"If you’re like most Americans, you must have noticed that grocery shopping has been growing more expensive with each passing month. Food prices are soaring all across the country, and industry experts are alerting that from now on, it's only going to get worse. Even the mainstream media is warning that grocery bills will continue to climb for the rest of the year, and when corporate media starts flashing a red light over an issue that was overlooked for months, we know that things are about to get serious. The truth is that U.S. consumers should brace for a widespread shortage of goods and, as a consequence, skyrocketing prices will continue on a meteoric rise as our economy gets ravaged by inflation. And that's what we're going to expose in this video.
A new report released on Tuesday by the Labor Department revealed that consumer prices shot higher in March, as trillions in stimulus money started flooding the economy, pushing the consumer price index up 2.6% from the same period a year ago. The main driver of this staggering hike on the consumer price index was the significant increase in gasoline prices, which have surged 9.1% in March, and went up 22.5% from a year ago, part of a 13.2% increase in energy prices.
Higher gasoline prices have increased transport costs and demand continues to outpace oil production, therefore, that rise will be passed on to consumers. Data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicate food price inflation will escalate an additional 3% this year. In 2020, food prices rose 3.9%, almost triple last year's overall rate of inflation, according to the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. From now on, "people will have to get used to paying more for food," that's what the director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, Sylvain Charlebois, told Bloomberg, stressing that “it’s only going to get worse.”
Amongst the main drivers to this meteoric price rise is the plummeting food production. Since the health crisis started, several production and packing plants were completely shut down due to a number of widespread outbreaks caused by crowded working conditions. Even though many processing plants are reopening, owners are having to invest in technology and new operations to keep their workers safe, which includes more automation and equipment that can be operated remotely. And, of course, that additional investment cost will be absorbed by the end consumer.
Moreover, the sanitary outbreak also derailed food distribution, and the recent transportation tumult is adding to the price pressures. The Food and Drug Administration noted the U.S. imports account for 15% of its overall food supply, and estimates show we import roughly 65% of our seafood from international producers. Higher demand and a change of habits are contributing to elevated prices too. After restaurants were forced to close and remote working became more popular amongst American workers, people have begun eating more at home. With millions of families now at home for three meals a day, food consumption in the U.S. has boomed.
A recent article disclosed that 50% of participants in a food consumption survey affirmed they had been buying more food than usual during the health crisis, with 33% admitting to stockpiling it. And as the food supply sinks, there’s really only one direction prices can go. On top of all that, extreme weather has severely disturbed the global supply chain. One simple example of how vulnerable supply chains are at the moment can be seen in the fallout of the recent Texas storms. Farmers were forced to dump roughly 14 million gallons of milk during the crisis, and the state’s farmers and ranchers have lost more than $600 million. When similar events started to occur more frequently and more powerfully, the threat to the U.S. food supply will only grow, and grocery bills will continue to follow that upward trend.
In essence, even in the best of times, the planet was already struggling to feed the entire world population, and we're headed to even steeper hardships in both food production and distribution. Although the U.S. might still have enough supply for people to stockpile and secure themselves and their families, only those who managed to somehow keep their jobs and maintain some sort of financial stability during the recession will be able to afford such highly inflated prices. It is very unfortunate to admit that food prices may not return to lower levels for years, and things are going to become even more painful as our leaders continue to flood the system with more cash. Dark clouds are emerging on the horizon, and you should get prepared."
"From American Dream to American Nightmare" (Excerpt)
by Jim Quinn
"For most of the ninety years since James Truslow Adams coined the term American Dream, most Americans still believed the fairy tale of the American Dream, that no matter how humble your beginnings, everyone had a fair chance to become a success in America, based upon your individual talent, intelligence, work ethic and a society that rewarded those who exceled. Sadly, that dream is no longer achievable for most Americans. Our society has devolved into an oligarchy since The Epic of America was published in 1931, where a powerful few rule over a willfully ignorant many through propaganda, mistruth, fear, and an iron fist.
“But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position…
The American dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.” – James Truslow Adams, "Epic of America", 1931
It is terribly distressing the American dream has vaporized in less than a century after Adams wrote those profound, and at one time true, words. The real questions are why did the American dream turn into an American nightmare and is there a pathway back to the kind of country our forefathers created? There are numerous reasons why the country has fallen far from its original conception as a proud defiant Republic to its current state as a dying empire of depravity, decay, debt, and decadence. The conspiratorial creation of the Federal Reserve and implementation of a Federal income tax in 1913 marked a true destructive turning point for America.
These two choices, implemented by greedy bankers and sleazy politicians, put the country on a road to perdition. They centralized the power of money printing and confiscation of our wages at the point of a gun. The result has been a 96% loss of purchasing power of the dollar and an average tax burden of at least 30%, when all Federal, state, and local taxes are taken into consideration. The standard of living has steadily eroded for the average working class, while extreme wealth has been accumulated by the ruling class. And it was not an accident or miscalculation. It was purposeful. We have been fleeced by bankers, politicians, and the ruling oligarchy for decades.
Our world is now ruled by a tyrannical few who have used the system, created by their class, to accumulate immense wealth and power, sustained by a government they manipulate by buying politicians and having their cronies and thugs write and enforce the laws. The misinformation, propaganda, and fake news dished out by a mainstream media, owned, and controlled by the ruling oligarchy, creates a smokescreen to obscure who wields the true power in this country. The Deep State is no longer a looney conspiracy theory, but the reality of how this country is now controlled and run.
Despite his personality deficiencies, the four-year reign of Trump tore the curtain away and revealed the vile creatures wielding their traitorous power within the swamp of D.C. These despicable vermin (Obama, Clintons, Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Soros, Bloomberg, Gates, Biden) conducted a coup against a duly elected president and ultimately drove him from office by successfully executing a fraudulent election in conjunction with Big Tech despots and Democrat governors in a few swing states. The oligarchs have boldly gone where their criminal counterparts throughout history have gone before. In a just world these wretched traitors would be executed for their crimes against humanity."
Please view this complete and most highly recommended article here:
"Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though.
Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. Remarkably, this deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past."
“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House”
“Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice aren’t machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?
The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened. We’ve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.
In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged. The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:
“Political campaigns today are all sideshows. A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room. The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays
The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives.
Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Don’t Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom
This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.
Vonnegut and Huxley’s social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dante’s inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols.
This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The public’s foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.”
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "This morning, the Irish Independent reports: “US consumer prices climbed by the most in nearly nine years in March as the end of pandemic lockdowns triggered a rebound in travel and commuting that pushed up the cost of petrol, car rentals and hotel stays.” The death of an empire begins with a whimper… and ends with a bang. Yesterday, we trod lightly over the whimpers. After all, they are mostly silly… and puerile. Together, they generate a lot of noise, but they mean nothing. They are pointless… stupid… time-wasters.
Big Deal: Today, we sink into more serious matters. The Big Bang, that is. Yes, the Katastrophenhausse. The empire suffers a thousand paper cuts – trivia, distractions, and BS. But the deeper wound comes from the people who control the money. The logical and inevitable consequence of the Federal Reserve’s money-printing and reckless spending is inflation. Prices go up.
No big deal? Well… actually… Inflation is not always, everywhere, and only a monetary phenomenon. It is much more than that. It is an economic, social, and political catastrophe.
Asset Inflation: Before we go further, we will point out that “inflation” refers to increasing the money supply. This “inflation” then goes somewhere… but not always where and when you want it to go. So far, in the 21st century, it has mostly gone into asset prices.
The Nasdaq-100, for example, home to many of America’s leading tech companies, has gone up more than 500% over the last 10 years. But Sanford Bernstein Research tells us that 37% of companies in the tech sector are unprofitable.
Housing, too, has been distorted by price inflation. We are now in the second housing bubble of the century, with prices rising even faster than they did in the last one. Politico reports: "Home prices in January – typically a slow month for the market – were up 14 percent over the same month the previous year, while sales jumped 24 percent, despite an unemployment rate that was almost twice as high. Demand for existing homes is so strong that the average residence is on the market for just three weeks, and inventory is at a record low after seeing its steepest drop last year since the data was first tracked in 1999."
Inventory is at a record low? Didn’t Trump and Biden’s $5 trillion of “stimulus” increase output… including the supply of new houses? No, it didn’t. While house prices are 43% higher than they were at the height of the last housing bubble, the rate of new house construction is down nearly 50%. Hmmm… More money… Fewer houses available to buy? What do you get? Well, let’s take a look.
Road to Ruin: Let’s take a little trip… a little vacation… to the biggest island in the Caribbean. There, we will find an example of what we’re looking for – a social, political, and economic catastrophe approaching its climax.
Back in the 1950s, Cuba was a vacation spot. A jewel, with the fifth-highest per capita income in the Western Hemisphere, equal to 41% of the U.S., making the average Cuban wealthier than the typical American in the poorer states such as Mississippi or South Carolina. Cuba was second to the U.S. in ownership of automobiles and telephones, and first in ownership of TV sets. It was a mecca for American tourists.
A friend recalls, as a child, family vacations every year in Cuba. Ernest Hemingway lived for 20 years outside of Havana. And Lucille Ball’s husband – Desi Arnaz – brought the popular Cuban rhythms to New York and American television.
Had it been allowed to evolve in a normal way, Havana probably would have become like Las Vegas – but with Latin culture and a beach – rather than the dilapidated metropolis it is now. But so desperate are people for government – like children for parents – that they will put up with almost anything, no matter how bad. And so it was that the Castro regime – with its central planning and price controls – set Cuba on the road to ruin, where it stayed for the next 60 years.
Dire Economic Crisis: This week, the Castros’ reign comes to an end. Financial Times reports: "Cuba’s last Castro is set to leave the political stage, as Fidel’s 89-year-old brother Raúl cedes power to a younger generation at next week’s communist party congress which must also tackle a dire economic crisis and growing political dissent."
The “dire economic crisis” is the rather obvious fruit of dumbbell policies pursued over the last six decades. They began with the appointment of Che Guevara, the famous revolutionary, as head of the central bank of Cuba. Mr. Guevara knew no more about banking than current U.S. Treasury Secretary and former head of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen does. The result was an early setback for the new government… to be followed by many more over the years – almost all of them driven by activist bureaucrats, who thought they could do a better job of allocating capital than the “market.”
The end result is now on display. “This is cattle country,” the FT quotes a source in Camagüey province, “but there’s no milk, butter, yogurt or meat.” Cuba imports 60% of its food. And when its tourism industry hit the skids in the COVID-19 panic of 2020, it left very little money available for other things.Over the years, some 1.4 million Cubans left the island. Those who remain live like paupers. That is not to say they are necessarily unhappy or unwell. But its pursuit of “equality” left most Cubans poorer.
Government can’t equalize up; for that would require creating new wealth. It can only equalize down, by taking away money and redistributing it… and destroying much of the wealth-generating capacity of the free economy in the process.
At first, Castro’s Cuba relied on the Soviet Union for subsidies – selling its sugar at inflated prices. Then, it depended on Venezuelan oil money to keep going. Both of these socialist paradises have gone into the ditch. And now, Cuba is on its own… desperately trying to hold itself together.
End in Sight: But alert dear readers are already wondering: Why doesn’t the Bank of Cuba just print up some more money, like the U.S. is doing? Doesn’t it know the “stimmy” trick? Well, what do you think?
Of course, Cuban central bankers read the same books and journals as those everywhere else. The Cuban government recently devalued the peso by 96%... and raised salaries for everyone who works for the government – but not for the 40% of workers who actually produce goods and services. And guess what? Cuba approaches its Big Bang finale.
Consumer price inflation there is said to be approaching 500% this year. And new revolutionaries gather around Havana… like sharks off the Playa Paraiso… ready to take a bite out of Havana’s aging rulers. More to come…"
"Food Prices Are Rising Aggressively, And Even The
Corporate Media Is Admitting That It Is Only Going To Get Worse"
by Michael Snyder
"Food prices are outrageous now, but they are only going to go higher. Earlier today, I came across an NBC News article entitled “Get ready for higher grocery bills for the rest of the year”. I thought that it was strange that a piece put out by the corporate media sounded like it could have come straight from my website, because I have been sounding the alarm about higher food prices for quite some time. Surprisingly, the NBC News article was generally right on point. Thanks to a variety of factors, food prices have been rising aggressively, and that is going to continue for the foreseeable future.
According to the Labor Department, consumer prices overall were up 0.6 percent from February to March: "Consumer prices shot higher in March, given a boost by a strong economic recovery and year-over-year comparisons to a time when the Covid-19 pandemic was about to throttle the U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The consumer price index rose 0.6% from the previous month but 2.6% from the same period a year ago. The year-over-year gain is the highest since August 2018 and was well above the 1.7% recorded in February."
0.6 percent may not sound like that much, but if you multiply that figure by 12 months you get an annualized rate of 7.2 percent. Of course the government has changed the way the inflation rate is calculated dozens of times over the years, and at this point everyone knows that the official number greatly understates what is really happening in the economy. In fact, John Williams of shadowstats.com says that if the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would be over 10 percent right now. In other words, we have now reached Jimmy Carter levels of inflation.
One of the places where we are really starting to see inflation show up is in food prices. Here are just a few examples: "Before the pandemic began, the national average for a pound of bacon in January 2020 was $4.72. By last month, that price had soared to $5.11, according to exclusive supermarket point of sale data from NielsenIQ. Ground beef is up $5.26 a pound from $5.02. Bread is up $2.66 a loaf from $2.44."
So why are food prices increasing like this? Yahoo News recently posted an article that listed four explanations:
1. Plummeting food production.
2. Transportation tumult.
3. More eating at home.
4. Wild weather.
Moving forward, the pandemic will continue to suppress global food production, commodity prices will likely keep climbing, and increasingly wild weather patterns will certainly cause even more damage to crops. All of these factors are making it more expensive for food companies to operate, and as NBC News has noted, food companies are starting to pass along those costs to consumers: "Issues like higher gas prices, increasing transport costs that get passed on to consumers, especially for items like bread, are only going up as driving increases faster than oil production. So grocery prices are likely to remain on the higher end of estimates for at least the rest of the year, Olvera said. Producers may eventually increase their output in order to capture the heightened demand, but that won’t happen until toward the end of this year, Olvera said."
Of course it isn’t just the United States that is wrestling with these problems. Food prices are actually rising far more rapidly in much of the rest of the world, and we recently learned that global food prices spiked for a tenth month in a row during March: "Global food commodity prices rose in March, marking their tenth consecutive monthly increase, with quotations for vegetable oils and dairy products leading the rise, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported today.
The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of commonly-traded food commodities, averaged 118.5 points in March, 2.1 percent higher than in February and reaching its highest level since June 2014."
Those at the very bottom of the economic food chain are being hurt the most by rising food prices. We have already started to see food riots in some areas, and one relief organization is warning that millions of people in East Africa are now on the verge of starvation: "Over 7 million people across six East African countries are at the cusp of starvation as communities have faced existential threats from violence, flooding, the pandemic and locust infestation, the evangelical humanitarian organization World Vision has warned."
Even during the best of years, we really struggle to feed the entire planet, and 2021 is definitely not going to be a great year for global food production. The good news is that there is still plenty of food in our supermarkets right now, and that means that we have a window of opportunity.
I know that food prices may seem ridiculous, but they aren’t ever going to be any lower than they are right now. I would encourage you to use this window of opportunity to stock up at these relatively low prices, because the price increases are only going to become even more painful as our leaders continue to flood the system with more cash."
"America’s first animatronic president outside of Disney World routinely does a disappearing act every weekend. Where does he go? Does his management team plug him into a recharging station? Does he rest on a catafalque in some sub-basement of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue like one of the fabled undead from the Hollywood crypt classics? Or do they just stuff him into a closet where the rolling podiums and teleprompters are stored?
It’s unclear exactly what his duties were in eight years as vice-president, besides running interference for his busy son, Hunter, who followed the Veep around the world like a Roomba vacuum cleaner picking up nickels and dimes, but Joe did have to answer to the then-Bigger Guy, Barack Obama, and one wonders if that is not still the case. Does he actually meet regularly with go-between Susan Rice, or just wait for instructions, go where he is told to go, and read what has been prepared for him to read?
The executive regime, whatever it actually consists of, has rolled out an impressive first hundred days agenda of orders and acts designed to obliterate whatever remains of an American common culture and a US economy based on the transactions of free individuals. The easiest, and most readily damaging, was to simply reverse the previous administration’s policy of controlling our border with Mexico. All you had to do was order the border agents to do nothing - and let the restless folk to the south hear that the welcome mat was laid out. Voila! An out-of-control border! Just what you want!
It worked so well, it almost became an embarrassment, except that news media which used to function as the nation’s conscience, has turned sociopathic and is incapable of embarrassment or shame as it bombards the confounded public with narratives that, in any other era, would be easily recognized as rank propaganda. For instance, the apparent fib that Veep Kamala Harris has been placed in charge of managing the situation on the border. In the month since her assignment, she has been seen nowhere near the US-Mexican border, and somehow not a single reporter has asked her to account for that.
The other part of that deal, of course, is to make sure that the newcomers here illegally become Democratic Party voters by demolishing any process that would require proof of citizenship for filing a ballot. That is HR 1, the deviously styled “For the People Act,” wending its wicked way through Congress. The proposed law would attempt to abrogate the constitutional prerogative of the fifty states to craft their own election rules. It couldn’t possibly stand up to a Supreme Court review, and may not even survive its journey through the federal legislature. 75 percent of actual Americans polled favor voter ID, probably for the excellent reason that not requiring ID would be insane.
Is the Democratic Party determined to drive the nation insane? Kind of looks like that. They certainly seem bent on fomenting a race war. That would be insane, but the Democratic Party’s will to punish the nation eclipses all its other hopes, dreams, and aims - and such a degree of sadism tends to indicate a mental health problem. Prior to 2020, they had already destroyed at least a dozen US cities via sheer mal-administration, and the George Floyd riots across the country successfully wrecked much of what bad governance plus the Coronavirus lockdowns had left behind.
Wouldn’t you think that things are already bad enough, for instance, in Minneapolis, what with the Derek Chauvin trial about to entertain the defense’s case, and the courthouse secured like Fort Apache? And so, a fresh incident occurred on Sunday involving one Daunte Wright, 20, shot during a traffic stop. Apparently, there was a warrant out for Mr. Wright, meaning he was a suspect in a crime. When the police tried to detain him, he got back into his car against their clear instructions, raising the possible inference that he might be going for a gun. The officer shot him. A riot ensued, of course. In the chaos, some looting occurred. Black Lives Matter turned out in a matter of minutes, along with members of Daunte Wright’s family. Is another martyr being manufactured?
What message do you suppose the Minneapolis city council sent last month when it settled $27-million on the family of George Floyd - before the trial in the matter even began? It looks more and more like a high stakes hustle: Whatever the truth is about an incident that involves the police, the city will burn and large cash settlements await. Calling personal injury attorney Ben Crump….
And so, the riot season has arrived, as if right on schedule. If Minneapolis and other cities start burning again, will Mr. Biden be positioned to ignore it as he’s ignored the now-lawless situation at the border? Will his managers wind him up to inveigh against “white supremacy?” Or have they set a dynamic feedback loop in motion that is fast running beyond their control - making it clear that perhaps nobody is in charge?
Update 2:pm Monday: Minneapolis police release body-cam video of the Daunte Wright traffic stop. Mr. Wright, standing outside his car, disobeys instructions to be taken into custody on outstanding warrant, then slips away from attempt to handcuff him and back into the driver’s seat. Officer on the driver’s side declares intent to use taser, but grabs handgun instead and fires. A lot to sort out there - except the fact that Duante Wright resisted arrest and attempted to escape the scene."
"Clear focus space voyager mix study music with a space style theme. Play during long study sessions, especially if you're feeling stressed or under pressure. Helps to clear your mind of distraction and keep you in a relaxed focused mental state. Includes low-intensity beta and alpha wave isochronic tones plus amplitude entrainment effects embedded into the music.
How does it work? This is a brainwave entrainment music track using isochronic tones combined with music. The music has also been embedded with amplitude entrainment effects, where the music is subtly distorted and vibrates in unison with the same frequency of the isochronic tones. This helps to add further strength to the entrainment effect. This brainwave entrainment session cycles through a frequency range of between 10Hz in Alpha, (which can help with memorization and learning), and up to 14Hz in the Beta range, (which will help with increasing focus and concentration)."
"Will a vaccine to SARS-CoV-2 actually make the problem worse? Although not a certainty, all of the current data says that this prospect is a real possibility that needs to be paid careful attention to. If you stay with me, I’ll explain why.
First, let’s set aside the debate surrounding the topic of whether vaccines work and the negative health consequences due to the components of the vaccine. No matter where you stand on the vaccine issue, I’m not asking anyone to capitulate on this point. I’m just asking that this issue be set aside, because in this instance this argument is completely irrelevant. Even without bringing any other issue into the vaccine debate, a coronavirus vaccine is a highly dangerous undertaking due to a peculiar trojan horse mechanism known as Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). Regardless of someone’s conviction about vaccines, this point needs to be acknowledged. In the remaining portion of this article, I’m going to explain how ADE works and the future perils it may bring.
For a vaccine to work, our immune system needs to be stimulated to produce a neutralizing antibody, as opposed to a non-neutralizing antibody. A neutralizing antibody is one that can recognize and bind to some region (‘epitope’) of the virus, and that subsequently results in the virus either not entering or replicating in your cells.
A non-neutralizing antibody is one that can bind to the virus, but for some reason, the antibody fails to neutralize the infectivity of the virus. This can occur, for example, if the antibody doesn’t bind tightly enough to the virus, or the percentage of the surface area of the virus covered by the antibody is too low, or the concentration of the antibody is not high enough. Basically, there is some type of generic binding of the antibody to the virus, but it fails to neutralize the virus.
In some viruses, if a person harbors a non-neutralizing antibody to the virus, a subsequent infection by the virus can cause that person to elicit a more severe reaction to the virus due to the presence of the non-neutralizing antibody. This is not true for all viruses, only particular ones. This is called Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE), and is a common problem with Dengue Virus, Ebola Virus, HIV, RSV, and the family of coronaviruses. In fact, this problem of ADE is a major reason why many previous vaccine trials for other coronaviruses failed. Major safety concerns were observed in animal models. If ADE occurs in an individual, their response to the virus can be worse than their response if they had never developed an antibody in the first place.
An antibody can be rendered a non-neutralizing antibody simply because it doesn’t bind to the right portion of the virus to neutralize it, or the antibody binds too weakly to the virus. This can also occur if a neutralizing antibody’s concentration falls over time and is now no longer of sufficient concentration to cause neutralization of the virus. In addition, a neutralizing antibody can subsequently transition to non-neutralizing antibody when encountering a different strain of the virus.
What does ADE entail? The exact mechanism of ADE in SARS is not known, but the leading theory is described as follows: In certain viruses, the binding of a non-neutralizing antibody to the virus can direct the virus to enter and infect your immune cells. This occurs through a receptor called FcγRII. FcγRII is expressed on the outside of many tissues of our body, and in particular, in monocyte derived macrophages, which are a type of white blood cell. In other words, the presence of the non-neutralizing antibody now directs the virus to infect cells of your immune system, and these viruses are then able to replicate in these cells and wreak havoc on your immune response. One end of the antibody grabs onto the virus, and the other end of the antibody grabs onto an immune cell. Essentially, the non-neutralizing antibody enables the virus to hitch a ride to infect immune cells. You can see this in the picture above.
This can cause a hyperinflammatory response, a cytokine storm, and a generally dysregulation of the immune system that allows the virus to cause more damage to our lungs and other organs of our body. In addition, new cell types throughout our body are now susceptible to viral infection due to the additional viral entry pathway facilitated by the FcγRII receptor, which is expressed on many different cell types.
What this means is that you can be given a vaccine, which causes your immune system to produce an antibody to the vaccine, and then when your body is actually challenged with the real pathogen, the infection is much worse than if you had not been vaccinated.
Again, this is not seen in all viruses, or even in all strains of a given virus, and there is a great deal that scientists don’t understand about the complete set of factors that dictate when and if ADE may occur. It’s quite likely that genetic factors as well as the health status of the individual may play a role on modulating this response. That being said, there are many studies (in the reference section below) that demonstrate that ADE is a persistent problem with coronaviruses in general, and in particular, with SARS-related viruses. Less is known, of course, with respect to SARS-CoV-2, but the genetic and structural similarities between the SARS-CoV-2 and the other coronaviruses strongly suggests that this risk is real.
ADE has proven to be a serious challenge with coronavirus vaccines, and this is the primary reason many have failed in early in-vitro or animal trials. For example, rhesus macaques who were vaccinated with the Spike protein of the SARS-CoV virus demonstrated severe acute lung injury when challenged with SARS-CoV, while monkeys who were not vaccinated did not. Similarly, mice who were immunized with one of four different SARS-CoV vaccines showed histopathological changes in the lungs with eosinophil infiltration after being challenged with SARS-CoV virus. This did not occur in the controls that had not been vaccinated. A similar problem occurred in the development of a vaccine for FIPV, which is a feline coronavirus.
For a vaccine to work, vaccine developers will need to find a way to circumvent the ADE problem. This will require a very novel solution, and it may not be achievable, or at the very least, predictable. In addition, the vaccine must not induce ADE in subsequent strains of SARS-CoV-2 that emerge over time, or to other endemic coronaviruses that circulate every year and cause the common cold.
A major trigger for ADE is viral mutation. Changes to the amino acid sequence of the Spike Protein (which is the protein on the virus that facilitates entry into our cells via the ACE2 receptor) can cause antigenic drift. What this means is that an antibody that was once neutralizing can become a non-neutralizing antibody because the antigen has slightly changed. Therefore, mutations in the Spike protein that naturally occur with coronaviruses could presumably result in ADE. Since these future strains are not predictable, it is impossible to predict if ADE will become a problem at a future date.
This inherent unpredictability problem is highlighted in the following scenario: A coronavirus vaccine may not be dangerous initially. If the initial testing looks positive, mass vaccination efforts would presumably be administered to a large portion of the population. In the first year or two, it may appear that there is no real safety issue, and over time, a greater percentage of the world population will be vaccinated due to this perceived “safety”. During this interim period, the virus is busy mutating. Eventually, the antibodies that vaccinated individuals have floating around in their bloodstream are now rendered non-neutralizing because they fail to bind to the virus with the same affinity due to the structural change resulting from the mutation. Declining concentrations of the antibody over time would also contribute to this shift towards non-neutralization. When these previously vaccinate people are infected with this different strain of SARS-CoV-2, they could experience a much more severe reaction to the virus.
Ironically, in this scenario, this vaccine made the virus more pathogenic rather than less pathogenic. This is not something that vaccine producers would be able predict or test for with any level of real confidence at the outset, and it would only become evident at a later time.
If and when this does occur, who will be liable? Does this vaccine industry know about this problem? The answer is yes, they do. Quoting a Nature Biotechnology news article published on June 5th, 2020: ““It’s important to talk about it [ADE],” says Gregory Glenn, president of R&D at Novavax, which launched its COVID-19 vaccine trial in May. But “we can’t be overly cautious. People are dying. So we need to be aggressive here.””
And from the same article: “ADE “is a genuine concern,” says virologist Kevin Gilligan, a senior consultant with Biologics Consulting, who advises thorough safety studies. “Because if the gun is jumped, and a vaccine is widely distributed that is disease enhancing, that would be worse than actually not doing any vaccination at all.””
The vaccine industry is aware of this problem. The degree to which they are taking it seriously, is another question. While many vaccine developers are aware of the problem, some of them are approaching the problem with more Laissez-faire attitude. They see this problem as “theoretical,” and not guaranteed, with the idea that animal trials should rule out the potential of ADE in humans.
As a side note, it is not ethical to conduct “challenge” studies in humans. However, challenge studies are conducted in animals. In other words, a clinical trial for a vaccine does not include administering the vaccine to a person, and then exposing this person to the virus post-vaccination to monitor their reaction. In clinical trials, humans are only given the vaccine, they are not “challenged” with the virus afterward. In animal studies, they do conduct a challenge test to observe how the animals respond to being infected with the actual virus after being vaccinated.
Will conducting animal studies solve the issue and remove the risk? Not at all. Anne De Groot, CEO of EpiVax argues that testing for vaccine safety in primates does not guarantee safety in humans, mainly because primates express different major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, which alters epitope presentation and the immune response. Animals and humans are similar, but they are also very different. In addition, as pointed out above, the development of different viral strains in subsequent years could present a major problem not noticeable during the initial safety trials in either humans or animals.
What about unvaccinated people who are naturally infected with the virus and develop antibodies? Could these people experience ADE to a future strain of SARS-CoV-2? The ADE response is actually much more complicated than the picture I outlined above. There are other competing and non-competing factors in our immune system that contribute to the ADE response, many of which are not fully understood. Part of that equation is a variety of different types of T-cells that modulate this response, and these T-Cells respond to other portions (epitopes) of the virus. In a vaccine, our body is normally presented with a small part of the virus (like the Spike protein), or a modified (attenuated or dead) virus which is more benign. A vaccine does not expose the entirety of our immune system to the actual virus.
These types of vaccines will only elicit antibodies that recognize the portion of the virus which is present in the vaccine. The other portions of the virus are not represented in the antibody pool. In this scenario, it is much more likely that the vaccine-induced antibodies can be rendered as non-neutralizing antibodies, because the entire virus is not coated in antibodies, only the portion that was used to develop the vaccine.
In a real infection, our immune system is exposed to every nook and cranny of the entire virus, and as such, our immune system develops a panacea of antibodies that recognize different portions of the virus and, therefore, coat more of the virus and neutralize it. In addition, our immune system develops T-Cell responses to hundreds of different peptide epitopes across the virus; whereas in the vaccine the plethora of these T-Cell responses are absent. Researchers are already aware that the T-Cell response plays a cooperative role in either the development of, or absence of, the ADE response.
Based on these differences and the skewed immunological response which is inherent with vaccines, I believe that the risk of ADE is an order of magnitude greater in a vaccine-primed immune system rather than a virus-primed immune system. This will certainly become more apparent as COVID-19 progresses over the years, but the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the vaccine industry to demonstrate that ADE will not rear its ugly head in the near term or the far term. Once a vaccine is administered and people develop antibodies to some misrepresentation of the virus, it cannot be reversed. Again, this is a problem that could manifest itself at a later date.
Although this article focused on the problem of ADE, it is not the only pathway or mechanism that could present a problem for people being infected after vaccination. Another pathway is governed by Th2 immunopathology, in which a defective T-cell response initiates an allergic inflammation reaction. A second pathway is based on the development of faulty antibodies that form immune complexes, which then activate the complement system a consequently damage the airways. These pathways are also potential risks for SARS-CoV-2.
Right now, the fatality rate of the virus is estimated to be approximately 0.26%, and this number seems to be dropping as the virus is naturally attenuating itself through the population. It would be a great shame to vaccinate the entire population against a virus with this low of a fatality rate, especially considering the considerable risk presented by ADE. I believe this risk of developing ADE in a vaccinated individual will be much greater than 0.26%, and, therefore, the vaccine stands to make the problem worse, not better. It would be the biggest blunder of the century to see the fatality rate of this virus increase in the years to come because of our sloppy, haphazard, rushed efforts to develop a vaccine with such a low threshold of safety testing and the prospect of ADE lurking in the shadows. I would hope (and this is a big hope), that this vaccine WILL NOT BE MANDATORY.
Hopefully, you now know a little more about the topic of Antibody Dependent Enhancement, and the real, unpredictable dangers of a coronavirus vaccine. In the end, your health should be your decision, not some bureaucrat’s that doesn’t know the first thing about molecular biology."
"The housing market madness is currently marking a clear shift in buyers' mood and sentiment as the health crisis drags on. Whereas the Fed plunged mortgage rates to record lows and the federal government delayed the foreclosure wave via forbearances, a mass exodus from major metro areas due to the growing socio-economic chaos resulted in an unprecedented demand for new homes and a fierce bidding war. According to several housing experts, homes are being snatched up right after being listed, and buyers' euphoria is quickly draining the market's supply and plunging inventory to ultra-low levels. A recent study shows the U.S. housing market is months away from completely running out of supply. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve policies continue to take the market towards another enormous housing bubble as prices explode all across the nation. However, the threat of rising mortgage rates, inflationary spikes, and a complex affordability crisis can lead to a catastrophic housing market crash that would sharply collapse property values just as seen during the mid-2000s bubble burst. And that's what we're going to expose in this video.
The equation of low inventory plus low mortgage rates has resulted in skyrocketing home prices, making it increasingly harder for Americans to afford a home. Now, first-time buyers are facing extra pressure to enter the market, as the cited factors have set the stage for a speculative and extremely competitive market. Bidding wars are being reported all across the country, oftentimes with buyers making all-cash offers with no contingencies whatsoever. Daryl Fairweather, Redfin's chief economist, noted "new listings are getting snatched up right away," adding that nearly 50% of US homes are selling within a week of hitting the market.
In a fresh CNN Business report, a 40-year veteran of the real estate industry and the CEO of KB Home, Jeffrey Mezger, said homebuyers should be careful as this is the most highly leveraged housing market he has ever seen. "It's crazy. There is no inventory," exclaimed Mezger, noting that the rapid pace of home price appreciation is a clear evidence the housing bubble is nearing a dangerous bust. The same report features the story of Ellen Coleman, a real estate agent who works for RE/MAX Realty Centre. She recently listed a fixer-upper in suburban Washington, DC for $275,000, and within three days, she had 88 offers.
The 1,800 square-foot home was sold for $460,000, roughly a 70% surge from the asking price. As housing becomes unaffordable for larger swaths of the population and the market seems to be overheating, Redfin's chief economist Fairweather remembers that this scenario is something "we've seen before, and it never ends well". In essence, the US housing market is facing a tricky dilemma. Either home prices will hit a wall and drop from there, or demand will start waning and, as a result, it will deflate the housing bubble. In any of both cases, it means that a correction has to occur as the current valuations are out of the reality of most consumers. That's why experts say all signs are pointing to a fast-approaching housing market crash.
Every day it goes by, the inventory crisis worsens and, with builders unable to build fast enough while more and more potential homebuyers battle over a smaller share of listed homes, a new JPMorgan study suggested that it could take about two months to exhaust the entire supply of existing single-family homes and approximately five months of new single-family-homes at the current sales pace. According to a National Association of Home Builders survey, 96% of builders surveyed reported building materials as the top challenge in 2021, up from just 66% in 2020. The main culprit is lumber. The material has been so scarce, prices have soared almost 200%, adding over $25,000 to the cost of a new home.
At this point, there is no doubt current housing valuations are based on misconceptions that distort reality. The truth is that all asset bubbles artificially inflated by the Federal Reserve throughout the past year won't resist a sudden increase in interest rates. In other words, it will not only trigger a devastating housing market crash, and lead property values to experience a sharp drop, but create big risks to the economy too, as homeowners become delinquent while watching their main asset collapse."
“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the below gorgeously detailed image was taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch.
The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”
"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on."
"My wisdom is simple," begins Gustav Adolph Ekdahl, at the final celebratory family gathering of Ingmar Bergman's crowning epic “Fanny and Alexander.” I saw the movie in the early 1980s when it had its U.S. theater release. Now I have just watched the five-hour-long original version made for Swedish television. Whew!
But back to that speech by the gaily philandering Gustav, now the patriarch of the Ekdahl clan and uncle to Fanny and Alexander. The family has gathered for the double christening of Fanny and Alexander's new half-sister and Gustav's child by his mistress Maj. A dark chapter of family history has come to an end, involving a clash between two world views, one- the Ekdahl's- focussed on the pleasures of the here and now, and the other- that of Lutheran Bishop Edvard Vergerus, Fanny and Alexander's stepfather- a stern and joyless anticipation of the hereafter. It is not the habit of Ekdahls to concern themselves with matters of grand consequence, Gustav tells the assembled guests. "We must live in the little world. We will be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it."
The little world. I love that phrase. This world, here, now. This world of family and friends and newborn infants and trees and flowers and rainstorms and- oh yes, cognac and stolen kisses and tumbles in the hay. The Ekdahl's are a theatrical family; we will leave it to the actors and actresses to give us our supernatural shivers, says Gustav. "So it shall be," he says. "Let us be kind, and generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world."
