Will Catastrophic Crop Losses In 2022 Lead To Unprecedented Shortages In 2023? - by Michael Snyder - http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/will-catastrophic-crop-losses-in-2022-lead-to-unprecedented-shortages-in-2023/ Crops are failing all over the globe this summer, but most people don’t even know that this is happening because the big television news channels aren’t talking much about it. Instead, they remain intensely focused on politics day after day. Without a doubt, the political realm is important, but there should also be plenty of time to discuss a raging global crisis which is going to deeply affect all of us. The food that is not being grown this year is not going to be on our plates next year, but the vast majority of the population doesn’t understand this. They see plenty of food in the stores now and they just assume that everything is going to be okay. Unfortunately, everything is not going to be okay. Over in the UK, a major British news source is warning of “widespread crop failures across England”… Experts have warned of widespread crop failures across England, as charities and farmers criticised water companies for dithering over hosepipe bans despite drought being declared across much of the country. So what sort of losses are we talking about? Well, it is now being projected that losses could reach up to 50 percent for a wide variety of crops… Half of the potato crop is expected to fail as it cannot be irrigated, and even crops that are usually drought-tolerant, such as maize, have been failing. The group was told “irrigation options are diminishing with reservoirs being emptied fast”, and losses of 10-50% are expected for crops including carrots, onions, sugar beet, apples and hops. Milk production is also down nationally because of a lack of food for cows, and wildfires are putting large areas of farmland at risk. The British are assuming that they will just get enough food to feed their population from someone else. But that is what everyone else is assuming too. As global food supplies get tighter and tighter, the wealthy countries will buy up food at elevated prices, and many poor countries will be left out and will suffer tremendously. Things are even worse in Italy. As I covered the other day, some farmers in Italy have already lost “up to 80% of their harvest”… In Italy, farmers in some parts of the country have lost up to 80% of their harvest this year due to severe weather anomalies, the Coldretti farming association said Thursday. So where will Italy get enough food to feed their population? Just like the British, the plan to get it from someone else. But who is the someone else going to be? Here in the United States, agricultural production is going to be way below expectations because of the endless drought that is plaguing about half the country. Just yesterday, I wrote an article about how tomato production is being absolutely devastated in the state of California. It is being reported that tomato paste prices have already increased by up to 80 percent, and we are being warned that if rain doesn’t come soon there simply will not be enough tomatoes to meet demand. That means that there won’t be enough spaghetti sauce and pizza sauce to go around. For a lot of my readers, that statement is really going to hit home. Over in Texas, the cotton crop is going to be bitterly disappointing this year… US cotton prices continued to surge above the boom days of 2010-11 after a massive crop estimate cut by the USDA, shocking Wall Street analysts and traders, due primarily to a megadrought scorching farmland of Texas, according to Bloomberg. Futures in New York for December delivery were up 4.5% to $1.1359 a pound and up more than 21% this month. Normally, there would be vast fields of cotton being grown all over the state at this time of the summer. But this year many of those fields look like barren wastelands… Last Friday, the USDA’s bigger-than-expected cut to domestic cotton crop stunned many on Wall Street. Crop output plunged to 12.57 million bales, the lowest in a decade. The cut also pushed down the US from the world’s third-largest producer to the world’s fourth. Barbera said the western Texas region (around Lubbock and Lamesa), the epicenter of America’s cotton-growing belt, has “literally nothing” in fields that are just desert sand. He said fields that had drip irrigation were harvestable, but ones that weren’t weren’t salvageable. So are we going to experience a shortage of cotton in 2023? If so, that would be really bad news. Cotton is used in thousands of different products. Without enough water, we cannot grow the things that we need. I don’t know why this is so hard for people to grasp. And the truth is that our entire way of life depends on sufficient supplies of fresh water. Right now, there are seven western states that are facing the prospect of emergency water restrictions in the months ahead because the Colorado River is rapidly drying up… Two months ago, federal officials took the unprecedented step of telling the seven states that depend on Colorado River water to prepare for emergency cuts next year to prevent reservoirs from dropping to dangerously low levels. The states and managers of affected water agencies were told to come up with plans to reduce water use drastically, by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet, by mid-August. After weeks of negotiations, which some participants say have at times grown tense and acrimonious, the parties have yet to reach an agreement. Nobody wants to give up their water. In the end, all of those states are going to have to make severe sacrifices. At a minimum, the amount of water being taken from the Colorado River needs to be reduced by 2 million acre-feet, and that is an amount of water that is four times greater than the entire city of Los Angeles uses in an entire year… The latest round of closed-door talks occurred Thursday in Denver. Participants said they wouldn’t publicly discuss the offers of water reductions made, but they acknowledged those offers have amounted to far less than 2 million acre-feet. For comparison, the total annual water use of Los Angeles is nearly 500,000 acre-feet. Needless to say, this is going to affect agriculture in a major way. Farmers and ranchers use a tremendous amount of water, and they are about to be hit with restrictions that will be extraordinarily painful. Everything that I have discussed in this article is happening in the context of a horrifying global food crisis that is getting worse with each passing month. But don’t worry, the elite have a plan. For a long time they have touted the benefits of eating bugs, and now such products are actually on our store shelves… On Sunday, carnivore diet guru Dr. Shawn Baker tweeted a photo of a bag of cheddar cheese puffs, only instead of being made of corn meal these snack foods were chock-full of insect protein. The snack item from Canadian brand Actually Foods states the puffs are “powered by crickets” to the tune of 10 grams of protein per serving. The ingredients label on the back of the bag indicates “organic cricket flour” was used in the puffs’ production, and an allergy warning on the back of the bag also cautions, “People who are allergic to shellfish may also be allergic to crickets.” Doesn’t that sound delicious? Instead of suffering through the nightmarish global famines that are coming, we can all eat “cricket puffs” instead. Unfortunately, the truth is that they can’t make enough “cricket puffs” to rescue us from the “perfect storm” that has hit global food production. There simply is not going to be enough food for everyone in 2023, and it will be the poorest countries that will suffer the most.
Nearing Midnight: The Strategic Importance of Microchips – Todd Strandberg - https://www.raptureready.com/category/nearing-midnight/ For years, oil was the most important commodity. In the past few years, it has become clear that the microchip has surpassed oil as a far more important commodity. We don’t have a strategic reserve of chips that we can pump into the ground for later retrieval. Oil took millions of years to become useful. Microchips can become outdated in less than 90 days. The COVID lockdowns forced people to realize how much we use chips in our daily lives. You can open a card that plays a song that wishes you a happy birthday. You check your emails on your smartphone. You check into work at your factory or home office. All these actions are only possible by having access to microchips. The internet is completely dependent on a system based on chip technology. Trillion-dollar firms like Amazon, Google, and Apple would not exist if it wasn’t for the microchip. Looking around my room, I realize my phone, electric razor, and light bulbs would not function without this technology. I am mortified that we have fallen into a state where we are totally dependent on a few nations for these microchips. The point where we realized how behind we had fallen in the production of chips is when we were not able to produce cars because of a shortage. We are so far behind that it will take until 2023 before the backlog is cleared. At one point, chips were all made in America. As the price of manufacturing them rapidly declined, American companies turned to Asian firms to fulfill orders. It took decades to play out, but we eventually reached the point where our production levels were dangerously low. Taiwan now manufactures approximately 92% of advanced semiconductors; South Korea manufactures nearly all of the rest. China’s dependence on foreign semiconductors is a key factor preventing a Chinese attack on Taiwan: should China attack Taiwan, Taiwan could destroy its semiconductors and infrastructure. But if China can ramp up its own domestic manufacturing while everyone else is behind, China is in a solid position to blackmail all the world economies. The government has recently passed the US Chips Act, which is aimed at boosting domestic semiconductor production and improving technological competitiveness in the world. There is no guarantee that new plants will close the gap. We are about two years behind our competitors. Since it will take two years to build a microchip plant, we may find ourselves in the same position when our new factories come online. Moore’s law is a term used to refer to the observation made by Gordon Moore in 1965 that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. For several decades Moore’s law was extremely reliable. In recent years Moore’s law began to slow down as we reached basic limits. The component of some transistors is now only a few atoms thick. Most people have no idea that the Netherlands is the only source for high-end chip-making modules. In the southern Dutch town of Veldhoven sits the only factory capable of assembling a revolutionary machine that’s relied upon by the world’s biggest chipmakers. EUV lithography is the most expensive step in making the advanced microchips that power data centers, cars, and iPhones. The machines are made by only one company: Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography. “ASML has a monopoly on the fabrication of EUV lithography machines, the most advanced type of lithography equipment that’s needed to make every single advanced processor chip that we use today,” said Chris Miller, assistant professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “The machines that they produce, each one of them is among the most complicated devices ever made.” ASML has sold a total of about 140 EUV systems in the past decade, each one now costing up to $200 million. The price tag for its next machine, called High NA, will be more than $300 million. Its EUV machine is “so expensive that most companies cannot afford it,” said Joanne Itow, managing director of manufacturing at Semico Research. “It certainly has eliminated a lot of players out of the market,” including chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries, which decided a few years ago to stop working on more-advanced chips because of the high cost, she said. We have nothing to fear from the Dutch’s monopoly lithography machines. China is the nation that we need to keep an eye on. China is coming up fast in the chip world, and I know it uses any advantage as a weapon against us. Just as Europe made a huge mistake in trusting Russia for its natural gas supply, we would be in a similar bind if China grained a monopoly in the Chip market. America would still be the leader in microchips and many other technology fields if it had not faltered in our faith in God. By rejecting our first love, we removed the source of our once great wealth. “But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day” (Deuteronomy 8:18). |
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‘Morally Superior’ Democrats Pass Bill Doubling IRS Power, Adding Armed ‘Enforcers’ – By David Fiorazo – https://harbingersdaily.com/morally-superior-democrats-pass-bill-doubling-irs-power-adding-armed-enforcers/ Socialists in Washington voted and passed the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act.” But we must look deeper into what these bills do and the motives behind those supporting it. Claiming to reduce inflation and rising costs by spending billions of dollars, they’re essentially raising taxes on American citizens – during a recession! In another partisan power-play, Marxists, Democrat progressives, and useful idiots came together to give even more power to the federal government and the IRS. What do you think they’re going to do with so much more power at their disposal? Once again, VP Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote, and that always spells bad news for most Americans. The bill was passed to the applause of big government spending advocates, and one of the concerns about the bill is the effect it will have on low and middle-income Americans. A more appropriate title is the ‘Inflation Enhancement Plan.’ First, as $80 billion will be allocated to the IRS, we can expect audits to increase. For some reason, liberals and progressives aren’t as concerned about being audited. In addition to unleashing an army of IRS foot soldiers, recent job postings describe some requirements to work for the new IRS, but one stands out the most: agents must “carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.” But there’s more: “The IRS agent must also ‘Be willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.’ Lest you think this is just another conspiracy theory, it has been verified that in just a three-month period (March 1 – June 1, 2022), the criminal division of the IRS ordered $696,000 in ammunition. A militarized Democrat wing of government prepared to use deadly force against fellow citizens. How much of this has to do with taxes? According to the Daily Signal: The Democrats’ 755-page bill increases green energy subsidies, expands the IRS, and enacts other initiatives long sought by the left, and authorizes $430 billion in new spending. That’s supposed to be offset by $740 billion in new revenues from tax hikes and increased enforcement that includes the hiring of 87,000 additional IRS agents to conduct audits and seek tax liens. Patting himself on the back, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer boasted that the bill is “one of the defining legislative feats of the 21st century.” He also claimed the bill “reduces inflation, lowers costs, creates millions of good-paying jobs, and is the boldest climate package in U.S. history;” And they’re proud of this monstrosity? On top of rising costs, purposeful political and social division, moral relativism on steroids, censorship of conservatives, young children injected with shots, a tyrannical administration, and communist-style propaganda being disseminated by the One-party media, big-tech conglomerate, Democrats are also lying about their socialist policies and what matters to Americans. An overwhelming majority of families could care less about a bold climate package, especially one costing us hundreds of billions of dollars. It boggles our minds why so few lefties in D.C. ever ask the questions, ‘who’s going to pay for all this, what are the long term effects, and is it absolutely necessary?’ Experts suggest the spending bill is a scaled-down version of ‘big-government’ Biden’s signature Build Back Better globalist plan. And this new version includes Obamacare premium supports. Some warn this legislation would make the IRS larger than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined! But a primary concern is the IRS is beefing up to come after more of us. Expecting the O’Biden IRS to target Christians and conservatives, the Washington Stand reports, Just last week, 40 House Democrats … sent a letter to the IRS commissioner asking them to look into Family Research Council’s nonprofit status, because they don’t like our politics. These kinds of misinformation-fueled investigations of conservative groups and of conservative individuals causes a lot of concern.” Various sources report that out of the projected 1.2 million new audits the IRS will conduct each year, over 710,000 (nearly 60%) will fall on Americans who earn less than $75,000 per year. Did Joe Biden lie or was he unaware of what was in this bill? Likely both. It’s almost certain that the highest number of audits will target the poorest Americans, the ones unable to fight unfair claims. These policies are part of a big government, anti-American agenda that includes weakening the economy, families, and increasing discrimination and double standards leading our culture to slide even further into delusion, rebellion, and godlessness. And sadly, the sobering reality is we have allowed it to happen – along with our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. How? Either we’ve been too busy to notice the warning signs and recent trends, we’ve been (willfully?) ignorant, or we have become too Americanized – pursuing happiness and our best lives now as we’re entertaining ourselves into the rut of escapism. As I reported in 2015, the Obama/Biden Justice Dept. used the IRS as a bully pulpit to punish their political opposition. They denied non-profit status to various Christian and conservative groups prior to the 2012 presidential election – which helped Barrack Obama, of course. How do you think the left will use the IRS after they add agents and resources? Why wouldn’t the power elites running the country and Joe Biden take it up a notch now that everything is out in the open? They’re not even hiding their intentions any longer. Be reminded about the alleged computer crashes at the IRS during the Obama/Biden/Lois Lerner regime causing employees to somehow lose internal emails. IRS employees were under federal investigation in a case involving the targeting of conservatives. I wrote at the time: “More than twenty IRS employees conveniently had their computers crash which caused the suspicious deletion of, or the loss of emails as well as hard drives. (Apparently, only conservatives and Republicans in government agencies are required by law to back-up their data on external hard drives.)” “…former IRS Exempt Organizations Division Director, Lois Lerner [and] IRS officials, worked with Democrats to silence conservatives and used IRS intimidation tactics…” It has been documented. The IRS placed holds on the processing of hundreds of applications for tax-exempt status from organizations known to be conservative! Think about how this impacts people voting and elections across the country. How? By limiting the ability of conservative or Republican groups to acquire non-profit status and freely campaign and mobilize for a cause or candidate. The IRS monitored conservative groups and activities, their websites, and other publicly available information. Still not concerned about this administration weaponizing big government? A key takeaway from previous IRS corruption is that eighty-three (83%) of the nonprofit groups they targeted in 2014 and flagged for IRS Surveillance were conservative. Plus, American citizens who donated money at the time to tea party-affiliated groups were audited ten times more than average Americans. Are you starting to understand? Regarding audits, this is what we also learned about Democrats in power: out of all the groups the IRS selected for audit during that time, 100% of them were conservative! Why is all of this happening now? Is it to distract from the weaponization of the FBI and its unjustified raid on a former President, Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago? Of course it’s political. Are they manufacturing a smokescreen leading up to the next health crisis or the Midterm elections in November? I think we’re catching on. Does it seem like liberal Democrats and progressives in power are above the law? One of my favorite thinkers in our time is Professor Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution. He recently spoke about Democrat hubris, saying: They’re afraid in the short-term, but long-term they believe they’re morally superior to America and therefore any means necessary or justifiable for their morally superior ends. Right now, we don’t have the rule of law in Washington. Whether you’re targeted or exempt depends on your ideology. Whether or not you’re targeted depends on your ideology. This is communist policy. This is the epitome of calling evil good and good, evil while those who reject God and truth think we should be punished or silenced because they’re “morally superior.” This is part of what gives many leftists justification. Let that sink in. |
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Daily Jot: Stupidocrisy: Believing the stuntmen - Bill Wilson – www.dailyjot.com One of the definitions of a stuntman is “A trained professional who performs daring acts, often as a career.” Essentially, they are people who do things that would severely injure the untrained, or make people believe some fantastic feat. Sometimes the stunts are so sensational that one has to suspend his disbelief to believe it is real. The United States Congress and its supporting mainstream news media along with many large corporations are full of stuntmen—trained professionals that make people believe something is real when it isn’t. They are kind of like the old-time professional wrestlers faking their way through matches with just enough good moves to make people think it is real. All along it’s just a choreographed stunt. Well, Joe Biden just signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. All along, the news media was playing this Act as the turnaround for the Biden presidency. He was getting a string of legislative victories, they said, as the bill passed its way through committees, the Senate, the House and reconciliation. This single bill would define his success as president. Trouble is, it doesn’t reduce inflation at all. The new law will raise taxes on corporations and the middle class and allow the hiring of some 87,000 IRS agents to enforce it. Biden signed the bill that will provide enough pork for his “green energy” cronies that they will be able to retire early—if only. All this action and the stuntmen sold America on a giant head fake. Just as things were heating up on the inflation front, another choreographed scene came into play on the stage of this great American tragedy—the FBI raid on former president Donald Trump. The raid did a couple of things. First, it took the stuntmen closer to achieving their goal of staying employed in the November elections. By once again targeting Trump, the stuntmen were able to gain more ground in eventually outlawing Trump from running once again for president. And the raid diverted attention away from the disastrous, power-grabbing, wealth redistribution of the Inflation Reduction Act. This raid is probably one of the biggest stunts of the century—right next to the Russian hoax, the Ukraine hoax, and the impeachments. Here’s another good stunt—the CDC changing its COVID guidelines, essentially admitting that there is no difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, after telling everyone that COVID was a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Common sense says that these stunts will only hurt the stuntmen come election time. But not so fast. A recent USA Today poll of registered voters said they wanted a congressman who “stands up to President Biden,” but if the elections were today, most said they would vote for the Democratic candidate. Ephesians 5:6 says, “Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things comes the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” That’s the ultimate result of those who are watching the stuntmen thinking the stunts are real. Now that’s…say it with me…Stupidocrisy. |
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Daily Devotion: The God Who Suffers - by Greg Laurie – www.harvest.org He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief . . . Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows —Isaiah 53:3–4 https://harvest.org/resources/devotion/the-god-who-suffers-6/ - Listen When we think of God, we usually consider the fact that He is righteous, holy, loving, and good. But here is something else to consider about God: He is the God who has suffered. We don’t tend to think that a perfect Creator would experience such a human trait as human pain and suffering. After all, why would you suffer if you did not have to? But God has suffered, and more deeply than any of us could ever imagine. In his book The Cross of Christ, John Stott said, “Our God is a suffering God.” And I think he is right. Listen to Isaiah’s description of what Jesus (who was God) went through at Calvary: “He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief . . . Surely He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:3–5) “A man of suffering.” That was Jesus. But why did God suffer? Because He loved and loves. That means He also enters into our suffering as well. Hebrews 2:17–18 tells us: “Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people. Since he himself has gone through suffering and temptation, he is able to help us when we are being tempted” (nlt). You are not alone in your suffering today. Jesus has been there and walked in your shoes and He is here for you right now. Call out to Him. |
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