Wednesday, January 4, 2023

"Aldi Reports That Prices Of Thousand Of Grocery Items Will Double In 2023"

Full screen recommended.
"Aldi Reports That Prices Of Thousand 
Of Grocery Items Will Double In 2023"
by Epic Economist

"Aldi customers have always been loyal to the grocer due to its cheap prices and unique product range. However, the supermarket chain hasn’t been able to escape inflation and shortages in recent months. Shoppers have been furious at Aldi for doubling the price of hundreds of items, with some of them noting that larger competitors such as Walmart and Kroger are selling essentials at lower prices than the discount retailer, while others say that the amount of money they are saving at Aldi is not as great as it used to be. A flood of consumer complaints detail “unbelievable” price increases at stores in the past few weeks. But the company executives warn that the worst is yet to come given that the chain will be forced to pass “exploding costs” onto their customers this year. That’s what we’re going to expose in this video.

After RetailWeek exposed last month that Aldi is raising prices at a higher rate compared to many other grocers, executives were forced to admit the obvious. “It would be ridiculous for me to sit here and say that our prices aren’t going up. Of course, they’re going up,” exclaimed Aldi international group managing director Niall O’Connor.

In fact, just days before the end of 2022, the grocer announced that prices would “inevitably” have to rise further due to global inflationary pressures, revealing that hundreds of products were about to face increases of up to 50%. The latest price hikes are affecting pharmacy items, cleaning products, baked goods, snacks, frozen fruits and vegetables, and other several product categories.

Milk and dairy are among the items that have faced the fastest price spikes, Yahoo reports. In the past two weeks, milk prices shot up by 20% at the supermarket chain. Similarly, the grocery shopping blog Simply Grocery Deals compared prices at the grocer over the past 12 months, and it found that chicken prices at Aldi rose above the national average of 22%, going up by 27.5% since January 2022.

Meanwhile, shrimp went up by 25.6%, while ground beef soared by 28.21%, ham prices climbed 33.44%, and tuna surged by 31.13%. Fruits like cranberries are 23.26% more expensive at the retailer, and strawberries and blueberries are 12.5% higher than a year ago. Canned beans, apple pies, peanut butter, bread, and detergent have also experienced acute price spikes, the blog reports.

On Reddit, thousands of users revealed that their go-to products at the retailer’s stores are now more expensive than ever. “The price increases at Aldi’s are breaking my heart,” said one user. It’s totally understandable why fans of the grocery chain are so angry and frustrated nowadays. Unfortunately, they are about to have more reasons to be upset with the retailer.

In a December interview, Aldi customer interactions director Adrian Christie said that “grocery prices will rise further in coming months and shoppers will have to bear some pain while buying food items.” The executive explained that Aldi is being forced to “readjust” prices to cope with “exploding costs”. "Due to the situation on the world markets, we will experience jumps in sales prices that have never happened before," the supermarket chain announced. “It is likely to get worse before it gets better for consumers,” Christie highlighted. The era of cheap prices is far behind us. And it’s safe to say that many more challenges are coming for us in 2023."
Comments here:

"Time to Get Real About Ukraine"

"Time to Get Real About Ukraine"
By Jim Rickards

"The war in Ukraine remains the most important story in the world today. Don’t believe the incessant U.S. government and media propaganda about Ukraine. Ukraine is not winning the war; they are losing badly. But wait, hasn’t the news been talking up Ukrainian gains in recent months, while Russia is retreating and being badly beaten? That’s the mainstream, pro-Ukrainian narrative. Here’s the reality: Most of the Ukrainian gains were against lightly defended positions that the Russians quickly abandoned because they were not worth fighting to defend. Those Russian troops (really Donbas militias) were ordered to retreat to fortified Russian lines while Ukrainian forces rushing to fill the void were slaughtered by Russian artillery bombardments.

Most people think of war in terms of territory. If you lose territory, it must mean you’re losing the war. But it’s not always that simple.

The Russian Strategy: The Russians will willingly cede territory in order to fight again at a later time under more favorable circumstances. They’ll simply retake it when the terms favor them. They’re not primarily concerned about the territory per se. The primary Russian objective is to grind down and destroy the Ukrainian armed forces.

And if the Ukrainians want to keep hurling themselves against Russian positions in order to recapture land and score a propaganda coup, that’s fine with the Russians. They’ll just grind the attacking forces down with heavy artillery fire (artillery kills far more people in war than bullets or bombs).

And despite Ukrainian government claims, the best intelligence says Russia is presently enjoying an 8–10:1 casualty rate. In other words, Russia is inflicting eight–10 casualties on Ukraine for every casualty it’s suffering. That kind of ratio isn’t sustainable for Ukraine.

Russia Prepares to Lower the Boom on Ukraine: Meanwhile, Russia has reinforced its positions with 300,000 or more fresh troops (about 30 divisions) who are rested and resupplied. That’s in addition to the number of troops already in Ukraine. Evidence indicates they’re backed by at least 1,500 tanks, 5,000 armored fighting vehicles, 1,000 rocket artillery systems, hundreds of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters plus thousands of tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones.

At the same time, all indications are that Russia is changing its strategy. The initial Russian invasion was ill-conceived and took place in a piecemeal fashion. Contrary to mainstream opinion, Putin never intended to conquer Kyiv and occupy Ukraine. The invasion force was far too small to accomplish those objectives. Also contrary to mainstream opinion, Putin didn’t target Ukraine’s civilian population. He wanted to avoid civilian casualties to the greatest possible extent. Of course some civilian targets were hit, but that’s going to happen in war.

Putin instead believed that the “special military operation” would tell Kyiv and Washington that Russia was serious about enforcing its red lines in Ukraine, that it was willing to use force. But he thought his show of force would bring them to the negotiating table. He badly miscalculated. Rather than bring Kyiv and Washington to the negotiating table, they resolved to aggressively defend Ukraine. Russia’s ill-prepared forces were pushed back and routed in many instances.

“Russia Means Business This Time”: But now Russia is taking the gloves off. It’s already launched heavy, sustained attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, including the power grid and energy nodes. Its army is also regrouping and preparing for massive counteroffensives. It won’t make the same mistakes it made during last February’s ill-planned attacks. Russia means business this time. It's not interested in bringing Ukraine to the negotiating table anymore. It's focused instead on destroying Ukraine's military forces and imposing a settlement on Kyiv.

A major winter offensive will begin soon, likely when the ground in southern Ukraine is fully frozen (muddy ground will bog down Russian forces). A successful counteroffensive will consolidate Russian control of Donbas (the heartland of Ukrainian industry and natural resources), give Russia control of Zaporizhzhya (the largest nuclear power plant in Europe) and possibly include the conquest of Odessa, the most important Ukrainian Black Sea port.

The cost on the rest of Ukraine from Kyiv to Lviv will be horrendous, including the near-complete degradation of its power-generating capacity, transportation lines and food supplies. U.S. and U.K. weapons supplies won’t mean much because they are too little, too late and the Ukrainians are scarcely trained to use them. But these prospects make no impact at all on the anti-Russian warhawks, both Democrat and Republican, who are determined to prolong the war at all costs - even if it means fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

A Great Deal for the Military-Industrial Complex: It seems that every week or so the U.S. announces a new multibillion-dollar package of aid for Ukraine. These aid packages fall into two categories: Some are simple financial transfers to keep the oligarchs in Ukraine supplied with funds to keep their government going. Others consist of weapons including drones, anti-missile batteries like the Patriot, long-range artillery and most recently an announcement that the U.S. may supply Ukraine with Bradley Fighting Vehicles, or BFVs.

The total of such Ukraine aid, including the $1.7 trillion budget boondoggle passed by the U.S. Congress two weeks ago, is now approaching $112 billion.

When it comes to weapons, there’s a lot less than meets the eye in terms of helping Ukraine. It appears that Ukraine is getting billions of dollars in equipment, but in fact, Ukraine is getting castoffs from U.S. inventories. What’s really going on is the U.S. is dumping old or obsolete systems on Ukraine (the original BFV was built in 1981, over forty40 years ago) and then using the appropriations to order new weapons for itself.

Meanwhile, the U.S. will likely send Ukraine an older version of the Patriot air defense system - and only one battery at that, consisting of eight missile launchers. It’s not the game-changer many seem to think it is. The Russians will simply overwhelm the system with numbers, and then take it out. It probably won’t last long whenever it’s deployed, which could be several months from now.

The real winners of these weapons transfers will be U.S. defense contractors like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, who are getting the money to build new advanced systems for the U.S. The real losers will be the Ukrainian people, who will continue to die needlessly in the absence of a negotiated settlement that recognizes the reality on the ground.

How Much Western Military Aid Actually Makes It Into the Field? To make this racket even more absurd, much of the equipment that does make it to Ukraine is quickly blown up by Russia. Russia has very good intelligence on the whereabouts of these weapons systems once they reach Ukraine. Using global satellite imaging, laser guidance and a blend of drones and cruise missiles, Putin has had success preventing these weapons from reaching the battlefield or destroying them if they do.

But the U.S. has already spent so much money on Ukraine and committed itself so strongly to a complete Russian defeat, a Russian victory would represent another strategic defeat for the U.S., still smarting from the debacle in Afghanistan. What remains of U.S. credibility is on the line.

Brinksmanship: What happens if Russia brings Ukraine to the verge of defeat? Will Biden and his strongly anti-Russian administration simply throw up their hands and concede victory to Russia? Based on their maximalist rhetoric and commitment to Ukrainian victory, that appears unlikely.

Biden has shown no signs of relenting and recently said he will supply Ukraine with weapons as long as it takes. On the other hand, Putin will also not back down and seems determined to secure the entire seacoast of Ukraine, including the critical port of Odessa.

The great danger could arise if the U.S. foolishly continues escalation to the bitter end in order to stave off a Ukrainian defeat. I’m not predicting it’ll happen, but things could escalate to the point where tactical nuclear weapons are employed out of desperation. From that point, it’s a short step toward the broader use of strategic nuclear weapons. Again, I’m not specifically predicting that will happen. But it is a realistic possibility based on the logic of escalation, and we seem to be sleepwalking into a nuclear confrontation unless we wake up. Will we?"

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! FED Promises Much Higher Inflation, Extreme Job Losses, And An Economic Meltdown"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/4/23:
"Alert! FED Promises Much Higher Inflation,
 Extreme Job Losses, And An Economic Meltdown"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, " A Gift of Life"

Full screen recommended.
2002, " A Gift of Life"

"I Can Pretend..."

“I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come and Gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend...”
- Olethros, in “Sandman”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"This popular group leaps into the early evening sky around the March equinox and the northern hemisphere spring. Famous as the Leo Triplet, the three magnificent galaxies found in the prominent constellation Leo gather here in one astronomical field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as NGC 3628 (right), M66 (upper left), and M65 (bottom). All three are large spiral galaxies but tend to look dissimilar, because their galactic disks are tilted at different angles to our line of sight. 
NGC 3628, also known as the Hamburger Galaxy, is temptingly seen edge-on, with obscuring dust lanes cutting across its puffy galactic plane. The disks of M66 and M65 are both inclined enough to show off their spiral structure. Gravitational interactions between galaxies in the group have left telltale signs, including the tidal tails and warped, inflated disk of NGC 3628 and the drawn out spiral arms of M66. This gorgeous view of the region spans over 1 degree (two full moons) on the sky in a frame that covers over half a million light-years at the trio's estimated distance of 30 million light-years. Of course the spiky foreground stars lie well within our own Milky Way."

Chet Raymo, “Dewy-eyed”

“Dewy-eyed”
by Chet Raymo

“I believe I have mentioned before that many years ago, before I started writing for the Boston Globe, I had a column in the college newspaper called "Under a Skeptical Star." The phrase came from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment."

That was nearly half-a-century ago. I'm still astonished. Easily astonished. I don't require magnificent vistas, frozen waterfalls, spectacular sunsets. I don't need the Red Sea parted or Lazarus raised from the dead. I've been astonished by comets and eclipses, but I don't need a comet or eclipse. A leaf will do. A snowflake. The tip-tip-tip of a nuthatch heard but not seen in a piney wood. A lop-sided spider web wet with dew. Don't tell me about answered prayers. Premonitions that came to pass. The paranormal and preternatural. That's when my skeptical star kicks in, the one I was born under. That's when an irrepressible voice in the back of my head whispers: "There's nothing less astonishing than the apparently miraculous."

I'll settle for the commonplace. The ordinary. The quotidian. The flower in the crannied wall. The universe in a grain of sand. A single silicon dioxide molecule is astonishment enough to set my chin agog. How many silicon dioxide molecules in a grain of sand? About a trillion billion by my rough calculation. That's a lot of astonishment. A lop-sided spider web wet with dew. Even the words are astonishing.”

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"

"In a Dark Time"

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood-
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks- is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is-
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind."

- Theodore Roethke

"We Are Terribly Confused..."

"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."
- Edward O. Wilson

Judge Napolitano, "Col. Doug Macgregor: Ukraine Says Russia Shifting Away From Bakhmut"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/4/23:
"Col. Doug Macgregor: 
Ukraine Says Russia Shifting Away From Bakhmut"
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Henry Austin Dobson, “The Paradox Of Time”

“Time passes in moments. Moments which, rushing past, define the path of a life, just as surely as they lead towards its end. How rarely do we stop to examine that path, to see the reasons why all things happen? To consider whether the path we take in life is our own making, or simply one into which we drift with eyes closed? But what if we could stop, pause to take stock of each precious moment before it passes? Might we then see the endless forks in the road that have shaped a life? And, seeing those choices, choose another path?”
- Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully, “The X-Files”
“The Paradox Of Time”

“Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go;
Or else, were this not so,
What need to chain the hours,
For Youth were always ours?

Time goes, you say? – ah no!
Ours is the eyes’ deceit
Of men whose flying feet
Lead through some landscape low;
We pass, and think we see
The earth’s fixed surface flee:-
Alas, Time stays, – we go!

Once in the days of old,
Your locks were curling gold,
And mine had shamed the crow.
Now, in the self-same stage,
We’ve reached the silver age;
Time goes, you say? – ah no!

Once, when my voice was strong,
I filled the woods with song
To praise your ‘rose’ and ‘snow’;
My bird, that sang, is dead;
Where are your roses fled?
Alas, Time stays, – we go!

See, in what traversed ways,
What backward Fate delays
The hopes we used to know;
Where are our old desires?-
Ah, where those vanished fires?
Time goes, you say? – ah no!

How far, how far, O Sweet,
The past behind our feet
Lies in the even-glow!
Now, on the forward way,
Let us fold hands, and pray;
Alas, Time stays, – we go!”

- Henry Austin Dobson
o
Full screen recommended.
Hans Zimmer, "Time"

"The Monstrous Thing..."

"The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off."
- Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer”

"Massive Offensives By Russians To End This War, Our Media Is Hiding This From Us"

Douglas Macgregor, 1/4/23:
 "Massive Offensives By Russians To End This War, 
Our Media Is Hiding This From Us"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
CNN-News, 1/4/23:
"Putin Deploys New Zircon Hypersonic 
Cruise Missiles To Atlantic"
Comments here:


"Here's A Question..."

“Here’s a question every angry man and woman needs to consider: How long are you going to allow people you don’t even like – people who are no longer in your life, maybe even people who aren’t even alive anymore – to control your life? How long?”
- Andy Stanley

“That goes for old wounds, too, you know. I really wish we’d had the chance to talk before this,” he says, cracking the window so the smoke can escape. “There’s a Longfellow quote I have stuck on my bulletin board at the church office – ‘There is no grief like the grief that does not speak’ – and it’s true. I’ve found that keeping pain inside doesn’t give it a chance to heal, but bringing it out into the light, holding it right there in your hands and trusting that you’re strong enough to make it through, not hating the pain, not loving it, just seeing it for what it really is can change how you go on from there. Time alone doesn’t heal emotional wounds, and you don’t want to live the rest of your life bottled up with anger and guilt and bitterness. That’s how people self-destruct.”
- Laura Wiess

"Throwing Money and Time Away"

Full screen recommended,
Dan, iAllegedly 1/4/23:
"Throwing Money and Time Away"
"Barstow is going to become a very non-family friendly place. Buffalo Bills Casino reopens to little fanfare. What is your time worth? How do you feel about economy in 2023?"
Comments here:

"That's Why..."

"That's why crazy people are so dangerous.
You think they're nice until they're chaining you up in the garage."
- Michael Buckley

Bill Bonner, "A Christmas in Ireland"

"A Christmas in Ireland"
Plus, 8 stocks that lost $5 trillion, hanging pheasants, 
modern "earthships" and more...
by Bill Bonner

"In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone…"
~ Christina Rossetti

Youghal, Ireland - "The birds hung there for four days. They had such beautiful feathers…gold, brown, red and blue. But their necks were cocked at an unnatural angle, inasmuch as they were hanging by a string from a nail in the garage. “Shouldn’t you pluck them and clean them?” we asked Elizabeth.“No…they should hang first.”
And so, they remained where they were. Hung by the neck…like criminals. Each time we passed, they seemed to reproach us. “We were pretty to look at. And we never did you any harm. And yet, you let us hang, like Mussolini and his lover.”

Christmas came softly to the Emerald Isle, while much of the US was enjoying a white Christmas, with some of the lowest temperatures ever recorded. Colleague Dan Denning lives in Laramie, Wyoming where the wind was sweeping over the plain and the temperature was falling below zero. “Dan, you need an in-ground house,” we suggested.

The earth is always around 55 degrees. Dig down 3 feet and it never gets too hot or too cold. We learned the trick from Karl Hess, speechwriter for Barry Goldwater. It was he who wrote those immortal words: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation is no virtue.” “The weather where you’re from seems horrible,” a man delivering gas opened a conversation. “I don’t see how you stand it.” “Well, it’s not like that all the time. We only get a storm like that one every few years. And we’re prepared for it.”

While we were exaggerating the prudence of the American people, it was 10AM and as dark as Baltimore at midnight. Wind and rain flew against our faces. The delivery man didn’t seem to notice. “I guess the weather is why you’re here. It’s very mild in Ireland.”

Extreme Threats: ‘Very mild,’ means different things to different people. It was 50 degrees as these words were exchanged…just as it is most of the rest of the year. But unlike the summer months, it was dark. The Irish do not freeze…not like they do in Montana; instead, they are severely deprived of sunlight. On rainy days, which is almost all of them, the sun never rises and never sets. It gets progressively lighter…until noon…and then the light fades again.

Karl probably overstated the benefits of extremism. Out on the high plains…or in the high politics of Washington, DC, extremism may make things more interesting…but it is also a threat. Later, fed up with Washington, Karl became a welder and built his own earth-sheltered house in West Virginia. When we visited, we were enchanted. It was partially dug into a hill, with a glass wall on the South side. “I built this house for $11,000,” he told us proudly. “And the only heat I have is from the sun…and this wood stove.” Ever since, we’ve been fascinated by cheap, efficient houses. Not just cheap to build, but also cheap to live in.

We were later intrigued by the ‘Earthship’ houses – built by an old friend out of tires and mud – in Taos, New Mexico. We decided to try it ourselves, but without old tires or the mud. Instead, we used ferro-cement, concrete reinforced with steel. It was the first house ever built like that in Maryland. And the last. Maryland is not New Mexico. And the climate of the West– dry, with fairly large swings in temperature – is very different to the long sultry summers along the edges of the Chesapeake bay.

Nevertheless, the house is a marvel…wisteria blocks the sun in the summer…and lets it come in to heat up the house in the winter. “I was in that last weekend,” reported a friend. “I think someone left the heat on. I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.” “Uh…there is no heat,” we explained. It is heated by passive solar…preserved by the deep earth. You can’t turn it on…or off.

But here in Ireland, we found an entirely different project. When we bought our house in Ireland, we found that it had the ruins of four more houses. One of them looked like it might be resurrected. The roof had fallen in, but the walls were still standing, more or less intact. People spend a lot of money on housing. Some people can’t afford it. They are ‘bums,’ ‘homeless’ people, or ‘unhoused’ people, depending on your politics. And yet, in some places – with some imagination and elbow grease – housing can be remarkably cheap.

Deep and Dark: This is the first time we spent Christmas in Ireland. Our family is spread out…between the US and Europe. Usually, we return to the old family farm in Maryland for the holidays. But this year, we decided to make it easier on the European contingent of the family…especially, our son and his growing family in Dublin. Those are the circumstances which led us to go through the winter in these northern latitudes. And herewith, a little memoire of ‘nollaig shona,’ Christmas in Ireland, 2022.

The holiday began a few days before the family arrived. “Don’t go in there,” we said to Elizabeth, trying to protect her delicate sensibilities. She had just come from a visit to the neighbors, where she was given two dead birds. “They were shot by a poacher. He gave several of them to Jim [the neighbor]. He gave us a couple.” “Do you know how to pluck and clean them?” ‘No, but I’ll look it up on Youtube.’

They were beautiful animals. Pheasants are raised by the thousands at a nearby farm, and then released. Hunters pay good money to blast away at them, killing hundreds at a time. “I don’t see the sport in it,” Jim had commented earlier. “They’re practically tame.” Some of them get away. Like refugees, they make their way to our property… pecking at bugs and seeds…and happy to be alive.

The two hanging in the garage survived the general slaughter. But then, the poacher got them. “Why does Jim call him a poacher?” we asked. “McCreedy?” “Is that his name?” “Yes, he came to our door too and asked to hunt on our property. I asked Jim. He said that if it was McCreedy we were best off giving him permission. Because he’ll hunt anyway. He’s a poacher. Apparently, everyone knows it. But if you give him permission, he’ll give you some of the meat.”

The Christmas Spirit: In the library was a chimney sweep, bent to his work, but exposing a ‘plumber’s crack’ as deep and forbidding as the headwaters of the Nile, which is why we suggested to Elizabeth that she stay out. He was a jolly man, with a large torso mounted on very narrow hips, and a fleshy face topped by hair that had gone gray but been dyed gray, probably at home... perhaps while watching a soccer match.

“Ah ghan gimtchsmal,” he had said on his arrival. We presumed he was speaking English, but we had no idea what he meant to say. Seeing his chimney brushes in his left hand, though, we showed him to his work…and gradually began to comprehend his dialect. “You’re not getting up on the roof?” “Noo.. tat wool only poosh it dune an make it moor compact.”

His method was to run brushes up from the fireplace. We had tried that ourselves, without success. But he knew his business. When he encountered the same obstacle we did, he changed the brush for a sort of claw, and rammed it so hard up the chimney that, when it finally broke through, it knocked the wire chimney cap off. And then, ‘whhoosh…and thump’…a large bird’s nest, along with chunks of brick and ceramic chimney liner fell into the fireplace. Dust rose in a cloud. “I tink we got it,” said our man, Liam Daley.

We had set up a Christmas tree in the library. We needed the fireplace to work. Three sons, one daughter-in-law and one grandson were coming. We had to be ready for them. Mr. Daley did the job, charging us 60 euros. Things are expensive in Ireland. But the cash-and-carry local economy can be surprisingly cheap. Mr. Daley thought he was overcharging us. But he had come out from the city, brought his tools with him, and spent the best part of the morning at the house. Sixty euros – just a little more than $60 – seemed reasonable.

The work completed, we escorted Mr. Daley up the road to the aforementioned cottage. It has a main fireplace, with a chimney that has a straight shot to the outside. But a second small fireplace in the bedroom runs in a dog’s leg pattern to meet up with the main chimney on top of the roof. This second chimney was clogged. Again, Mr. Daley cleaned it out and charged us another $20.

Celtic Nan: Now, at least, we were ready for company. Our house is small – with three bedrooms. And the rooms are small, it would be hard to add another cot. So, the youngest of our sons would stay at the cottage. “You’re the first person to stay here since Nan Donovan died,” we told him.

“Nan Donovan was old when we were young,” Jim explained. “She lived alone in that house, with no electricity, no heat, no running water, no toilet, and dirt floors. But that was the old Ireland. People were poor. It was only after we joined the European Union and became the ‘Celtic Tiger’ that people had any money. And by then, Nan was in her grave.

I remember walking home from school…this was the 1960s...we walked to school back then…and Nan would stand at her gate, waiting for us to come by. She just wanted someone to talk to. But we were not very nice about it; we just wanted to get home. So, we were probably rude…or unfriendly; I don’t remember. But then, Nan died about 40 years ago…and the house was abandoned. The roof caved in, I guess it was about 20 years ago. And I thought I’d never see smoke from that chimney again.”

We were showing the house to him and his daughter-in-law, who were out for a walk on the road. The fire was burning bright. And our son had hung up ‘fairy lights’ which took the edge off of our LED kitchen lamp. He had also put on some contemporary music. So, the house was warm and welcoming. More to come…"

"How It Really Is"

 

"Holy @%@%# Our World is About to Change Forever"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 1/3/23:
"Holy @%@%# Our World is About to Change Forever"
"This is why China and Russia are moving fast and
 why WW3 is here to stay UNTIL this happens..."
Comments here:

Greg Hunter, "Desperate Deep State Planning Intense Chaos in 2023"

"Desperate Deep State Planning Intense Chaos in 2023"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State,” says the world is waking up fast to the global genocide caused by the CV19 bioweapon passed off as a vaccine. Because of this public awakening, Newman says the desperate Deep State is planning intense chaos in multiple areas to cover their tracks and distract the public away from the extreme crimes globalist elites have committed. Newman explains, “What they are going to be doing over the coming year is massive numbers of crises and expanding and accelerating existing crises. They will be fomenting new crises such as food crises, immigration crises, border crises, currency crises and terrorism crises. You name it because that is what they do. 

The U.N. is standing by to provide ‘solutions’ to this. The World Health Organization is working on digital IDs and vaccine passports to deal with the health crises. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is working on the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) to deal with the currency crises. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the FAO, is working on solutions to the food crises that they are unleashing on humanity. So, we are going to see a lot more of this, and I forgot the energy crisis. This is what we talked about a few weeks ago when we talked about the U.N. climate summit (COP 27) in Egypt. They are dismantling our energy infrastructure for the purpose of causing an energy crisis, and they say this is what they are doing. They are starting a ‘new energy order’ to take control and limit our energy use.”

Newman says, “Totalitarians like to create the poison and the antidote all in the same laboratory. That’s what these globalists, Deep Staters and insiders are working on. They create the poison and antidotes in the same laboratory to take our freedoms, and population control is going to be a very big part of it.”

This brings us back to the CV19 bioweapon/vax. Newman says what is unfolding in 2023 is a “mass unstoppable awakening” to the genocide that is CV19 from infection to injection. This is mass murder, and that is what people will wake up to in 2023. Newman says, “These people are on the record with statements and speeches where they claim there are too many people consuming too many resources, and we need to reduce the population of the earth. I think the evidence for mass murder and genocide is so overwhelming that it would be hard for a court not to convict. We have to understand the global elites, the global predators behind this atrocity, that, in my mind, have killed millions and millions of people, are not going to say ‘You got us. We give up, take us to jail. We are going to have another Nuremberg.’ They are not going to do that. They are going to deploy the next part of their plan. Based on what we have seen so far, we can expect to see some sort of crisis of epic proportions to try to take the focus off it (the CV19 bioweapon/vax genocide).” There is much more in the 40-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with hard hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the book “Deep State”:

"Situation Update: Escalation With Russia Will Thrust Us Into The Jaws Of World War III"

"Situation Update: Escalation With Russia Will 
Thrust Us Into The Jaws Of World War III"
By Mike Adams

"The United States appears to be deliberately provoking Russia into precisely such a response by providing key intelligence, satellite imagery and targeting solutions to HIMARS crews which are widely believed to be US soldiers out of uniform, operating as "contractors" in Ukraine.

Russia is preparing a major offensive against Ukraine that would involve hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, combined with short and medium range missile strikes on key military and infrastructure targets inside Ukraine. The end result is likely a direct war - and a full declaration of war - between the United States and Russia. This is a highly likely outcome in 2023."
Get the full analysis, plus a featured interview and podcast here:
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"There are a multitude of fuses affixed to dozens of powder-kegs and little kids with matches are on the loose. I don’t know which of the fuses will be lit and which powder-keg will blow, but someone is bound to do something stupid, and then all hell will break loose. It could happen at any time. One military miscue. One assassination. One violent act that stirs the world. And the dominoes will topple, setting off fireworks not seen on this planet since 1939 – 1945. I can see it all very clearly."
- Jim Quinn

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

"Why Is Your Money Still In The Bank? Ominous Forecast For 2023"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/3/23:
"Why Is Your Money Still In The Bank? 
Ominous Forecast For 2023"
Comments here:

Gerald Celente ,"Trends Journal: Top Trends 2023"

Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert.
Gerald Celente, 1/3/23:
"Trends Journal: Top Trends 2023"
Comments here:

"Supply Chain Shortages Will Trigger Panic At Stores This Winter As People Rush To Hoard Essentials"

Full screen recommended.
"Supply Chain Shortages Will Trigger Panic At Stores 
This Winter As People Rush To Hoard Essentials"
by Epic Economist

"Everyone is noticing that products are more expensive than ever and also very challenging to find lately. Shoppers are having to check different stores for particular goods, but still, most of the time they’re unable to get what they want. Those who were hoping that the new year would mark a new era of abundance on our supply chains will be disappointed to find out that the various shortages that defined 2022 are not only expected to continue this year, but analysts are also warning that they’re likely to get even worse in the coming months. Conditions at stores will remain chaotic, and food industry experts say "Americans are really going to be hurting in their wallet" in 2023.

The damages done to the system were far greater than anyone could have imagined, and while the health crisis has exacerbated those issues, it also showed holes in the industry’s infrastructure and processes that have been there all along, as explained by Brian Alster, general manager of the North America Finance & Risk. “As we look into a new year, supply chain risks continue to heighten within organizations, particularly those that are most vulnerable to shortages and labor disruptions,” he says.

With a recession expected to aggravate many of the problems companies and consumers are already coping with, in addition to environmental catastrophes and an ongoing fertilizer shortage, the food supply chain is at the highest risk of experiencing persistent disruptions this year. In a recent interview with Fox Business, Tennessee dairy farmer and agricultural activist Stephanie Nash believes that “2023 is going to be rough. Worse than 2022," she says. When asked about the severity of the shortages retailers and consumers will have to deal with this season, Nash answered: "I definitely think we have a food security threat. We're going to have a supply chain shortage, we're going to have an increase in our food prices at the grocery store," she alerted.

Moreover, increasing environmental disasters are also contributing to worsening food shortages all across the nation. Analysts expose that California's devastating drought has led to empty rice fields and a 10 to 15% loss of viable farmland. A poll conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that roughly three-quarters of farmers saw a reduction in harvest yields due to drought in the past 12 months. At the same time, around two-thirds of ranchers and livestock farmers reported selling off animals, with the national herd size down by 36%. Some states like Texas saw herd declines of 50%.

Unfortunately, the doom and gloom don’t stop there. Global shortages of grains, carbon dioxide, wood pulp, and other commodities are going to affect the availability of thousands of products in 2023. Food analysts at Mashed predict that bread, flour, oatmeal, vegetable oil, corn, tomatoes, soft drinks, canned foods, champagne, frozen goods, coffee, paper towels, and toilet paper will all be harder to find from here on. “People may have to shop around or use different brands. The available brands may also hike prices to be able to meet the demand,” they noted.

Problems are actually becoming more widepread as more and more shortages emerge, while manufacturers’ and retailers’ ability to replenish inventories remains compromised. This frustrating situation is going to impact the lives of millions of Americans for yet another year. We should all stay alert and prepare for the worst before things start to go downhill once again."

Gregory Mannarino, "FED Repo Operation Is Exploding As The World Economy Craters"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/3/23"
"FED Repo Operation Is Exploding 
As The World Economy Craters"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Unity"

Liquid Mind, "Unity"

"A Deep Look To The heavens"

"The Hubble Deep Field: 
The Most Important Image Ever Taken"
"In 2003, the Hubble Space Telescope took the image of a millenium, an image that shows our place in the universe. Anyone who understands what this image represents, is forever changed by it."- YouTube/NASA
Full screen recommended.
Full screen recommended.
"It helps to put things in perspective here on our frenetic little planet with a look at this extraordinarily powerful and moving video of the Hubble Space Telescope mapping of the Universe, whose known size is 78 billion light years across. The video of the images is the equivalent of using a "time machine" to look into the past to witness the early formation of galaxies, perhaps less than one billion years after the universe's birth in the Big Bang.

The video includes mankind's deepest, most detailed optical view of the universe called the Hubble Deep Field (HDF). One of the stunning images was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) for ten consecutive days. Representing a narrow "keyhole" view stretching to the visible horizon of the universe, the HDF image covers a speck of the sky only about the width of a dime located 75 feet away. Though the field is a very small sample of the heavens, it is considered representative of the typical distribution of galaxies in space because the universe, statistically, looks largely the same in all directions. Gazing into this small field, Hubble uncovered a bewildering assortment of at least 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution.

Most of the galaxies are so faint (nearly 30th magnitude or about four-billion times fainter than can be seen by the human eye) they have never before been seen by even the largest telescopes. Some fraction of the galaxies in this menagerie probably date back to nearly the beginning of the universe. "The variety of galaxies we see is amazing. In time these Hubble data could turn out to be the double helix of galaxy formation. We are clearly seeing some of the galaxies as they were more than ten billion years ago, in the process of formation," said Robert Williams, Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute Baltimore, Maryland. "As the images have come up on our screens, we have not been able to keep from wondering if we might somehow be seeing our own origins in all of this."

Chet Raymo, “The Spark of Life”

“The Spark of Life”
by Chet Raymo

"In a previous post I quoted Teilhard de Chardin referring to the discovery of electromagnetic waves as a "prodigious biological event." A biological event? What could he mean? The universe was awash with electromagnetic waves long before life appeared on Earth, or anywhere else in the universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation- the residue of the big bang- is electromagnetic. Starlight is an electromagnetic wave. You can "discover" electromagnetic waves by opening your eyes.

Of course, what Teilhard referred to was the conscious control of electromagnetic radiation by sentient biological creatures. Electromagnetic waves were predicted theoretically by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1864, as he played with equations describing electric and magnetic fields. Then, twenty-two years later, electromagnetic waves were experimentally demonstrated by Heinrich Hertz, who in effect made the first radio broadcast and reception. At Hertz's transmitter a spark jumped back and forth between two metal spheres 50 million times a second. Across the room a similar spark was instantly produced at the receiver. Invisible electrical energy had passed through space at the speed of light.

A spark dancing between two spheres- an unpretentious beginning for the age of radio, television, mobile phones and wireless internet. That first transmitter and receiver had a basement-workshop simplicity about them. Hertz demonstrated the nature of electromagnetic waves with constructions of wood, brass and sealing wax.

Wood, brass, sealing wax and conscious intelligence. Here on Earth- perhaps throughout the universe- stardust gave rise to living slime. The slime complexified, became conscious. Invented mathematics, experimental science. Caused sparks to jump between metal spheres. Sent the signature of biological activity across a room. Across a planet. Across the universe. Prodigious!”