speak up for Iraq, or Afghanistan or Iran or Syria.

The sanctions laid on Russia for daring to do what they said they would do to defend their country and their citizens are not similar to that of dropping a turd in the punch bowl. It’s a lot more like dropping the entire punch bowl into a cesspool and inviting the world to sip. The sanctions are going to blow up the entire debt based paper economy since individuals no longer actually own their assets. The government can steal them at any time for any reason.

The real reason there is so much hysteria in the MSM is because actually the Gang of Weasels is losing big time as citizens wake up one at a time and realize that freedom is not free, it must be paid for."

“Markets In Panic Mode; Warning: Banks Legally Seize Cash; FED Has Lost Control; Pension Collapse Next”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 3/7/22:
“Markets In Panic Mode; Warning: Banks Legally Seize Cash;
 FED Has Lost Control; Pension Collapse Next”

"As a Wrecking Ball is Crushing Stocks Food Rationing is Coming As a Supply Shock of a Lifetime is Imminent"

Full screen recommended.
Steven Van Metre,
"As a Wrecking Ball is Crushing Stocks Food Rationing
 is Coming As a Supply Shock of a Lifetime is Imminent"
Related:

“I Think You've All Lost Your Minds”

“I Think You've All Lost Your Minds”
by Brian Maher

"This weekend we really flustered the fish… and fluttered the dovecotes… That is because we argued that Vladimir Putin merited the Nobel Prize. Can you imagine it - Vladimir Putin - for the Nobel Prize? As well nominate Dr. Fauci for Physician of the Year. Who outside the devil could suggest it? Only a fellow as malicious and vicious as your editor could suggest it.

Our moral abominations excited reader Mary into a state of furious incandescence. She dealt with us this way: "I have an employee who is Ukrainian and in touch with her suffering relatives over there. Your sympathy is for the uber-rich oligarchs… and not for the people of a democracy who have been in need of our help for the past 20 years to maintain that democracy… Putin doesn't deserve any positive recognition… He sure as hell does not deserve any kind of prize, particularly the Nobel PEACE Prize!!

This ability of yours to compartmentalize the moral and immoral behavior of an obviously bad person with selfish aims and evil intent explains your support of Donald Trump and the Marjorie Greenes of the world. Your obsession with far-right politics and money has caused you to lose your sense of right and wrong. I think you've all lost your minds to even put that nomination in print."

The Side of the Angels: We appreciate vastly Mary’s principled ferocity. Love us or hate us, we say - but spare us your indifference. Mary has spared us her indifference. And we have no doubt: Mary is with the angels. Yet our stone heart is actually with Mary’s Ukrainian employee. It is also with her desperate and forlorn Ukrainian relatives, presently withering beneath Mr. Putin’s atrocities.

As we argued last week: "Let the record reflect it at once - we are not with the Russian strongman. Ukrainian blood - and Russian blood - will forever stain his hands. He cannot rinse it away."

We repeated our denunciation of Mr. Putin’s “special military operation” in this weekend’s Reckoning. We are not certain Mary listened. We suspect she glanced the title – “Putin Deserves the Nobel Prize” - and ran away. If Mary read on she would have understood we did not nominate Mr. Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize. We nominated - wryly and jestingly - Mr. Putin for the Nobel Prize in medicine. The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine is not the Nobel Peace Prize. Mary failed to appreciate the jest.

Anti-Partisan: Yet let us concede it now: Your editor is a sort of rascal, though generally harmless… Moral panics, frenzies and manias fail to stir him. He yanks on legs and pulls on noses - particularly those of the pious and the righteous. He places tacks on chairs and dips ponytails in inkwells. He activates hallway fire alarms. He razzes. Let it also enter the record: This publication has not supported “Donald Trump and the Marjorie [Taylor] Greenes of the world.”

We found the former a fantastic source of entertainment, it is true. Never has a United States president frosted so many noses or wrung so many gizzards. And we suspect strongly - we know it for a fact - we have not mentioned the latter even once in these pages. Nor do we harbor an “obsession with far-right politics.”

We harbor no obsession with politics whatsoever… save as entertainment. We attempt to skirt politics to the extent it is possible. Alas, it is not always possible. To the extent we are partisan, we are partisan for whichever side will leave us most alone. But each side, left and right, invades our peace, our dignity and our wallet to one degree or other.

But is Mary correct that we have lost our mind? We would inform Mary that a man can only lose something he previously possessed.

In Praise of Division: Days earlier reader Tim denounced us for fomenting “division”: "Rethink your misguided current course of action as now more than ever we need unity, not division." Yet we would inform Tim that unity is not our concern. In point of fact, unity generally alarms us. Unity is often the warrant for all manner of political evil - war, to name one example. Pandemic-induced “lockdowns” and censorship of dissent to name two more.

The Daily Reckoning grazes against the grain of consensus, by its nature. If it is unity Tim seeks, we would direct him elsewhere. He will not find it here. It is the wrong address. But to proceed…

Again, Putin for the Nobel Prize: We merely argued this weekend that Mr. Putin’s latest buccaneering has ended the pandemic. Hence his nomination for the Nobel Prize in medicine: "The coronavirus has menaced us for two years. We have endured vicious home imprisonments, grave economic privations, government ruthlessness and all species of associated miseries. None of it has leashed the virus. Nor have the vaccines - which is now obvious to any with eyes able to see and willing to see.

Now comes along the Russian berserker… Within the space of days, he has scotched the virus and put it to rout. He has liberated us at last from this hell-sent scourge."

In support of our nomination we cited economist Martin Armstrong. From whom: "The joke running around is that Putin should be nominated for the 2022 Nobel Prize in medicine for he cured COVID-19 in 48 hours – something nobody else has been able to do in three years. Just hours before Biden’s State of the Union, he rescinded the mask requirement. So just hours before, you would get COVID if you did not have a mask. Thanks to Putin, suddenly Congress could actually meet without masks. That is something nobody else could have done in a matter of hours."

Clemency for Putin: And has Dr. Fauci put in a single television appearance since this latest rumpus commenced? To our knowledge he has not… though we will take correction if mistaken. The doctor’s recent vanishing nearly tempts us to absolve Mr. Putin of his grave, grave sins against peace. We cannot do it of course. Yet we might counsel some slight clemency when The Hague convicts him of crimes against humanity. Rather than 89 consecutive life sentences, we might reduce it to 81. Perhaps even 66 if we are in generous spirits come the time.

If Dr. Fauci vanishes forever - may the Lord forgive us - we may even be amenable to a full and unconditional pardon…"

"The Ukrainian People Are Being Sacrificed Like Pawns On A Chessboard By The Global Elite"

Full screen recommended.
"The Ukrainian People Are Being Sacrificed Like 
Pawns On A Chessboard By The Global Elite"
by Epic Economist

"Ukraine is home to 44 million people, and now these people are tremendously suffering after being pushed to the middle of a conflict most of them did not want. Just like the average American, most Ukrainians just want a peaceful and comfortable life, but that has been drastically removed from them. We should never forget that a global confrontation of such proportions is not just about geopolitical interests and power, but also about the millions of lives that are threatened by fear, hunger, desperation, chaos, and misery. So we should send our thoughts and prayers for the people of Ukraine because they’re going through a tragedy most of us don’t even have the ability to imagine. And we should be angry with those we call leaders – those who caused this horrifying mess that didn’t have to happen.

There’s nothing – absolutely nothing – that can justify this attack on the rights of millions of people in the name of the interests of the global elites. We must stand against this conflict and we must fight misinformation. In an era of enhanced communications, all of this could’ve been avoided. Russia could’ve achieved its goals in a different manner, but now they’ve started the most devastating conflict of modern times.

But we should remind ourselves that the global elites are also responsible for this. The U.S. government and other western powers have incited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to continuously provoke Russia by making all sorts of delusional promises to him. That led Zelensky to take his chances and go all-in, but the Kremlin knew that neither the U.S. nor Europe would stop Russia to invade the Ukrainian border. Russian leaders have rapidly called the bluff, and as soon as they acted, the U.S. and Europe chose to stay on the sidelines.

Western nations certainly do not want to mess with the Russians, but they surely didn’t see any problem in encouraging the Ukrainian government to sacrifice millions of lives fighting a battle they can’t possibly win. Of course, it was the U.S. government and other western governments that have ultimately set the stage for all of this to happen. Needless to say, none of these global leaders are actually going to fight for their people. They think they’re too important for that.

This is not a battle between the Russian people vs. the Ukrainian people. It’s safe to say that both populations did not want any of this to happen. This is a clash of power-hungry leaders. Just imagine what would happen to us if we were held accountable for the stupid things our leaders did and continue to do. So while we comfortably sit here in the western world, major Ukrainian cities are being destroyed by Russian forces. Millions of people are out in the cold, with no access to food and medicine, and with nowhere to go.

Most Ukrainians never wanted any of this. If anyone deserves such a fate, it is the global elite that actually created this gigantic mess in the first place. Meanwhile, the elites are still thinking that they’re going to be able to watch this conflict from a safe distance. But the thing is that such a big and impactful strife will spark severe consequences that will be felt all across the world. And if there’s something history taught us is that global conflicts tend to spread, and this will eventually deeply affect all of us."

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"