Just as the IDF protects us against the 2 legged Rats and Snakes, the Cats protect us against the real Rats and Snakes. You need to take care of our other army protecting you from Rats and Snakes by feeding the Cats.
נחש זעמן מטבעות נלכד בכותל המערבי. Snake at the Western Wall
Prayers at the Western Wall were unexpectedly interrupted on Wednesday night [31 October 2018] when a snake slithered out from stones above the women’s prayer section. (A Women of the Wall member?)
היום הגעתי לירושלים במיוחד כדי לשים מים לחתולים. הם מתים מצמא בעיר העתיקה איפה שוק הערבי ליד בית חולים לעיניים. הם נימצאים שם בלי טיפת מים. מישהי זורקת להם אוכל יבש ולא שמה מים בכלל.
הם מתנפלים על קערות המים, כמו חיות רעבות על האוכל.
אני גרה במרכז ורק מדי פעם יוצא לי להגיע לשם.
יש מישהו שגר בירושלים שאיכפת לו ויכול לפחות פעם או פעמיים בשבוע לשים להם מים?
Today I came to Jerusalem especially to put water for cats. They die of thirst in ancient city where the Arab market next to the eye hospital. They’ll be there without a drop of water. Someone throws them dry food and doesn’t put water at all.
They pounce on the water bowls, like hungry animals on the food.
I live in the center and only every once in a while I get to get there.
Is there anyone who lives in Jerusalem who cares and can at least once or twice a week to put water on them?
צפוי היום עומס חום, קחו רגע למלא להם קערת מים.הם זקוקים לנו! It is going to be extremely hot today. Please take a minute to fill a bowl of water for cats and other creatures on the street. They need us!
Local Cats need a perk, take a cat out to lunch today.
Mrs. Whiskers: “That cat looked so thin… and he’s right near our market too.”
“I have an idea”
Mr. Whiskers: “We could keep cat food in our pockets.”
Mrs. Whiskers is at home with her daughters cutting up egg cartons.
Sugar: “What are you doing?”
Mrs. Whiskers: “We saw some thin cats today on our walk.”
Not everyone is a smart, fat, cat; some just occasionally need a helping paw from time to time. Remember you could be in the same situation in the future, G-d forbid. So dig in your pocket the next time someone asks for something, and give him some cat food with a smile. because Hashem gave you all the blessings you have.
In Israel, getting medical help is affordable
Page 2Mrs. Whiskers: “You take an egg carton and cut out little cups and…”
Spice: “that may be a lot of cat food, Mom.”
Mrs. Whiskers: “and put some cat food in it for a needy cat we may come across.”
“We can feed the cats in these bio-degradable cups.”
Mr. Whiskers: “Yes, the Cats and Dogs in Los Angeles are rounded up in death camps and executed in the city pound.” “the method of execution is lethal gas just like German!”
Two Cats at the Cat Doctor’s office. Doctor Cat: “I’m happy to hear your doing much better Mr. Katz.”
Mr. Katz: “Thank you Doctor, I’ve been taking Cat supplements lately. In Israel getting medical help is affordable Baruch Hashem!”
Jerusalem mayor Moshe Lion allocates 100 thousand nis per year to build feeding stations for capital’s street cats.
By Hagay Hacohen January 22, 2019 https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Meow-Jerusalem-mayor-provides-annual-budget-for-cat-food-578282
Jerusalem mayor Moshe Lion decided to build feeding stations for stray cats in Jerusalem and fill them with food at the cost of 100,000 nis per year, he said in a press release on Tuesday.
Jerusalem recently changed its garbage disposal system and began using containers that are buried in the ground, this led to thousands of complaints from worried residents who noticed that street cats are unable to get into the garbage to find food as they used to.
The feeding stations will be built in neighborhoods where the new, earth-buried garbage cans are placed and cat-lovers will be encouraged to feed cats in the designed stations, as some people dislike cats and don’t want to see their numbers grow even further.
The monthly estimate is that city hall will use 210 food bags a month and 2,500 bags per year.
Next week the city of Jerusalem will hold a special event for cat lovers who currently feed street cats at their own expense to explain the new move and how they can be reimbursed for their feeding efforts.
Wonder Pot (Hebrew: סיר פלא, seer peh-leh) is an Israeli invention for baking on top of a gas stove rather than in an oven. It consists of three parts: an aluminum pot shaped like a Bundt pan except smooth-sided rather than fluted, a hooded cover perforated with venting holes, and a thick, round, slightly domed metal disc with a center hole that is placed between the pot and the flame.A Wonder Pot can be used to bake cakes, casseroles, rice, potatoes, apples, and even meat and chicken.
Shavot Wonder Pot סיר פלא Recipe – Cheesecake
The Wonder Pot for Shavot Cheesecake-P1
Shavot Cheesecake with a Wonder Pot
by Auntie Nosebag
Crust: 30 Israeli tea biscuits crushed 2/3 Cup butter 13 Cup sugar Mix cookies, butter and sugar together and place in the bottom of the greased wonder pot. Filling: ¼ Cup butter ¾ Cup sugar ¼ tsp. Salt 4 eggs, separated 2 Cups cottage cheese ½ Cup cream, or sour cream grated rind of ½ lemon 1 tsp. Lemon juice ¾ Cup flour Mix with beater all the ingredients except egg whites. Beat up the egg whites frothy and fold into cake batter and pour on top of the cookie crust and fill pan. Place on flame diffuser (bottom) of wonder pot and put on lowest setting and bake for 1 hour til sets. Let the Cheesecake completely cool, then slide a sharp knife around the inside of the Wonder Pot to release the Cheesecake. Place your serving plate upside down on the Wonder Pot, Flip the whole thing over and gently tap the bottom of the pot to release the cake.
Mix with beater all the ingredients except egg whites. Beat up the egg whites frothy and fold into cake batter and pour on top of the cookie crust and fill pan. Place on flame diffuser (bottom) of wonder pot and put on lowest setting and bake for 1 hour til sets.
The Wonder Baker Pot סיר פלא, . The Cheesecake is done very quickly..
Let the Cheesecake completely cool, then slide a sharp knife around the inside of the Wonder Pot to unmold the Cheesecake. Place your serving plate upside down on the Wonder Pot, Flip the whole thing over and gently tap the bottom of the pot to release the cake.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Pot
Wonder Pot – Chocolate cake baked in a Wonder Pot
Wonder Pot (Hebrew: סיר פלא, sír péle, Hebrew pronunciation: [siʁ ˈpele]) is an Israeli invention for baking on top of a gas stove rather than in an oven. It consists of three parts: an aluminium pot shaped like a Bundt pan except smooth-sided rather than fluted, a hooded cover perforated with venting holes, and a thick, round, slightly domed metal disc with a center hole that is placed between the pot and the flame.
A Wonder Pot can be used to bake cakes, casseroles, rice, potatoes, apples, meat, and chicken.[1][2]
History
Wonder Pot – A Wonder Pot (right) on the stove
The Wonder Pot gained popularity during Israel’s era of national austerity in the 1950s, when most citizens did not own an oven. The concept was based on models from Germany and Eastern Europe, and was first manufactured by the Palalum company (the company name was a contraction of the words pele (wonder) and aluminium). Later the Wonder Pot was manufactured by other companies in the Haredi sector, including the Matlum company, which continues to produce the item today.[1]
The Wonder Pot retained its popularity through the 1970s, especially among new immigrants who did not have ovens. During its heyday, the Wonder Pot spawned its own bestsellingcookbook. The introduction of the microwave oven and a national desire to dissociate with the austerity mentality put an end to its widespread use.[3] However, the Wonder Pot is still used by Israeli Haredi families for baking kugels, and it is also popular in this sector on the holiday of Passover for those who do not have a kosher-for-Passover oven.[1][4]
Today the Wonder Pot is considered a nostalgic Israeli kitchen item. It is still sold in traditional housewares stores, via marketing outlets, and in Haredi communities such as Bnei Brak[1] and Jerusalem. In the late 2000s decade, a housewares store calling itself Seer Peh-leh (“Wonder Pot”) opened in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem.[5]
How it works
Place The Wonder Pot, סיר פלא, on top of the flame heat diffuser so that the bottom grove of the pot is on the rim of the flame heat diffuser.
The Wonder Pot is effective at baking on top of the stove for three reasons: its aluminum material, its hole, and the metal disc separating it from the flame. The aluminium material allows heat to spread uniformly. The center hole of the pot focuses the flame and creates heat dispersion around the inside of the cake. The metal disc lifts the pot off the fire, reducing and focusing the flame. Baking in the Wonder Pot without the metal disc will produce a cake that is dry on the bottom and thick and wobbly in the center. The metal disc is sold in different thicknesses and diameters to accommodate different baking times and larger flames. The lid of the Wonder Pot is perforated with small holes to release steam. Baking time in a Wonder Pot varies from 40 to 50 minutes.[1]
The Wonder Pot produces high and airy cakes. In addition to baking, the Wonder Pot is an effective medium for cooking vegetables, legumes, and rice in layers. It can also be used to cook kugels, casseroles, pasta dishes, meat, and chicken.[1]
A Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Men are studying.
Somewhere in the world (China) a Siamese cat is taking an internet order: “You wish to purchase this product code # 389 269 5452 9 89… Tracking # 566 8666… And that will be $100 for extra shipping costs, insurance fees…. Taxes and currency exchange costs.”
A Plane flies overhead.
Supervisor Postal Cat: “We received this package via Deer mail… Please take this to Mr. Paws on Straus St. Via #3 bus in Jerusalem.. In Back of the secret home of Rav Baker.”
Postal Cat thinking: ‘ I wonder what’s inside. It says fragile.’
Supervisor Postal Cat: “We shall expect you back at 22:00.”
Postal Cat: ” Yes, Sir.”
Supervisor Postal Cat: “Once we finish, I want you to come stay for Shabbat.”
Alien looking at the 2 Cats: “Woow!” Beep
The Alien Spacecraft: “Shabbat! wow Beep.”
Postal Cat walking on the rooftops.
Postal Cat with his iPad to Mr. Paws: “Plesae put your paw print on the recept.”
Mr. Paws with the Mystical Crystal iPhone. He tries and tries to turn it on. It does not work,”Dead on Arrival”.
Mr. Paws puts it back in the box: “Err Grrrr Oh!”
Mr. Paws to his wife: “I tried to save money buying on E-Bay… but it’s too expensive to ship it back… It’s broken. I guess I need to buy it local.”
His Wife: ‘Oh, Expensive.”
This is the interconnecting Web of Major Corporations that produce the International Brands that you buy.
You have a choice, You can be their Slave and buy from them or you can support your local people and Buy locally thereby defeat the New World Order that wants you DEAD!
Is 1984 Becoming a Reality? – George Orwell’s Warning to the World
10 Corporations That Control Almost Everything You Buy
Unilever through it’s Subsidiary Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream has an active Boycott against the Jews living in the Land of Israel. It is time to Boycott the Boycotters!
Unilever Brands
Top social media companies in the world that control your Mind.
“Russia is done with the West. The divorce is nearly complete”- Analysis
by VBL 23June2022 – 0:16 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-06-22/russia-done-west-divorce-nearly-complete-analysis
Housekeeping: Thank you to all the new subscribers. We hope you see GoldFix’s value. ZH reader rate here
Russia’s New Rules
Intro: We thought this latest missive by Tom Luongo very complementary to our recent post What Russia Thinks Will Happen Next. It’s always interesting when someone comes to similar conclusions using different (Political/realpolitik here) metrics. If you enjoyed our post, you should like this one as well.- GoldFix
Russia is done with the West. The divorce is nearly complete. In the past few days we’ve heard from all major Russian leaders the same thing, “The West will play by our rules now.”
Vladimir Putin
You can decide for yourselves whether Russia is writing checks they can’t cash, but in the words of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov telling the BBC bluntly, “We do not care about the eyes of the West.” Lavrov has always been the soul of politeness and discretion when dealing with European media.
His open hostility towards his BBC interviewer was not only palpable, it was hard to argue with. He followed that up with:
“I don’t think there’s even room for maneuver left anymore,”Lavrov replied.
“Because both [Prime Minister Boris] Johnson and [Foreign Secretary Liz] Truss say publicly: ’We must defeat Russia, we must bring Russia to its knees. Go on, then, do it.”
Russia’s leadership never talks in such openly blunt terms. It’s almost like Lavrov was channeling comedian Dennis Miller who used to say, “Feeling froggy, take that leap.”
See where it gets you.
IRussia knows it has the West on the ropes. We need what they produce and now they are determined to set the rules on who gets them and for what price. It knows that European leaders are puppets with Klaus Schwab’s hand up their asses.
And it knows Davos has zero leverage over Russia’s actions from here on out.
“The game of nominal value of money is over, as this system does not allow to control the supply of resources. …Our product, our rules. We don’t play by the rules we didn’t create.”
Miller’s statement should be thought of as a statement of principle across all theatres of operation for Russia. This doesn’t just apply to natural gas or oil. This is everything, all of Russia’s dealings with the West from here on out will be on its terms not the West’s.
This is clearly the biggest geopolitical middle finger in the post WWII period.
Miller is clearly laying out the rules for a new, commodity-centric monetary system, one based on what Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Poszar called ‘outside money’ — commodities, gold, even bitcoin — rather than the West’s egregious use of ‘inside money’ — debt-based fiat and credit — to perpetuate old colonialist behavior well past its use-by date.
I laid out the basic problem in an article from March after Russia soft-pegged the ruble to gold.
Today’s “Inside Money” standard, known colloquially as the Dollar Reserve standard, is actually what I like to call “Milton Friedman’s Nightmare.” It is nothing more than a system of competitively devalued and inflated debt-based scrips running around drinking each other’s milkshakes until everyone’s glass is empty.
Miller is definitely a glass full kinda guy now.
These comments came after Gazprom began cutting gas flows to Europe through the Nordstream 1 pipeline using the cover story of repaired gas turbines trapped in fascist Canada which couldn’t be shipped back to Siemens because of sanctions.
Now Germany and Canada are trying to figure out how to circumvent the sanctions to get these turbines back.
At the same time Miller pledged more gas to China (up 67% yoy through May) because Russia is interested in energy stability for its friends, while its enemies can starve.
Reuters is reporting that “Russia’s Gazprom increased gas supplies to China by 67% in the first five months of this year, the company’s CEO Alexei Miller said on Thursday.”
It was also on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their second phone call since the Ukraine war began. Xi told Putin that China is “willing to continue to offer mutual support (to Russia) on issues concerning core interests and major concerns such as sovereignty and security,” as quoted in state broadcaster CCTV.
The arrogance of EU commissars never ceases to amaze me. These people all but declare war on Russia and then act shocked (Shocked, I say!) that Russia then treats them like that.
On the same day that four members of the EU Commission — France, Italy, Germany and Romania — approve fast-tracking Ukraine’s membership application, France’s Emmanuel Macron urges Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to go to the bargaining table with Russia.
Even if Zelenskyy were to make those overtures to Russia, given his public statements on what his terms are, there would be absolutely zero chance that Russia would agree to show up for talks.
At this point I see nothing more than Russia continuing to grind out the Ukrainian army, taking what territory they want and then shepherding through local elections by the conquered territory to either become independent states or part of Russia.
It’s likely the latter at this point since Russia is now issuing Russian passports in regions they’ve taken from Ukraine, which the EU, of course, will refuse to honor until no one cares what they think anymore.
The rules are changing rapidly. Looking ahead there is a real danger that what Russia has set in motion leads to something no one wants to contemplate. Of course the West helped create this situation by forcing Putin’s hand to invade Ukraine, so who’s to blame about where this all leads to may, ultimately, be an irrelevant point.
Let’s hope the noises coming from the West about the sanctions having gone too far and the chest-beating of the worst US and British neocons is no longer being taken seriously by anyone with their fingers anywhere near the launch codes.
If that’s the case than these new rules will be grudgingly accepted only after a lot of borders have been redrawn, new alliances formed and a different world order established.
This morning at the President Putin declared the old world order dead. He finished his speech where he detailed how the West was committing suicide to suit the wishes of The Davos Crowd with the following definitive statement:
“Russia is entering the coming era as a powerful sovereign country. We will definitely use the enormous new opportunities that time opens up for us. And we will become even stronger.”
Putin is correct here. Russia is getting stronger by the day. The West took their best shot at destroying Russia and missed the mark. He clearly identified the real culprits for Europe’s and the US’s problems, subservience to an oligarch class who feel entitled to rule the world.
When the war started I wrote about what I thought Putin’s intentions were. Then it was speculation:
Russia held all the cards in the negotiations over Ukraine and we recklessly pursued a policy of insults and amateurish propaganda, refusing to believe Russia wouldn’t make her final stand.
By putting boots on the ground, planes in the air and missiles up the ass of every Ukrainian military installation across the country, Russia turned the ‘might makes right’ argument of the US and Europe on its head.
The game has changed because the rules have changed. It’s no longer a game of rhetorical chicken and virtue signaling.
Today it is fact. When Putin made his move on Ukraine the ultimate goal was the end of Russia treating the West as an equal and leading the Global South out of what he has called “vassalage.” The reason Putin is hated is because he realizes there are two types of countries, “sovereigns” and “vassals.”
It’s been his life’s work to make Russia into a ‘sovereign’ state free from the West.
From Russia’s perspective their military operation in Ukraine was their Declaration of Independence from the old ‘rules-based order’ of the post-WWII era. Justified or not, we are now in a new age.
The question is now, how many will survive into it.
The Russian Defence Ministry continues to study materials on the implementation of military biological programs of the United States and its NATO allies on the territory of Ukraine.
We have already mentioned Robert Pope, director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Programme and author of the idea of the Central Depository of Highly Dangerous Microorganisms in Kiev.
In his statement of April 10, 2022, Pope said that “…there is no reason to claim that research related to the development of biological weapons is taking place in Ukraine…”. He previously claimed that “…the Americans did not find biological weapons when they first started working with Ukraine, and they still haven’t. In addition, Ukraine lacks the infrastructure to develop and produce biological weapons…”.
I would like to recall that the term “biological weapons” includes biological formulations that contain pathogenic micro-organisms and toxins, as well as the means of delivery and use of said formulations.
While the priority for Ukrainian healthcare is socially significant diseases such as HIV, poliomyelitis, measles and hepatitis, US customers are interested in a completely different nomenclature: cholera, tularemia, plague and hantaviruses.
As a result of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine, facts of work with the specified pathogens, which are potential agents of biological weapons, have been revealed. At the same time, it was noted that Ukraine had sent a request to the manufacturing company regarding the possibility of equipping the Bayraktar drones with aerosol equipment.
In addition on March 9, three unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with 30-litre containers and equipment for spraying formulations were detected by Russian reconnaissance units in Kherson region. At the end of April, 10 more were found near Kakhovka.
All this information calls into question the statements of American experts.
We have previously provided a scheme for US coordination of biological laboratories and research institutes in Ukraine. Its preliminary analysis suggests that Ukraine is essentially a testing ground for the development of biological weapons components and the testing of new samples of pharmaceuticals.
The Russian Ministry of Defence was able to clarify the said scheme.
It should be noted that the ideologues of US military-biological activities in Ukraine are the leaders of the Democratic Party.
Thus, through the US executive branch, a legislative framework for funding military biomedical research directly from the federal budget was formed. Funds were raised under state guarantees from NGOs controlled by the Democratic Party leadership, including the investment funds of the Clintons, Rockefellers, Soros and Biden.
The scheme involves major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and the US military-affiliated company Gilead. U.S. experts are working to test new medicines that circumvent international safety standards. As a result, Western companies are seriously reducing the cost of research programmes and gaining a significant competitive advantage.
The involvement of controlled nongovernmental and biotechnological organisations, and the increase in their revenues, allows the leaders of the Democratic Party to generate additional campaign finance and hide its distribution.
In addition to US pharmaceutical companies and Pentagon contractors, Ukrainian state agencies are involved in military bioweapons activities, whose main tasks are to conceal illegal activities, conduct field and clinical trials and provide the necessary biomaterial.
Thus, the US Department of Defence, using a virtually internationally uncontrolled test site and the high-tech facilities of multinational companies, has greatly expanded its research capabilities, not only in the field of biological weapons, but also in gaining knowledge about antibiotic resistance and the antibodies to specific diseases in populations in specific regions.
It should be noted that not only the US, but also a number of its NATO allies are implementing their military-biological projects in Ukraine.
The German government has decided to launch a national biosafety programme independent of Washington, D.C., starting in 2013. Twelve countries, including Ukraine, are involved in the Programme.
On the German side, the programme involves the Institute for Armed Forces Microbiology (Munich), the Robert Koch Institute (Berlin), the Loeffler Institute (Greifswald) and the Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (Hamburg).
New documents reveal that between 2016 and 2019 alone, three and a half thousand blood serum samples of citizens living in 25 regions of Ukraine were taken by military epidemiologists from the Bundeswehr Microbiology Institute.
The involvement of institutions subordinate to the Bundeswehr confirms the military orientation of biological research carried out in Ukrainian laboratories and raises questions about the goals pursued by the German armed forces in collecting biomaterials of Ukrainian citizens.
The documents obtained also show the involvement of Poland in Ukrainian biolaboratories. The participation of the Polish Institute of Veterinary Medicine in research aimed at assessing the epidemiological threats and spread of the rabies virus in Ukraine has been confirmed. Characteristically, the research in question was carried out jointly with the US-based Battelle Institute, a key contractor for the Pentagon.
In addition, Polish funding for the Lvov Medical University, which includes a member of US military biology projects, the Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene, has been documented. The organisation has been running a retraining programme for specialists with experience of working with dual-use materials and technologies since 2002.
The special military operation by Russian troops succeeded in obtaining additional information about bio-incidents in Ukraine.
For example, materials indicating the intentional use of a multidrug-resistant tuberculosis pathogen in 2020 to infect the population of the Slavyanoserbsky district of the LPR were examined.
The flyers, made in the form of counterfeit currency notes, were infected with the tuberculosis agent and distributed to minors in Stepovoe village. The organisers of this crime took into account the behaviour of children, who have a habit of “putting everything in their mouths” and taking food with unwashed hands.
The results of bacteriological studies have confirmed the resistance of the isolated bacteria to first- and second-line anti-TB drugs, meaning that the disease caused by them is much more difficult to treat and the cost of treatment is much higher.
According to the conclusion of the Lugansk Republican Sanitary and Epidemiological Station, “…the contamination of the notes was most likely carried out artificially, as the material contains extremely dangerous strains of the pathogen in concentrations capable of ensuring infection and development of the tuberculosis process…”.
In his conclusion, the chief doctor of the Lugansk Republican TB Dispensary also notes that “…there are all signs of deliberate, man-made contamination of the flyers with highly pathogenic biomaterial…”.
We previously reported on trials of potentially dangerous biological drugs on one of the least protected categories of people – patients of the Kharkov Regional Clinical Psychiatric Hospital No 3.
We have received new information revealing details of the Pentagon’s inhuman experiments on Ukrainian citizens in Psychiatric Hospital No 1 (Streleche village, Kharkov region). The main category of subjects was a group of male patients aged 40-60 years with a high stage of physical exhaustion.
In order to conceal their US affiliation, the biological research experts travelled via third countries. Here is a photograph of Florida native Linda Oporto, who was directly involved in these works.
In January 2022, the foreign nationals conducting the experiments were evacuated in an emergency and the equipment and drugs they were using were taken to western Ukraine.
Russian Defence Ministry specialists have carried out work directly in two biolaboratories in Mariupol.
Evidence of emergency destruction of documents confirming work with the US military establishment was obtained. A preliminary analysis of extant documentation indicates the use of Mariupol as a regional centre for cholera pathogen collection and certification. The selected strains were sent to the Public Health Centre in Kiev, which is responsible for the onward shipment of biomaterials to the United States. These activities have been carried out since 2014, as evidenced by the transfer of strains.
An act of destruction of the pathogen collection dated February 25, 2022, according to which cholera, tularemia and anthrax pathogens were handled there, was found in the sanitary and epidemiological laboratory.
Part of the collection of the veterinary laboratory was not destroyed in a hurry. In order to ensure safety and secure storage, 124 strains were exported by Russian specialists and their study was organised.
The presence in the collection of pathogens that are uncharacteristic of veterinary medicine, such as typhoid, paratyphoid fever and gas gangrene, is a cause for concern. This could indicate the laboratory’s misuse and involvement in a military biological programme.
We will continue to examine the full volume of material received from the Mariupol biolaboratories and will inform you about the results.
The Russian Ministry of Defence has information that provocations are being prepared to accuse the Russian Armed Forces of using weapons of mass destruction, followed by a “Syrian scenario” investigation to fabricate the necessary evidence and assign blame.
The high likelihood of such provocations is confirmed by requests from the Kiev administration for personal skin and respiratory protection equipment that provides protection against toxic chemicals and biological contaminating agents. The supply to Ukraine of organophosphorus poisoning antidotes raises concerns. In 2022 alone, more than 220,000 ampoules of atropine, as well as preparations for special treatment and disinfection, were delivered from the USA at the request of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.
Thus, the information obtained confirms that the United States is implementing an offensive military-biological programme in Ukraine to study the possibility of forming controlled epidemics in specific territories.
The special military operation of the Russian Armed Forces has crossed the US military-biological expansion in Ukraine and stopped criminal experiments on civilians.
Click to Enlarge
NBCP Briefing Slide (1)
NBCP Briefing Slide (2)
NBCP Briefing Slide (3)
NBCP Briefing Slide (4)
NBCP Briefing Slide (5)
NBCP Briefing Slide (6)
NBCP Briefing Slide (7)
Background briefing:
iEarlGrey-YouTube Post-3May2022 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtMGV3SHfVfiAt_w8lnmI8g/community?lb=UgkxIqpyc39Or78sE5bkpdIKIxrHTzqYLY7c
“In Azovstal, the Russian military arrested a Canadian general who led a biological laboratoryIn Azovstal, the Russian military arrested a Canadian general who led a biological laboratory
Canadian General Trevor Kadeer, who headed the bio lab No. 1, where 18 people worked with deadly viruses, was arrested while trying to escape from the territory of Azovstal in Mariupol
This is a really important witness to the crimes of the United States and its allies against humanity, now it will be difficult for Washington and Ottawa not to recognize the fact of conducting research in the field of super-lethal biological weapons on the territory of Ukraine.”
Alexander Shumkin
iEarlGrey-YouTube Post-3May2022 In Azovstal, the Russian military arrested a Canadian general who led a biological laboratory
And as numerous people pointed out in that twitter thread, we’re now witnessing a perfect example of the Hegelian Dialectic at play in 2022, with the life-hating globalists once again launching a contagion upon the world which the dumbed down masses will ‘demand‘ a ‘solution to‘, that ‘solution‘ already pre-planned well in advance, though it certainly won’t ‘solve the problem‘.
With the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists putting out a story back on February 21st of 2020 titled “A biotech firm made a smallpox-like virus on purpose. Nobody seems to care” within which they reported that the smallpox-causing variola virus had been eradicated from nature with the only known samples of it have been held in two high-security facilities in the United States and Russia, as it also warned, developments in synthetic biology, a field which includes the art and science of constructing viral genomes, have made it possible to create the smallpox virus in a lab.
Reporting also within that story that evidence indicated back in 2020 that researchers are inching incredibly close to that line, their story also warned “the re-introduction of the disease—through negligence or malice—would be a global health disaster” with Smallpox responsible for the deaths of 300 million+ in the 20th Century.
With Monkeypox another such ‘pox virus‘, and very strong evidence emerging that this latest ‘outbreak‘ that is spreading quickly into the Western world was ‘manufactured‘, we’ll be taking a long look at that possibility in the next section of this story below but first, let’s listen to what the ‘scientific experts‘ who’ve been studying Monkeypox have to say and as you’ll see, something very strange is going on.
Scientists who have monitored numerous outbreaks of monkeypox in Africa say they are baffled by the disease’s recent spread in Europe and North America.
Cases of the smallpox-related disease have previously been seen only among people with links to central and West Africa. But in the past week, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, U.S., Sweden and Canada all reported infections, mostly in young men who hadn’t previously traveled to Africa.
France, Germany, Belgium and Australia confirmed their first cases of monkeypox on Friday.
“I’m stunned by this. Every day I wake up and there are more countries infected,” said Oyewale Tomori, a virologist who formerly headed the Nigerian Academy of Science and who sits on several World Health Organization advisory boards.
“This is not the kind of spread we’ve seen in West Africa, so there may be something new happening in the West,” he said.
Imagine waking up one morning in the near future and turning on your favorite morning news shows to hear the big story of the day, it had recently been discovered that Russia had put a series of bioweapons labs in Cuba, Mexico and scattered about, hidden throughout Canada.
Learning in those shows that they were using those labs to create bioweapons banned by international law, right on our own borders, it wouldn’t be too difficult to see 10’s of millions of Americans demanding an immediate response of some kind from those who are supposed to be our ‘public servants in the United States government‘, such deadly and banned weapons so close to our own homes.
The US researched Ebola and smallpox viruses in Ukraine, says Irina Yarovaya, Co-Chair of the Parliamentary Commission on Investigation of US Biological Laboratories in Ukraine.
“Today, we presented an analysis of which pathogens the US was particularly interested in in Ukraine,” she told reporters Friday. “Aside from the pathogens that are territorially bound to Ukraine, [the laboratories] researched viruses and pathogens that are endemically very far from Ukraine, such as Ebola and smallpox.”
According to the legislator, the information obtained indicates “aggressive goal-setting that underpins the foundation of these programs, de facto implemented by US Department of Defense on Ukrainian soil.”
“Unfortunately, it is necessary to particularly emphasize that the betrayal that the Ukrainian regime carried out against its own people has effectively left Ukrainian citizens defenseless in the face of these manipulations, experiments and clandestine research that the US is carrying out on Ukrainian territory,” Yarovaya underscored.
She noted that Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin spoke as the main expert at Friday’s commission meeting.
“I would like to underscore that the dialogue that we had with the SVR chief today, combined with the proof obtained by the commission, fully confirms the US-created network of biological intelligence worldwide and the implementation of active military-biological exploitation of the globe, and Ukraine in particular. This essentially poses a serious global threat,” Yarovaya warned.
According to the lawmaker, Russia’s main goal today is to guarantee the protection of its national interests and the security of the Russian people.
“But at the same time, [it should] urge the global community to seriously get to the bottom of this secret and dangerous military biological activity, implemented by the US. So that comprehensive measures pertaining to common, equal and indivisible security could be developed. Given the distinction between peaceful and non-peaceful use of bacteriological research and the study of toxins, it must be completely transparent and controlled. And there simply must not be any bacteriological weapons in the world, this is Russia’s principal position,” Yarovaya stressed.
And while like an abusive spouse, a child beater or a career criminal, we’d never expect ‘terrorist government‘ to just admit to their crimes upon humanity, as we’ll explore in the final section of our story below, all of this is right on par for the globalists and their ‘depopulation agenda‘.
29May2022 by: Cassie B. https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-05-29-prominent-doctors-calm-monkeypox.html
This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author
(Natural News) The media hysteria surrounding monkeypox is largely leaving out one very important part of the story: The disease poses very little risk to most people and is being spread largely through men having sex with men.
This is something that even the World Health Organization has quietly admitted. In confirming around 200 cases of the virus on Monday, WHO officials said that while anyone can technically contract it, the recent surge has been tied to homosexual men.
In fact, Dr. David Heymann, who served as the chair of a meeting of the WHO’s advisory group on infectious disease, said that the leading theory explaining the spread was sexual transmission at events recently held in Spain’s Canary Islands and Belgium. In the past, monkeypox has not triggered widespread outbreaks outside of Africa, where the disease is endemic in animals.
Heymann told The Associated Press: “We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission.
“It’s very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions … and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact.”
Of course, if they drew attention to that fact, it would make it harder for them to convince the masses to line up for the monkeypox vaccine that will inevitably be pushed on the population much in the same way that people are being bullied into getting COVID-19 vaccines.
Belgian officials have already announced a mandatory 21-day quarantine for people who contract the disease, while Germany has confirmed four cases of monkeypox stemming from exposure at “party events … where sexual activity took place.”
Doctor labels hysteria over monkeypox a “gross overreaction”
Speaking on Real America’s Voice, former WHO Consultant and Senior Advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the COVID-19 response, Dr. Paul Alexander called the hysteria a “gross overreaction” to a disease that is much milder than smallpox. He said that there is a small chance of droplet infection but the risk to the general population is low overall. While it’s prudent to keep an eye on it for public health reasons, there is no reason to overreact.
Epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough echoed this sentiment, calling for people to keep calm as the disease has a low risk of spreading and is relatively easy to treat with proper medical care.
Speaking on The Alex Jones Show, he noted: “There should be absolutely no panic. It’s almost analogous to chickenpox and someone having lots of pustular vesicular lesions is readily identified. We can manage this. The treatment is actually very well tolerated. TPOXX drug taken twice a day is perfectly fine.”
To illustrate its limited spread, he pointed out that there have been just 700 reported cases of monkeypox in the last half century, nearly all of them in the Congo. Moreover, it has plenty of symptoms, making it easy to identify people who have the disease so its spread can be limited. He added that governments buying up millions of vaccine doses was a “hyperbolic response.”
According to experts, monkeypox does not spread as easily among humans as Covid because it requires close intimate contact and mainly enters the body through broken skin via bodily fluids. It’s a self-limiting illness, and most people will recover within a few weeks, even without treatment.
Unfortunately, as long there is money to be made on vaccines, there will be no end to the fearmongering over this and other diseases. The Covid pandemic has demonstrated just how much money there is to make from disease outbreaks, and now everyone is looking for the next cash cow.
Russia no longer accepts Dollars or Euros from Unfriendly States
I Probably Shouldn’t Tell You About the Next Shortages That Are Beginning
Posted 25March2022 Adapt 2030:
Beyond the food, fertilizer and fuel shortages turning to rationing across the globe, look to palladium, gold and silver shortages that will change the world as we know it. I call it the run on everything and hyperinflation commodities cycle. Otherwise known as a civilization reset. TOP
by Tyler Durden 04April2022 – https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/which-nations-are-russias-unfriendly-list
On May 13, 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law the List of Unfriendly Nations, which included the United States and the Czech Republic.
On March 5, 2022, as Russia’s military operation in Ukraine progressed, the list was updated to include 45 more nations and jurisdictions.
The countries and territories mentioned in the list have imposed or joined the sanctions against Russia.
zerohedge-tweet-2April2022-GAZPROM HAS STOPPED DELIVERIES OF RUSSIAN GAS TO GERMANY VIA YAMAL EUROPE PIPELINE
Instead of flowing toward Germany and the EU, gas supplies on Friday and Saturday started flowing in the opposite direction, according to Gascade, the network operator.
US monthly exports to Europe of LNG Jan 2019 -Feb 2022
…and despite President Biden’s promise to bolster to exports to the EU (although he stipulated that not all of this additional capacity would come from the US), researchers at Goldman Sachs have already shown that US exports of LNG are already at capacity.
US gas price volatatility Sept 2021 – March 2022
Another problem for pipeline-dependent Europe: the continent presently doesn’t have the infrastructure to allow it to rapidly ramp up imports of LNG, which must be carefully processed and “regassified” before it can be distributed to utilities and other distributors of energy.
A map below illustrates the level of dependence that various European economies have on Russia.
EU gas risk map 2022
But it’s not just the Germans who must now make due without Russian gas supplies. British energy major Shell is being cut off from Russian supplies in response to the UK’s economic sanctions on Russia, said Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“London wants to be the leader of everything anti-Russian. It even wants to be ahead of Washington! That’s the cost!” Peskov outlined.
So far, the UK is the only country to have imposed sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank, through which payments for Russian natural gas are made. The measure effectively denies Britain the ability to pay for the commodity, and has forced Gazprom to walk away from the sales and trading arm. In accordance with Putin’s decree that Russian gas be paid for in rubles, Gazprom has set up foreign-currency accounts for customers where their currencies can be converted into rubles on the Moscow exchange.
Now that Putin is turning up the pressure, the European nations have a difficult choice ahead: either they can play ball and demonstrate to the world that their efforts to wean themselves off of their dependence on Russian energy have been mostly in vain. Or they can face a “catastrophic” economic crisis as energy prices soar, leading to rationing, blackouts and other measures that will make the 1970s oil crisis in the US look like child’s play.
by Tyler Durden 10March2022 – https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-considers-temporary-ban-agricultural-products-countries-outside-eurasia
Russia’s war on Ukraine is continuing to boost food prices. While the US and European countries are engaged in economic warfare against Moscow, it appears Russia’s turn to strike back has emerged.
On Thursday, Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said Russia decided to suspend fertilizer exports. This comes when global food prices are at record highs, and European fertilizer makers are struggling to produce nutrients ahead of the spring growing season, increasing global food inflation risks.
President Vladimir Putin said the fertilizer export ban was a move to ensure stable domestic food prices. This is another sign of growing protectionism worldwide as countries grapple with soaring food prices. Putin said fertilizer markets are deteriorating, making food a lot more expensive.
Notably, Putin added that Russia has agreements with “friendly countries” on fertilizers.
Making matters worse, Interfax, an independent Russian news agency, reported earlier that Moscow is considering retaliatory economic measures to ban exports of certain agricultural products to countries outside the Eurasian Economic Union.
Interfax said Moscow could temporarily ban grain exports to the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and ban sugar exports beyond the EEU. This may result in declining food supplies for those countries and soaring food costs.
Add this to the fertilizer ban and Europe and maybe the West is headed for a major food crisis.
Eurasian Economic Union
Possible Russian retaliatory measures follow a series of Western sanctions on Russia, which have collapsed the ruble, locked the central bank out of a large chunk of its foreign-currency savings, and crushed its ability to trade with the outside world by removing certain Russian banks from SWIFT.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been quoted well before the invasion of Ukraine of the need to strengthen an emerging multipolar world order.
“It is important to maintain and boost mutually respectful, constructive and effective cooperation globally, as well as to strengthen the emerging multipolar world order that consists of independent centers of economic growth and political influence, which certainly includes BRICS,” Putin emphasized.
It’s early to declare if Western sanctions will paralyze Russia, but what appears to be happening is that the global economy is becoming more fractured than ever as a great power struggle between the West and East flourishes.
Earlier this week, Russian banks that were cut off from SWIFT turned to China’s state-owned UnionPay system. Also, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday its oil and gas firms have other buyers as many Western nations halt or wind down purchases for energy products.
The global economy is splintering, and Russia could be inclined to unleash retaliatory economic measures outside the Eurasian Economic Union. This area in Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and Central Asia, is also home to some of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, also known as One Belt One Road… and likely includes numerous so-called “friendly countries” including China.
Meanwhile, China FM Spokesperson, Zhao Lijian was quoted earlier today as saying Beijing will retaliate with a “serious response” if the US hits sanctions on China over Ukraine.
Things are getting a little bit out of control.
To sum up, Russia banning fertilizer and the possibility of certain agricultural products to the West will result in elevated food prices. At the same time, we see a multipolar world order emerging that is bringing Moscow and Beijing closer by the day.
17 February 2022, Updated on 18 February 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-17/belarus-potash-maker-roils-fertilizer-markets-with-force-majeure?sref=QV0pAzKC
A Belarusian potash miner that accounts for a major chunk of global supply has declared force majeure, shaking up a market that’s already contending with soaring prices.
Belaruskali said around Feb. 16 that it won’t be able to meet its contracts, according to a letter from an exporter addressed to clients seen by Bloomberg. Shipments have been halted as a result of U.S. and European sanctions.
The absence of Belarusian supplies will have big consequences. Potash is a key nutrient for major commodity crops like corn and soybeans, as well as produce. Fertilizer prices have already skyrocketed as soaring natural gas costs forced some European plants to halt or curtail production, and U.S. spot prices for potash in the Corn Belt have nearly doubled in the last year. Expensive fertilizer is making food more costly to produce and contributing to rising global inflation for consumers.
“This is a fairly unprecedented situation in the potash market,” CRU Group analyst Humphrey Knight said by phone. “It could take many months if not longer for that supply to recover.”
Fertilizer Giants
Canada, Russia were the top potash producers in 2021
Fertilizer Giants Canada, Russia were the top potash producers in 2021
Source: USGS 2022 Mineral Commodity Summary
Note: Volumes are USGS estimates.
Belarus exports about 10-12 million tons annually, according to Green Markets data. The country accounts for about a fifth of global supply. It’s a major shipper to Brazil, as well as to India and China.
“Global potash contracts have settled at the highest price since 2008, ensuring another year of pricey inputs for farmers and strong earnings for producers,” Alexis Maxwell, an analyst Green Markets, a company owned by Bloomberg, said in an email. “U.S. sanctions on Belarus eliminated a key competitor” with no readily available alternative supplier.
The U.S. sanctions against Belaruskali, Belarus’s only potash miner, came into force in December, while penalties against Belarusian Potash Co., which exports all the potash from the country, should become effective April 1.
The sanctions may result in shifting trade flows and some demand rationing, Nutrien Ltd. interim Chief Executive Officer Ken Seitz said in an interview. Customers who have historically purchased from Belarus are trying to secure supplies elsewhere. For example, Russia is doubling fertilizer quantities offered to Brazil, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said during an interview to Radio Jovem Pan Thursday.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko discussed the potash sanctions with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, he said during a televised joint news conference in Moscow. Putin ordered a port to be built near St. Petersburg for exports of the nutrient, Lukashenko said, adding that Belarus expects to start loading “millions” of tons of cargo there within 1 to 1 ½ years.
CRU’s Knight said that Russian ports were likely the only option left for Belarusian Potash Co. to export, but most are already operating at capacity. While some Belarusian potash could be rerouted to the Russian market, pushing Russian companies to export more, the volumes would be small, he said.
Nutrien has an additional half million tons of capacity that would be available in the latter half of 2022 if needed, Seitz said. Grower margins are strong, so higher potash prices won’t result in less demand.
The company could also ramp up potash output, but first, it would need to see a prolonged impact on the market for “years” to bring on additional sustained capacity, Seitz said. Nutrien increased its potash capacity by 1 million tons in 2021 and additional volumes are expected to come online in 2022 from other companies, he said.
“We’re not standing around saying we’re not doing anything,” Seitz said, noting the company doesn’t want to be left with additional cost if supply challenges go away quickly. “We are bringing on volumes.”
Nutrien anticipates global potash shipments will be between 68 million tons and 71 million tons in 2022.
The potash situation in Belarus is bleak, Scotiabank analyst Ben Isaacson said in a note. Nutrien will benefit not only from the higher prices, but also from being able to leverage their volume of the crop nutrient.
“Nutrien is now in the driver’s seat for how high potash prices go this year, while Belaruskali will determine how low they go,” Isaacson said.
— With assistance by Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Yuliya Fedorinova, Dominic Carey, Chloe Whiteaker, and Aine Quinn
It was a spooky time to be out at sea off the US East Coast on Halloween in 1991. A strong storm system over the maritime provinces in Canada merged with the remnants of Hurricane Grace, forming a new, epic, and dangerous Nor’easter. The winds of this new storm breached 70 miles per hour and a wave as high as 100 feet was measured off the coast of Nova Scotia, but the storm was not renamed as either a tropical storm or a hurricane – instead, it is known only colloquially as simply the Perfect Storm. Six fishermen from Massachusetts perished when their vessel Andrea Gail sunk in open waters, and the story of the storm and of that tragedy became the subject of a best-selling book and a blockbuster feature film.
While the concept of a perfect storm is often too casually assigned in popular culture, it is difficult to find a more apt description of what has been unfolding in the global agriculture markets over these past several months. The tempest caused by the European energy disaster has merged with the hurricane of consequences flowing from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, forming the genesis of a generational crisis in food that will leave few unaffected. While we’ve been warning about just such a scenario for some time, after spending the past two weeks traveling across the US Midwest and conferring with our contacts in the agricultural sector, even we are a little spooked by what we’ve learned. In a financial crash, the correlation between all asset classes converges to one. The coming crash in global food supply will be driven by a similar phenomenon across virtually every input into farming – they are all spiking to historic highs simultaneously, supply availability is diminishing across the spectrum, and the time to reverse the worst of the upcoming consequences is rapidly running short.
Other than that, things are great.
We begin with the price of fertilizer, which has been soaring to record highs across the globe. Key sources of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous – important inputs into soil fertility, crop yield, and plant maintenance – have all gone vertical. Ammonia is derived directly from natural gas, and the price of natural gas outside of the US has gone vertical. It’s no surprise that the price of ammonia has tripled over the past twelve months. Belarus is the third-largest supplier of potash in the world and its state-owned miner, Belaruskali, declaredforce majeure after sanctions were imposed by the US and Europe. The number two supplier of potash globally? Russia. Perhaps front-running the Russian move on Ukraine, China halted phosphate exports last fall in an effort to ensure adequate domestic supply. The combined impact of these events can be seen in the Green Markets North American Fertilize Index, which tracks a blend of fertilizer prices globally:
Green Markets NA Fertilizer price Index 18March2022
Weed control is an important element of farming, and herbicides are an irreplaceable tool in the farmer’s repertoire. The most heavily used herbicide in the world is the controversial molecule glyphosate, known widely by its retail brand name Roundup. Invented by Monsanto (which is now owned by Bayer) in the 1970s, glyphosate has been linked to certain blood cancers and is targeted for elimination by many environmental groups. Despite these concerns, glyphosate remains a systemically important molecule – many seeds have been genetically modified to be resistant to it, allowing for its widespread use while minimizing damage to crops, and generics have expanded the market as it came off Monsanto’s patent.
Glyphosate is effectively little more than an elegantly modified fertilizer, containing both phosphorous and nitrogen. It is derived from similar starting materials – including ammonia – and, as such, its price has soared amid chronic supply shortages. This has caused the price of other herbicides to rise as farmers desperately seek substitutes, as described by this article in The Western Producer (emphasis added throughout):
“The much-ballyhooed glyphosate shortage is just the first domino to fall, according to a leading crop protection company.
‘The knock-on effect on basically every other herbicide molecule is starting to manifest itself,’ said Cornie Thiessen, general manager of ADAMA Canada. ‘We are seeing quite a domino effect in the market because of the glyphosate challenges.’
Bayer was already warning customers in late 2021 about a potential glyphosate shortage.”
If farmers skimp on herbicides to get by this season, it only makes dealing with weeds more challenging in the future. As one expert warned us, it only takes one year of negligence to do several years of damage to a field.
Glyphosate Market Price in China 20March2022
Diesel is another significant input into farming, and it too is facing a global supply crunch. Javier Blas, an energy and commodities columnist at Bloomberg whose Twitter account is an absolute must-follow, recently published an editorial sounding the alarm:
“The dire diesel supply situation predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While global oil demand hasn’t yet reached its pre-pandemic level, global diesel consumption surged to a fresh all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2021. The boom reflects the lopsided Covid economic recovery, with transportation demand spiking to ease supply-chain messes.
European refineries have struggled to match this revival in demand. One key reason is pricey natural gas. Refineries use gas to produce hydrogen, which they then use to remove sulphur from diesel. The spike in gas prices in late 2021 made that process prohibitively expensive, cutting diesel output.”
Once again, we discover the vital role natural gas plays in many downstream verticals, a key theme of manyDoomberg pieces. With inventories at record lows and supplies constrained, the retail price of diesel in the US smashed previous record highs. In Europe, which depends heavily on Russian imports for both diesel and its semi-processed oil precursor, the wholesale market is on the verge of breaking. Here’s an updated version of the chart in Blas’ editorial:
European Wholesale Diesel 2017 – 2022
As expensive as it is to fuel the field equipment needed to farm, keeping them operational at all is becoming an ever-growing challenge. The same chip shortage constraining automobile production has struck the farming equipment industry, making new equipment and spare parts harder to come by. Farmers in Iowa recently vented their frustration at a Republican forum on agriculture:
“…they bemoaned the hit-and-miss availability of parts to fix their equipment — the result of pandemic disruptions in the production of those parts. Iowa Rep. Ross Paustian, R-Walcott, is a farmer who said his neighbor was forced to buy a hydraulic pump for his tractor from a Nebraska dealership because it was the only place in the country that had it stocked.
Jim Boyer, an Emmet County farmer, had a similar, personal anecdote. He’s awaiting a $40 emissions-related sensor for his tractor, and he’s not sure if it will arrive anytime soon.
‘I cannot drive that tractor — a quarter-million-dollar piece of equipment — because I cannot get that sensor,’ he said.”
Compounding these challenges with machinery is a burgeoning labor shortage that is rapidly adding pressure to this brewing catastrophe. Although the labor issues in the US span well beyond agriculture, there are aspects that exacerbate the impact on farmers, including the physical labor intensity and seasonality of many roles, as well as the reliance on foreign laborers to fill key positions US citizens have historically shunned. This is especially challenging in light of vaccine mandates at border crossings. Here’s a recent report from Wisconsin Public Radio which describes the challenges well:
“While some farms employ workers all year round, Strader said many jobs are seasonal, starting in March and April and going until late fall when harvest ends.
With producers on edge about hiring for this year, Strader said many farms started recruiting earlier than usual and developed a contingency plan for how to make it through the season without employees. That could mean discontinuing certain markets or scaling back the variety of produce that they’re growing.”
Farmers are also competing with other sectors for a limited pool of labor. The gap between job openings and unemployed but willing workers across the entire US continues to widen:
US Unemployment 28February2022
Even generously assuming farmers can cobble together enough fertilizer, herbicide, machinery, and labor to produce a good harvest this fall, they may be left to deal with yet another crisis of supply that few off the field have on their radar: propane. As Tracy Schuchart – yet another absolute must-follow on Twitter – has been flagging for several months, the US exits the winter of 2021-2022 with concerningly low levels of propane inventory, well-below typical averages for this time of year:
I know I keep bringing propane up, but the US is now just below 35 days of supply
You know what industry relies on propane the most?
Tracy-tweet-20March2022-what industry relies on propane the most Farming
Here is the supply situation in chart form, with the shaded region signifying the high- and low-inventory levels over the past seven years:
Seasonal US Propane Storage 18March2022
What does propane supply have to do with farming? Grain drying. Here’s a primer on the importance of drying, from Wikipedia:
“Hundreds of millions of tonnes of wheat, corn, soybean, rice and other grains as sorghum, sunflower seeds, rapeseed/canola, barley, oats, etc., are dried in grain dryers. In the main agricultural countries, drying comprises the reduction of moisture from about 17-30% w/w to values between 8 and 15% w/w, depending on the grain. The final moisture content for drying must be adequate for storage.”
Many farms are located in rural areas without ready access to natural gas, and thus some 80% of grain dryers in the US, for example, rely on propane as a fuel. In a piece we wrote in December called An Urgent Call on Line 5, we chronicled how progressive politicians and environmental groups were targeting an important pipeline artery that runs from Canada, under the Straits of Mackinac, and across the State of Michigan. Line 5 is crucial to the stability of the US supply of propane, and yet – despite the catastrophic energy crisis we find ourselves in – the Attorney General of Michigan was recently captured on video spouting unserious nonsense:
“Acknowledging the legal battle she’s waging against Line 5 is an uphill and unpopular battle, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel blamed ‘propaganda’ from the pipeline’s proprietor, which she said has ‘really changed public perception and opinion.’
Nessel vowed to continue the fight against Line 5 and defended the attempts by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration to shut down the nearly 70-year-old pipeline during a recorded video chat with the Royal Oak Area Democratic Club. The conservative group Michigan Rising Action shared the video with Breitbart.”
Progressive politicians and environmental groups were targeting an important propane pipeline
We believe we are at the onset of a global famine of historic proportions. In a staggering defiance of logic, many US politicians are still attacking the lifeblood of our own energy production infrastructure, looking to score political points against “the other team,” blaming price-taking producers of global commodities for gouging, threatening producers of energy with windfall profits taxes, resisting calls to remove bureaucratic hurdles to new production, and refusing to open an introductory physics textbook to help guide them through the suite of policy choices that require true leadership to get right. They remain stuck in an endless loop of platitudes, blamestorming, corruption, and ignorance.
As Eisenhower aptly identifies in our opening quote, distance has an anesthetizing effect on the observer of any occurrence. One wonders how many people will starve before our politicians get serious. The populations most at risk of falling off the edge are half a world away and we worry that that number is uncomfortably high.
At Doomberg, we pride ourselves on seeing patterns early and being months ahead of the news flow. We are consistently human-centric. Never have we been more certain in our beliefs while fervently wishing that we are wrong. A global famine is no joke, and correctly forecasting one would bring no joy.
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by Tyler Durden 11March2022 – https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/majority-americans-make-lifestyle-changes-gas-prices-hit-record-highs
President Biden’s disastrous economy shows signs of stagflation as growth wanes, and commodity prices stage the largest weekly gain ever. Today’s inflation printed at a 40-year high as soaring commodity costs hit the working poor the hardest, who have been forced to make lifestyle changes to offset additional costs.
First, let’s begin with a new report from LendingClub. It shows a staggering 64% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 61% in December. As costs skyrocket, the working poor see their wages stripped away by inflation.
“You’ve got to eat, you’ve got to commute; these are not discretionary expenses,” Anuj Nayar, LendingClub’s financial health officer, said.
New research from Yardeni Research estimates the average household will spend an additional $2,000 per year in gasoline on top of an extra $1,000 in food expenses. Adding this all up, the typical household will spend $3,000 less this year on other things.
This means that people living paycheck to paycheck with no savings or other safety nets will have to make abrupt lifestyle changes.
According to American Automobile Association (AAA), 59% of Americans are making lifestyle changes as the national average for regular gasoline at the pump hits a new record high of $4.318. If gas hit $5, three-quarters of the respondents said they would need to make lifestyle changes to offset the spike at the pump.
Among the respondents who said they would make changes in response to higher gas prices, 80% of them said they would drive fewer miles, with some differences among different generations:
18 to 34 year-olds are almost three times as likely as those 35 and over to consider carpooling (29% vs 11%), which would likely involve major changes to their daily travel plans.
Those 35 and over are more likely to favor combining tips and errands (68% vs 52%) and to reduce shopping or dining out (53% vs. 43%).
Prices in some parts of the country have spiked to just under $8 a gallon.
CBS Los Angeles-tweet-10March2022-Gas prices $8 a gallon.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, gas prices have risen more than 74 cents to $4.318 per gallon, a record high. The Biden administration has launched a media blitz to blame soaring prices on Putin.
Gas prices in the US 10March2022
However, when Biden was elected, gas prices averaged around $2.30 and jumped $1.230 over the last year before the attack several weeks back. That means prices jumped 53% even before the invasion, but the administration insists in their messaging that President Putin is responsible for why prices of everything are rising. TOP
Nefesh B’Nefesh: Live the Dream US & CAN 1-866-4-ALIYAH | UK 020-8150-6690 or 0800-085-2105 | Israel 02-659-5800 https://www.nbn.org.il/ info@nbn.org.il
It’s time to come home! Nefesh B’Nefesh: Live the Dream 1-866-4-ALIYAH
The Rishon Lezion Chief Rabbi of Israel HaRav Yitzchak Yosef wrote a letter to Jews in Ukraine, and ALL JEWS LIVING IN THE DIASPORA, to understand the threat of war as a call to quickly MOVE TO ERETZ YISRAEL.
Rishon Lezion HaRav Yitzchak Yosef Posted on 26February2022 https://breslev.com/3067039/
Urgent Call From Chief Rabbi of Israel for Aliyah
Kol Koreh to all Acheinu Beis Yisrael in Ukraine
To our Jewish brothers in foreign lands, especially Ukraine: During these times, when the sounds of war are heard, it’s appropriate for every Jew with yirat Shamayim (fear of heaven) to hasten his way to Holy Land, as promised by the prophet Ovadia (1:17):
וּבְהַר צִיּוֹן תִּהְיֶה פְלֵיטָה וְהָיָה קֹדֶש …
On Mount Zion there will be refuge, and it will be holy…
And although it’s not clear if there will be a war and only Hashem has the solutions and we must daven for peace throughout the entire world, in any event, ascending to the Holy Land is always a very great and important mitzvah, and at all times, we must strive to reach the Holy Land and especially the holy city of Jerusalem. And now that there are sounds and fears of war, the issues are unfolding in a way as to see it as a type of call from Shamayim, to ascend to the Holy Land from all the foreign lands in the entire Diaspora, and especially the holy city of Jerusalem, because these are the places where the Schechina (the Divine Presence) rests, and they have more protection.
And the main thing is to strengthen one’s emuna and tefillah (prayer), and to know that there is nothing that can stop Hashem from providing a yeshuah (salvation) from every situation in any manner. Just like we witnessed miracles and wonders during the exodus from Egypt that were above all the laws of nature, and there was also a great amount of Divine help during Kriyat Yam Suf (crossing the Sea of Reeds) to save each and every Jew from the dangerous sea, in the same way, a Jew that exerts himself for Hashem with emuna by saying “Shema, Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad” (Hear, Oh Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem, the One and Only”) twice a day – Hashem will protect him and save him.
And yet there is a sacred obligation on each and every Jew who has fear of Heaven in all the lands of the Diaspora to make every effort to hurry and hasten his footsteps to Eretz Yisrael, and to make aliyah quickly to our Holy Land, and not to delay this at all, and to hurry to arrange a plane ticket. And Hashem, May He be blessed, who feeds and sustains everyone will, with heavenly assistance, provide everyone with a good place to live, and food and adequate income.
Harav Yosef aliyah message-Feb-2022
Now that there are sounds and fears of war, the issues are unfolding in a way as to see it as a type of call from Shamayim, to ascend to the Holy Land from ALL the foreign lands in the ENTIRE DIASPORA.
Ukraine-Russia Sanctions: Oil Embargo – Iran, Venezuela and Arab nations join Russia’s rally against the West
The long lines for Gas under President Jimmy Carter
Posted 8March2022 TFIglobal ” Iran, Venezuela and Arab nations join Russia’s rally against the West “: Remember the long lines for Gas under President Jimmy Carter?
If Russia, the second-largest oil producer in the world, starts weaponizing crude oil exports too, then the US too could face problems. The US imports a lot of Russian crude oil. Last year, it imported an average of 209,000 barrels per day of crude oil and 500,000 bpd of other petroleum products from Russia.
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by Tyler Durden 27April2022 – 01:00 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/bolsonaro-asks-wto-not-sever-russian-trade-27-fertilizer-ships-inbound
The latest example of G-20 countries not bowing down to US pressure to halt trade relations with Russia comes from South America.
On Tuesday, in response to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s request for Brazil to increase more food exports, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro asked the WTO not to sever trade flows with Russia. He said there are 27 Russian vessels hauling fertilizer to Brazil.
Now, why would Bolsonaro go against the wishes of the US and EU politicians to eliminate trade with Russia?
Well, the South American country imports more than 85% of its fertilizer demand. Russia is its top supplier, and Belarus provides 28% of the total.
Restraining fertilizer consumption would be absolutely disastrous, crush harvest yields, and threaten the world’s food security. The country is a top exporter of coffee, sugar, soybeans, manioc, rice, maize, cotton, edible beans, and wheat.
This is more evidence that G-20 countries, such as Brazil, India, and China, widely known as BRICs, disregard US pressure to halt trade with Russia. Many of these countries are dependent on Russia and Belarus for commodities. In one chart, here is Russia’s commodity reach:
Russia’s commodity reach:
Defiant G-20 countries imply the old economic order, in which the dollar’s centrality to global trade remains king, is fading. Numerous countries are already trading outside the dollar system (see & here) because Western sanctions isolated Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system. This has given rise to commodity-based currencies.
It remains to be seen if South American traders will use a Brazilian real-Russian ruble payment system for the fertilizer purchases.
Chinese Oil Giant To Exit US, Canada And UK Over Fears Of Western Sanctions
by Tyler Durden 16April2022 –
An odd thing happened this week: for obvious reasons, Russian usage of the Chinese yuan has been booming in recent weeks, with the Nikkei reporting that Russia boosted yuan holdings over dollar just before the invasion (having previously dumped all of its Treasury holdings all the way back in 2018 telegraphing what was coming to anyone who was paying attention), and even though Chinese trade with Russia has soared…
China Exports-Import with Russia April 2022
… many Chinese companies had refused to side fully with Russia, amid concerns that they would be swept up in various secondary sanctions should the increasingly erratic Biden administration decide to lash out at Beijing.
That’s not the odd thing, in fact it is to be expected: after all, if you go after the king – in this case the king of global reserve currencies, the dollar, you better not miss and according to most experts, China is nowhere near ready to dethrone the US as the world’s biggest superpower (with or without the assistance of Russia). What was odd, is that Reuters reported that China’s top offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC, was preparing to exit its operations in Britain, Canada and the United States, because of concerns in Beijing the assets could become subject to Western sanctions, industry sources said.
In other words, one of China’s largest and most important companies has decided to pull the plug before it absolutely has to, in what appears to be a clear indication that what comes next will be very troubling.
The United States said last week China could face consequences if it helped Russia to evade Western sanctions that have included financial measures that restrict Russia’s access to foreign currency and make it complicated to process international payments. Additionally, the US has also made very clear that any Chinese invasion of Taiwan will result in an identical response to that faced by Russia now. The implication: one of those two things may be about to happen.
Some background: according to Reuters, while companies periodically carry out reviews of their portfolios, the exit being prepared would take place less than a decade after state-owned CNOOC entered the three countries via a $15 billion acquisition of Canada’s Nexen, a deal that transformed the Chinese champion into a leading global producer. The assets, which include stakes in major fields in the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and large Canadian oil sand projects, produce around 220,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, Reuters calculations found.
However, it now appears that CNOOC has had enough, and last month, Reuters reported CNOOC had hired Bank of America to prepare for the sale of its North Sea assets, which include a stake in one of the basin’s largest fields. That’s just the start, however, and Reuters adds that CNOOC has launched a global portfolio review ahead of its planned public listing in the Shanghai stock exchange later this month that is aimed primarily at tapping alternative funding following the delisting of its U.S. shares last October. CNOOC is also taking advantage of a rally in oil and gas prices, driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, and hopes to attract buyers as Western countries seek to develop domestic production to substitute Russian energy.
As it exits the West, CNOOC is looking to acquire new assets in Latin America and Africa, and also wants to prioritize the development of large, new prospects in Brazil, Guyana and Uganda, the Reuters sources said.
Even before its exit, CNOOC faced hurdles operating in the United States in particular, such as security clearances required by Washington for its Chinese executives to enter the country.
“Assets like Gulf of Mexico deepwater are technologically challenging and CNOOC really needed to work with partners to learn, but company executives were not even allowed to visit the U.S. offices. It had been a pain all along these years and the Trump administration’s blacklisting of CNOOC made it worse,” said the source.
And just to make it even clearer what’s coming, in its prospectus ahead of the initial public offering, CNOOC said it could face additional sanctions. “We cannot predict if the company or its affiliates and partners will be affected by U.S. sanctions in future, if policies change,” CNOOC said.
In the United States, CNOOC owns assets in the onshore Eagle Ford and Rockies shale basins as well as stakes in two large offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico, Appomattox and Stampede. Its main Canadian assets oil sands projects are Long Lake and Hangingstone in Alberta Province.
All of the above is a very long-winded way to put what Rabobank’s Michael Every summarized in just a few words:
Reuters says China’s oil giant CNOOC is preparing to exit the UK, Canada, and US over sanctions fears. Why would it be retreating if China is not going to do anything that could cause it to be subject to secondary sanctions?
The answer? Because China will do things that will cause it to be subject to sanctions
Over the last 48 hours, China and Russia have taken big steps toward separating themselves from the monetary policy and economies of the west – and nobody has even noticed.
Those who have been reading my blog for the last couple of weeks know that I have been predicting that China and Russia would grow far closer economically, creating, in essence, a second global monetary system where the US dollar is no longer the reserve currency.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article proclaiming that Russia would back the ruble with gold as a way to fight back against western economic sanctions. I also made similar predictions about the new digital Chinese currency last summer when I first started Fringe Finance.
This shift is happening as a result of the United States and the rest of the western economies foolishly thinking that they’re going to be able to effectively sanction Russia economically, despite the fact that Russia is a massive producer of oil and the country seems prepared to back its currency, the ruble, with this productive capacity.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we continue to run enormous deficits and have very little productive capacity, and even less to back our currency with. Our destiny seems to be to continue printing money regardless of the negative consequences. We’re nothing more than printing press junkies that won’t cease our inflationary addiction until we inevitably hit rock bottom.
US M2 Money Supply (via TradingEconomics)
US M2 Money Supply (via TradingEconomics)
If you haven’t read them yet, a couple articles that explain my position on Russia and China creating their own monetary system include:
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There’s been several new developments to this thesis over the last 24 hours.
First, it was little noticed yesterday when Bloomberg reported that “Israel’s central bank has made the biggest changes to its allocation of reserves in over a decade, adding the Chinese yuan alongside three other currencies to a stockpile that last year exceeded $200 billion for the first time ever.”
The report read:
Starting this year, the currency mix will expand from the trio of the U.S. dollar, the euro and the British pound to include the Canadian and Australian dollars as well as the yen and the yuan, which is also known as the renminbi. The additions mark a change in the Bank of Israel’s “whole investment guidelines and philosophy,” Deputy Governor Andrew Abir said in an interview.
Following discussions held by the monetary committee last year, the pound and the yen will account for 5% and the currencies of Canada and Australia will have 3.5% each. Under the new approach, the yuan’s proportion is set at 2% for 2022, according to the Israeli central bank’s annual report published at the end of last month.
To accommodate the changes, the euro’s share will fall to 20% — the lowest in at least a decade — from just over 30%, while the dollar will account for 61%, down from 66.5%. The pound’s weighting, by contrast, will almost double to 5%, returning to a level last seen in 2011.
The “dramatic” rise in Israel’s foreign-exchange reserves led the central bank to lengthen its investment horizon, Abir said. “We look at the need to earn a return on the reserves that will cover the costs of liability.”
Bank of Israel FX Mix 2020 – 2022
In other words, Israel is reducing its exposure to the dollar and to the Euro to add exposure to the Renminbi.
And so perhaps isn’t just little old me here chipping away at my blog daily that has noticed that China and Russia could be on the verge of effecting meaningful change to the global monetary landscape. It sure seems like Israel is catching on.
I expect other countries to follow suit.
Then, another prediction of mine started to come to fruition this morning when it was announced that China was considering buying some of Shell’s Russian LNG assets. Bloomberg reported:
China’s key state-run energy companies are in talks with Shell Plc to buy its stake in a major Russian gas export project, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Cnooc, CNPC and Sinopec Group are in joint discussions with Shell over the company’s 27.5% holding in the Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas venture after the European firm said it would exit Russian operations following the Ukraine invasion
I had previously argued on my podcast and on my blog that even though the west was going to be ignoring Russian investments, there would definitely be a strategic buyer who would come in and scoop up what can only be described as long-term strategic energy assets from Russia.
Many people smarter than I am, including macro analyst Luke Groman, predicted that China would be the strategic buyer for such transactions. I agreed.
Now, it looks like that is exactly what’s happening. These purchases will only serve to knit China and Russia’s economies even closer together.
Liquified Natural Gas Shipping Tankers
If the picture hasn’t come into focus, it soon will – even for most people that aren’t paying attention yet.
China and Russia continue on a cooperative path together: doing business together, backing their currencies with tangible commodities and, as I wrote just days ago, we’re in the process of watching the dollar become dethroned as the global reserve currency. We just don’t notice it yet.
The next prediction I have, that hasn’t yet taken place, is that China will back its digital currency with gold. I’ve predicted this since August of 2021, long before the current macro picture has emerged. Now, my convictions are even stronger.
When the rest of the world catches on to what is playing out here, there’s going to be a mad dash for gold, in my opinion. I still prefer gold over any fiat currency and, as I wrote weeks ago, consider miners to be one of the market’s truly undervalued sectors.
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From The Royal United Services Institute https://www.rusi.org/
A unique institution, founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington, RUSI embodies nearly two centuries of forward thinking, free discussion, and careful reflection on defence and security matters.
Alex Vershinin 17 June 2022 https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare
Can the West still provide the arsenal of democracy?
The war in Ukraine has proven that the age of industrial warfare is still here. The massive consumption of equipment, vehicles and ammunition requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply – quantity still has a quality of its own. The mass scale combat has pitted 250,000 Ukrainian soldiers, together with 450,000 recently mobilised citizen soldiers against about 200,000 Russian and separatist troops. The effort to arm, feed and supply these armies is a monumental task. Ammunition resupply is particularly onerous. For Ukraine, compounding this task are Russian deep fires capabilities, which target Ukrainian military industry and transportation networks throughout the depth of the country. The Russian army has also suffered from Ukrainian cross-border attacks and acts of sabotage, but at a smaller scale. The rate of ammunition and equipment consumption in Ukraine can only be sustained by a large-scale industrial base.
This reality should be a concrete warning to Western countries, who have scaled down military industrial capacity and sacrificed scale and effectiveness for efficiency. This strategy relies on flawed assumptions about the future of war, and has been influenced by both the bureaucratic culture in Western governments and the legacy of low-intensity conflicts. Currently, the West may not have the industrial capacity to fight a large-scale war. If the US government is planning to once again become the arsenal of democracy, then the existing capabilities of the US military-industrial base and the core assumptions that have driven its development need to be re-examined.
Estimating Ammo Consumption
There is no exact ammunition consumption data available for the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Neither government publishes data, but an estimate of Russian ammunition consumption can be calculated using the official fire missions data provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense during its daily briefing.
Number of Russian Daily Fire Missions, 19–31 May
Number of Russian Daily Fire Missions 19–31 May 2022
Although these numbers mix tactical rockets with conventional, hard-shell artillery, it is not unreasonable to assume that a third of these missions were fired by rocket troops because they form a third of a motorised rifle brigade’s artillery force, with two other battalions being tube artillery. This suggests 390 daily missions fired by tube artillery. Each tube artillery strike is conducted by a battery of six guns total. However, combat and maintenance breakdowns are likely to reduce this number to four. With four guns per battery and four rounds per gun, the tube artillery fires about 6,240 rounds per day. We can estimate an additional 15% wastage for rounds that were set on the ground but abandoned when the battery moved in a hurry, rounds destroyed by Ukrainian strikes on ammunition dumps, or rounds fired but not reported to higher command levels. This number comes up to 7,176 artillery rounds a day. It should be noted that the Russian Ministry of Defense only reports fire missions by forces of the Russian Federation. These do not include formations from the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist republics, which are treated as different countries. The numbers are not perfect, but even if they are off by 50%, it still does not change the overall logistics challenge.
The Capacity of the West’s Industrial Base
The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base. A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to build massive quantities of ammunition or have other manufacturing industries that can be rapidly converted to ammunition production. Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either.
Presently, the US is decreasing its artillery ammunition stockpiles. In 2020, artillery ammunition purchases decreased by 36% to $425 million. In 2022, the plan is to reduce expenditure on 155mm artillery rounds to $174 million. This is equivalent to 75,357 M795 basic ‘dumb’ rounds for regular artillery, 1,400 XM1113 rounds for the M777, and 1,046 XM1113 rounds for Extended Round Artillery Cannons. Finally, there are $75 million dedicated for Excalibur precision-guided munitions that costs $176K per round, thus totaling 426 rounds. In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.
Unfortunately, this is not only the case with artillery. Anti-tank Javelins and air-defence Stingers are in the same boat. The US shipped 7,000 Javelin missiles to Ukraine – roughly one-third of its stockpile – with more shipments to come. Lockheed Martin produces about 2,100 missiles a year, though this number might ramp up to 4,000 in a few years. Ukraine claims to use 500 Javelin missiles every day.
The expenditure of cruise missiles and theatre ballistic missiles is just as massive. The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually, meaning that in three months of combat, Russia has burned through four times the US annual missile production. The Russian rate of production can only be estimated. Russia started missile production in 2015 in limited initial runs, and even in 2016 the production runs were estimated at 47 missiles. This means that it had only five to six years of full-scale production.
“If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime
The initial stockpile in February 2022 is unknown, but considering expenditures and the requirement to hold substantial stockpiles back in case of war with NATO, it is unlikely that the Russians are worried. In fact, they seem to have enough to expend operational-level cruise missiles on tactical targets. The assumption that there are 4,000 cruise and ballistic missiles in the Russian inventory is not unreasonable. This production will probably increase despite Western sanctions. In April, ODK Saturn, which makes Kalibr missile motors, announced an additional 500 job openings. This suggests that even in this field, the West only has parity with Russia.
Flawed Assumptions
The first key assumption about future of combat is that precision-guided weapons will reduce overall ammunition consumption by requiring only one round to destroy the target. The war in Ukraine is challenging this assumption. Many ‘dumb’ indirect fire systems are achieving a great deal of precision without precision guidance, and still the overall ammunition consumption is massive. Part of the issue is that the digitisation of global maps, combined with a massive proliferation of drones, allows geolocation and targeting with increased precision, with video evidence demonstrating the ability to score first strike hits by indirect fires.
The second crucial assumption is that industry can be turned on and off at will. This mode of thinking was imported from the business sector and has spread through US government culture. In the civilian sector, customers can increase or decrease their orders. The producer may be hurt by a drop in orders but rarely is that drop catastrophic because usually there are multiple consumers and losses can be spread among consumers. Unfortunately, this does not work for military purchases. There is only one customer in the US for artillery shells – the military. Once the orders drop off, the manufacturer must close production lines to cut costs to stay in business. Small businesses may close entirely. Generating new capacity is very challenging, especially as there is so little manufacturing capacity left to draw skilled workers from. This is especially challenging because many older armament production systems are labour intensive to the point where they are practically built by hand, and it takes a long time to train a new workforce. The supply chain issues are also problematic because subcomponents may be produced by a subcontractor who either goes out of business, with loss of orders or retools for other customers or who relies on parts from overseas, possibly from a hostile country.
China’s near monopoly on rare earth materials is an obvious challenge here. Stinger missile production will not be completed until 2026, in part due to component shortages. US reports on the defence industrial base have made it clear that ramping up production in war-time may be challenging, if not impossible, due to supply chain issues and a lack of trained personnel due to the degradation of the US manufacturing base.
Finally, there is an assumption about overall ammunition consumption rates. The US government has always lowballed this number. From the Vietnam era to today, small arms plants have shrunk from five to just one. This was glaring at the height of the Iraq war, when US started to run low on small arms ammunition, causing the US government to buy British and Israeli ammunition during the initial stage of the war. At one point, the US had to dip into Vietnam and even Second World War-era ammo stockpiles of .50 calibre ammunition to feed the war effort. This was largely the result of incorrect assumptions about how effective US troops would be. Indeed, the Government Accountability Office estimated that it took 250,000 rounds to kill one insurgent. Luckily for the US, its gun culture ensured that small arms ammunition industry has a civilian component in the US. This is not the case with other types of ammunition, as shown earlier with Javelin and Stinger missiles. Without access to government methodology, it is impossible to understand why US government estimates were off, but there is a risk that the same errors were made with other types of munitions.
Conclusion
The war in Ukraine demonstrates that war between peer or near-peer adversaries demands the existence of a technically advanced, mass scale, industrial-age production capability. The Russian onslaught consumes ammunition at rates that massively exceed US forecasts and ammunition production. For the US to act as the arsenal of democracy in defence of Ukraine, there must be a major look at the manner and the scale at which the US organises its industrial base. This situation is especially critical because behind the Russian invasion stands the world’s manufacturing capital – China. As the US begins to expend more and more of its stockpiles to keep Ukraine in the war, China has yet to provide any meaningful military assistance to Russia. The West must assume that China will not allow Russia to be defeated, especially due to a lack of ammunition. If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must first radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime.
The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.
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Why Do All These Rabbis Warn Against Getting the Covid-19 Vaccine?
PRAYER TO BE SAVED FROM CORONAVIRUS
Master of Universe, who can do anything!
Cure me and the whole world of the Coronavirus, because redemption is near.
And through this reveal to us the 50th gate of holiness, the secret of the ibbur, and may we begin from this day onward to be strong in keeping interpersonal commandments (i.e. being kind to others).
And by virtue of this may we witness miracles and wonders the likes of which haven’t been since the creation of the world. And may there be sweetening of judgments for the entire world, to all mankind, men women and children.
Please God! Please cure Coronavirus all over the world, as it says about Miriam the prophetess, “Lord, please, cure her, please.”
Please God! Who can do anything! Send a complete healing to the entire world! To all men, women, children, boys and girls, to all humanity wherever they may be, and to all the animals, birds, and creatures. All should be cured from this disease in the blink of an eye, and no trace of the disease should remain.
And all will merit fear of Heaven and fear of God, O Merciful and Compassionate Father.
Please God, please do with us miracles and wonders as you did with our forefathers by the exodus from Egypt. And now, take us and the entire world out from this disease, release us and save us from the Coronavirus that wants to eliminate all mortals.
We now regret all the sins that we did, and we honestly ask for forgiveness. And in the merit of our repentance, this cursed disease, that does not miss men, women, boys, girls, and animals, will be eliminated.
Please God, as quick as the illness came it will go away and disappear immediately, in the blink of an eye, and by this the soul of Messiah Ben David will be revealed.
Please God, grant us the merit to be included in the level of the saints and pure ones, and bless anew all the fruit and vegetation, that all will be healed in the blink of an eye, and we will see Messiah Ben David face to face.
Please God, who acts with greatness beyond comprehension, and does wonders without number. Please now perform also with us miracles and wonders beyond comprehension and let no trace of this cursed disease remain. And may the entire world be cured in the blink of an eye.
Because Hashem did all this in order for us to repent, it is all in order for us to direct our hearts to our Father in Heaven, and by that He will send blessings and success to all of our handiwork.
הסערה הבאה שרת התרבות מירי רגב הורתה להכניס ללוגו הרשמי של חגיגות היובל לאיחוד ירושלים את המילה שחרור ירושלים במקום איחוד העיר נשלח על ידי איתמר אייכנר אחרי
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From the 1940s until the 1970s, and heightening with the founding of Israel in 1948, nearly million Jews were expelled from their homes across Arab countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Algeria and Iran.
Jews were frequently subjected to pogroms, systemic violence and religious persecution. Their exiles were largely attributable to Arab regimes increasing their hostility toward Jews because of the very existence of Israel.
Today, while stories abound of many Arab refugees, few are aware or even acknowledge this forgotten exodus of Jewish refugees. Only in Israel has Nov. 30, the day after the UN voted to approve the Jewish-Arab partition plan of Palestine, been marked to commemorate their plight.
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June 2022
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Jerusalem-80-percent- Jewish-British-1864-Census
An important piece of evidence: The British Palestine Exploration Fund survey map – 1871-1877 – The PEF people delineated every wadi, every settlement, tree, and home. They crisscrossed the territory, and an examination of the map shows how empty and barren the land was, and how few people lived there.
“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity… Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people… to oppose Zionism.” Zuheir Muhsein, the late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council.; March 1977, Dutch daily Trouw
London cab driver’s answer to a request from a Muslim to turn off the radio. (You just got to love the Brits.)
A devout Arab Muslim entered a black cab in London .
He curtly asked the cabbie to turn off the radio because as decreed by his religious teaching, he must not listen to music because in the time of the prophet there was no music, especially Western music which is the music of the infidel.
The cab driver politely switched off the radio, stopped the cab and opened the door.
The Arab Muslim asked him, “What are you doing?”
The cabbie answered, “In the time of the prophet there were no taxis, so get out and wait for a camel.”
I wonder how many years (hundreds for sure) Jewish people have lived in Quebec. I don’t believe that they have ever demanded that pork be removed from the school’s menu where their children attend…
Excellent reply by the Mayor of Dorval, Quebec, to the demands of the Muslim population in his community.
Put some pork on your fork.
Too bad the USA doesn’t have the common sense to publish this nationwide, even if they have a muslim in the white house. Should also be posted on signs all along U.S. borders.
Let’s hear it for a Quebec mayor.
MAYOR REFUSES TO REMOVE PORK FROM SCHOOL CANTEEN MENU. EXPLAINS WHY
Muslim parents demanded the abolition of pork in all the school canteens of a Montreal suburb. The mayor of the Montreal suburb of Dorval, has refused, and the town clerk sent a note to all parents to explain why..
“Muslims must understand that they have to adapt to Canada and Quebec, its customs, its traditions, its way of life, because that’s where they chose to immigrate.
“They must understand that they have to integrate and learn to live in Quebec .
“They must understand that it is for them to change their lifestyle, not the Canadians who so generously welcomed them.
“They must understand that Canadians are neither racist nor xenophobic, they accepted many immigrants before Muslims (whereas the reverse is not true, in that Muslim states do not accept non-Muslim immigrants).
“That no more than other nations, Canadians are not willing to give up their identity, their culture.
“And if Canada is a land of welcome, it’s not the Mayor of Dorval who welcomes foreigners, but the Canadian-Quebecois people as a whole.
“Finally, they must understand that in Canada ( Quebec ) with its Judeo-Christian roots, Christmas trees, churches and religious festivals, religion must remain in the private domain. The municipality of Dorval was right to refuse any concessions to Islam and Sharia.
“For Muslims who disagree with secularism and do not feel comfortable in Canada, there are 57 beautiful Muslim countries in the world, most of them under-populated and ready to receive them with open halal arms in accordance with Shariah.
“If you left your country for Canada, and not for other Muslim countries, it is because you have considered that life is better in Canada than elsewhere.
“Ask yourself the question, just once, “Why is it better here in Canada than where you come from?”
“A canteen with pork is part of the answer.”
If you feel the same forward it on.
Judea and Samaria not West Bank
This reminds me of a Morty Dolinsky story from the time he was head of the Government Press Office:
When the late Morty Dolinsky was in charge of the Government Press Office in the 1980s, he once famously replied to a reporter, who asked for information about the West Bank, that he knew no West Bank as he banked at Leumi.
