So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, February 3, 2023
"Food Shortages Are Starting To Become Quite Serious All Over The Planet"
"Food Shortages Are Starting To Become
Quite Serious All Over The Planet"
by Michael Snyder
"The worst case scenario that many of the experts feared is starting to play out right in front of our eyes. Throughout 2022, I repeatedly warned my regular readers that there were all sorts of indications that the emerging global food crisis would go to entirely new level in 2023, and that is precisely what is happening. In response to tightening supplies of food, prices are surging all over the planet and the number of desperately hungry people is exploding. Unfortunately, this crisis is not going to be just temporary. As I will explain at the end of this article, the global nightmare that we are facing is inevitably going to intensify in the years ahead.
Most of us in the western world simply do not understand how badly conditions have already deteriorated in much of the world. For example, Reuters is admitting that the hunger crisis in Africa has now become “bigger and more complex than the continent has ever seen”…"Across Africa, from east to west, people are experiencing a food crisis that is bigger and more complex than the continent has ever seen, say diplomats and humanitarian workers." Please let that sink in for a moment. There have been many famines in Africa in the past, but things have never been as bad as they are right now.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East a severe shortage of wheat is forcing many Pakistanis to wait in line for hours “to receive a single bag”… "Pakistan is currently suffering from skyrocketing prices and a shortage of wheat flour, with people waiting in line for hours to receive a single bag." Would you wait in line for hours for one bag of flour? If you were desperately hungry you would.
In South America, seemingly endless civil unrest has intensified the very serious shortages that are happening in Peru…"As the anti-government protests in Peru show no sign of ending, the country is currently facing a shortage of basic products including food items and fuel."
And on the other side of the globe, Australians are growing increasingly frustrated about the very painful potato shortage that has gripped that nation…"Potatoes are among Australia’s favourite vegetables. However, we are facing a shortage of processed potatoes, especially of frozen chips. Coles introduced a two-item limit for shoppers seeking frozen potato products. Fish and chip businesses are under pressure and some are outraged McDonald’s is launching a new potato product in the middle of a crisis."
In previous decades, there have been times when there have been localized famines in various parts of the world. But what we are facing now is global. According to the New York Times, food shortages are “causing intense pain across Africa, Asia and the Americas”…“We’re dealing now with a massive food insecurity crisis,” Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said last month at a summit with African leaders in Washington. “It’s the product of a lot of things, as we all know,” he said, “including Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”
The food shortages and high prices are causing intense pain across Africa, Asia and the Americas. U.S. officials are especially worried about Afghanistan and Yemen, which have been ravaged by war. Egypt, Lebanon and other big food-importing nations are finding it difficult to pay their debts and other expenses because costs have surged. Even in wealthy countries like the United States and Britain, soaring inflation driven in part by the war’s disruptions has left poorer people without enough to eat.
Have I convinced you yet? This is serious. Here in the United States, food prices continue to escalate to frightening levels. For example, the price of orange juice just skyrocketed to a brand new record high because it is being projected that Florida citrus production will hit the lowest level since 1945…"OJ futures have hit a new high, surging 10 cents or 4.56% to $2.292/lb, surpassing the 2016 record of $2.2585, due to limited supply. The USDA predicts Florida’s citrus production will reach 44.5 million boxes this year, which could result in the state’s smallest orange harvest since 1945. This is due to “greening disease” and hurricane damage in Florida’s citrus groves." In 1945, there were 139 million people living in the United States. Today, the population of the country has risen to 329 million. So there are far less oranges per person now.
The size of the national cattle herd is also shrinking…"The latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture cattle-inventory report on Tuesday showed 89.3 million cattle as of Jan. 1, down 3% from a year ago. The decline wasn’t unexpected and was in line with a Bloomberg survey." This means that beef prices are going to continue to go higher and higher.
You could try to switch to chicken or turkey, but thanks to the bird flu pandemic they certainly aren’t inexpensive either. At this point, the bird flu has already killed more than 58 million chickens and turkeys in the United States. If that wasn’t bad enough, now a lot of chicken farmers around the country are reporting that their hens have suddenly stopped laying eggs. This is something that Tucker Carlson recently discussed…"Now healthy hens lay eggs on a regular basis, every 24 to 26 hours. But suddenly, chicken owners all over the country – not all of them, but a lot of them – are reporting they’re not getting any eggs or as many. So what’s causing that? Clearly, something is causing that. Some have concluded their chicken feed may be responsible."
Egg prices have already shot up to a level that most people never dreamed would be possible, and this is creating quite a bit of panic. More Americans than ever before are suddenly interested in raising their own chickens, and this has sparked quite a buying frenzy at local hatcheries…"Google search interest in “raising chickens” has jumped markedly from a year ago. The shift is part of a broader phenomenon: A small but rapidly growing slice of the American population has become interested in growing and raising food at home, a trend that was nascent before the pandemic and that has been invigorated by the shortages it spurred.
“As there are more and more shortages, it’s driving more people to want to raise their own food,” Ms. Stevenson observed on a January afternoon, as 242 callers to the hatchery sat on hold, presumably waiting to stock up on their own chicks and chick-adjacent accessories."
Unfortunately, everything that I have shared in this article so far is just the tip of the iceberg. That is because global food supplies are going to continue to get tighter in the years ahead no matter what we do now. If we suddenly stopped using all fertilizer immediately, we would only be able to feed about half the world. So the production of fertilizer is absolutely critical.
Unfortunately, almost all of the phosphorus that we use in our fertilizers comes from “non-renewable phosphate rock”, and 85 percent of the remaining supply is located in just five countries…"Without phosphorus food cannot be produced, since all plants and animals need it to grow. Put simply: if there is no phosphorus, there is no life. As such, phosphorus-based fertilisers – it is the “P” in “NPK” fertiliser – have become critical to the global food system.
Most phosphorus comes from non-renewable phosphate rock and it cannot be synthesised artificially. All farmers therefore need access to it, but 85% of the world’s remaining high-grade phosphate rock is concentrated in just five countries (some of which are “geopolitically complex”): Morocco, China, Egypt, Algeria and South Africa."
As supplies of non-renewable phosphate rock continue to get tighter and tighter, global food supplies will continue to get tighter and tighter. Eventually there will simply not be enough non-renewable phosphate rock to go around, and at point we will be in all sorts of trouble. The kind of horrifying global famine that I have been relentlessly warning about has become inevitable. It is just a matter of time. I would encourage you to learn how to grow your own food now, because we are moving into times that will be extremely “interesting” indeed."
Jim Kunstler, "Lose-Lose"
"Lose-Lose"
by Jim Kunstler
“The White House has taken the entire West in such a direction and speed of triumphalism, arrogance and “egregious” imbecility that there is no going back or reversal possible without a total defeat of the official narrative and the consequent eternal shame.” -Hugo Dionisio
"The New York Times - indicted this week as a chronic conveyer of untruths by no less than their supposed ally, The Columbia Journalism Review - is lying to you again this morning. This whopper is an artful diversion from the reality on-the-ground that Ukraine is just about finished in this tragic and idiotic conflict staged by the geniuses behind their play-thing President “Joe Biden.” By the way, it’s not a coincidence that Ukraine and “JB” are going down at the same time. The two organisms form a symbiont: a matched pair of mutual parasites feeding off each other, swapping each other’s toxic exudations, and growing delirious on their glide path to a late winter crash.
The point of the war, you recall, is “to weaken Russia” (so said DoD Sec’y Lloyd Austin), even to bust it up into little geographic tatters to our country’s advantage - that is, America’s dominance in global affairs, and especially the supremacy of the US dollar in global trade settlements.
The result of the war so far has been the opposite of that objective. US sanctions made Russia stronger by shifting its oil exports to more reliable Asian customers. Kicking Russia out of the SWIFT global payments system prompted the BRIC countries to build their own alternative trade settlement system. Cutting off Russia from trade with Western Civ has stimulated the process of import replacement (i.e., Russia making more of the stuff it used to buy from Europe). Confiscating Russia’s off-shore dollar assets has alerted the rest of the world to dump their dollar assets (especially US Treasury bonds) before they, too, get mugged. Nice going, Victoria Nuland, Tony Blinken, and the rest of the gang at the Foggy Bottom genius factory.
All of which raises the question: who is liable to bust up into tatters first, the USA or Russia? I commend to you Dmitry Orlov’s seminal work, "Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects, Revised & Updated." For those of you not paying attention the past thirty-odd years, Russia, incorporated as the Soviet Union, collapsed in 1991. The USSR was a bold experiment based on the peculiar and novel ill-effects of industrialism, especially gross economic inequality. Alas, the putative remedy for that, advanced by Karl Marx, was a despotic system of pretending that individual humans had no personal aspirations of their own.
That business model could be reduced to the comic aphorism: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. It failed and the USSR gurgled down history’s drain. Russia reemerged from the dust, minus many of its Eurasian outlands. Remarkably little blood was shed in the process. Mr. Orlov’s book points to some very interesting set-ups that softened the landing. There was no private property in the USSR, so when it collapsed, nobody was evicted or foreclosed from where they lived. Very few people had cars in the USSR, so the city centers were still intact and people could get around on buses, trams, and trains. The food system had been botched for decades by low-incentive collectivism, but the Russian people were used to planting gardens - even city dwellers, who had plots out-of-town - and it tided them over during the years of hardship before the country managed to reorganize.
Compare that to America’s prospects. In an economic crisis, Americans will have their homes foreclosed out from under them, or will be subject to eviction from rentals. The USA has been tragically built-out on a suburban sprawl template that will be useless without cars and with little public transport. Cars, of course, are subject to repossession for non-payment of contracted loans. The American food system is based on manufactured microwavable cheese snacks, chicken nuggets, and frozen pizzas produced by giant companies. These items can’t be grown in home gardens. Many Americans don’t know the first thing about growing their own food, or what to do with it after it’s harvested.
There’s another difference between the fall of the USSR and the collapse underway in the USA. Underneath all the economic perversities of Soviet life, Russia still had a national identity and a coherent culture. The USA has tossed its national identity on the garbage barge of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which is actually just a hustle aimed at extracting what remains from the diminishing stock of productive activity and giving the plunder to a mob of “intersectional” complainers - e.g. the City of San Francisco’s preposterous new plan to award $5-million “reparation” payments to African-American denizens of the city, where slavery never existed.
As for culture, consider that the two biggest cultural producers in this land are the pornography and video game industries. The drug business might be a close third, but most of that action is off-the-books, so it’s hard to tell. So much for the so-called “arts.” Our political culture verges on totally degenerate, but that is too self-evident to belabor, and the generalized management failures of our polity are a big part of what’s bringing us down - most particularly the failure to hold anyone in power accountable for their blunders and turpitudes.
This might change, at least a little bit, as the oppositional House of Representatives commences hearings on an array of disturbing matters. Meanwhile, be wary of claims in The New York Times and other propaganda organs that our Ukraine project is a coming up a big win, and that the racketeering operations of the Biden family are a right-wing conspiracy theory. These two pieces of the conundrum known as reality are blowing up in our country’s face. It will be hard not to notice."
"Shopping At Ollie's! Bargain Hunting, Checking Prices!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 2/3/23:
"Shopping At Ollie's! Bargain Hunting, Checking Prices!"
"In today's vlog we are at Ollie's, and are seeking out some bargains on grocery items. With massive price increases continuing at grocery stores, we are searching for some good deals during these times of high inflation. We will go over quality, and prices of items that we shop for in the store."
Comments here:
Thursday, February 2, 2023
"Big Surprise is Coming..."
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 2/2/23:
"Big Surprise is Coming..."
Comments here:
"Great Retail Collapse: The Devastating Impact Of Mass Store Closings In America's Biggest Chains"
Full screen recommended.
"Great Retail Collapse: The Devastating Impact
Of Mass Store Closings In America's Biggest Chains"
By Epic Economist
"The U.S. retail industry has been undergoing some drastic changes in recent years. We have lost thousands of iconic stores and seen many popular brands disappearing from our economic landscape, in a phenomenon known as the “retail apocalypse.” Now, the latest reports show that the ongoing recession is forcing some of the biggest retailers in America, including names like Nike, to conduct mass store closings once again as they rush to cut costs and boost their profit margins before consumer demand declines even further in the months ahead. Industry insiders expect retail bankruptcies to soar this year, with many companies being overwhelmed by an oversupply crisis and the slowest sales growth recorded since 2008.
In recent weeks, some retail favorites have been closing stores in droves as the retail apocalypse comes back with a vengeance. The combination of declining sales, rising operational costs, slower foot traffic, and changing consumer patterns are pushing many popular brands to shutter brick-and-mortar locations before a full-blown recession wreck havoc on their bottom lines as they attempt to weather the storm that is ahead.
Grocery chains like Piggly Wiggly and IGA Supermarkets announced in January that they will start closing multiple locations for good very soon. Meanwhile, in the apparel sector, things are looking ugly. With Americans cutting back on discretionary purchases, many brands are watching sales collapse and they are being left with no alternative other than closing up shop. The scenario is looking so bleak that even consolidated brands like Nike are closing dozens of stores, starting with locations in Ohio, Seattle, and New York City, the company confirmed to The Enquirer. Nike’s inventory glut sent the company’s stock to the lowest level in 20 years. Before the health crisis, the sports retailer was already experiencing a cash flow crisis, and tightening credit conditions are certainly not helping the situation.
Many other struggling chains are at heightened risk of bankruptcy as consumer spending softens. The new wave of turbulence in the sector comes as the end of 2022 has seen an uptick in loan defaults from multiple retailers. But this time around, industry experts say that America’s classic department stores are at the highest risk of going under.
Reports show that in the past seven years around 40 percent of the nation's department stores have closed. A new forecast shared by UBS analysts warns that national chains will be forced to shutter some brick-and-mortar locations to better position themselves for the recession that is at our door, – “even those that survived the combined challenges of the retail apocalypse, which devastated the industry from 2017 to 2020, and the pandemic shutdowns. That's because months of inflation and a looming recession are eating into sales at mid-tier retailers,” the analysts highlighted.
With inflation cooling slowly, the outlook for mid-tier retailers is dim. "I suspect there's going to be a whole round of restructures, bankruptcies, all sorts of upheaval, as we approach the end of the year into next year," the director of retail studies at Columbia University, Mark Cohen, said to Insider. What lies ahead for American retail remains shrouded in darkness, and the impact of the retail apocalypse will haunt us for generations to come. This crisis has cast a long shadow over America, and its consequences will be felt far into the future, leaving us to ponder the grim reality of a world without physical retail stores."
Comments here:
"Prepare For Emergency; Parents Paying Your Bills"
Jeremiah Babe, 2/2/23:
"Prepare For Emergency; Parents Paying Your Bills"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Galaxies don't normally look like this. NGC 6745 actually shows the results of two galaxies that have been colliding for only hundreds of millions of years. Just off the above digitally sharpened photograph to the lower right is the smaller galaxy, moving away. The larger galaxy, pictured above, used to be a spiral galaxy but now is damaged and appears peculiar. Gravity has distorted the shapes of the galaxies.
Although it is likely that no stars in the two galaxies directly collided, the gas, dust, and ambient magnetic fields do interact directly. In fact, a knot of gas pulled off the larger galaxy on the lower right has now begun to form stars. NGC 6745 spans about 80 thousand light-years across and is located about 200 million light-years away."
“Mirror Neurons: Mirrors In Your Brain”
“Mirror Neurons: Mirrors In Your Brain”
by Casey Kazan
“A recent paradigm-shattering discovery in neuroscience shows how our minds share actions, emotions, and experience - what we commonly call "the monkey see, monkey do" experience. When we see someone laugh, cry, show disgust, or experience pain, in some sense, we share that emotion. When we see someone in distress, we share that distress. When we see a great actor, musician or sportsperson perform at the peak of their abilities, it can feel like we are experiencing just something of what they are experiencing.
Only recently, however, with the discover of mirror neurons, has it become clear just how this powerful sharing of experience is realized within the human brain. In the early 1990's Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma discovered that some neurons had an amazing property: they responded not only when a subject performed a given action, but also when the subject observed someone else performing that same action. These results had a deep impact on cognitive neuroscience, leading the the world's leading experts to predict that 'mirror neurons would do for psychology what DNA did for biology'.
Vilayanur Ramachandran is a neurologist at the University of California-San Diego and co-author of "Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind" writes that "Giacomo Rizzolatti at the University of Parma has elegantly explored the properties of neurons- the so-called "mirror" neurons, or "monkey see, monkey do" neurons. His research indicates that any given cell in this region will fire when a test monkey performs a single, highly specific action with its hand: pulling, pushing, tugging, picking up, grasping, etc. In addition, it appears that different neurons fire in response to different actions."
The astonishing fact is that any given mirror neuron will also fire when the monkey in question observes another monkey (or even the experimenter) performing the same action. "With knowledge of these neurons, you have the basis for understanding a host of very enigmatic aspects of the human mind: imitation learning, intentionality, "mind reading," empathy- even the evolution of language." Ramachandran writes.
"Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds."
Mirror neurons may also help explain the emergence of language, a problem that has puzzled scholars since the time of Charles Darwin, he adds. "Is language ability based on a specially purposed language organ that emerged suddenly 'out of the blue,' as suggested by Noam Chomsky and his disciples? Or did language evolve from an earlier, gesture-based protolanguage? No one knows for sure, but a key piece of the puzzle is Rizzolatti's observation that the ventral premotor area may be a homologue of "Broca's area"- a brain center associated with the expressive and syntactic aspects of language. Rizzolatti and Michael Arbib of the University of Southern California suggest that mirror neurons may also be involved in miming lip and tongue movements, an ability that may present the crucial missing link between vision and language."
To test his idea, Ramachandran tested four Broca's aphasia patients - individuals with lesions in their Broca's areas. He presented them with the sound of the syllable "da," spliced to a videotape of a person whose lips were actually producing the sound "ba." Normally, people hear the "da" as "ba" - the so-called "McGurk effect" - because vision dominates over hearing. To his surprise, he writes, "we found that the Broca's patients did not experience this illusion; they heard the syllable correctly as 'da.' Even though their lesions were located in the left frontal region of their brains, they had a visual problem- they ignored the lip movements. Our patients also had great difficulty with simple lip reading. This experiment provides a link between Rizzolatti's mirror neurons and the evolution of human language, and thus it calls into question the strictly modular view of language, which is currently popular."
Based on his research, Ramachandran predicted that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: "they will provide a unifying framework and possibly even explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments."
Only recently, however, with the discover of mirror neurons, has it become clear just how this powerful sharing of experience is realized within the human brain. In the early 1990's Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma discovered that some neurons had an amazing property: they responded not only when a subject performed a given action, but also when the subject observed someone else performing that same action. These results had a deep impact on cognitive neuroscience, leading the the world's leading experts to predict that 'mirror neurons would do for psychology what DNA did for biology'.
Vilayanur Ramachandran is a neurologist at the University of California-San Diego and co-author of "Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind" writes that "Giacomo Rizzolatti at the University of Parma has elegantly explored the properties of neurons- the so-called "mirror" neurons, or "monkey see, monkey do" neurons. His research indicates that any given cell in this region will fire when a test monkey performs a single, highly specific action with its hand: pulling, pushing, tugging, picking up, grasping, etc. In addition, it appears that different neurons fire in response to different actions."
The astonishing fact is that any given mirror neuron will also fire when the monkey in question observes another monkey (or even the experimenter) performing the same action. "With knowledge of these neurons, you have the basis for understanding a host of very enigmatic aspects of the human mind: imitation learning, intentionality, "mind reading," empathy- even the evolution of language." Ramachandran writes.
"Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds."
Mirror neurons may also help explain the emergence of language, a problem that has puzzled scholars since the time of Charles Darwin, he adds. "Is language ability based on a specially purposed language organ that emerged suddenly 'out of the blue,' as suggested by Noam Chomsky and his disciples? Or did language evolve from an earlier, gesture-based protolanguage? No one knows for sure, but a key piece of the puzzle is Rizzolatti's observation that the ventral premotor area may be a homologue of "Broca's area"- a brain center associated with the expressive and syntactic aspects of language. Rizzolatti and Michael Arbib of the University of Southern California suggest that mirror neurons may also be involved in miming lip and tongue movements, an ability that may present the crucial missing link between vision and language."
To test his idea, Ramachandran tested four Broca's aphasia patients - individuals with lesions in their Broca's areas. He presented them with the sound of the syllable "da," spliced to a videotape of a person whose lips were actually producing the sound "ba." Normally, people hear the "da" as "ba" - the so-called "McGurk effect" - because vision dominates over hearing. To his surprise, he writes, "we found that the Broca's patients did not experience this illusion; they heard the syllable correctly as 'da.' Even though their lesions were located in the left frontal region of their brains, they had a visual problem- they ignored the lip movements. Our patients also had great difficulty with simple lip reading. This experiment provides a link between Rizzolatti's mirror neurons and the evolution of human language, and thus it calls into question the strictly modular view of language, which is currently popular."
Based on his research, Ramachandran predicted that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: "they will provide a unifying framework and possibly even explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments."
- http://www.dailygalaxy.com/
oRelated:
"The Mind's Mirror", Excerpts
"For years, such experiences have puzzled psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers, who've wondered why we react at such a gut level to other people's actions. How do we understand, so immediately and instinctively, their thoughts, feelings and intentions?"
"The mirror neurons could help explain how and why we "read" other people's minds and feel empathy for them. If watching an action and performing that action can activate the same parts of the brain in monkeys- down to a single neuron- then it makes sense that watching an action and performing an action could also elicit the same feelings in people."
"This neural mechanism is involuntary and automatic," he says. "With it we don't have to think about what other people are doing or feeling, we simply know. It seems we're wired to see other people as similar to us, rather than different," Gallese says. "At the root, as humans we identify the person we're facing as someone like ourselves."
The Poet: William Stafford, ”Today”
”Today”
“The ordinary miracles begin. Somewhere
a signal arrives: “Now,” and the rays
come down. A tomorrow has come. Open
your hands, lift them: morning rings
all the doorbells; porches are cells for prayer.
Religion has touched your throat. Not the same now,
you could close your eyes and go on full of light.
And it is already begun, the chord
that will shiver glass, the song full of time
bending above us. Outside, a sign:
a bird intervenes; the wings tell the air,
“Be warm.” No one is out there, but a giant
has passed through town, widening streets, touching
the ground, shouldering away the stars.”
- William Stafford
"Never, Ever Forget..."
"Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how you let them become."
- Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls "
"The Pain is Not Going to Stop"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 2/2/23:
"The Pain is Not Going to Stop"
"Things are going to get worse for the average person. The pain is going to continue. The Fed just raised interest rate a quarter of a percent. That may seem good to you but Jerome Powell just said that this is going to get much worse and we are going to continue to have a raise interest rates."
Comments here:
o
Related:
"Know What's Weird?"
"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change,
but pretty soon... everything's different."
- Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbes"
"A Panicked Empire Tries To Make Russia 'An Offer It Can't Refuse'" (Excerpt)
"A Panicked Empire Tries To Make
Russia 'An Offer It Can't Refuse'"
By Pepe Escobar
Excerpt: "Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. But why should Moscow take indirect proposals seriously, especially on the eve of its new military advance and while it is in the winning seat?
Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall. Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.
So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front. As confirmed by a high-level US establishment source, a new directive on NATO vs. Russia in Ukraine was relayed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken, in terms of actual power, is nothing but a messenger boy for the Straussian neocons and neoliberals who actually run US foreign policy. The secretary of state was instructed to relay the new directive – a sort of message to the Kremlin – via mainstream print media, which was promptly published by the Washington Post.
In the elite US mainstream media division of labor, the New York Times is very close to the State Department. and the Washington Post to the CIA. In this case though the directive was too important, and needed to be relayed by the paper of record in the imperial capital. It was published as an Op-Ed (behind paywall).
The novelty here is that for the first time since the start of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the Americans are actually proposing a variation of the “offer you can’t refuse” classic, including some concessions which may satisfy Russia’s security imperatives.
Crucially, the US offer totally bypasses Kiev, once again certifying that this is a war against Russia conducted by Empire and its NATO minions – with the Ukrainians as mere expandable proxies."
Full, highly recommended article is here:
o
A Must-Read Related:
Scott Ritter, "Iran & Russia Alliance; West Seeks To Destabilize Iran"
Scott Ritter, 2/2/23:
"Iran & Russia Alliance; West Seeks To Destabilize Iran"
"We are joined by Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian American academic and political analyst. He was born in Richmond, Virginia and spent the first 13 years of his life in the United States. Marandi is a graduate of the University of Tehran and Birmingham University (UK). Marandi is also the former head of the North American Studies program at the University of Tehran. He is currently a professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the university and an adviser to the Iranian nuclear negotiations team in Vienna."
Comments here:
Gonzalo Lira, "The West Is Now Impotent In The Ukraine Conflict"
Gonzalo Lira, 2/1/23:
"The West Is Now Impotent In The Ukraine Conflict"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "Critical Alert! Central Banks Have Begun A New Phase"
Gregory Mannarino, 2/2/23:
"Critical Alert! Central Banks Have Begun A New Phase,
They Are Literally Buying It All"
Comments here:
o
"Successful crime is dignified with the name of virtue;
the good become the slaves of the wicked;
might makes right; fear silences the power of the law."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Shopping At Kroger! More Price Increases! Checking Sales!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 2/2/23:
"Shopping At Kroger!
More Price Increases! Checking Sales!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
"Exactly What We Would Expect If A Recession Was Beginning – Sales Are Down Throughout The Economy"
"Exactly What We Would Expect If A Recession Was
Beginning – Sales Are Down Throughout The Economy"
by Michael Snyder
"All of the things that we would expect to see at the start of a major economic downturn are happening. Retail sales are falling, auto sales have been way down, and the housing market is starting to crash like it did in 2008. But unlike the last recession, we are also dealing with a raging inflation crisis, and this is one of the main reasons why real disposable income declined at the fastest rate that we have seen since the Great Depression last year. At this point, close to two-thirds of the entire country is living paycheck to paycheck, and more than half the country cannot even afford to pay an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense. We are in very dangerous territory, because most U.S. consumers are tapped out.
If we really are in the early chapters of a new recession, we would expect to see sales dropping throughout the economy, and that is precisely what is happening right now…"Retail purchases have fallen in three of the past four months. Spending on services, including rent, haircuts and the bulk of bills, was flat in December, after adjusting for inflation, the worst monthly reading in nearly a year. Sales of existing homes in the U.S. fell last year to their lowest level since 2014 as mortgage rates rose. The auto industry posted its worst sales year in more than a decade".
Everyone can see what is taking place. The economy is really slowing down and there are very dark clouds on the horizon. The Wall Street Journal recently asked a group of “business and academic economists” if a recession was coming within the next 12 months, and 61 percent of them said yes…"Consumer spending accounts for roughly 70% of the economy. A downshifting consumer is a key reason that business and academic economists polled by The Wall Street Journal, on average, put the probability of a recession in the next 12 months at 61%."
Of course we won’t know whether or not we are officially in a recession at this moment until several months from now. But all the signs indicate that economic conditions have already deteriorated quite significantly. For example, demand for cardboard boxes declined “sharply” during the fourth quarter…"Demand and output for cardboard boxes and other packaging material fell sharply in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to data released by the American Forest & Paper Association and Fibre Box Association on Friday."
It’s the latest indicator that consumer demand is eroding following the pandemic. Dwindling savings, inflation, rising interest rates and fears of a recession may all be swaying consumers to spend less. To me, this is one of the clearest indicators of what is really going on in our economy. When there is lots of economic activity, there is lots of demand for cardboard boxes. And when economic activity drops off, so does demand for cardboard boxes.
So it should deeply alarm all of us that we just witnessed “the most severe quarterly decline since the Great Financial Crisis”…"U.S. box shipments fell by 8.4% in the fourth quarter, according to the Fibre Box Association. KeyBanc’s Adam Josephson, who leads the bank’s analysis of the packaging industry, wrote in a Sunday note that this was “the most severe quarterly decline since the Great Financial Crisis (2Q09).”
U.S. box operating rates fell to 80.9%, the Fibre Box Association said, which was also a low last seen in the first quarter of 2009. This means nearly 20% of the U.S. capacity to produce boxes was stagnant last quarter. Supply of containerboard, which is used to make corrugated boxes, stood at 4.3 weeks, according to the American Forest & Paper Association. That’s down from last quarter, but still historically high."
Another thing that happens when a recession strikes is that a lot of people get laid off. In recent articles I have been providing lots and lots of examples of this, and today I have a couple of new ones that are quite interesting. During booming economic times, shipping companies tend to bring on lots of extra workers, but when things get bad they start letting people go.
And so it should deeply alarm all of us that FedEx has decided to give the axe to “more than 10% of its global management staffers”…"FedEx Corp. is laying off more than 10% of its global management staffers as the delivery company faces a shipping slowdown. In an email to staff Wednesday, Chief Executive Raj Subramaniam said the company was reducing the size of its officer and director ranks and consolidating some teams and functions. The company declined to say how many jobs were being eliminated."
To me, the fact that Paypal has just announced that it will be laying off “approximately seven percent of its workforce” is even more troubling…"Engadget reports that the leading online payment provider, PayPal, recently announced that it will lay off about 2,000 employees, or approximately seven percent of its workforce. The layoffs are anticipated to take place over the coming weeks and will have varying effects on different segments of the business. The company says the layoffs are in response to a difficult macroeconomic environment that has prompted similar responses from other technology giants like Google and Microsoft."
If even our largest and wealthiest tech companies are laying off workers now, are any jobs in the private sector truly safe? Many that work in the private sector are deeply concerned that they might be next, because thanks to the rising cost of living their savings are almost totally gone. For instance, consider the plight of 32-year-old Minnesota resident Benjamin DeLong…"Recent layoff trends worry Benjamin DeLong, a 32-year-old customer-account manager at an industrial manufacturer in southern Minnesota. His savings rose to $3,700 during the pandemic, thanks in part to government stimulus. He is now down to about 3 cents.
Mr. DeLong said he had to dip into his savings to cover the rising costs of his groceries, utilities and car insurance. He has found some relief in his grocery bills since he and his partner decided last year to purchase some pigs, jointly with other families, to be raised on a relative’s farm. Their portion of meat yielded nearly 150 pounds, saving them about $500 on groceries, Mr. DeLong estimated."
This is what life is like now in much of the country. Millions upon millions of hard working Americans are living on the edge. Now a very serious economic downturn has begun, and things aren’t going to get any easier in the long run. It appears that 2023 is going to be such a tough year for the U.S. economy. Hopefully you were able to build up a sizable emergency fund while times were relatively stable. Unfortunately, most Americans did not, and so they find themselves completely unprepared for what is ahead of us."
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
Gerald Celente, "WW3 Escalating, Middle East Melting Down"
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal, 2/1/23:
"Judge Napolitano:
WW3 Escalating, Middle East Melting Down"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
"Douglas Macgregor - Additional 200,000 Troops, Readying A Massive Offensive"
Redacted News, 2/1/23:
"Douglas Macgregor - Additional 200,000 Troops,
Readying A Massive Offensive"
Comments here:
"10 Disruptions That Threaten To Spark Chaos On Supply Chains In 2023"
Full screen recommended.
"10 Disruptions That Threaten To Spark
Chaos On Supply Chains In 2023"
By Epic Economist
"Disruptions to supply chain operations are set to accelerate in 2023, and they are likely to affect businesses’ and consumers’ access to goods, create port holdups, reduce container and freight availability, and push prices to even higher levels in the months ahead. To say that the vast majority of the global population has felt the impact of the supply chain crisis over the past three years is quite an understatement. It’s hard to see how someone – living in any part of the planet – would not have faced the reality of surging consumer prices, delivery delays, and uncertain outlooks.
Industry executives say that 2023 will be a hungover year for supply chains, with lingering headaches from more than two years of shipping congestion, freight problems, and shortages of commodities and raw materials all around the world. “There’s a reliability hangover,” Bill Seward, the new president of supply-chain solutions at United Parcel Service, said in an interview. “Many, many companies still feel chagrined and burned by what happened with regard to accessibility last year,” he said.
There’s still plenty of angst in most sectors. “A lot of senior execs feel very battered by the last two years and there’s a heavy emphasis on risks and the ability to adapt in different ways,” Seward added. At the same time, labor remains the biggest challenge across all modes of logistics and transportation right now. Finding and maintaining enough employees to effectively move products along the distribution network is a major concern as carriers do not have the manpower to ensure schedule reliability. Consequently, this compromises shippers’ ability to deliver supplies and finished goods on time. In the US, particularly in the service sector, 65% of employers reported difficulties in recruitment. Many experts explain that the record logjams witnessed over the past couple of years have contributed to prompting workers to seek alternative employment. On top of that, the current tension in the labor market is leading to higher turnover as workers ask for better pay and working conditions.
Even though consumers are curbing their spending to cope with hot inflation, and demand is expected to sink as a new downturn begins, transportation challenges and product shortages are already occurring, and many factors are combining to make these problems even more acute throughout the year. And it’s safe to say, new bottlenecks may emerge along the way, putting even more pressure on companies and the already struggling shipping industry.
Xeneta’s Peter Sand says that 2023 is poised to be another challenging year for the global supply chain, with global shipping container volumes expected to fall precipituously. The outlook remains bleak, with no signs of a reprieve from the current market moderation. The ING’s Trade Outlook 2023 states, “There are simply not enough silver linings to keep global goods trade robustly flowing.” In fact, global trade growth is expected to slow to just 1.1% during the worldwide industrial recession, according to HSBC. This forecast paints a picture of an industry grappling with a perfect storm of economic and regulatory challenges. The shipping and freight market are facing a turbulent future, and the ramifications of this turbulence will be felt by businesses and consumers alike. It is a time of great uncertainty, and the industry must brace itself for a long and difficult road ahead.
That’s why today, we decided to list some of the major issues that are likely to wreak havoc on supply chains in 2023."
"The Federal Reserve Is Protecting The Stock Market, Not You"
Jeremiah Babe, 2/1/23:
"The Federal Reserve Is Protecting The Stock Market, Not You"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "Prelude To The Meltdown: The FED Pump Is Just Beginning"
Gregory Mannarino, 2/1/23:
"Prelude To The Meltdown:
The FED Pump Is Just Beginning"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Can the night sky appear both serene and surreal? Perhaps classifiable as serene in the below panoramic image taken last Friday are the faint lights of small towns glowing across a dark foreground landscape of Doi Inthanon National Park in Thailand, as well as the numerous stars glowing across a dark background starscape. Also visible are the planet Venus and a band of zodiacal light on the image left.
Click image for larger size.
Unusual events are also captured, however. First, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, while usually a common site, appears here to hover surreally above the ground. Next, a fortuitous streak of a meteor was captured on the image right. Perhaps the most unusual component is the bright spot just to the left of the meteor. That spot is the plume of a rising Ariane 5 rocket, launched a few minutes before from Kourou, French Guiana. How lucky was the astrophotographer to capture the rocket launch in his image? Not lucky at all- the image was timed to capture the rocket. What was lucky was how photogenic - and perhaps surreal - the rest of the sky turned out to be.”
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