"A Warning from Russia, Saudis buying fuel, people fleeing to Israel, Sri Lanka a fallen state, climate chaos, fuel and good shortages, cyberattacks, nuclear torpedoes, forest fires, floods, assassinations, and then there's the bad news..."
Houston, Texas - "We’re back in the land of milk and honey, dear reader, the capitalist cornucopia in which we can cheerfully saunter into any grocery store and avail ourselves of near any item on a mere whim... hot sauce, baby formula, potatoes, cream cheese,champagne, chlorine, maple syrup... Actually... scratch those items. They’ll be returning to shelves near you soon (see absentee reports filed here, here, here, here, here,here and here*) Well, whatever... we didn’t want them anyway! (Ok... maybe the hot sauce.)
But seriously... America, what happened to your grocery stores? Those grand Meccas of unashamed superabundance? Those fountainheads of consumerist indulgence? We used to delight in strolling your broad aisles, basking in your ridiculous array of salad dressing choices (who knew mango and habanero were so darned tasty together?!), ogling the myriad deodorant sticks on display, wondering how we had ever got by without purple carrots and orange broccoli...
Our American brethren may not know this... but other parts of the world are not so blessed as here. Why, in our sometimes home of Argentina, they don’t measure missing items in units of empty “shelves”... they refer to whole aisles gone AWOL! We’ll have more about Argentina’s woes in tomorrow’s Sunday Session. For now, we focus on the good ol’ U.S. of A., which we are celebrating this weekend with a “time warp” 4th of July cookout. As the token Australian, your editor will be manning the barbecue. (Go on... have your “throw another shrimp on the barbie” joke. We’ll wait.)
Follow the Money: Meanwhile, since our beat here is money, let’s check in on the prices. Oh look, our helpful friends at the Bureau of Labor Statistics have already done the math/tortured the figures for us. The itemized cost of your Independence Day fete this year was officially up by...
Pork +3.1%
Wine +5.8%
Ice cream +6%
Hot dogs +6.3%
Fruit and vegetables +7%
Shrimp +8.2% (For the record, Australians call them “prawns.” Just sayin’.)
Hot dog and hamburger buns +10%
Ground beef 11.8%
Sodas +13%
Chicken breast +24%
Beer +25%
Wings +38%
All in, you’re looking at an 11% year on year increase since 2021’s celebrations. At least, that’s according to the BLS. Our in-laws here in Texas reckon it’s closer to 30%… but then, supposedly everything’s bigger in the Lone Star State.
Now, far be it from us to gripe without offering solutions. And so, in the spirit of the spooky statistician, we humbly suggest those eating chicken do as the National Pork Board advised back in the summer of ‘87 and try “the other white meat”... those swilling beer are encouraged to find their excess calories through too much ice-cream... and for the kids, it’s time for you to switch from sodas to wine (except for those of you old enough to assume the role of designated driver).
We jest, of course. Kids are terrible drivers... and even worse drunks! Besides, astute readers will no doubt realize that’s not the way substitution works. But it is – sort of – the way economists sometimes fudge the figures. The magic of hedonics, for example, is the practice of discounting rising prices by assuming an increase in “quality.” But how is that measured?
The Devil in the Details: Say it’s the year 2000. Not wanting to be left out, you buy a middle of the road phone for $100. Fast-forward to futuristic-sounding 2022, and the average cost of a new phone is now $500. Ok, you think, so the price has gone up by 500% over 20 years. “Ah,” says the economist, “but now your phone is ‘smart’. It’s actually 1000x more powerful than that old Nokia 3210... so in ‘real’ terms, your phone has actually gone down in price… by half!”
And he’s right... as far as that line of thinking goes. But is your life really that much better now because you can waste countless hours checking Twitter and ordering things you don’t need from Amazon? Would you have bothered with all those extra, “smart” features anyway? And hey, aren’t you still out of pocket $500, 5x more than you were back when the game “snake” stood guard at the limit of the gadget’s entertainment capabilities?
“But, but, but...” argues our imagined economist, “what about maps (never getting lost), access to email (constant work) and ‘staying connected’ to friends and family (social media)?” Even there, one is left to wonder if we’re really better off. Maybe learning to read an actual map, or even getting lost sometimes, is not such a bad thing... perhaps leaving work when you leave the office is – gulp! – good for the brain... and maybe, just maybe, spending meaningful, physical time with friends and family, at a time warp 4th of July barbecue, say... instead of digitally “liking” their latest post or “commenting” on a picture of their hot dog, is a good thing after all. And on that note, it’s cookout time!"
"Gaslighting: The Psychology Of Shaping Another's Reality"
by Cynthia Chung
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here.
I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
– Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
"We are living in a world where the degree of disinformation and outright lying has reached such a state of affairs that, possibly for the first time ever, we see the majority of the western world starting to question their own and surrounding level of sanity. The increasing frenzied distrust in everything “authoritative” mixed with the desperate incredulity that “everybody couldn’t possibly be in on it!” is slowly rocking many back and forth into a tighter and tighter straight jacket. “Question everything” has become the new motto, but are we capable of answering those questions? Presently the answer is a resounding no.
The social behaviorist sick joke of having made everyone obsessed with toilet paper of all things during the start of what was believed to be a time of crisis, is an example of how much control they have over that red button labelled “commence initiation of level 4 mass panic”. And can the people be blamed? After all, if we are being lied to, how can we possibly rally together and point the finger at the root of this tyranny, aren’t we at the point where it is everywhere?
As Goebbels infamously stated, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State [under fascism].”
And here we find ourselves today, at the brink of fascism. However, we have to first agree to forfeit our civil rights as a collective before fascism can completely dominate. That is, the big lie can only succeed if the majority fails to call it out, for if the majority were to recognize it for what it is, it would truly hold no power.
The Battle for Your Mind: “Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief. The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.”
– William Sargant “Battle of the Mind”
It had been commonly thought in the past, and not without basis, that tyranny could only exist on the condition that the people were kept illiterate and ignorant of their oppression. To recognize that one was “oppressed” meant they must first have an idea of what was “freedom”, and if one were allowed the “privilege” to learn how to read, this discovery was inevitable.
If education of the masses could turn the majority of a population literate, it was thought that the higher ideas, the sort of “dangerous ideas” that Mustapha Mond for instance expresses in “The Brave New World”, would quickly organize the masses and revolution against their “controllers” would be inevitable. In other words, knowledge is freedom, and you cannot enslave those who learn how to “think”. However, it hasn’t exactly played out that way has it?
The greater majority of us are free to read whatever we wish to, in terms of the once “forbidden books”, such as those listed by The Index Librorum Prohibitorum. We can read any of the writings that were banned in “The Brave New World”, notably the works of Shakespeare which were named as absolutely dangerous forms of “knowledge”. We are now very much free to “educate” ourselves on the very “ideas” that were recognized by tyrants of the past as the “antidote” to a life of slavery. And yet, today, the majority choose not to…
It is recognized, albeit superficially, that who controls the past, controls the present and thereby the future. George Orwell’s book “1984”, hammers this as the essential feature that allows the Big Brother apparatus to maintain absolute control over fear, perception and loyalty to the Party cause, and yet despite its popularity, there still remains a lack of interest in actually informing oneself about the past.
What does it matter anyway, if the past is controlled and rewritten to suit the present? As the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien states to Winston, “We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not? And thus, are free to rewrite it as we choose…”
Of course, we are not in the same situation as Winston…we are much better off. We can study and learn about the “past” if we so desire, unfortunately, it is a choice that many take for granted. In fact, many are probably not fully aware that presently there is a battle waging for who will “control the past” in a manner that is closely resembling a form of “memory wipe”.
William Sargant was a British psychiatrist and, one could say, effectively the Father of “mind control” in the West, with connections to British Intelligence and the Tavistock Institute, which would influence the CIA and American military via the program MK Ultra. Sargant was also an advisor for Ewen Cameron’s LSD “blank slate” work at McGill University, funded by the CIA.
Sargant accounts for his reason in studying and using forms of “mind control” on his patients, which were primarily British soldiers that were sent back from the battlefield during WWII with various forms of “psychosis”, as the only way to rehabilitate extreme forms of PTSD.
The other reason, was because the Soviets had apparently become “experts” in the field, and out of a need for national security, the British would thus in turn have to become experts as well…as a matter of self-defense of course.
The work of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, had succeeded in producing some disturbingly interesting insights into four primary forms of nervous systems in dogs, that were combinations of inhibitory and excitatory temperaments; “strong excitatory”, “balanced”, “passive” and “calm imperturbable”. Pavlov found that depending on the category of nervous system temperament the dog had, this in turn would dictate the form of “conditioning” that would work best to “reprogram behavior”. The relevance to “human conditioning” was not lost on anyone.
It was feared in the West, that such techniques would not only be used against their soldiers to invoke free-flowing uninhibited confessions to the enemy but that these soldiers could be sent back to their home countries, as zombified assassins and spies that could be set off with a simple code word. At least, these were the thriller stories and movies that were pumped into the population. How horrific indeed! That the enemy could apparently enter what was thought the only sacred ground to be our own…our very “minds”!
However, for those who were actually leading the field in mind control research, such as William Sargant, it was understood that this was not exactly how mind control worked. For one thing, the issue of “free will” was getting in the way.
No matter the length or degree of electro-shock, insulin “therapy”, tranquilizer cocktails, induced comas, sleep deprivation, starvation etc induced, it was discovered that if the subject had a “strong conviction” and “strong belief” in something, this could not be simply erased, it could not be written over with any arbitrary thing. Rather, the subject would have to have the illusion that their “conditioning” was in fact a “choice”. This was an extremely challenging task, and long term conversions (months to years) were rare.
However, Sargant saw an opening. It was understood that one could not create a new individual from scratch, however, with the right conditioning that was meant to lead to a physical breakdown using abnormal stress (effectively a reboot of the nervous system), one could increase the “suggestibility” markedly in their subjects. Sargant wrote in his “Battle of the Mind”: “Pavlov’s clinical descriptions of the ‘experimental neuroses’ which he could induce in dogs proved, in fact, to have a close correspondence with those war-neuroses which we were investigating at the time.”
In addition, Sargant found that a falsely implanted memory could help induce abnormal stress leading to emotional exhaustion and physical breakdown to invoke “suggestibility”. That is, one didn’t even need to have a “real stress” but an “imagined stress” would work just as effectively.
Sargant goes on to state in his book: “It is not surprising that the ordinary person, in general, is much more easily indoctrinated than the abnormal. A person is considered ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ by the community simply because he accepts most of its social standards and behavioural patterns; which means, in fact, that he is susceptible to suggestion and has been persuaded to go with the majority on most ordinary or extraordinary occasions.”
Sargant then goes over the phenomenon of the London Blitz, which was an eight month period of heavy bombing of London during WWII. During this period, in order to cope and stay “sane”, people rapidly became accustomed to the idea that their neighbors could be and were buried alive in bombed houses around them. The thought was “If I can’t do anything about it what use is it that I trouble myself over it?” The best “coping” was thus found to be those who accepted the new “environment” and just focused on “surviving”, and did not try to resist it.
Sargant remarks that it is this “adaptability” to a changing environment which is part of the “survival” instinct and is very strong in the “healthy” and “normal” individual who can learn to cope and thus continues to be “functional” despite an ever changing environment. It was thus our deeply programmed “survival instinct” that was found to be the key to the suggestibility of our minds. That the best “survivors” made for the best “brain-washing” in a sense.
Sargant quotes Hecker’s work, who was studying the dancing mania phenomenon that occurred during the Black Death, where Hecker observed that heightened suggestibility had the capability to cause a person to “embrace with equal force, reason and folly, good and evil, diminish the praise of virtue as well as the criminality of vice.”
And that such a state of mind was likened to the first efforts of the infant mind “this instinct of imitation when it exists in its highest degree, is also united a loss of all power over the will, which occurs as soon as the impression on the senses has become firmly established, producing a condition like that of small animals when they are fascinated by the look of a serpent.” I wonder if Sargant imagined himself the serpent…
Sargant does finally admit: “This does not mean that all persons can be genuinely indoctrinated by such means. Some will give only temporary submission to the demands made on them, and fight again when strength of body and mind returns. Others are saved by the supervention of madness. Or the will to resist may give way, but not the intellect itself.” But he comforts himself as a response to this stubborn resistance that “As mentioned in a previous context, the stake, the gallows, the firing squad, the prison, or the madhouse, are usually available for the failures.”
How to Resist the Deconstruction of Your Mind: “He whom the gods wish to destroy, they first of all drive mad.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Masque of Pandora”
For those who have not seen the 1944 psychological thriller “Gaslight” directed by George Cukor, I would highly recommend you do so since there is an invaluable lesson contained within, that is especially applicable to what I suspect many of us are experiencing nowadays.
The story starts with a 14 year old Paula (played by Ingrid Bergman) who is being taken to Italy after her Aunt Alice Alquist, a famous opera singer and caretaker of Paula, is found murdered in her home in London. Paula is the one who found the body, and horror stricken is never her old self again. Her Aunt was the only family Paula had left in her life. The decision is made to send her away from London to Italy to continue her studies to become a world-renowned opera singer like her Aunt Alice.
Years go by, Paula lives a very sheltered life and a heavy somberness is always present within her, she can never seem to feel any kind of happiness. During her singing studies she meets a mysterious man (her piano accompanist during her lessons) and falls deeply in love with him. However, she knows hardly anything about the man named Gregory.
Paula agrees to marry Gregory after a two week romance and is quickly convinced to move back into her Aunt’s house in London that was left abandoned all these years. As soon as she enters the house, the haunting of the night of the murder revisits her and she is consumed with panic and fear. Gregory tries to calm her and talks about the house needing just a little bit of air and sun, and then Paula comes across a letter written to her Aunt from a Sergis Bauer which confirms that he was in contact with Alice just a few days before her murder. At this finding, Gregory becomes bizarrely agitated and grabs the letter from Paula. He quickly tries to justify his anger blaming the letter for upsetting her. Gregory then decides to lock all of her Aunt’s belongings in the attic, to apparently spare Paula any further anguish.
It is at this point that Gregory starts to change his behavior dramatically. Always under the pretext for “Paula’s sake”, everything that is considered “upsetting” to Paula must be removed from her presence. And thus quickly the house is turned into a form of prison. Paula is told it is for her best not to leave the house unaccompanied, not to have visitors and that self-isolation is the best remedy for her “anxieties” which are getting worst. Paula is never strictly forbidden at the beginning but rather is told that she should obey these restrictions for her own good.
Before a walk, he gives as a gift a beautiful heirloom brooch that belonged to his mother. Because the pin needs replacing, he instructs Paula to keep it in her handbag, and then says rather out of context, “Don’t forget where you put it now Paula, I don’t want you losing it.” Paula remarks thinking the warning absurd, “Of course I won’t forget!” When they return from their walk, Gregory asks for the brooch, Paula searches in her handbag but it is not there.
It continues on like this, with Gregory giving warnings and reminders, seemingly to help Paula with her “forgetfulness” and “anxieties”. Paula starts to question her own judgement and sanity as these events become more and more frequent. She has no one else to talk to but Gregory, who is the only witness to these apparent mishaps. It gets to a point where completely nonsensical behavior is being attributed to Paula by Gregory. A painting is found missing on the wall one night. Gregory talks to Paula like she is a 5 year child and asks her to put it back. Paula insists she does not know who took it down. After her persistent passionate insistence that it was not her, she walks up the stairs almost like she were in a dream state and pulls the painting from behind a statue. Gregory asks why she lied, but Paula insists that she only thought to look there because that is where it was found the last two times this occurred.
For weeks now, Paula thinks she has been seeing things, the gas lights of the house dimming for no reason, she also hears footsteps above her bedroom. No one else seems to take notice. Paula is also told by Gregory that he found out that her mother, who passed away when she was very young, had actually gone insane and died in an asylum.
Despite Paula being reduced to a condition of an ongoing stupor, she decides one night to make a stand and regain control over her life. Paula is invited, by one of her Aunt Alice’s close friends Lady Dalroy, to attend a high society evening with musical performances. Recall that Paula’s life gravitated around music before her encounter with Gregory. Music was her life. Paula gets magnificently dressed up for the evening and on her way out tells Gregory that she is going to this event. Gregory tries to convince her that she is not well enough to attend such a social gathering, when Paula calmly insists that she is going and that this woman was a dear friend of her Aunt, Gregory answers that he refuses to accompany her (in those days that was a big deal). Paula accepts this and walks with a solid dignity, undeterred towards the horse carriage. In a very telling scene, Gregory is left momentarily by himself and panic stricken, his eyes bulging he snaps his cigar case shut and runs after Paula. He laughingly calls to her, “Paula, you did not think I was serious? I had no idea that this party meant so much to you. Wait, I will get ready.” As he is getting ready in front of the mirror, a devilish smirk appears.
Paula and Gregory show up to Lady Dalroy’s house late, the pianist is in the middle of the 1st movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata #8 in C minor. They quickly are escorted to two empty seats. Paula is immediately immersed in the piece, and Gregory can see his control is slipping. After only a few minutes, he goes to look at his pocket watch but it is not in his pocket. He whispers into Paula’s ear, “My watch is missing”. Immediately, Paula looks like she is going to be sick. Gregory takes her handbag and Paula looks in horror as he pulls out his pocket watch, insinuating that Paula had put it there. She immediately starts losing control and has a very public emotional breakdown. Gregory takes her away, as he remarks to Lady Dalroy that this is why he didn’t want Paula coming in the first place.
When they arrive home, Paula has by now completely succumbed to the thought that she is indeed completely insane. Gregory says that it would be best if they go away somewhere for an indefinite period of time. We later find out that Gregory is intending on committing her to an asylum. Paula agrees to leave London with Gregory and leaves her fate entirely in his hands.
In the case of Paula it is clear. She has been suspecting that Gregory has something to do with her “situation” but he has very artfully created an environment where Paula herself doubts whether this is a matter of unfathomable villainy or whether she is indeed going mad. It is rather because she is not mad that she doubts herself, because there is seemingly no reason for why Gregory would put so much time and energy into making it look like she were mad, or at least so it first appears. But what if the purpose to her believing in her madness was simply a matter of who is in control?
Paula almost succeeds in gaining the upper-hand in this power-struggle, the evening she decided to go out on her own no matter what Gregory insisted was in her best interest. If she would have held her ground at Lady Dalroy’s house and simply replied, “I have no idea why your stupid watch ended up in my handbag and I could care less. Now stop interrupting this performance, you are making a scene!” Gregory’s spell would have been broken as simple as that. If he were to complain to others about the situation, they would also respond, “Who cares man, why are you so obsessed about your damn watch?”
We find ourselves today in a very similar situation to Paula. And the voice of Gregory is represented by the narrative of false news and the apocalyptic social behaviorist programming in our forms of entertainment. The things most people voluntarily subject themselves to on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Socially conditioning them, like a pack of salivating Pavlovian dogs, to think it is just a matter of time before the world ends and with a ring of their master’s bell…be at each other’s throats.
Paula ends up being saved in the end by a man named Joseph Cotten (a detective), who took notice and quickly discerned that something was amiss. In the end Gregory is arrested. It is revealed that Gregory is in fact Sergis Bauer. That he killed Alice Alquist and that he has returned to the scene of the crime after all these years in search for the famous jewels of the opera singer. The jewels were in fact rather worthless from the standpoint that they were too famous to be sold, however, Gregory never intended on selling these jewels but rather had become obsessed with the desire to merely possess them. That is, it is Gregory who has been entirely mad all this time.
A Gregory is absolutely dangerous. He would have been the end of Paula if nothing had intervened. However, the power that Gregory held was conditional to the degree that Paula allowed it to control her. Paula’s extreme deconstruction was thus entirely dependent on her choice to let the voice of Gregory in. That is, a Gregory is only dangerous if we allow ourselves to sleep walk into the nightmare he has constructed for us."
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,
“It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
Guidestones Blown Up, Vax Deaths Blow Up, Economy Blows Up
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"I was praying to God for a win or a sign we are headed in the right direction in our fight with the satanic God-hating, Deep State globalists. The next day, the infamous and evil Georgia Guidestones were blown up and torn down by sunset. Inscribed on the huge 30,000 pound stones were the evil goals of the globalists such as “maintaining humanity under 500 million people.” Of course, the creepy globalists survive, and almost everyone else has to die for their dark, Godless world without Jesus Christ. Boy, did the globalists have a hot cup of coffee thrown in their faces. My question is: Did they get so freaked out they just tore down the Guidestones because they want to go back under the radar of “We the People” and lower their evil profile? Too late!!
Every week, there are more vax deaths and injuries, and nobody ever asks, “Were they vaxed?” What caused the death or injury? It’s always “unexpected” or a “mystery,” or “no cause of death revealed.” Actor James Caan is yet another Hollywood icon that has “mysteriously” died. No cancer, no foul play, no drugs. Caan just died - poof. Oh well. They say things like “He was a great guy” and “He will be missed.” This is how these “mysterious, unexpected” deaths are reported. How much longer can this go on before people see this “mysterious” trend is linked to the CV19 bioweapons they passed off as lifesaving “vaccines”? It’s not going to get better - only worse. Brace yourselves, and be kind to the vaxed.
The economy is tanking by any metric you would like to use. Mortgage applications have plunged. 8 million people are behind paying their rent, and vehicle delinquencies are spiking. Gas prices are still in record territory as is inflation. Staff is quitting the Biden/Obama Administration in droves, and it’s going to get much worse if we keep pushing for war against Russia. There is no peace in sight, and no one will even mention the word PEACE. The words they like are “war” and “more weapons” concerning Ukraine. Maybe this is why, according to a new poll, 88% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction - Ya think?"
Dr. Perrie Kory, Founder of Front Line Covid Critical Care Alliance, who is also a top lung doctor, Covid and CV19 vaccine injury expert, will be the guest for the Saturday Night Post. There are dark powers in the medical community who want to shut him and other brave doctors up. Dr. Kory is fighting back big-time. He will tell you what is going on to silence the truth about the deadly CV19 bioweapons.
"In today's Vlog we visit Kroger Marketplace to witness the aftermath of a massive power outage, leaving the stores with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of refrigerated items wasted. Although this Kroger was not affected, we go to check out thousands of people shopping here because it was the only one around here that didn't lose power!"
"New developments at ports worldwide are converging to create a new series of supply chain disruptions that are threatening to turn global trade upside down. Experts are actually using the term “doomsday scenario” to describe the threats that are emerging on the horizon. In America, several businesses are hanging by a thread as supply chain issues become the new normal. Meanwhile, chaos is making a comeback at ports and the worsening shortage of containers means more shipping delays are ahead.
A new report released by the business group US Logistics Inc. revealed that supply chain disruption is set to worsen throughout the third and fourth quarters of 2022 as a series of local and global factors have caused issues for all elements of the supply chain, with bottlenecks such as a growing shortage of shipping containers, labor strife at ports, and a lack of enough truck drivers, warehouse space and semiconductor chips all impacting on the way that goods are moved around the world.
In the U.S., retailers are scrambling to meet consumers’ demand as product shortages and stockouts become the new norm. A survey from Brightpearl exposes the very thin ice on which U.S. retailers are standing. Researchers found that over a third of U.S. retailers are just two months away from running out of cash. The study of 500 retailers also found that 80 percent have been hit with supply problems since the start of the year; 52 percent have experienced stockouts, resulting in a loss of sales; and the supply crisis has added 23 percent to retailers’ costs over the last year, with 51 percent saying they have increased prices as a result.
“We are in the worst supply chain crisis that any of us can remember and there is no sign of the problems easing before the end of the year,” said Brightpearl CEO Derek O’Carroll. The founder and CEO of global trading company Versa, Kath Blackham, noted that if those problems aren’t fixed in the next six months, there’s a chance many of these companies will go bankrupt. “If there is not consideration put to the supply chain issues in the next six months, I really feel like there will be a lot of agencies that just can’t survive financially,” she said in an interview last week.
Adding fuel to the fire, worldwide port congestion is being severely aggravated by labor slowdowns and strikes at U.S. and European ports, which are consequently creating a massive backlog of containers that will take months to clear out, experts say.
According to Kerem Alkin, an economist, and professor at Medipol University, the world is moving towards a doomsday scenario. In a recent paper, the professor defined such ‘doomsday scenario’ as the convergence of three major threats facing the world economy and international politics – and all of them are rooted in the supply chain crisis. Alkin argues that energy, food, and shipping disruptions are set to reach even more unmanageable levels in the coming autumn and winter, which can turn the lives of billions of people upside down.
On top of everything else, the concretization of this rather apocalyptic scenario will come as major economies fall into recession, inflationary or stagflationary crises, and also face an uptick in unemployment rates. Supply chains connect the entire planet and provide us with goods that are essential to our daily lives. But when that flow is interrupted, the foundations of our society start to crumble, and turbulence starts to emerge."
“Filling my car used to cost $33,” came a text from a friend to my phone. “Now it costs $70. What gives?” My unhelpful answer: “Very bad things.” In a few months or sooner, it could be closer to $100. No one knows for sure. Madness seems to have broken out on all fronts and in ways that have shaken even the most pessimistic prognosticator.
The spokesperson for the U.S. president says it is all due to the Russia/Ukraine war, which in fact can only account in part for the latest spikes. But, hey, anything to deflect from the reality that the Biden administration’s campaign against fossil fuels, the spending program, the prolonged economic controls, all backed by an easy-money policy pushed by the Fed, all bear a good deal of the responsibility.
Presidential spokespeople rather amaze me. I get that their job necessarily involves some misdirection, obfuscation and spin. But should it really require daily, constant, unrelenting and very obvious lies? I have this fantasy that one day, one of them on live TV will suddenly stop and then break the silence with the words: “I can’t lie anymore. I quit,” and then walk away.
Age of Lies: Yep, it’s fantasy. The reality is that we live in the Age of Lies. All the subjects that have consumed my intellectual interests since my teen years have now swept the interests of the world. No one is exempt from the forces of chaos today. Not blue states. Not red states. Not neutral countries. Not tax havens. Not faraway islands.
This crisis is global and affects everyone on the planet. No one alive today has seen anything like it. The crisis globally is characterized by violence, irrationalism, nihilism, a segregationist ethos, hate, tribalism, state glorification, growing poverty, ill health, inflation and wars cold and hot and small and big.
Each of these seems to be getting worse by the day. No one is powerful enough to stop it. No one knows where it ends. Truly, anything is possible. The barriers are gone. There seem to be no limits remaining. The institutions that once protected the world from chaos have broken. It’s not just that the trust is gone; also gone seems to be basic moral clarity.
Hell to Pay: There will be hell to pay for what the U.S. has done to Russia’s so-called oligarchs. The “West” is confiscating yachts, homes, bank accounts and more, thus guaranteeing a tightening of alliances between Russia and China. This alliance is economic, political and technological. What unites them is hate of the U.S. and its dying empire.
The dollar-based banking system has been fully weaponized against every manner of political enemy, domestic and foreign. It is no longer trustworthy. No wonder why Russia, China and many other nations want an alternative to the dollar. This decision, which seems to have been driven by a hysterical social media campaign plus a desire to test some new track-trace-and-isolate tools, marks a turning point in the global monetary system. Changes that would normally take years to develop have happened within months.
What are the possibilities? I’m open to any amount of speculation. Among the dangers we must include an aggressive invasion of Taiwan by China (what can the U.S. do?) and even the deployment of nuclear weapons. All this alongside the kind of inflation that we’ve never seen since the American revolution.
Pandora’s Box: All of which reminds us of the ancient Greek myth of Pandora and the clay pot (later rendered as a box) that her husband Epimetheus (brother of Prometheus) left in her care. The pot contained poverty, sickness, chaos, death and a host of other evils. The story sticks with us because evil does seem to come in these waves. Once it begins, it feels unstoppable.
Another metaphor concerns the biblical plagues on the land that God sent Egypt as punishment for keeping Israel captive. Floods, horrors, sickness and death took away all the comforts and peace and no one was in a position to stop the unfolding disaster.
Oil recently fell to under $100 per barrel for the first time in months. It wasn’t too long ago it hit an unthinkable $136 per barrel. That’s a price that has already fundamentally shifted oil production markets. The scramble is on for new sources. Fracking is back alive. There won’t be a word from the White House anytime soon about the need to get rid of fossil fuels. Indeed the Biden administration is panicked and has no idea what to do.
Look at Biden’s inflation advice: “Cut your costs.” It’s now a meme on Twitter and elsewhere. This is how the great man is going to solve the problem, by merely announcing to everyone or no one just to cut your costs!
Think of this too: Two of the greatest achievements of modernity were the mass availability of food and the near-universal distribution of affordable sources of energy. Both of those are in the process of slipping away.
Money, Money, Money: I spent some time this weekend examining money supply data to observe to what extent the incredible inflation we are experiencing. I had a look at M1 and observed some very weird-looking charts. I played with them a bit to understand what precisely happened in 2020–22. Then I suddenly remembered: They changed the definition of M1 in May of 2020. Changed it! And then did not backdate the data with the new definition for easy access.
In other words, it is now very difficult to use existing data channels to understand what happened to a core definition of the money supply over the last two years as compared with previous decades. It can be done but not easily. So it is better just to look at M2. Here we see 26% increases in 2020 to be dialed back but still running at 12% increases. This is for a Fed that claims to seek a 2% inflation target. They are either lying or have been suddenly affiliated with a bad case of inumerancy.
It’s remarkable to think of it, just how more or less normal life seemed only 2 ½ years ago. Few had any idea that we were on the precipice of total disaster. It began and seems not to end. Our lives will never be the same."
"Chaos this morning across Canada! Debit machines down nationwide, apps not working, Millions are without cell service due to an issue with Rogers network in Canada, is this a cyber security issue? Make sure you got some cash on hand for situations like this."
“The southern Milky Way appears spectacular in this composite image taken from Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands. Few sources of light pollution exist here, home to only 500 people.
The two bright stars at the Milky Way’s center are Alpha (left) and Beta Centauri. They point to Crux the Southern Cross. Near the horizon, two of the satellite galaxies of our Milky Way, the Small (left) and Large Magellanic Clouds are easy to spot.”
"We said together, wistfully, 'Life, eh?' It says everything without having to say anything: that we all experience moments of joyful or painful reflection, sometimes alone, sometimes sharing laughs and tears with others; that we all know and appreciate that however wonderful and precious life is, it can equally be a terribly confusing and mysterious beast. 'Life, eh?"
"If There Is A Nuclear War Between The U.S. And Russia,
Most Americans Will Die By Starving To Death"
by Michael Snyder
"Can you imagine what it would be like to literally starve to death? Most Americans believe that if a nuclear war with Russia actually happens the vast majority of the U.S. population will be instantly wiped out. But that is not what the science says. What the studies have shown is that only about 20 percent of the U.S. population will be instantly killed during a nuclear exchange. If you live near a military base or some other highly strategic target you will probably be among that 20 percent. Otherwise, it is likely that you will starve to death during the horrifying “nuclear winter” that follows.
A brand new study that was just released has concluded that average global temperatures would immediately drop by a whopping 13 degrees following a full-blown nuclear exchange… Firestorms would release ash and smoke into the upper atmosphere that would block out the Sun, resulting in crop failure around the world, according to researchers from Louisiana State University. In the first month following these catastrophic detonations, average global temperatures would plunge by about 13 degrees Fahrenheit, more than during the most recent Ice Age.
With much less sunlight reaching the Earth, the food chains in our oceans would collapse very rapidly… "The sudden drop in light and sea temperatures, especially from the Arctic to the North Atlantic and North Pacific, would kill algae - the bedrock of the marine food web. Researchers said that fishing and aquaculture would be halted by the creation of ‘essentially a famine in the ocean.’ And as average temperatures plummeted, very little would be able to be grown for an extended period of time.
Since the U.S. and Russia are both in the northern hemisphere, the northern half of the globe would be affected much more than the southern half of the globe. One study that was conducted in 2019 determined that temperatures in Iowa would ultimately stay below 0 degrees celsius for 730 days in a row…"A massive drop in temperature follows, with the weather staying below freezing throughout the subsequent Northern Hemisphere summer. In Iowa, for example, the model shows temperatures staying below 0°C for 730 days straight. There is no growing season. This is a true nuclear winter." (0 degrees Celsius equals 32 degrees Fahrenheit.)
Nor is it just a short blip. Temperatures still drop below freezing in summer for several years thereafter, and global precipitation falls by half by years three and four. It takes over a decade for anything like climatic normality to return to the planet.
Since so little food would be grown during this period of time, we would see starvation in the northern hemisphere on a cataclysmic scale…"In the 4,400 warhead/150 Tg soot nuclear war scenario, averaged over the subsequent five years, China sees a reduction in food calories of 97.2 percent, France by 97.5 percent, Russia by 99.7 percent, the UK by 99.5 percent and the US by 98.9 percent. In all these countries, virtually everyone who survived the initial blasts would subsequently starve."
The Russians can see where the proxy war in Ukraine is heading, and they are sounding the alarm. This week, Dmitry Medvedev warned that this conflict “potentially poses a threat to the existence of humanity”…"Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday warned the US against trying to punish Russia for its war in Ukraine, saying that doing so would risk humanity since Moscow has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. “The idea of punishing a country that has one of the largest nuclear potentials is absurd. And potentially poses a threat to the existence of humanity,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram."
Here in the United States, there are a handful of politicians that are speaking out rationally about this war. One of them is Marjorie Taylor Greene…“The American people do not want war with Russia, but NATO and our own foolish leaders are dragging us into one. We should pull out of NATO,” said right-wing Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in a Twitter post on Thursday while referring to the Biden administration’s massive military aid to Ukraine as a “proxy war” against Russia that Americans have no appetite for."
Ukraine is the “new Iraq wrapped up with a pretty little NATO bow, with a nuclear present inside,” she further added in a series of tweets in which she has expressed fierce criticism of Washington’s response to the Ukraine conflict by sending billions of taxpayer dollars to the country and risking a potential nuclear war.
Sadly, she is right on target. The longer this war goes on, the greater the risk that it could eventually become a nuclear conflict. The Russians have been preparing for such a conflict for a very long time, and this week we learned that they have conducted more successful nuclear drills…"Vladimir Putin has staged nuclear drills with his road-launched intercontinental Yars missiles in a forest in western Siberia. The 7,500-mile range of the missiles means they would be capable of striking Britain or anywhere in Europe."
Meanwhile, our most recent missile test exploded just 11 seconds after launch…"A test missile launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California exploded seconds after being fired late Wednesday night, according to officials. The Minotaur II space launch vehicle exploded approximately 11 seconds after launching off the test pad at 11:01 p.m. local time, Vandenberg officials confirmed in a statement early Thursday."
The U.S. desperately needs to develop new systems, because right now Minuteman missiles that went into service back in the 1970s still form the backbone of our strategic nuclear arsenal…"Vandenberg Space Force Base was testing the Air Force’s new missile rocket, expected to be used with the developing LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, according to The Tribune of San Luis Obispo County, Calif. Both are set to replace the U.S. military’s aging Minuteman missiles."
At this point, the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal is far superior to our own, and our anti-ballistic missile systems are not even worth comparing to what they possess. But most Americans don’t understand any of this. I was sounding the alarm about a military conflict with Russia long before the war in Ukraine ever started. Unfortunately, most of the population was not interested in such warnings.
Now a nuclear war with Russia has become a very real possibility thanks to the war in Ukraine, but most of the population is still not alarmed. Meanwhile, leaders on both sides continue to escalate the conflict in Ukraine, and that is an extremely dangerous game to be playing."
"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."
- H. L. Mencken, 1929
○
"It is extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut,
with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well;
and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes
life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. "
"Eve: “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
Serpent: “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
~ Genesis 3:2-5
Bonner: Yeah, right.
"There are many different ways to understand what is going on. At the simplest level, there is a ‘correction’ in the stock market. At the next level down, there is a historic shift in the bond market. Both markets are now selling off from some of the highest levels ever recorded. But how did they get so high? That’s where we find another layer of meaning, understanding and confusion.
In an honest economy, wealth is created by providing real goods and services to others. The more real goods and services a society can produce, the richer it is. High prices are never a problem. They are just information – telling us where we need to invest more to get more output.
Stretchy and Sticky: But then, along comes a snake. He has an offer that is too good to refuse. In 1971, the US money system was changed. Milton Friedman led the way. He called it ‘monetarism,’ where the dollar would no longer be handcuffed to gold. Instead, the money supply would increase steadily and predictably (Friedman recommended 3% per year – roughly equal to GDP growth at the time.) It sounded like a good idea, especially since it meant the US could welsh on its obligation to redeem foreign-held dollars for gold.
But it wasn’t long before people realized that this new money was stretchy… and sticky. They could use it like duct tape, to cover cracks, holes, gaps – in place of real wealth. No need to match up income and outgo. No need to save.
Want to raise your stock price, for example? Just borrow some of this money and buy the shares. Thanks to the Fed’s super-low rates, you were often able to borrow below the rate of consumer price inflation… or below the rate of your own company earnings. Borrow at 3% for a stock that earns 4%... when inflation is running at 5%? A no brainer.
Or suppose you wanted a new house? No need to work and save so that you could afford it. Just borrow. And no need to ever pay off the loan. You could just refinance… over and over… and reduce your monthly payments each time.
Where the Money Was: Borrow… borrow… borrow – there was no apparent limit to how much ‘credit’ the new system offered. And the way to get ahead in this new ‘financialized’ world was to get into ‘finance,’ not into manufacturing. Gradually, the grand houses on Long Island and in Aspen came under new ownership. Gone were the families that made their fortunes by making mattresses and box cereal. In came the hedge fund managers, and private equity slicksters. Mothers, being no fools, told their babies not to bother going to Detroit to get a job with GM. Instead, they should go to Manhattan and get a job with Goldman Sachs; that’s where the money was.
But the money that was too-good-to-refuse was also too-good-to-be-true. Goods and services are hard to produce. Money is easy. Soon, there was a lot more money than there were goods and services. Yes, the system had a fatal flaw. The people running it weren’t gods after all. They were jackasses.
US GDP was just over $1.1 trillion in 1971. Now it is $24 trillion – a 21 times increase. But Federal Debt in 1971 was only $398 billion. Now, it’s over $30 trillion – an increase of 75 times. In other words, the supply of ‘money’ grew three times as fast as supplies of goods and services (GDP).
Tom Dyson, our investment chief, explained yesterday: "The system now requires a constant expansion of credit and debt to survive. The minute that debt stops expanding (or being refinanced at affordable rates) the system collapses in what economists call a “debt deflation.” Think of a hot air balloon that suddenly loses its hot air. It does not float gently to the ground. It plummets. It's as simple and unavoidable as that."
All In Due Course: Yes, the Fed has turned off the hot gas. It’s the end of “financialization.” The ‘inflate or die’ economy is dying. But why now? After 40 years of Bubble Finance, you’d think the Fed would have figured out the trick to it.
Alas, there’s more to the story. Another level to study. More money than stuff? Prices rise. And now, with inflation rates many times higher than the Fed’s key rate… the controllers have lost control. They are ‘behind the curve’ – out of step and out of time. And now they have no choice. They have to slow the economy down. The fake money must now return whence it came.
Money dies. Prices die. Businesses die. Debts die. Jobs die. And the whole money-mad economy begins to rot… from the extremities. Cryptos and NFTs fall off, like gangrenous toes. Then, the decay spreads… up the body to the interior organs. The big question for us is: how far will the putrefaction go… before the Fed panics and goes back into ‘inflate’ mode? That question will answer itself in due course."
