GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

A Series of “Mega Disasters” Could Make This a Catastrophic Year for Food Production in the United States
by Michael Snyder

April 30, 2022

What I am about to share with you is extremely disturbing. There are some that don’t want to hear bad news like this, but most people would rather know what is coming so that they can prepare for it. As I have been documenting on my websites for months, we were already heading for a nightmarish global food crisis even before the war in Ukraine erupted.

Fertilizer prices have risen to absolutely absurd heights, and this is going to depress agricultural production all over the planet in 2022. And of course the war in Ukraine has now made this emerging crisis a whole lot worse, because Russia and Ukraine collectively account for approximately 30 percent of all global wheat exports under normal conditions. So with everything that has been going on, it is absolutely imperative that we have a good growing season here in the United States this year. Unfortunately, it appears that a series of “mega disasters” is going to prevent that from happening.

In recent days, a number of people have written to me about the bizarre storms and unusually cold temperatures that we have been witnessing in our agricultural heartland. Winter has stuck around a lot longer than usual in the middle of the country, and this has prevented large numbers of Midwest farmers from planting their crops in a timely manner…

In the last several weeks, farmers in the Northern Plains have been battered by blizzards, winter storms, high winds, and extreme flooding. These weather phenomena have delayed farmers from plantings in high-producing crop regions. Every week plantings are delayed, the harvest yield shrinks, and this comes at a precarious time as the global food supply chain is fracturing.

Private weather forecasters and ag specialist BAMWX warned about delayed plantings across the Northern Plains to Midwest to the Ohio Valley. Some farmers might not be able to plant until at least May as widespread above-average moisture, and widespread well below average temperatures inhibit farmers from working their fields.

Unfortunately, we still haven’t gotten a break in the weather. In fact, forecasters were warning that temperatures would be plunging near all-time record lows in Ohio on Wednesday and Thursday…

The National Weather Service has issued a freeze warning from 10 p.m. Wednesday to 9 a.m. Thursday with temperatures dipping into the 20s across the region. Some areas could see temperatures as low as 25 degrees. The weather service warns temperatures this cold could kill crops, sensitive plants and even damage outdoor plumbing.

A shorter growing season will mean less crops harvested in the fall. And that is really bad news. In the western third of the nation, the big news is the ongoing drought that continues to severely hurt agricultural production.

On Thursday, we learned that the water level in Lake Mead has dropped so low that one of the original intake valves is now visible for the first time ever…

The West is in the grips of a climate change-fueled megadrought, and Lake Mead — the largest manmade reservoir in the country and a source of water for millions of people — has fallen to an unprecedented low. The lake’s plummeting water level has exposed one of the reservoir’s original water intake valves for the first time, officials say.

This drought has dragged on for more than two decades, and experts are now telling us that it is the worst that the region has experienced in more than a thousand years…

The West is in its worst drought in centuries, scientists reported Monday. A study published in February found the period from 2000 to 2021 was the driest in for the region 1,200 years.

Needless to say, all of this drought has created ideal conditions for wildfires. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, more than a million acres have already burned since the start of 2022, and we haven’t even gotten to the heart of fire season yet…

The agency said more than 21,181 wildfires had burned 1,080,836 acres in the US since the beginning of the year. That’s above a 10-year average of 14,958 wildfires that burned 727,141 acres. Some of the most devastating wildfires have been in Texas due to “extreme drought” and high winds.

On top of everything else, the new bird flu pandemic in the United States just continues to intensify. On Thursday, the presence of the bird flu was confirmed at yet another poultry facility in Pennsylvania…

A highly contagious and deadly strain of avian influenza was confirmed on a sixth Lancaster County poultry operation on Thursday, requiring 18,000 birds to be destroyed in hopes of curtailing the virus’s spread.

I hope that you are sitting down for what I have to tell you next. Overall, the total death toll for this bird flu pandemic has now risen to more than 35 million…

As of noon Thursday, the flu had infected 247 domesticated commercial or backyard poultry flocks in 29 states, according to the USDA. About 35.52 million birds have died or been destroyed nationwide.

The very first case at a commercial facility in the U.S. was confirmed in early February. That means that we have gone from one case to over 35 million dead in less than 3 months. Of course this is going to deeply affect every single one of us when we go to the grocery store.

The price of eggs has already more than doubled. Everything with turkey in it is going to become much more expensive. Everything with chicken in it is going to become much more expensive. And what will happen if this pandemic rages out of control for many more months?

We have never faced so many simultaneous threats to U.S. food production. We truly are in unprecedented territory, and that should deeply concern all of us.

Sadly, global food production is going to be way down all over the planet this year, and the UN is telling us that we are heading into the worst global food crisis since World War II.

In other words, there is not going to be enough food for everyone. Just a few years ago, a worldwide famine would have been unthinkable, but now we are on the precipice of a true global nightmare.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the population still does not understand what is happening, and so they aren’t taking any steps to get prepared for the horror that is ahead of us.

^^^^^



Algerians Struggle with Food Price Hikes Ahead of Eid Al Fitr
Rising prices amid an economic slump has resulted in a difficult Ramadan for many Algerians as even domestically-produced food is sold at high prices.

• Jasper Hamann
• Apr. 30, 2022 1:53 p.m.

Rising food prices have made it difficult to feed the family, let alone treat visitors with the generosity and sharing tradition that is typical of Ramadan.

Rabat - Rising food prices in Algeria have led to a difficult Ramadan for many, as citizens see their purchasing power drop ahead of Eid Al Fitr celebrations.

Food prices in Algeria have risen due to similar global challenges that have impacted much of North Africa. Global food supply chains have struggled with a slow recovery from the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, mixed with supply chain disruptions worsened by the Ukraine conflict.

Algerians have felt the brunt of the blow caused by global trends, as the Algerian government’s limited stocks of basic supplies meant the country had to resort to expensive foreign imports.

Soaring prices have significantly reduced the purchasing power of most Algerian citizens, a painful trend amid the month of Ramadan and the Eid Al Fitr celebrations ahead.

Ramadan and Eid al Fitr are commonly celebrated with large festive meals, shared with family and friends, yet rising food prices have made it difficult to feed the family, let alone treat visitors with the generosity and sharing tradition that is typical of Ramadan.

Gas-rich Algeria logically would be facing both economic difficulties due to limited food supplies, which could be off-set by record energy prices that have raised government revenue significantly. Yet, despite Algeria’s vast natural resources, price hikes have been near-universal, even among locally produced products.

Civil servants went on strike and took to the streets this week to protest what many see as the peak of Algeria’s recent economic woes. With basic foodstuffs including cooking oil, water milk and pasta reaching exorbitant prices, many blame Algeria’s regime and its economic policies for the ongoing economic crisis that has marred religious celebrations.

Algeria’s government faces a complex gamble amid the current crisis. The country faces international pressure to boost hydrocarbon exports to Europe to combat its reliance on Russian oil and gas. Yet, many experts predict that gas prices could again fall rapidly once the crisis in Eastern Europe eases, making any current large-scale investment more of a liability in the future.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQvKxGehKok
2:31 min

Overton window | 2 minute idea

Apr 8, 2020


War of Ideas

Steve Gruber: A Food Crisis is Coming to America 2:20 min

Steve Gruber: A Food Crisis is Coming to America
Real America's Voice - Special Events Published May 1, 2022
Steve Gruber lays out the upcoming food crisis in America as fertilizer and other input costs are skyrocketing under Biden: “None of these clowns in Washington get this. There is a food crisis, a real shortage coming.”

(Fertilizer cost up. Biden Admin says that's ok, we can return to more traditional manures. Union Pacific has reduced fertilizer hauls by 20%. What this means to a field in S Mich that would produce 200 bushels of corn under average conditions will now produce 120 bushels. You couple that with the increased cost of diesel fuel of $2.00 a gal over last year. Farmers are also beholden to the banks. They get financed on the season ahead based on what they are going to grow and how they will get that to the processor. The banks can say that they don't agree with that deal. More farms have been going bankrupt in the last several years, he says, than in all of his life. They are getting gobbled up by large foreign conglomerates. The largest meat processor is Smithfield, bought by a front company of the Chinese Communist Party There is only one meat packing plant of size that is American owned - Tyson foods. None of these clowns in DC get this. There is a food crisis - a real shortage coming. It is not just Africa and Asia, it is going to be for ordinary Americans)

Biden’s ‘Disinformation Board’ is a Direct Attack on the 1st Amendment 2:04 min
Biden’s ‘Disinformation Board’ is a Direct Attack on the 1st Amendment (Steve Gruber)
Real America's Voice - Special Events Published May 1, 2022

“When do you need the government to explain to you what freedom of speech is? The answer is NEVER.”
Steve Gruber says the newly announced “disinformation” board under DHS will likely be a prominent topic in President Trump’s speech tonight.

Oh, they get it alright.

Not the first time in history the Left has used famines to get their way.

"We Are Witnessing Right Now the Chinafication of Europe" - Romanian MEP Cristian Terheș 2:19 min

"We Are Witnessing Right Now the Chinafication of Europe" - Romanian MEP Cristian Terheș
The Vigilant Fox Published May 1, 2022
"When the government knows everything about you, where you go, what you eat, where you enter, that's a tyrannical system, and we've seen the system being implemented right now under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, slowly but surely in the European Union. The Green Certificate was just the first step... The European wallet ID, for example, the European Social Security card, all these things are creating the system that will monitor, control, supervise, and condition the rights of all the European citizens.

Time Columnist Denounces Free Speech As A White Man's "Obsession"

SUNDAY, MAY 01, 2022 - 08:40 AM
Authored by Jonathan Turley,

It has become depressingly common to read unrelenting attacks on free speech in the Washington Post and other newspapers.

The anti-free speech movement has been embraced by Democratic leaders, including President Joe Biden, as well as academics who now claim “China was right” on censorship. However, a Time magazine column by national correspondent Charlotte Alter was still shocking in how mainstream anti-free speech views have become.

Alter denounces free speech as basically a white man’s “obsession.”



What is most striking about the column is Alter’s apparent confusion over why anyone like Musk would even care about the free speech of others. She suggests that Musk is actually immoral for spending money to restore free speech rather than on social welfare or justice issues.

She suggests that supporting free speech is some disgusting extravagance like buying Fabergé eggs.

“Why does Musk care so much about this? Why would a guy who has pushed the boundaries of electric-vehicle manufacturing and plumbed the limits of commercial space flight care about who can say what on Twitter?”

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The answer, not surprisingly, is about race and privilege. Alter cites Jason Goldman, who was an early figure shaping the Twitter censorship policies before he joined the Obama administration. Goldman declared, “free speech has become an obsession of the mostly white, male members of the tech elite” who “would rather go back to the way things were.”

Alter also cites professor of communication at Stanford University Fred Turner who explains that free speech is just “a dominant obsession with the most elite… [and] seems to be much more of an obsession among men.”

In arguing in favor of censorship, Alter engages in a heavy use of historical revisionism, claiming that

“‘free speech’ in the 21st century means something very different than it did in the 18th, when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution. The right to say what you want without being imprisoned is not the same as the right to broadcast disinformation to millions of people on a corporate platform. This nuance seems to be lost on some techno-wizards who see any restriction as the enemy of innovation.”

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It is also lost on me.

Censorship has always been based on the notion that the underlying speech was false or harmful. Calling it “disinformation” does not materially change the motivation or the impact.

What Alter calls a “Tech Bro obsession” was the obsession of the Framers.

Alter is confusing free speech values with the rationale for the First Amendment. For years, anti-free-speech figures have dismissed free speech objections to social media censorship by stressing that the First Amendment applies only to the government, not private companies. The distinction was always a dishonest effort to evade the implications of speech controls, whether implemented by the government or corporations.

The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies. This threat is even greater when politicians openly use corporations to achieve indirectly what they cannot achieve directly.

Key free speech figures practiced what they preached in challenged friends and foes alike. After playing a critical role with our independence, Thomas Paine did nothing but irritate the Framers with his words, including John Adams, who called him a “crapulous mass.”

Yet, free speech was a defining value for the framers (despite Adams’ later attacks on the right). It was viewed as the very growth plate of democracy. As Benjamin Franklin stated in a letter on July 9, 1722: “Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such thing as Wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without Freedom of Speech.”

The same anti-free speech voices were heard back then as citizens were told to fear free speech. It viewed as a Siren’s call for tyranny. Franklin stated:

“In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech; a thing terrible to publick traytors.”

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Yet, Alter assures readers that this is just due to a lack of knowledge by Musk and a misunderstanding of why censorship is a natural and good thing:

“Tech titans often have a different understanding of speech than the rest of the world because most trained as engineers, not as writers or readers, and a lack of a humanities education might make them less attuned to the social and political nuances of speech.”

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It appears that Alter’s humanities education in college allows her to see “nuances” that escape the rest of us, including some of us who are not “trained as engineers.”

Indeed, James Madison warned us to be more on guard against such nuanced arguments:

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

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As Time, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other media outlets align themselves with the anti-free speech movement, it is more important than ever for citizens fight for this essential right. There is nothing nuanced in either this movement or its implications for this country.

Diesel For Dinner

SUNDAY, MAY 01, 2022 - 11:00 AM
Via Doomberg Substack,

“Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish - too much handling will spoil it.” – Lao Tzu

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The words edible and eatable are often used interchangeably but embedded within their respective definitions is a distinction that makes an important difference. Edible means “safe to eat,” whereas eatable means “pleasant to eat.” A variant of the word eatable is delicious, commonly defined as “highly pleasant to eat.” Delicious certainly sounds more enticing than highly eatable, a phrase nobody would use to compliment an exquisite meal crafted by a professional chef. We find such linguistic nuances pleasing.

Whether the balance of calories a person consumes is edible, eatable, or delicious depends on where they sit on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a concept we covered at length in a piece we wrote last July called Why Are Cows Sacred? For those at the base of the pyramid, the struggle to consume enough edible food just to see another sunrise defines much of their existence. At the top of the pyramid sit those fortunate souls who can afford to cook delicious meals with fresh ingredients, eat at fine restaurants, or even hire a personal chef to tend to their every dietary indulgence.



At the molecular level, the distinction between edible and inedible can be subtle. The rearrangement of a few atoms within an otherwise similar chemical structure can make the difference between satiation and a trip to the emergency room. Prior to the advent of the modern chemical and energy industries, humanity leveraged animal and plant byproducts to create many of the functional materials used in daily life, making the tradeoff between food and other needs a more visceral one than it is today. The edible parts were eaten, and the inedible stuff – presumably identified through an unfortunate series of trial and error experiments – was converted into other useful things or burned to create energy.

Armed with humanity’s mastery of chemistry, we can now rearrange atoms with astonishing specificity at an unimaginable scale, pushing billions of people further up Maslow’s hierarchy than they would otherwise be. In addition to using fossil fuels to create most of the materials that surround us, we leverage them to produce fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and other inputs into the farming process, boosting crop yields to levels once thought impossible. We also synthesize mountains of edible ingredients directly from oil and gas. Touring a modern food processing factory would seem almost indistinguishable from a specialty chemical plant, mostly because they aren’t all that different.



While it makes perfect sense to leverage our bounty of fossil fuels and ability to manipulate them at the molecular level to increase global food abundance, going through the effort to grow food only to turn around and burn it for energy seems less than ideal. In a controversial piece we wrote in January titled “In Praise of Corn Ethanol,” we put forth a theory that the adoption of corn ethanol as a mandated additive to gasoline was a scheme to coverup one of the greatest environmental scandals of the past century: the use of tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock agent. While some readers interpreted our piece as supporting this policy – undoubtedly because of the title – our primary purpose was to highlight the ugly history that got us to the current situation, and how it was predominantly a dirty political compromise. In hindsight, “Why Corn Ethanol is a Thing” might have been a better title.

No such compromise underpins the decision to use foodstuffs as replacements for diesel, a policy that will make the unfolding global food crisis substantially worse if it is not soon overturned.

When a barrel of oil is refined, it is separated into various products using the different boiling points of its components. Gasoline boils at a lower temperature than diesel and represents about 43% of each barrel of oil. Diesel makes up approximately 27%, with the other 30% destined to become heating oil, jet fuel, asphalt, and other important materials. Because of its higher energy density per gallon and the efficiency of engines designed to use it, diesel is a desirable fuel, especially for long-haul trucking.


Trucks at the pump | Getty Images

Unfortunately for those near the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, many cooking oils – liquid fat isolated from various crops used extensively in frying, baking, and other types of food preparation all over the world – have a molecular structure quite similar to that of diesel. It does not take much chemical magic to transform previously edible cooking oils into workable substitutes for the valuable fuel. Now that the environmental lobby has convinced government officials worldwide that “renewable carbon content” is prima facia a desirable thing – a fallacy that deserves its own Doomberg piece – various mandates exist to literally take food out of the mouths of the hungry and pump it into our trucks for burning. For the planet, and whatnot.

The first commercially relevant incarnation of a diesel substitute derived from crops is a product known as biodiesel. Oils derived from palm, sunflower, soybean, rapeseed, and castor are used as inputs, to name a few, and they are reacted with methanol (derived from fossil fuels) in a chemical process known as transesterification. Transesterification generates a product with higher oxygen content than standard diesel. This presents some challenges, including poor low-temperature performance, increased microbial growth, corrosion of engine parts, and higher shipping costs (biodiesel cannot leverage existing pipelines that are used to transport regular diesel). Much like corn ethanol, biodiesel is blended with regular diesel at concentrations between 2-20% before being marketed. Despite these limitations, government mandates have motivated farmers the world over to redirect a sizable chunk of their crops from the grocery store to the gas station.

Nearly all of the challenges with biodiesel have been overcome with the recent development of renewable diesel, a material synthesized by hydrotreating cooking oils. Here’s how the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) describes the differences (emphasis added throughout):

“Renewable diesel is a biomass-based diesel fuel similar to biodiesel, but with important differences. Unlike biodiesel, renewable diesel is a hydrocarbon that is chemically equivalent to petroleum diesel and can be used as a drop-in biofuel that does not require blending with petroleum diesel for use…

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Because renewable diesel is a drop-in fuel, it meets ASTM D975 specification for petroleum diesel and can be seamlessly blended, transported, and even co-processed with petroleum diesel.”

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Image credit: iStockPhoto / Lori Hays

To the truckers forced to meet renewable carbon content mandates, renewable diesel is a godsend. It requires no change on their part, is indistinguishable from regular diesel, and allows them to proudly proclaim their green bonafides. To the companies who produce it, renewable diesel is a government-mandated financial pot of gold. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issues valuable renewable identification numbers (RINs) to track compliance with various mandates and to stoke production. There’s also a national $1-per-gallon tax credit to further incentivize producers.

While support at the federal level has been important, the real driver for renewable diesel adoption has been the State of California. Through its low-carbon fuel standards (LCFS) program, credits currently trading for $115 per carbon ton are being issued, and renewable diesel is now the largest source of incremental credits. This is before the real capacity to produce renewable diesel comes online.

Where will all this renewable diesel come from? In the US, soybean oils are the main input, and it should come as no surprise that planting strategies are being quickly modified to produce more of it. This quote from an industry consultant frames the magnitude of the upcoming disruption well:

“The dramatic development of the U.S. renewable diesel industry is similar to how ethanol changed the U.S. corn industry from 2007 to 2010, says Dan Basse, president of AgResource Company. But he believes renewable diesel could be more disruptive.

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‘We are calling for 90.5 million soybean acres in 2022 versus this year’s 87 million, and that just gets us started in meeting renewable diesel demand,” he says. “Then we’d need to increase soybean acres by 5 million to 7 million each year. We have to top 120 million acres of soybeans to meet the growing demand for renewable diesel.’”

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With the force of the government’s thumb on the scale of demand compounding pre-existing inflationary pressures hitting farmers, the price of soybeans has soared to fresh all-time highs.

At the time of this writing, soybeans trade for $17 per bushel, more than double the price seen just two years ago. Unless these policies are unwound, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where positive price momentum abates.


In a piece we wrote last October called Starvation Diet, we warned that the unfolding energy crisis would trigger a global famine, a process that would be exacerbated by protectionism. Here’s a key passage:

“We’ve written extensively about how the market for energy in Europe broke and how the ripple effects will snap through our delicate supply chains like a whip. When the supply of critical goods goes short, countries implement protectionist policies in a futile attempt to minimize the impact at home. A cascading series of retaliatory moves usually follows, leading to economic vapor lock. We are seeing that pattern play out now in agriculture.”

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Although we take no joy in being proven right in this regard, more evidence of our prescience emerged last week when Indonesia shocked the world by banning all exports of palm oil.

Cooking oils can be substituted for each other and price pressures on one oil inevitably puts a bid under the others. Here’s how The Guardian describes the situation:

“The price of edible oils such as soyoil, sunflower oil and rapeseed oil is expected to rise after Indonesia announced a surprise export palm oil ban, experts have warned.
Major edible oils are already in short supply due to adverse weather and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The move by Indonesia to pause exports will place extra strain on cost-sensitive consumers in Asia and Africa hit by higher fuel and food prices.”

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The magnitude of this ban cannot be overstated. According to data from Statista, palm oil accounted for 35% of all cooking oil produced last year. Indonesia is responsible for a staggering 60% of global palm oil production. The blast waves emanating from this explosive move will be felt the world over, most acutely by those already on the brink that can least afford to react. Bluntly, people are going to starve.

In the face of a global energy crisis, the war in Ukraine, food shortages, and rampant inflation, does it make sense to be redirecting so many acres of valuable cropland to make renewable diesel, a fuel we can easily and directly drill for domestically? Do our policymakers understand the interconnected nature of these markets, and how forcing a strong link between diesel and soybeans creates a tunnel through which the contagion of crisis in one market bleeds directly into the other? Imagine how grotesque this spectacle must seem to the most vulnerable among us. While they scramble to secure enough edible food to survive, our elite know-it-alls gorge themselves on the most delicious hors d'oeuvres the cocktail party circuit can provide. Through either shocking ignorance or callous indifference, they convince themselves they are saving the planet.

Saving the planet for who, exactly? The poorest citizens on Earth? Nah.

Let them eat diesel.

Crisis Or Hiccup? Assessing The Logistics Impact Of China Lockdowns

SUNDAY, MAY 01, 2022 - 05:10 AM
By Eric Kullisch of FreightWaves.com

A mixed bag of circumstances and time horizons are creating diverging narratives about whether shipping delays stemming from the shutdown of Shanghai and other Chinese cities are getting better or presage massive supply chain gridlock.

The Yangshan Deepwater Container Terminal at the Port of Shanghai, where trade flows have slowed because of citywide COVID restrictions
There is no sign that Shanghai’s lockdown is easing anytime soon. Footage on social media shows steel fences being installed on public roads and inside residential compounds to keep people from traveling to other districts and moving in neighborhoods. On Monday, the Shanghai Health Commission reported 2,472 new positive cases of COVID-19, up from 1,401 the previous day. Total daily case levels exceed 30,000. Fifty-two people died Monday of COVID, according to the China Daily.

While some cities in China, including Guangzhou are loosening COVID restrictions, rising COVID cases in Beijing are sparking fears the Chinese capital and other cities could join Shanghai, Suzhou and other major cities in lockdowns. Kunshan, a technology manufacturing hub west of Shanghai, has extended a lockdown, which began on April 2, to April 28. Several districts in Hangzhou, home to e-commerce giant Alibaba, began a lockdown on April 23, with mass testing being carried out for three days.

Based on current trends, China watchers say lockdowns won’t begin to ease until mid-May or possibly June as the government maintains its zero-COVID policy.

In some ways the logistics situation sounds manageable. The Port of Shanghai, the largest container shipping gateway in the world, has remained in operation. Wait times for export loadings are only about two days and the 12 days it takes to pick up an import box is below wait times for other COVID-related disruptions in China since 2020, as American Shipper reported Thursday. The daily number of vessels waiting for a berth has actually fallen since the lockdown began nearly four weeks ago and there is limited congestion from redirected cargo at other ports.

But snapshots of current throughput don’t measure how much deferred cargo is piling up in warehouses or will be churned out by factories working overtime to make up for lost time. A key reason cargo isn’t stacking up at the port is that the vast majority of truck drivers are restricted from freely moving around Shanghai and making deliveries at marine terminals.

Many logistics professionals remain concerned that a huge wave of cargo will be released once the lockdowns are lifted and swamp the handling capacity of local and overseas ports, compounding pressure on the traditional peak shipping season, according to logistics analysts. Shippers that haven’t placed orders yet could miss getting their goods in time for big shopping events such as back to school, Halloween and Christmas.

“Shipping is being very materially disrupted. In 2021, we calculated about six weeks were needed to recover/get back to normal flows for every week of shutdown. Given this effective shutdown is in its third week, we can expect three months or more before flows are restored to normal levels,” Michael Zimmerman, leader of the analytics practice for the Americas at consulting firm Kearney, told FreightWaves.

Shanghai’s industrial output fell 7.5% in March, the city’s statistics bureau said. Reduced manufacturing output and limited truck access to the port and airport have decreased air and ocean export volumes over the past month.

The slowdown in imports has prevented key raw materials from reaching manufacturers and many companies have either shut down or are operating at severely constrained levels.

Export-oriented businesses that rely on global sources for raw materials will not be able to fully recover until logistics networks increase their capacity. There is a high risk that many industrial, technology, and automotive companies with suppliers in Shanghai and Kunshan will have to halt operations due to component shortages, should the current lockdowns in both cities continue into the month of May, says Everstream Analytics, which uses artificial intelligence to help companies predict supply chain threats.

Factory shutdowns due to COVID are higher now in Shanghai than any comparable period in China.

At least 11 Apple suppliers have been impacted by the lockdown, Everstream reported in an update. Foxconn, a key Apple supplier, halted production at plants in Shanghai and Kunshan.

Shanghai authorities last week gave 660 companies the green light to restart operations. But ongoing restrictions prevent many workers from reaching the plants and many are functioning with less than half their workforce, according to various reports. The plants must have workers staying in a closed bubble environment.

“Production will ramp up as imports increase and logistics services improve, but will not fully catch up until June or July,” said Andrea Huang, senior director of supply chain at Overhaul, a provider of supply chain visibility and risk management software, in an email.

While the Port of Shanghai continues to operate, port productivity has decreased 20% to 30% and some carriers are not calling the port. Shipping delays are impacting intra-Asia trade, as well as North America and Europe trade lanes, according to international logistics and trade finance companies monitoring the situation. When the Yantian terminal in Shenzhen went under quarantine a year ago productivity was slashed by 80%, but in that case the restrictions applied specifically to the port and not the city itself.

On Monday, Maersk announced a dozen blank sailings for its AE1 service to the Port of Ningbo, citing accumulating bottlenecks on its Asia-North Europe network. It is also rerouting cargo cargo where possible to mitigate delays and avoid bunching and adjusting barge and rail capacity to help off-set landside issues.

Several carriers are skipping Shanghai as a port of call until mid-May.
The Alliance (ONE, Hapag-Lloyd and Yang Ming) had canceled 36 voyages to Shanghai as of April 14, said Zimmerman. The lockdown has also led to significant shortages of 40-foot containers and diversion of 20-footers to other Chinese ports.

Many carriers, including Maersk, ONE, Hapag-Lloyd, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and CMA CGM, have suspended accepting new refrigerated and dangerous goods cargo to Shanghai, due to insufficient storage space at Shanghai’s port for such specialized containers. Maersk said it resumed booking dangerous goods at the Port of Shanghai on Friday as yard density begins to improve.

According to FreightWaves’ SONAR, ocean demand out of Chinese ports to the U.S. dropped 31% between April 6 and 15. Other factors, including lower consumer demand, could also be involved, experts say. Real U.S. retail sales are down from last year as inflation squeezes pocketbooks and people spend more on services.

FreightWaves SONAR shows ocean volume decline in recent weeks from Shanghai to California.

Ocean freight bookings from China to the U.S. are about the same as last year at this time, according to Customs data compiled by SONAR.

“If shippers are really nervous about not getting a lot of goods they should in theory be increasing their bookings” as they did after manufacturing shut down because of the Wuhan outbreak in 2020, said Luke Falesca, enterprise account director for SONAR on last week’s episode of #WithSONAR. “There’s not the same panic as when ports shut down in the past.”

Drewry Shipping Consultants reports container volumes from Shanghai to Los Angeles and Shanghai to New York are down 17% and 16%, respectively, since the beginning of the year.

Airport troubles
Freight shipments through airports arguably are being jammed more than at ports, but also are subject to rapidly shifting dynamics.

Since March, inbound airfreight has experienced 10 to 20 days delay due to airport customs closures in Shanghai and quarantine rules at other major airports. Outbound volumes have also declined. Once the lockdown eases, airfreight will pick up pace, with courier services taking a bit longer to recover, said Huang.

Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) has extended its embargo on all imports and exports at Shanghai Pudong International Airport until May 6 due to the local COVID restrictions that forced the airline to cancel all flights to the city.

Many passenger and cargo airlines continue to cancel flights in and out of Shanghai. Cargolux, for example, stopped operating there until Monday.

Cargo terminals at Shanghai’s airport have suspended on-site X-ray security testing and testing service for chemical goods, according to a recent customer update from Crane Worldwide Logistics.

Air cargo diverted from Shanghai is disrupting freight operations at other Chinese airports, causing a shortage of pallets for exports, Chicago-based AIT Worldwide Logistics reported.

Meanwhile, Shenzhen International Airport imposed a daily import cap of 250 tons, including 125 tons for perishable and temperature-controlled cargo from April 21 to 27. During this period, the terminal won’t accept dangerous goods, loose cargo or cargo destined for Shanghai, the logistics provider said.

While air cargo operations are functioning at the Shenzhen and Guangzhou airports, shipping and logistics giant Maersk warned customers that lead times for reserving space on aircraft are now two to three weeks due to the increased volume diverted from Shanghai.

Import operations are suspended in Nanjing.

AIT Worldwide Logistics reports that Air China’s terminal is back to normal operations, but China Southern’s terminal remains closed at Guangzhou airport. In Qingdao, air imports must be stored in the terminal for 10 days following disinfection. Wuhan has a three- to four-day backlog of air cargo because truck deliveries are suspended to cities facing outbreaks. Tianjin, in north China, is also preventing truck movements to cities with rising case counts.

The People Behind DHS's Orwellian "Disinformation Governance Board"

SATURDAY, APR 30, 2022 - 08:30 PM
Authored by Jeff Thompson via The Organic Prepper blog,

A “Disinformation Governance Board” has just been created and is going to be run by the Department of Homeland Security. Their primary goal is going to be to “police” what is deemed to be “misinformation” or “disinformation.”



No clarification has been given as of yet as to what this policing will mean, but it has been pointed out that the creation of this new Disinformation Governance Board is going to have the full strength of the DHS behind it.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “the goal is to bring the resources of (DHS) together to address this threat.”

Nina Jankowicz has been chosen to head up the new disinformation office as the executive director.

Nina Jankowicz

Nina Jankowicz

Jankowicz received her MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. A full list of the staff at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University can be found here.

Some of the current faculty/staff members within the Walsh School of Foreign Service are:

• Rebecca Katz
• Shantayanan Devarajan
• Thomas Banchoff
• Madeleine Albright

Jankowicz also spent time previously working with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (also called the Wilson Institute) in the past as a disinformation fellow. A full listing of their staff can be found here.

Some of the current staff members, faculty, and associates at the Wilson Institute include:

• Cynthia Arnson – Director of the Latin American Program
• Shihoko Goto – Director for Geoeconomics and Indo-Pacific Enterprise/Deputy Director of the Asia Program
• Duncan Wood – VP for Strategy and New Initiatives; Senior Advisor to the Mexico Instituted; Interim Director of the Global Europe Program
• Lonnie Bunch III – Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution

She also previously worked with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry with the Fullbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship, where she offered advice and oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.

In addition to her past work history, Nina is also the author of two books: How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, published in 2020, and a book that was just published this month, How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back.

How to Lose the Information War
Within this book, Nina discusses what she learned during her time with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and Belarus as she worked to combat “Russian information warfare tactics.” The book examines five different nations and the policies they pushed to counter “misinformation” in what is claimed to be a fight for “the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.”

(If you’re looking for information on how to starve the beast, check out our free QUICKSTART Guide.)

How to Be a Woman Online
Here, Nina says that toxic masculinity has poisoned the internet against women, particularly women who aren’t white. She argues from the standpoint that something needs to be done against these men to keep them from saying these things.

When interviewed by NPR about this book, Nina said, “And I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities all around the world…”

Nina went on within the interview to advocate for stronger consequences against men online who say things that are deemed to be wrong.

“…we frankly need law enforcement and our legislatures to do more as well,” Nina said. She later went on to add, “really any law enforcement of consequences against abusers would make such a big difference because part of the reason this happens right now is that hardly anything ever happens to the people who are levying the abuse.

Click to expand...

The announcement
News about the new taxpayer-supported agency was released to the American public by Alejandro Mayorkas during the House Appropriations Subcommittee as the 2023 budget for the Department of Homeland Security was discussed.

This came about after Representative Lauren Underwood (?) asked Mayorkas what he was going to do to combat “misinformation campaigns” aimed at people who aren’t white.


Lauren Underwood

Underwood said that not only was disinformation a “huge threat to our homeland,” but that “foreign adversaries attempt to destabilize our elections by targeting people of color with disinformation campaigns.”

She went on to add, “A newer trend that we saw in the 2020 election and already in the 2022 midterms is that disinformation is being heavily targeted at Spanish-speaking voters, sparking and fueling conspiracy theories.”

“DHS and its components play a big role in addressing myths and disinformation in Spanish and other languages. Can you share what steps you’ve taken and what future plans you have to address Spanish-language myths and disinformation through a department-wide approach?”

Mayorkas' response was the reveal of the DGB.

He not only revealed that the DGB was in the process of being created but said that there were a number of other “different offices engaged in this critical effort,” one of which is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.


Alejandro Mayorkas

Rob Silvers, the Undersecretary of Policy, and Jennifer Gaskill are stated to be involved in heading up the new agency, in addition to Nina Janckowicz.

Tverberg: The World Has A Major Crude Oil Problem; Expect Conflict Ahead

SATURDAY, APR 30, 2022 - 05:30 PM
Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

Media outlets tend to make it sound as if all our economic problems are temporary problems, related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, world crude oil production has been falling behind needed levels since 2019. This problem, by itself, encourages the world economy to contract in unexpected ways, including in the form of economic lockdowns and aggression between countries. This crude oil shortfall seems likely to become greater in the years ahead, pushing the world economy toward conflict and the elimination of inefficient players.

To me, crude oil production is of particular importance because this form of oil is especially useful. With refining, it can operate tractors used to cultivate crops, and it can operate trucks to bring food to stores to sell. With refining, it can be used to make jet fuel. It can also be refined to make fuel for earth moving equipment used in road building. In recent years, it has become common to publish “all liquids” amounts, which include liquid fuels such as ethanol and natural gas liquids. These fuels have uses when energy density is not important, but they do not operate the heavy machinery needed to maintain today’s economy.

In this post, I provide an overview of the crude oil situation as I see it. In my analysis, I utilize crude oil production data by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) that has only recently become available for the full year of 2021. In some exhibits, I also make estimates for the first quarter of 2022 based on preliminary information for this period.

[1] World crude oil production grew marginally in 2021.



Figure 1. World crude oil production based on EIA international data through December 31, 2021.

Crude oil production for the year 2021 was a disappointment for those hoping that production would rapidly bounce back to at least the 2019 level. World crude oil production increased by 1.4% in 2021, to 77.0 million barrels per day, after a decrease of -7.5% in 2020. If we look back, we can see that the highest year of crude oil production was in 2018, not 2019. Oil production in 2021 was still 5.9 million barrels per day below the 2018 level.

With respect to the overall increase in crude oil production of 1.4% in 2021, OPEC helped bring this average up with an increase of 3.0% in 2021. Russia also helped, with an increase of 2.5%.

The United States helped pull the world crude increase down, with a decrease in production of -1.1% in 2021. In Section [5], more information will be provided with respect to crude production for these groupings.

[2] The growth in world crude oil production shows an amazingly steady relationship to the growth in world population since 1991. The major exception is the decrease in consumption that took place in 2020, with the lockdowns that changed consumption patterns.



Figure 2. World per capita crude oil production based on EIA international data through December 31, 2021, together with UN 2019 population estimates. The UN’s estimated historical amounts were used through 2020; the “low growth” estimate was used for 2021.

Figure 2 indicates that, up through 2018, each person in the world consumed an average of around 4.0 barrels of crude oil. This equates to 168 US gallons or 636 liters of crude per year. Much of this crude is used by businesses and governments to produce the basic goods we expect from our economy, including food and roads.

A big downshift occurred in 2020 with the COVID lockdowns. Many people began working from home; international travel was scaled back. The reduction of these uses of oil helped bring down total world usage. Changes such as these explain the big dip in crude oil production (and consumption) in 2020, which continued into 2021.

Even in 2019, the world economy was starting to scale back. Beginning in early 2018, China banned the importation of many types of materials for recycling, and other countries soon followed suit. As a result, less oil was used for transporting materials across the ocean for recycling. (Subsidies for recycling were helping to pay for this oil.) Loss of recycling and other cutbacks (especially in China and India) led to fewer people in these countries being able to afford automobiles and smartphones. Lower production of these devices contributed to the lower use of crude oil.

On Figure 2, there is a slight year-to-year variation in crude oil per capita. The single highest year over the time period shown is 2005, with 2004 not far behind. This was about the time many people think that conventional oil production “peaked,” reducing the availability of inexpensive-to-produce oil.

[3] Crude oil prices dropped dramatically when economies were shut in, beginning in March 2020. Prices began spiking the summer and fall of 2021, as the world economy attempted to open up. This pattern suggests that the real problem is tight crude oil supply when the economy is not artificially constrained by COVID restrictions.



Figure 3. Average weekly Brent oil price in chart prepared by EIA, through April 8, 2022. Amounts are not adjusted for inflation.

An analysis of price trends suggests that most of the recent spike in crude prices is due to the tightness of the crude oil supply, rather than the Ukraine conflict. The Brent oil price dropped to an average of $14.24 in the week ending April 24, 2020, not long after COVID restrictions were enacted. When the economy started to reopen, in the week ending July 2, 2021, the average price rose to $76.26. By the week ending January 28, 2022, the average price had risen to $90.22.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The Brent spot price on February 23, 2022, was $99.29. Brent prices briefly spiked higher, with weekly average prices rising as high as $123.60, for the week ending March 25, 2022. The current Brent oil price is about $107. If we compare the current price to the price the day before the invasion began, the price is only $8 higher.

Even compared to the January 28 weekly average of $90.22, the current price is $17 higher.

Saying that the Ukraine invasion is causing the current high price is mostly a convenient excuse, suggesting that the high prices will suddenly disappear if this conflict disappears. The sad truth is that depletion is causing the cost of extraction to rise. Governments of oil exporting countries also need high prices to enable high taxes on exported oil. We are increasingly experiencing a conflict between the prices that the customers can afford and the prices that those doing the extraction require. In my view, most oil exporting countries need a price in excess of $120 per barrel to meet all of their needs, including reinvestment and taxes. Consumers would prefer oil prices under $50 per barrel to keep the price of food and transportation low.

[4] Food prices tend to rise when oil prices are high because products made from crude oil are used in the production and transport of food.

History shows that bad things tend to happen when food prices are very high, including riots by unhappy citizens. This is a major reason that high oil prices tend to lead to conflict.


Figure 4. FAO inflation-adjusted monthly food price index. Source.

[5] Quarterly crude oil data suggests that few opportunities exist to raise crude oil production to the level needed for the world economy to operate at the level it operated at in 2018 or 2019.

Figure 5 shows quarterly world crude oil production broken down into four groupings: OPEC, US, Russia, and “All Other.”



Figure 5. Quarterly crude oil production through first quarter of 2022. Amounts through December 2021 are EIA international estimates. Increase in OPEC first quarter of 2022 production is estimated based on OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report, April 2022. US crude oil production for first quarter of 2022 estimated based on preliminary EIA indications. Russia and All Other production for first quarter of 2022 are estimated based on recent trends.

Figure 5 shows four very different patterns of past growth in crude oil supply. The All Other grouping is generally trending a bit downward in terms of quantity supplied. If world per capita crude oil production is to stay at least level, the total production of the other three groupings (OPEC, US, and Russia) needs to be rising to offset this decline. In fact, it needs to rise enough that overall crude production growth keeps up with population growth.

Russian Crude Oil Production
The data underlying Figure 5 shows that up until the COVID restrictions, Russia’s crude oil production was increasing by 1.4% per year between early 2005 and early 2020. During the same period, world population was increasing by about 1.2%. Thus, Russia’s oil production has been part of what has helped keep world crude production about level, on a per capita basis. Also, Russia seems to have made up most of its temporary decrease in production related to COVID restrictions by the first quarter of 2022.

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

US Crude Oil Production
Growth in US crude oil production has been more of a “feast or famine” situation. This can be seen both in Figure 5 above and in Figure 6 below.



Figure 6. US crude oil production based on EIA data. First quarter of 2022 amount is estimated based on EIA weekly and monthly indications.

US crude oil production spurted up rapidly in the 2011 to 2014 period, when oil prices were high (Figure 3). When oil prices fell in late 2014, US crude production fell for about two years. US oil production began to rise again in late 2016, as oil prices rose again. By early 2019 (when oil prices were again lower), US crude oil growth began to slow down.

In early 2020, COVID lockdowns brought a 15% drop in crude oil production (considering quarterly production), most of which has not been made up. In fact, growth after the lockdowns has been slow, similar to the level of growth during the “growth slowdown” circled in Figure 6.

We hear reports that the sweet spots in shale formations have largely been drilled. This leaves mostly high-cost areas left to drill. Also, investors would like better financial discipline. Ramping up greatly, and then cutting back, is no way to operate a successful company.

Thus, while growth in US crude oil production greatly supported world growth in crude oil production in the 2009 to 2018 period, it is impossible to see this pattern continuing. Getting crude oil production back up to the level of 12 million barrels a day where it was before the COVID restrictions would be extremely difficult. Further production growth, to support the growing needs of an expanding world population, is likely impossible.

OPEC Crude Oil Production
Figure 7 shows EIA crude oil production estimates for the total group of countries that are now members of OPEC. It also shows crude oil production excluding the two countries which have recently been subject to sanctions: Iran and Venezuela.



Figure 7. OPEC crude oil production to December 31, 2021, based on EIA data. Estimates for first quarter of 2022 based on indications from OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report, April 2022.

If Iran and Venezuela are removed, OPEC’s long-term production is surprisingly “flat.” The “peak” period of production is the fourth quarter of 2018. The fourth quarter of 2018 was the time when the OPEC countries were producing as much oil as they could, to get their production quotas as high as possible after the planned cutbacks that took effect at the beginning of 2019.

Strangely, EIA data indicates that production didn’t fall very much for this group of countries (OPEC excluding Iran and Venezuela), starting in early 2019. The 2019 cutback seems mostly to have affected the production of Iran and Venezuela. It was only later, in the first three quarters of 2020, when COVID restrictions were affecting worldwide production, that crude oil production for OPEC excluding Iran and Venezuela fell by 4 million barrels per day. Production for this group then began to rise, leaving a shortfall of about 900,000 barrels a day, relative to where it had been before the 2020 lockdowns.

It seems to me that, at most, production for the group of OPEC countries excluding Iran and Venezuela can be ramped up by 900,000 barrels a day, and even this is “iffy.” Iraq is reported to be having difficulty with its production; it needs more investment, or its production will fall.

Nigeria is past peak, and it is also having difficulty with its production. The high reported crude oil reserves are meaningless; the question is, “How much can these countries produce when it is required?” It doesn’t look like production can be ramped up very much. Furthermore, we cannot count on continued long-term growth in production from these countries, such as would be needed to keep pace with rising world population.


Figure 8. Crude oil production indications for Iran and Venezuela, based on EIA data through December 31, 2021. Change in oil production for first quarter of 2021 is estimated based on OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report, April 2022.

Figure 8 suggests that, indeed, Iran might be able to raise its production by perhaps 1.0 million barrels a day when sanctions are lifted.

Venezuela looks like a country whose crude oil production was already declining before sanctions were imposed. The cost of production there was likely far higher than the world oil price. Also, Venezuela has oil debts to China that it needs to repay. At most, we might expect that Venezuela’s production could be raised by 300,000 barrels per day in the absence of sanctions.

Putting the three estimates of amounts that crude oil production can perhaps be raised together, we have:

• OPEC ex Iran and Venezuela: 900,000 bpd
• Iran: 1,000,000 bpd
• Venezuela: 300,000 bpd
• Total: 2.2 million bpd

The shortfall of crude oil production in 2021, relative to 2018 production, was 5.9 million bpd, as mentioned in Section [1]. The 2.2 million barrels per day possibly available from this analysis gets us nowhere near the 2018 level. Furthermore, we have nowhere to go to obtain the rising crude oil production required to support the rising population with enough crude oil to supply food and industrial goods at today’s consumption level.

[6] Eliminating, or even reducing, Russia’s crude oil production is certain to have an adverse impact on the world economy.

Figure 9 shows the step-down in crude oil production that occurred in early 2020 and indicates that the world’s oil supply is having difficulty getting back up to pre-COVID levels. If Russia’s crude oil production were to be eliminated, it would make for another step-down of comparable magnitude. Major segments of the economy would likely need to be eliminated.


Figure 9. Quarterly crude oil production through first quarter of 2022 divided by world population estimates based on 2019 UN population estimates. Crude oil amounts through December 2021 are EIA estimates. Crude oil production estimates for first quarter 2022 are as described in the caption to Figure 5.

[7] When there isn’t enough crude oil to go around, the naive belief is that oil prices will rise and either more oil will be found, or substitutes will take its place. In fact, the result may be conflict and elimination of segments of the economy.

Our self-organizing economy will tend to adapt in its own way to inadequate crude oil supplies. Eventually, the economy may collapse completely, but before that happens, changes are likely to happen to try to preserve the “better functioning” parts of the economy. In this way, perhaps parts of the world economy can continue to function for a while longer while getting rid of less productive parts of the economy.

The following is a partial list of ways the economy might adapt:

• Fighting may take place over the remaining crude oil supplies. This may be the underlying reason for the conflict between NATO and Russia, with respect to Ukraine.
• COVID lockdowns indirectly reduce demand for crude oil. A person might wonder whether the current COVID lockdowns in China are partly aimed at preventing oil and other commodity prices from rising to absurd levels.
• Some organizations may disappear from the world economy because of inadequate funding or lack of profitability.
• Additional supply lines are likely to break, allowing fewer types of goods and services to be made.
• The world economy may subdivide into multiple pieces, with each piece able to make a much more limited array of goods and services than is provided today. A shift toward the use of other currencies instead of the US dollar may be part of this shift.
• World population may shrink for multiple reasons, including poor nutrition and epidemics.
• The poor, the elderly and the disabled may be increasingly cut off from government programs, as total goods and services (including total food supplies) fall too low.
• Europe could be cut off from Russian fossil fuel exports, leaving relatively more for the rest of the world.

[8] Countries that are major importers of crude oil and crude oil products would seem to be at significant risk of reduced supply if there is not enough crude oil to go around.

Figure 10 shows a rough estimate of the ratio of crude oil produced to crude oil products consumed in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. On an “All Liquids” basis, the US ratio of crude oil production to consumption would appear higher than shown on Figure 10 because of its unusually high share of natural gas liquids, ethanol, and “refinery gain” in its liquids production. If these types of production are omitted, the US still seems to have a deficit in producing the crude oil it consumes.

Figure 10. Rough estimate of ratio of crude oil produce to the quantity of crude oil products consumed, based on “Crude oil production” and “Oil: Regional consumption – by product group” in BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy. Russia+ includes Russia plus the other countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Perhaps all that is needed is the general idea. If inadequate crude oil is available, all of the countries at the left of Figure 10 are quite vulnerable because they are very dependent on imports. Russia and the Middle East are prime targets for countries that are desperate for crude oil.

[9] Conclusion: We are likely entering a period of conflict and confusion because of the way the world’s self-organizing economy behaves when there is an inadequate supply of crude oil.

The issue of how important crude oil is to the world economy has been left out of most textbooks for years. Instead, we were taught creative myths covering several topics:

• Huge amounts of fossil fuels will be available in the future
• Climate change is our worst problem
• Wind and solar will save us
• A fast transition to an all-electric economy is possible
• Electric cars are the future
• The economy will grow forever

Now we are running into a serious shortfall of crude oil. We can expect a new set of problems, including far more conflict. Wars are likely. Debt defaults are likely. Political parties will take increasingly divergent positions on how to work around current problems. News media will increasingly tell the narrative that their owners and advertisers want told, with little regard for the real situation.

About all we can do is enjoy each day we have and try not to be disturbed by the increasing conflict around us. It becomes clear that many of us will not live as long or well as we previously expected, regardless of savings or supposed government programs. There is no real way to fix this issue, except perhaps to make religion and the possibility of life after death more of a focus.

Half Of France's Nuclear Reactors Are Shutdown Amid Energy Crisis

SUNDAY, MAY 01, 2022 - 05:45 AM

Half of France's nuclear power plants are offline because of "maintenance or defects," which comes at a precarious time for energy and power markets across Europe as prices soar due to the Ukraine conflict.

Bloomberg reports energy supplier Electricité de France (EDF) is struggling with widespread outages after 28 of the country's 56 reactors are offline due to routine maintenance or defects.

France's nuclear power plants supply more than 66% of its total power output. The outrage has caused nuclear power output to hit the lowest seasonal level in at least a decade.



France's electricity market has trended higher in terms of prices, upwards of 30% more than its German neighbor that relies mostly on fossil fuels to power its plants. French power prices are four times higher than at the same time in 2021 because declining nuclear power has put more pressure on other power generation sources, thus triggering a supply crunch.



Emeric de Vigan, chief executive officer at French energy analysis firm COR-e, told Bloomberg that high power prices are likely to remain because the country's nuclear power problems are "going to last beyond this year and likely into the year after."

On Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase & Co. questioned if more nuclear reactors scheduled to be down this year can be pushed to 2023 "given the extraordinarily tight supply/demand and the geopolitical context."

Bloomberg noted the combination of nuclear outages and government measures to cap power prices would result in a massive 26.2 billion euros ($28.3 billion) loss in earnings for EDF this year.

France is Europe's largest net exporter of power. Continuous nuclear reactor outrages will elevate power prices and strain the crisis-stricken continent ever more as Russia now demands rubles in exchange for fossil fuels.

Inflation, Food Shortages, and Supply Chain Collapse: Skyrocketing Diesel Is the Existential Threat Nobody’s Talking About
by Mary Villareal
May 1, 2022




Editor’s Commentary: Truckers, loaders, and machine operators have been taken for granted. Their efforts are absolutely crucial to our economic infrastructure and supply chain stability.

Even incremental shortages of labor or equipment can cause massive chain reactions, which we’ve seen playing out as the supply chain crisis of 2021-22.

It’s about to get worse. Much worse. Diesel drives more than just the trucks. It’s the fuel that powers much of the equipment without our supply chain as well, and its cost is skyrocketing much faster than unleaded gasoline. No other component of the American economy has a more direct effect on the prices of literally every physical good transported anywhere in the nation than the trucking industry.

The cost of diesel doesn’t just affect how much it costs to transport goods and thereby the prices of those goods themselves. It also contributes to decision-making on what to transport where. For example, an east coast company may decide it’s simply not cost-effective to ship their goods to the west coast if diesel prices continue to rise. That could cost jobs on top of lost revenues.

What makes it all worse is that nobody in media, corporate or otherwise, is really talking about this. The handful of independent journalists who are ringing the alarm bell aren’t getting nearly enough traction to make enough Americans aware. We desperately need lawmakers contacted so we can talk some sense into them regarding what’s coming down the pike.

The article below by Mary Villareal from Natural News details why we should be extremely concerned about the state of diesel prices and how it will generate a massive economic domino effect if we do not get things turned around immediately…

No Signs of Slowing Down: Diesel Price Jumps 42.8% From Beginning of the Year, Way Ahead of Gasoline’s 25% Increase

The increase in diesel price has raced past that of gasoline. Data from the Department of Energy‘s Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed that diesel price has jumped a staggering 42.8 percent while the price of gasoline has increased 25 percent from the beginning of the year.

Given the enormous role of Russia as a supplier of diesel, it is easy to blame the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine for the soaring prices. However, the increase in the price of diesel compared to crude and gasoline began even before the war started.

The price that truckers and motorists pay at the pump is determined by the price of crude. But if the relationship between crude and diesel goes through structural changes that tack on another 10 to 15 cents a gallon to the spread, those gains are going to impact the retail price of diesel even if crude price remains unchanged.

The spread of the prices was just under 40 cents per gallon a year ago but has now increased to up to $1.20. The spread crossed the $1 per gallon mark on March 18 of this year after starting the year at only 27 cents.

But the retail price is already at the end of a long supply chain that includes oil production, the selection of the types of crudes for a refinery to process, and the split output that includes gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other products. The growth in the gasoline-to-retail spread is ultimately the final step after changes in the spot products market. (Related: Germany, Austria move closer to rationing gas supplies.)

Diesel prices driving up costs of goods
As consumers notice the spiking gasoline prices, energy industry analysts say the current spike in diesel prices is historic in the sense that it is pushing up costs of goods. Now hovering at all-time highs, diesel prices are being forced upward by the same circumstance that fueled gasoline’s rise.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, said the price of fuel is the bigger headline as nearly everything people buy is at some point freighted in a vehicle powered by a diesel engine, including ships and barges, trains, trucks and even some airplanes.

This massive increase is hitting consumers hard, including truckers who spend nearly twice the amount for fuel per week. Freight industry analysts also suspect that the very fragmented and volatile trucking industry will likely experience another severe recession, with others going as far as calling it a bloodbath.

“We see when fuel surges as much as it has over the past couple of months, that’s usually when we see a lot of trucking bankruptcies follow,” said Craig Fuller, founder and CEO of industry tracker Freightwaves.

This is bad news for the nearly two million trucking companies in the United States, the vast majority of which are smaller businesses with just a handful of trucks. (Related: Newsom wants to spend $11 billion to give Californians $400 gas cards, throwing more incendiary money into an already inflationary economy.)

“These small operators that live essentially on the cash flow of their trucking operations are not prepared and don’t have the balance sheets or the cash position to absorb these instantaneous shocks to their cash flow,” he said.

Lake Powell officials are now facing an impossible choice in the West’s megadrought: Water or electricity?

May 1, 2022 | 0 |

Lake Powell, the country’s second-largest reservoir, is drying up. The situation is critical: if water levels at the lake were to drop another 32 feet, all hydroelectricity production would be halted at the reservoir’s Glen Canyon Dam.

According to CNN, The West’s climate change-induced water crisis is now triggering a potential energy crisis for millions of people in the Southwest who rely on the dam as a power source.

Over the past several years, the Glen Canyon Dam has lost about 16 percent of its capacity to generate power.

The water levels at Lake Powell have dropped around 100 feet in the last three years. Bob Martin, deputy power manager for the Glen Canyon Dam, pointed toward what’s called the “bathtub ring” on the canyon walls. The miles of white rock represent this region’s problem.

“That’s where the water has bleached out the rock — and that’s how high the water was at one point,” Martin told CNN. As water levels decline, so does hydropower production. The dam harnesses the gravitational force of the Colorado River’s water to generate power for as many as 5.8 million homes and businesses in seven states, including Nevada and New Mexico.

Bryan Hill runs the public power utility in Page, Arizona, where the federal dam is located, and likens the situation to judgment day. “We’re knocking on the door of judgment day — judgment day being when we don’t have any water to give anybody.”

Forty percent of Page’s power comes from the Glen Canyon Dam. Without it, they’ll be forced to make up that electricity with fossil fuels like natural gas, which emits planet-warming gases and will exacerbate the West’s water crisis.

Loss of power at the dam would also mean higher energy costs for customers as the price of fossil fuels skyrockets. “If nothing changes, in other words, if we don’t start getting some moisture for Page, in particular, we are looking at an additional 25 to 30% in power costs,” Hill told CNN.

Arash Moalemi, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority’s deputy general manager, told CNN a loss of power at the Glen Canyon Dam would be devastating for the Navajo community.

REESE REPORT: BIG PHARMA SET TO CONTROL ENTIRE FOOD SUPPLY 5:51

REESE REPORT: BIG PHARMA SET TO CONTROL ENTIRE FOOD SUPPLY

• WATCH

(More about big pharma/Bill Gates backed vertical farms and synthetic GMO farms. MRNA lettuce. Fresh produce. pigs, cattle and salmon are being genetically modified. Meat production is being reimagined as synthetic. They will need a major crisis like is being created now with food supplies. When the people demand a solution, this will be pushed forward. Coding food to make it trackable to control people. )

Manufactured Crisis? All of a Sudden, Unfortunate 'Coincidences' Are Affecting Food Supplies 7:05 min

Manufactured Crisis? All of a Sudden, Unfortunate 'Coincidences' Are Affecting Food Supplies (Del Bigtree)
Red Voice Media Published May 1, 2022
Food processing plants catching fire, private planes crashing into such plants in the middle of nowhere, beef recall, bird flu outbreak: what's going on?


(Locations where food processing plants have suffered damage/destruction)

"Never let a crisis go to waste," says USAID administrator Samantha Power. .35 min

"Never let a crisis go to waste," says USAID administrator Samantha Power. (fertilizers vs "natural manures")
The Post Millennial Clips Published May 1, 2022

Russian fertilizer shortages - result working with countries on "natural solutions" like manure and compost May hasten transitions "in the interests of farmers to make anyway." Never let a crisis go to waste.

Thanks marsh for these informative articles. Keep up the great work. We appreciate the work you do.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNO55jkxuIk
6:40 min

More Food / Farm Processing Fires Just Happened / Food Shortage / Supply Chain

May 1, 2022


The Economic Ninja

More Food / Farm Processing Fires Just Happened / Food Shortage / Supply Chain. Fires Destroying Food Processing Plants All Over The Country Right Now (Food Supply Chain Collapse). Right now from Cargill, JBS Meats To Nestle Hot Pockets Food plants.
https://www.wtkr.com/news/chesapeake-... https://www.powderbulksolids.com/food... https://www.kvrr.com/2022/05/01/sever...

(General Mills processing plant - Iowa; Rare -train fire cars full of tater tots; Perdue Farms Grain/soy bean processing and storage Chesapeake; )

Fellow identifies what the WEF is projecting about those who don't go along with the plan...


"Great Reset- What do they think of people who will live in the country?"
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omGd7NNzjBk

rt: 15:50


He did a good job of putting it together, and is another voice raising a clarion call regarding the 'Future' the Elites have in store for everyone.

Another vid, by Sorelle Amore Finance, where she discusses the "Great Reset" - and it's ramifications...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpE5cBgl11U

rt: 14:11

I remember watching a few vids from her a couple/few years ago; she seems to have evolved in her thinking from "Don't worry, be happy! and make some money" to "Be worried. Be very worried..." (my take on her trajectory...)

She discusses how digital currencies are going to be rolled out by the Central Banks, and the ramifications thereunto appertaining...

von Koehler said:

Oh, they get it alright.

Not the first time in history the Left has used famines to get their way.

Click to expand...

In fact, seems to be a pattern...

Food Shortages In Six Months – The Globalists Are Telling Us What Happens Next

SUNDAY, MAY 01, 2022 - 07:10 PM
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

In mid 2007 the Bank for International Settlements (The central bank of central banks) released a statement predicting an impending “Great Depression” caused by a credit market implosion. That same year the International Monetary Fund also published warnings of “subprime woes” leading to wider economic strife. I started writing alternative economic analysis only a year earlier in 2006 and I immediately thought it was strange that these massive globalist institutions with far reaching influence on the financial world were suddenly starting to sound a lot like those of us in the liberty movement.

This was 16 years ago, so many people reading this might not even remember, but in 2007 the alternative media had already been warning about an impending deflationary crash in US markets and housing for some time. And, not surprisingly, the mainstream media was always there to deny all of our concerns as “doom mongering” and “conspiracy theory.” Less than a year later the first companies awash in derivatives began to announce they were on the verge of bankruptcy and everything tanked.

The media response? They made two very bizarre claims simultaneously: “No one could have seen it coming” and “We saw this coming a mile away.” Mainstream journalists scrambled to position themselves as the soothsayers of the day as if they said all along that the crash was imminent, yet, there were only a handful of people who actually did call it and none of them were in the MSM. Also ignored was the fact that the BIS and IMF had published their own “predictions” well before the crash; the media pretended as if they did not exist.

In the alternative media we watch the statements and open admissions of the globalists VERY carefully because they are not in the business of threat analysis; rather, they are in the business of threat synthesis. That is to say, if something goes very wrong in the world economically, central bankers and money elites with aspirations of a single centralized economic authority for the world are ALWAYS found to have a hand in that disaster.

For some reason, they like to tell us what they are about to do before they do it.

The idea that globalists artificially create economic collapse events will of course be criticized as “conspiracy theory,” but it is a FACT. For more information on the reality of deliberate financial sabotage and the “order out of chaos” ideology of globalists please read my articles ‘Fed One Meeting Away From Creating A Doomsday Sinkhole’ and ‘What Is The Great Reset And What Do The Globalists Actually Want?’

The Great Reset agenda proposed by WEF head Klaus Schwab is just one example of the many discussions hidden in plain sight by globalists concerning their plans to use economic and social decline as an “opportunity” to quickly establish a new one world system based on socialism and technocracy.

The primary problem with discerning what the globalists are planning is not in uncovering secret agendas – They tend to openly discuss their agendas if you know where to look. No, the problem is in separating the admissions from the disinformation, the lies from the truth. This requires matching up globalist white papers and statements to the facts and evidence at hand in the real world.



Let’s look specifically at the food shortage problem in detail…

Food Shortages In Six Months
A week ago there was a torrent of press releases from global institutions all mentioning the same exact same concern: Food shortages within the next 3 to 6 months. These statements line up very closely with my own estimates, as I have been warning regularly about impending dangers of inflation leading to food rationing and supply chain disruptions.

The IMF, the BIS, World Bank, The UN, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Economic Forum, Bank of America and even Biden himself are all predicting a major food crisis in the near term, and it is not a coincidence that the policies of these very institutions and the actions of puppet politicians that work with them are causing the crisis they are now predicting. That is to say, it’s easy to predict a disaster when you created the disaster.

The claim is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the primary cause, but this is a distraction from the real issue. Yes, sanctions against Russia will eventually lead to less food supply, but the globalists and the media are purposely ignoring the bigger threat, which is currency devaluation and price inflation created by central banks pumping out tens of trillions of dollars in stimulus packages to prop up “too big to fail” corporate partners.

In 2020 alone, the Fed created over $6 trillion from nothing and air dropped it into the economy through covid welfare programs. Add that to the many trillions of dollars that the Fed has printed since the credit crash in 2008 – It has been a nonstop dollar destruction party and now the public is starting to feel the consequences. Lucky for the central bankers that covid struck and Russia invaded Ukraine, because now they can deflect all the blame for the inflationary calamity they have engineered onto the pandemic and onto Putin.

Inflation hit 40 year highs in the US well before Russia invaded Ukraine, but let’s consider the ramifications of that war and how it affects the food supply.

The Russian invasion certainly disrupts Ukrainian grain production, which makes up around 11% of the total world wheat market. Russia also maintains a 17% share and together these two nations feed a large swath of third world nations and parts of Europe with 30% of wheat and barley exports, 19% of corn exports, 23% of canola exports, and 78% of sunflower exports.

It is the sanctions on Russia that are a problem well beyond Ukraine, however, as Russia also produces around 20% of global ammonia and 20% of global potash supplies. These are key ingredients to fertilizers used in large scale industrial farming. Farmers are estimating an overall price spike of around 10% in food markets, but I believe this is very conservative. I am already seeing overall price increases of at least 20% from six months ago, and I expect there to be another 30% in price hikes before this year is over. In other words, we are looking at 50% in average increases in 2022.

Official government inflation data and CPI cannot be trusted. Double whatever numbers they give and you will be much closer to the truth. The inflation rate used by Shadowstats.com, calculated using methods once applied by the US government in the 1980s before they “adjusted” their models to hide the data, supports my position so far.

The expectation among US agricultural experts is that China will fill the void where Russian supplies disappear, but it’s a mistake to make this assumption.

Something Weird Is Going On In China
China’s crackdown on covid infections has reached levels so bizarre I have to ask the question: Are their lockdowns really about covid, or are they hiding something else?

The death rate of covid in China is impossible to calculate accurately because they have never released proper data that can be confirmed. However, almost everywhere else in the world we see a median infection fatality rate of 0.27% for covid; meaning, over 99.7% of people in the world on average have nothing to fear in terms of dying from the virus. But in China, the CCP is acting as if they are dealing with the Black Plague. Why?

Lockdowns have resulted in food shortages across the country as supply chains become strained and manufacturing remains shut in many cases. The story many westerners are not hearing much about, though, is the fact that Chinese exports have essentially been frozen. This is very important so I think it needs emphasis – Over 1 IN 5 container ships IN THE WORLD are now backed up in Chinese ports due to their covid lockdowns. This is incredible.

Why would China do this over a virus we all know is not dangerous to the vast majority of people? Why institute the worst lockdown in the country so far and starve their own people when the majority of Western governments have now given up on their pandemic fear mongering and the forced vaccination agenda?

I would suggest the possibility that China might already be engaging in an economic war that many Americans and Europeans don’t even realize is going on. (Emphasis mine) This may be a beta test for a shut down of exports to the US and Europe, or it is an incremental shutdown that is meant to become permanent. The bottleneck on trade may also be a precursor to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Taiwan is actually more dependent and intertwined with China’s economy than many people know. China is the biggest buyer of Taiwan’s exports and those exports account for 10% of Taiwan’s GDP. Taiwan has hundreds of thousands of workers and businessmen that travel regularly to China to work, another economic factor that is now strained by lockdowns.

Furthermore, Taiwan has multiple corporations that operate their factories on mainland China, all of which could be closed due to covid lockdowns.

All I’m saying is, if I was China planning on invading Taiwan in the near future, I might consider using covid as a cover for damaging their economy first and disrupting their export model.

Communists see the population as a utility that can be sacrificed if necessary, and China is perfectly willing to cause short term suffering to their people if it means long term gains for the party. Beyond that, if I was going to engage in economic warfare with the west covertly, what better way than to tie up 20% of the world’s cargo ships and disrupt supply chains in the name of protecting the country form a “pandemic?”

The bottom line? Don’t rely on China to fill export needs for fertilizer ingredients or anything else as sanctions on Russia continue.

Inflation vs. Supply vs. Control
It’s not just globalist organizations talking about incoming food shortages; the CEO of international food corporation Goya has also recently warned we are on the precipice of a food crisis. As I have noted in the past, inflation leads to government price controls, price controls lead to lack of production incentives (profits), lack of profits leads to loss of production, loss of production leads to shortages, and shortages lead to government rationing (control over all large food sources).

As we have seen with almost every authoritarian regime in modern history, control over the food supply is key to controlling the population. It is only surpassed as a strategic concern by control over energy (which we will also see shortages of soon as Europe sanctions Russian oil and gas and starts eating up supplies from other exporters). The food issue hits closest to home because we can see the effects immediately on our wallets and on our families. There is nothing worse for many parents than the prospect of their children going hungry.

The mainstream media is once again ignoring any potential economic threat, specifically they are denying the notion of food shortages as something to be worried about. I say, why listen to a group of people that are always wrong on these types of events? If anything, I would at least take the words of the globalists seriously when it comes to economic collapse; they benefit the most from such disasters after all, and they also have the most influence when it comes to triggering crisis.

Preparedness today costs nothing tomorrow. Lack of preparedness today costs EVERYTHING tomorrow. The choice for anyone with a brain is simple – Get prepared for the end of affordable and easily available food before this year is out.

Alarming Signs Farmers Reduce Fertilizer May Wreck Crop Yields

SUNDAY, MAY 01, 2022 - 03:05 PM

There is growing concern farmers worldwide are reducing chemical fertilizer, which may threaten yields come harvest time, according to Bloomberg. The repercussions could be huge: Lower yields may exacerbate the food crisis.

There are alarming signs commercial farmers in top growing areas in the world are decreasing the use of essential nutrients — nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

Revealed last week, SLC Agricola SA, one of Brazil's largest farming operations, managing fields of soybeans, corn, and cotton fields in an area larger than the state of Delaware, will reduce the use of fertilizer by 20% and 25%.

Coffee farmers in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, some of the largest coffee-producing countries, are expected to spread less fertilizer because of high costs and shortages.

A coffee cooperative representing 1,200 farmers in Costa Rica predicts coffee output could slip 15% next year because of soaring fertilizer costs.

The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) warned a reduction in fertilizer use would shrink yields of rice and corn come harvest time. Farmers in China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam — the largest rice-producing countries — are spreading less fertilizer, and may result in a 10% reduction in output, equating to about 36 million tons of rice, or enough food to feed a half billion people.

More fertilizer equals more food production; Less fertilizer equals lower food production. It's a simple concept to understand and may suggest an even larger food crisis is on the horizon.

The US won't be spared. Chairman of the Kansas Wheat Commission Gary Millershaski said his "biggest fear" this spring is that farmers in North America skip out on applying nitrogen to wheat plantings. He said, if farmers did, this might suggest harvests would be a "lower class of wheat."

In March, Tony Will, the chief executive of the world's largest nitrogen fertilizer company CF Industries Holdings Inc., warned: "My biggest concern is that we end up with a very severe shortage of food in certain areas of the world."

Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah provided Bloomberg Television's David Westin with a timeline of when the "massive, immediate food crisis" begins. He said, "in the next six months."

Iowa egg-laying farm kills 5M chickens, fires 200-plus workers
Megan Cerullo - Thursday

Animal rights activists are up in arms over reports that a chicken farm in Iowa killed more than five million birds, after detecting a case of avian influenza, in what activists say was a gruesome culling method. The factory farm later dismissed the more than 200 workers it had tasked with slaughtering the hens, according to a report from The Guardian.


© Credit: CBSNewsrembrandt-facility.jpg

Rembrandt Farms, where the mass slaughter took place in March, is owned by billionaire Glen Taylor, one of the wealthiest Iowans, and an owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Last month, protesters from Direct Action Everywhere, an animal rights advocacy group, stormed the court at home games wearing T-shirts reading, "Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive."

The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship in March announced that it had confirmed a case of avian influenza in "a flock of commercial layer chickens" in Buena Vista County, where Rembrandt Farms is located.

Zoe Rosenberg, a protester, alleged that the farm created an environment that made it easy for disease to spread.

"I don't think any farm should have that many birds to begin with," she told CBS MoneyWatch.

The Storm Lake Times detailed the Ventilation Shutdown Plus method by which the birds were killed. The system shuts off barn ventilation, temperatures rise above 104 degrees and the birds die slowly, by suffocation.

Rosenberg described the method by which the hens were killed as "horrifying."

"They were essentially roasted alive. They were cooked from the inside out," she said. "Glen Taylor is a billionaire, yet he chose the cheapest option to kill these birds in a very cruel way."

Workers dismissed
The enterprise then summarily dismissed more than 200 workers.

"The workers were let go immediately after they performed ventilation shutdown and finished disposing of the bodies of these chickens. Working on a factory farm is not easy," Rosenberg added.

Oscar Garcia, a former plant supervisor, told the Guardian that workers were poorly treated.

"People worked in those barns pulling out dead birds in terrible conditions, feces everywhere, doing 12 to 14 hour days," he said. "They couldn't protest because then they'd be fired and lose their redundancy pay. Then they're thrown out of work and no one speaks for them."

Rembrandts Farms did not immediately reply to CBS MoneyWatch's request for comment.

The culling at Rembrandt comes amid a spread of bird flu in the U.S. that has farms grappling with ways to quickly kill and dispose of millions of chickens and turkeys to limit the spread of disease.

More than 24 million birds have been killed in the past two months an effort to contain outbreaks. It is the biggest outbreak of bird flu since 2015, when producers killed more than 50 million chickens and turkeys.

WATCH: The Global Pandemic Treaty – What You Need to Know

https://player.odycdn.com/api/v4/st...b67d31f813d34fd0738af390c3159d6cf9514a/44a672 1:19:27 min

The World Health Organization has already begun drafting a global pandemic treaty on pandemic preparedness. What form will it take? What teeth will it have? How will it further the globalists in cementing the biosecurity grid into place?

James Corbett discusses all this and more – not to mention talks with OffG’s own Kit Knightly – in the latest edition of the Corbett Report.

There’s also valuable background on the WHO itself, the current Director-General Tedros Adhanom, the organization’s role in the “swine flu” scam of 2009 and much, much more. A must watch.

Apr 25, 2022

5 signs they are CREATING a food crisis
Kit Knightly

It’s no secret that, according to politicians and the corporate press, “food shortages” and a “food supply crises” have been on the way for a while now. They have been regularly predicted for several years.

What’s really strange is that despite its near-constant incipience, the food shortage never seems to actually arrive and is always blamed on something new.

As long ago as 2012, “scientists” were predicting that climate change and a lack of clean water would create “food shortages” that would “turn the world vegetarian by 2050”.

In 2019, UN “experts” warned that “climate change was threatening the world’s food supply”.

Later the same year, the UK was warned that they could expect a food shortage as a result of “post-Brexit chaos”.

By early March 2020 supermarkets were already “warning” that the government had been too slow to act on the coronavirus outbreak, and they might run out of food. (They never actually did).

A month later, in April 2020 when the “pandemic” was less than three months old, “officials” warned Covid was going to create a global food crisis. Three months later it had ballooned into “the worst food crisis for 50 years”.

In the Summer of 2021 the British press was predicting the “worst food shortages since world war 2” and “rolling power cuts”, allegedly due to a lack of truck drivers blamed equally on Covid and Brexit (neither the shortages nor power cuts ever really materialised).

By September 2021, the UK was told the gas price spike would create a shortage of frozen food, and just a month later, that we may have to ration meat ahead of Christmas, due to the gas crisis. (There never was any rationing)

In January 2022, Australia saw “empty supermarket shelves” blamed on the Omicron variant crippling the supply chain, while the US had the same empty shelves blamed on bad winter weather.

Moving into the spring of 2022, the food crisis is still on its way…only now it’s because of the war in Ukraine, or China’s “Zero Covid” policies, or the bird flu outbreak.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that – since the food crisis is always expected but never arrives, and is always blamed on the current thing – that it doesn’t really exist. That it’s nothing but a psy-op designed to spread panic and give suppliers an excuse to jack up their prices in response to fake “scarcity” created by the press.

However, there are indications that this may be about to change.

In a Brussels press conference on March 25th of this year, Joe Biden said…

Regarding food shortages – yes, we did talk about shortages, and they’re going to be real.”

Click to expand...

…which is a decidedly odd thing to say.

Most of the time the only reason to strongly affirm something is “going to be real” from now on, is that up to that point it was not.

Indeed, there are a few signs that the food supply is about to genuinely come under attack.

1. UKRAINE WAR & WESTERN SANCTIONS
It’s well documented that Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine has driven up the prices of oil, gas and wheat. Partly due to disruption on the ground, but mostly due to Western sanctions.

Russia is the largest exporter of wheat and other grains in the world, and these products are used not just for making food for humans, but also as animal feed. Western nations boycotting Russian wheat will therefore potentially drive up the price of a huge variety of foodstuffs.

We have already seen rationing of sunflower oil (a major Ukrainian export), with reports that this could extend to all kinds of other products including sausages, chicken, pasta and beer.

This war did not need to happen, it could have been prevented (and could still be stopped) by a simple agreement on Ukrainian neutrality. Combine that with the sweeping nature of the anti-Russian sanctions – unmatched in recent history – and you can reason that the chaos on the ground and concomitant increase in food prices is part of a deliberate policy serving the Great Reset agenda.

2. INCREASING THE PRICE OF OIL
The increased price of oil has natural and obvious knock-on effects for every industrial sector – most especially transport, logistics and agriculture. Despite fears of a cost of living crisis, warnings of food shortages and Russia’s status as the largest exporter of oil and gas in the world, Western nations and their allies have made virtually zero effort to lower the cost of oil.

The high oil price has already seen the Russian ruble bounce back to pre-war strength, and yet Saudi Arabia has been increasing their prices, not flooding the market to tank the price as they did in 2014/15.

Keeping the cost of petroleum high is a deliberate policy decision, and one that shows the cost of living crisis – and any resultant food shortages – are being engineered on purpose.

3. BIRD FLU
The press is claiming there is a major bird flu outbreak going on. As we published last week, the dynamics of “bird flu” seem to be identical to Covid. Birds are tested for the virus using PCR tests, culled if they are “positive”, and these culls are then labelled “bird flu deaths”.

This process has already seen at least 27 million poultry birds destroyed in the US alone, the world’s largest exporter of both chicken and eggs. France, Canada and the UK have also culled millions of birds.

Bird flu has already (allegedly) caused the price of chicken and eggs to skyrocket.

(As a potentially important aside, a new report has also warned that pigs can pass “superbugs” to humans, so pigs may be for the chop sometime soon, too)

4. UK & US PAYING FARMERS TO STOP FARMING
Going back to last May, the Biden administration began pushing farmers to add agricultural land to the “conservation reserve program”, a federally funded program allegedly aimed at preserving the environment. The program is essentially paying farmers not to farm. A very odd policy decision, given the widely predicted food shortages.

A state-level plan in California is going to pay farmers to grow less, this time in the name of saving water.

Interestingly, the UK has a similar program going on for (again, allegedly) totally different reasons. Starting this past February, the British government is paying lump sums of up £100,000 to any farmers who want to retire from farming. Again, a strange policy during a period of geopolitical unrest impacting the food supply.

5. MANUFACTURED FERTILISER SHORTAGES
Russia and Belarus are two of the biggest exporters of fertiliser and fertiliser-related products in the world, accounting for around 10 billion dollars worth of trade manually. So, the war in Ukraine (and the sanctions) are already hitting the fertiliser market hard, with prices hitting new all-time highs in March.

China, the third biggest exporter of fertiliser in the world, has had a self-imposed export ban on the product since last summer, allegedly in an effort to keep domestic food prices low.

Given that, it is very strange that America’s Union Pacific Railway has suddenly placed a limit on the number of fertiliser deliveries it will make, informing fertiliser giant CF Industries they will need to cut their train car use by as much as 20%.

In their public response, CF Industries stated:

The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers…Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all. By placing this arbitrary restriction on just a handful of shippers, Union Pacific is jeopardizing farmers’ harvests and increasing the cost of food for consumers.”

Click to expand...

BONUS: FIRES AT FOOD PROCESSING PLANTS
This get’s a bonus slot, not an official spot, because of the multiple unknowns in this case.
In the strangest and most ephemeral story on the list, it seems there has been a rash of fires at food processing plants all over the United States in the last six months. Since August 2021 at least 16 major fires have broken out at food processing plants all across the country.

In September last year a meat processor in Nebraska burned down, impacting 5% of the country’s beef supply. In March of this year fire shut down a Nestle frozen food plant in Arkansas and a major potato processing site in Belfast, Maine was almost levelled by a huge fire.

The examples just keep on coming.

In just the last week two different single-engine planes have crashed into two different food plants, causing major fires. One at a potato processing plant in Idaho, another at a General Mills plant in Georgia.

Right now we can’t prove this is a deliberate campaign, or even statistically unusual, but it certainly warrants some further investigation.

There’s a good write-up on this story on Tim Pool’s website, and an in-depth twitter thread covering all the recent events from Dr Ben Braddock here.

*
In summary…

1. A war which did not need to happen is driving up food and oil prices.
2. Sanctions which did not need to be put in place are also driving up food and oil prices.
3. Western allies are intentionally raising their oil prices.
4. Despite warning of a food crisis, US and UK are paying farmers not to farm.
5. A “bird flu epidemic” very much like the fake Covid “pandemic” is driving up the price of poultry and eggs.
6. Western companies are actively making the fertiliser shortages worse.
7. Bizarre fires are crippling large sections of the US food industry.

Taken individually maybe these points could all be seen as mistakes or coincidences, but when you put them all together it’s not hard to spot the pattern. The press may claim we are “sleepwalking” into a food crisis, but it looks more like they’re running head-first into it.

After years of saying there’s a food shortage on the way, it looks like they might be about to finally actually create one.

(Now ponder why they are simultaneously undermining and defunding police departments.)

Price of diesel hits all-time high, straining the trucking industry

A gallon of diesel hit $5.296 on Sunday, according to AAA
By Paul Best FOXBusiness

Soaring cost of diesel ripples through economy

Gas prices continue to rise as inflation surges in the U.S. FOX Business' Madison Alworth with more.

The price of diesel hit an all-time high in the United States this week as energy markets around the world cope with ongoing disruptions amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The average price of a gallon of diesel was $5.296 on Sunday, up about 4.3% from one week ago and nearly twice as much as one year ago.

Gas prices are also elevated, standing at $4.187 a gallon on Sunday, down slightly from the all-time high of $4.331 on March 11, according to AAA.


Although gasoline prices have dropped recently, the price of diesel fuel is still high, as the sign at this Flying J Truck Stop advertises in Pearl, Miss., Wednesday, April 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis / AP Newsroom)

While average Americans are feeling the pain at the pump with high gas prices, the trucking industry has been hit hard by the diesel surge.

"The prices are skyrocketing, and we still don’t get good prices for the loads," Michal Agboire, who works for Maitland Trucking, told WNCN. "If it goes any higher than this, and the price of the load not coming up, then maybe we just call it quits."

The high cost of diesel is being partially passed on to consumers for everything from electronics to groceries.


Gas prices are displayed at a gas station in Long Beach, Calif., Wednesday, March 9, 2022. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. hit a record $4.17 on Tuesday as the country prepares to ban Russian oil imports. (AP Photo/Ashley Landi (AP Photo/Ashley Landis / AP Newsroom)

"To cover the increased cost of diesel, truckers must increase the rates charged to haul freight.

These increased rates are then passed on to consumers via higher costs at the retail level," Ron Faulkner, the president of Faulkner Trucking and 2022 president of the California Trucking Association, wrote in an op-ed at the Sacramento Bee this week.

"So, you are paying for high prices of fuel both at the pump and at the grocery checkout line."

Overall inflation hit a four-decade high in March, as the consumer price index, which measures a broad basket of goods, jumped 8.5% over March 2021

marsh said:

(Now ponder why they are simultaneously undermining and defunding police departments.)

Click to expand...

Out of Chaos, Order.




See how that works?

Tristan said:

Out of Chaos, Order.




See how that works?

Click to expand...

All going as planned by Schwab and friends.

Another from the 'Health and Homestead' channel on Youtube.

I've watched 3-4 of his videos, and he seems to be doing a pretty good job considering the topics involved. Scanned the titles of more of his vids, and will be paying attention to this channel.

13 Ways to Avoid the Great Reset - As Long As Possible

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHAwhZ7TOU8


rt: 10:13

Title is a good summation... and pretty well presented.

The suggestions made will be familiar to anyone who's read much on this forum for any length of time; but he associates how those skills will (hopefully) aid in avoiding getting sucked into the "Great Reset", for as long as possible, at least.

Perhaps may be shared with others so the 'message' doesn't have to come from you...

Warning (in case you're 'offended' by the Bible): There is a suggestion to read Revelations, due to it's seeming parallels to today.

Get it while ya can.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWXlP1h2MOE


Animal & Food Supply Tragedy As 5 Million Bees Perish At An Airport Due To Supply Chain Issues

May 2, 2022


The Economic Ninja

(5 million bees from Sacramento to Alaska were bumped to an Atlanta route instead of Seattle and died on the tarmac. Bee hives are shipped all over the US. Bees to be used to pollinate Apple orchards and nurseries in Alaska. Bees are not native to Alaska. The rest is about creating bee habitat on your property.)

The Great Reset's Ultimate Nefarious Goal To Keep Us In Panic Mode Explained - Dr. Reiner Fuellmich 1:55 min

The Great Reset's Ultimate Nefarious Goal To Keep Us In Panic Mode Explained - Dr. Reiner Fuellmich
Red Voice Media Published May 2, 2022

(Keeping us in panic mode through COVID, supply chain, Ukraine - all engineered for chaos. The WEF wants us to say that our individual governments can't handle the crisis and we must look to the WEF-controlled UN to govern us. Klaus Schwab was selected by Henry Kissinger is a CIA controlled program. They want one world government and one world digital currency embracing the ideas of the Chinese social credit system.)

(Australia)

The Chinafication of Australia: Senator Malcolm Roberts Details the Dangers of the Trusted Digital Identity Bill 2 min

The Chinafication of Australia: Senator Malcolm Roberts Details the Dangers of the Trusted Digital Identity Bill
Red Voice Media Published May 1, 2022 221 Views

"The dream of micromanaging individual carbon emissions hinges on the soon to be passed so-called Trusted Digital Identity Bill. If Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce want to achieve their Net Zero 2050 dream, freedoms must be slashed [and] removed. It is only through the relentless digital stalking of citizens that the liberal national government can micromanage purchasing choices. Businesses [would be] punished with tax while consumers [would] get their credit scores docked [for making 'undesirable' choices]... When the liberals tell you that digital identity will make your life easier, remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch."

Elon Musk | Grimes "AI Is Actually the Fastest Path to Communism." 10:37 min

Elon Musk | Grimes "AI Is Actually the Fastest Path to Communism." | The Great Reset
Thrivetime Show: The ReAwakening versus The Great Reset Published May 2, 2022 715 Views

Overview: Elon Musk was listed on the 2008 World Economic Forum list of Young Global Leaders. Musk produced two children with Grimez who released the SATANIC song “We Appreciate Power.” Musk founded OpenAI in San Francisco in 2015 with Sam Altman, and Others. OpenAI LP received a $1 billion investment from Bill Gates’ and Microsoft. Musk owns the COVID-19 vaccine developer CureVac and is openly discussing us his Boring Company to dig the new CERN Hadron Collider.

(In a series of short clips, Musk, Grimes Harari discuss technohumans, transhumans, neurolink, inter-brain nets, intelligent design of humans and algorithms, direct human/computer interface, exemption from death for the wealthy and AI controlled things like agriculture. )

Frank Gaffney: CPDC Webinar on the Coming Digital Gulag 10:56 min

Frank Gaffney: CPDC Webinar on the Coming Digital Gulag (Frank Gaffney)
Bannons War Room Published May 2, 2022

^^^^^

Webinar | DIGITAL GULAG: Vaccine Passports, “Disinformation”, and a Cashless Society
Published On: April 24, 2022

A Stop Vax Passports Task Force Webinar:
DIGITAL GULAG:
Vaccine Passports, “Disinformation”, and a Cashless Society
May 2, 2022
04:30 PM ET

“Digital Gulag: Vaccine Passports, “Disinformation”, and a Cashless Society” will examine how Americans are at extreme risk of losing basic freedoms to centralized digital platforms controlled by state bureaucrats and corporate enablers. Freedom of movement, association, speech, bodily autonomy, thought, privacy, and private property are all threatened. We welcome you to join us for this urgent and thought-provoking program.

Hosted by: The Stop Vaccine Passports Task Force sponsored by the Committee on the Present Danger: China and Women’s Rights Without Frontiers

MODERATOR
Frank Gaffney, Vice Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger: China; Co-Chair, Stop Vaccine Passports Task Force

HOST
Reggie Littlejohn, Founder and President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, Co-Chair, Stop Vaccine Passports Task Force

PANELISTS

• Nick Corbishley, Journalist, Author of Scanned: Why Vaccine Passports and Digital IDs Will Mean the End of Privacy and Personal Freedom.
• Kevin Freeman, Host of Economic War Room; Senior Fellow, Center for Security Policy
• Joe Allen, Analyst on transhumanism for Steve Bannon’s War Room; Author of the “Singularity Weekly” on SubStack
• Zach Vorhies, Google whistleblower; Author of “Google Leaks”
• Dr. Benjamin Marble, ER doctor in Gulf Breeze Florida; Founder of MyFreeDoctor.com
• Connie Elliott, Researcher on Advanced Digital Technologies and Applications
• Kyle Bass, Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Hayman Capital Management*

Scientific Dictatorship: Patrick Wood Details the Oligarchs' Plan, But Will Humanity Wake Up in Time? 3:40 min

Scientific Dictatorship: Patrick Wood Details the Oligarchs' Plan, But Will Humanity Wake Up in Time?
The Vigilant Fox Published May 2, 2022

"The world would be run by algorithm; resources will be allocated out to the people... and we are part of the resources... Taking over the health of the world is very important to this crowd, and [this force] is working right now to take over the 'healthcare of the world' to manage the human population."

"Once you see the whole picture, you cannot unsee it. It's like the magic trick... If [the magician] were to tell you how he did the trick, and you understood how we did it, you can never be fooled again."
Full Video: ‘Friday Roundtable’ Episode 5: Crimes Against Humanity – A Cross Examination of the Global Pandemic With Judy Mikovits, Reiner Fuellmich + More - Friday Roundtable - CHD TV: Livestreaming Video & Audio
1:16:58
APRIL 29, 2022FRIDAY ROUNDTABLE
‘Friday Roundtable’ Episode 5: Crimes Against Humanity – A Cross Examination of the Global Pandemic With Judy Mikovits, Reiner Fuellmich + More
Today‘s “Friday Roundtable” is a powerful testament to the efforts being made to expose corruption, produce true science, and put forth eye-opening evidence. In this episode, individuals from the Crimes Against Humanity Tour join for this discussion. These guests are Reiner Fuellmich, Patrick M. Wood, Dr. Richard M. Fleming, Nash Singh, Nisha D., and Judy A. Mikovits, Ph.D.

The recording of this webinar should be available on Thursday at stopvaxpassports.org

'Faulty and non-existent science': Cosmin Dzsurdzsa on report attacking Canadian cereal farmers 5:33 min

'Faulty and non-existent science': Cosmin Dzsurdzsa on report attacking Canadian cereal farmers
Rebel News Published May 2, 2022
The report outlines a framework to meet Trudeau’s 2020 climate plan target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the agriculture sector.

(Truedeau's government imposed a 30% emissions cap on fertilizer use. Report by Agriculture-agrifood Canada singles out wheat, barley and other cereal crops as highest greenhouse gas emissions among export countries. Government relied on UN report based in modeling and guesstimations. There have been no hard data studies.

Cosmin points out that farmers are not going to abuse fertilizer as it is so expensive. Farmers are price takers, not price makers. They aren't going to abuse inputs as it will cut into their profit.

The people need to oppose this. It seems like agricultural and military policies are intended to weaken the country and make it less secure in the name of ideology.