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The UN Is Warning That We Are Heading Into The Worst Global Food Crisis Since World War 2

March 21, 2022March 21, 2022 by Michael

The executive director of the UN’s World Food Program is saying that we are now facing “a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe”. Unfortunately, he is not exaggerating. The global price of food was skyrocketing even before the war on the other side of the globe erupted, and now many of the countries that are extremely dependent on agricultural exports from Ukraine and Russia are going to have to turn elsewhere for answers. Meanwhile, severe drought is threatening production in the other major “breadbasket” of the world. We are being warned that the winter wheat harvest in the U.S. could be “disastrous” this year, and that is very unwelcome news. Because if some sort of a miracle does not happen, we will soon see hunger and famine on a scale that once would have been unimaginable to many people.

We really are facing a “perfect storm” as far as global food production is concerned. The following comes from a recent New York Times article…

Ukrainian farms are about to miss critical planting and harvesting seasons. European fertilizer plants are significantly cutting production because of high energy prices. Farmers from Brazil to Texas are cutting back on fertilizer, threatening the size of the next harvests.

China, facing its worst wheat crop in decades after severe flooding, is planning to buy much more of the world’s dwindling supply. And India, which ordinarily exports a small amount of wheat, has already seen foreign demand more than triple compared with last year.

The new global energy crisis just keeps pushing fertilizer prices higher and higher.

This is something that I have been warning about for months, and now the mainstream media is finally acknowledging that we have a truly historic challenge on our hands.

In fact, they are not openly admitting that fertilizer prices have “more than doubled or tripled in price over the past year”…

In another ominous signal to fertilizer customers, earlier this month European fertilizer producers said they were slowing or halting production because of soaring energy prices. Many fertilizers are made with natural gas.

The world’s major fertilizers have now more than doubled or tripled in price over the past year.

Actually, in some cases fertilizer prices have actually quadrupled.

How are the poorer parts of the world supposed to deal with that?

It is easy to tell them to use less fertilizer, but using less fertilizer will mean less food is grown.

Sadly, absurd fertilizer prices will result in dramatically reduced agricultural production all over the globe this year, and the executive director of the UN’s World Food Program is publicly warning that we are heading into the worst global food crisis “since World War II”…

The looming disaster is laying bare the consequences of a major war in the modern era of globalization. Prices for food, fertilizer, oil, gas and even metals like aluminum, nickel and palladium are all rising fast — and experts expect worse as the effects cascade.

“Ukraine has only compounded a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe,” said David M. Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that feeds 125 million people a day. “There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.”

There will be famine in many parts of the globe in 2022.

Starting on page 44 of my latest book, I specifically warned that we were heading into a time of global famine.

Now even the United Nations is admitting that it is upon us, and things are only going to get worse in the months ahead.

But many Americans simply will not care about this crisis until it affects them personally.

Of course the truth is that many Americans are now starting “to feel the financial squeeze” of rapidly raising food prices. The following comes from the Washington Post…

As war continues to ravage Ukraine, Americans, particularly those who live paycheck to paycheck, are beginning to feel the financial squeeze on their food prices from the conflict half a world away.

It began with a rapid rise in gas prices. Now, with Russian oil banned in the United States and energy scarcity heightened globally, experts say shoppers can expect their grocery bills to rise in coming months – especially if Ukraine misses its wheat planting season.

The good news is that nobody is facing starvation in the United States at this point.

But lines at our local food banks are starting to get quite long once again…

Food bank officials are reporting growing lines at their distribution centers nationwide. Rates of reported hunger have been increasing since early August, when nearly 8 percent of respondents said they “sometimes” or “often” did not have enough to eat, according to data from the Census Household Pulse Survey.

In early February, 10 percent of those polled said their household sometimes doesn’t have enough to eat. That uptick is more significant for households with children, rising to 13 percent, although off from pandemic peaks.

In the months ahead, do you think that global energy prices will go up or down?

To me, the answer to that question is quite obvious.

If global energy prices continue to rise, that means that fertilizer prices will continue to rise.

And the higher fertilizer prices shoot up, the worse this new global hunger crisis will become.

Ever since the start of the COVID pandemic, the number of people around the world that do not have enough food to eat has been steadily rising.

Now the war in Ukraine has taken things to an entirely new level, and experts such as David Beasley are openly admitting that we simply are not going to be able to feed everyone.

So what happens if another “black swan event” takes place?

For example, what will happen if China invades Taiwan?

Or what will happen if another global pandemic suddenly erupts?

We are so vulnerable right now, and it isn’t going to take much to push our world into a complete and utter food production nightmare.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending digital copies as gifts through Amazon to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to ask Jesus to be your Lord and Savior today.

Severe Drought And “Dust Bowl Conditions” Threaten To Create A Disastrous Winter Wheat Harvest In The U.S.

March 20, 2022March 20, 2022 by Michael

Food prices in the U.S. have already been soaring, and now we are on track for an absolutely horrible winter wheat harvest. Of course this comes at a time when the war on the other side of the globe is going to greatly reduce wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine. Over the last 12 months, the price of wheat has already risen 69 percent, and now this crisis threatens to go to an entirely new level. In all my years of writing, I have never seen anything like this, and I am deeply concerned about what the months ahead will bring.

Due to extreme drought, winter wheat is in very bad shape in states such as Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The following comes from one of the most prominent agricultural websites in the entire country…

Some farmers in southwestern Kansas, the top U.S. wheat producing state, have not received much measurable rain or snow since October. Winter wheat is planted in autumn, lays dormant in winter and begins sending up green shoots in spring. Proper soil moisture is critical at this stage for the crop to thrive.

More than half of Kansas was classified as under severe drought or worse as of March 8, the driest conditions since 2018, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center. Severe drought is also covering three-quarters of Oklahoma and more than two-thirds of Texas, both of which also are large wheat producers.

If that sounds really bad, that is because it is really bad.

Farmers are praying for rain, because they desperately need it.

That same article also discussed the fact that winter wheat was severely damaged by a wind storm “that brought ‘Dust Bowl’ conditions to Kansas”…

The coming weeks will be critical for the southern Plains wheat crop, said Lucas Haag, extension agronomist at Kansas State University. Many farmers apply fertilizer to maximize crop potential, but moisture is needed to carry nutrients to plant roots, he said.

Wheat plants damaged by the December wind storm that brought “Dust Bowl” conditions to Kansas face additional drought problems because plants have been weakened either by the sand-blast effect of blowing dust and dirt or by soil nutrient loss from the 100 mph (161 kph) winds.

How many years have I been warning that “Dust Bowl conditions” would return to the middle of the country?

Now it has happened.

And forecasters are telling us that “abnormally dry” conditions will likely continue across much of the nation for the foreseeable future…

Abnormally dry to exceptional drought conditions are expected to persist across 60% of the continental U.S. as spring in the Northern Hemisphere begins. Forecasters expect little to no rain for certain parts of the western U.S. through June.

From April to June, above-average temperatures are expected from Southwest to the East Coast and north through the Midwest, according to a new outlook published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA’s map shows a greater than 50% chance of drought persistence for nearly 60% of the continental U.S.

We have been witnessing very strange weather patterns all over the globe in recent months, and that is one of the reasons why major agricultural commodity prices have been spiking dramatically…

Over the past year, wheat prices are up 69 percent. Among other major food exports of Russia and Ukraine, corn prices are up 36 percent and barley 82 percent.

Now war in Ukraine has created an immense “supply shock”, and this is going to have ripple effects that are felt all across the planet.

Ukraine is normally one of the key “breadbaskets” of the world, but now the invasion has changed everything…

Ukraine’s top agricultural export products are corn and wheat. Before the invasion, Ukraine was the second-largest supplier of grains for the European Union and one of the largest suppliers for emerging markets in Asia and Africa. Breaking down the numbers, Ukraine produced 49.6% of global sunflower oil, 10% of global wheat, 12.6% of global barley, and 15.3% of global maize.

Collectively, Russia and Ukraine typically account for a very large chunk of all global agricultural exports…

For the global food market, there are few worse countries to be in conflict than Russia and Ukraine. Over the past five years, they have together accounted for nearly 30 percent of the exports of the world’s wheat, 17 percent of corn, 32 percent of barley, a crucial source of animal feed, and 75 percent of sunflower seed oil, an important cooking oil in some parts of the world.

So what are we going to do now?

I haven’t found a single person that has a reasonable solution to that question.

When it comes to wheat, there are a whole bunch of countries that usually get most of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine…

Armenia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Eritrea have imported virtually all of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine and must find new sources. But they are competing against much larger buyers, including Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh and Iran, which have obtained more than 60 percent of their wheat from the two warring countries.

What are they supposed to do?

Due to an unprecedented spike in the price of fertilizer, the outlook for global agricultural production was already extremely grim before the war erupted, and now we truly are staring into an abyss.

Those that have been following my articles on a regular basis already know that global hunger has been escalating rapidly over the past few years, and one UN official just admitted that this crisis is now reaching a crescendo…

“For the last three years, global rates of hunger and famine have been on the rise. With the Russian invasion, we are now facing the risk of imminent famine and starvation in more places around the world,” Fakhri said in a statement.

Read that part about “imminent famine and starvation” again.

In other words, there isn’t going to be nearly enough food for everyone.

This is exactly what we have been warned about, and we will soon see the global price of food reach heights that would have once been unimaginable.

In light of these developments, I am encouraging all of my readers to take action.

Stock up while food prices are still relatively stable, because it looks like things are about to start getting really crazy.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

You May Want To Figure Out Where You Want To Spend Your Days When World War 3 Fully Erupts

March 16, 2022March 16, 2022 by Michael

The growing desire for war that we are witnessing in Washington D.C. right now should greatly alarm all of us. In this environment, voices of reason such as Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard are being accused of “treason” just because they are calling for peace. Well, you can add me to that list because I am calling for peace too. I don’t want nuclear war. I don’t want billions of people to die. You would think that we should all be able to agree on those things, but unfortunately the warmongers in Washington seem absolutely determined to keep escalating matters. That is a very dangerous game, and it is going to be way too easy for someone to make a huge mistake. Before that day arrives, you may want to figure out where you want to spend your days when global war fully erupts.

At some point, the shooting in Ukraine will end. Either Russia will achieve total victory, or more likely there will be some sort of a ceasefire agreement.

But when the shooting in Ukraine stops, don’t be fooled into thinking that everything is okay. The truth is that a much bigger conflict between the United States and Russia has now begun, and both sides are beginning to realize that this is ultimately a struggle for all the marbles.

World War 3 is here, and now we must hope that we can keep both parties from “going nuclear” for as long as possible.

Of course there are some that would like to see the U.S. and Russia shooting at each other very soon. On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begged Congress to establish a “humanitarian no-fly zone” over Ukraine…

The t-shirt-attired Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress by video on Wednesday and asked for the United States to send warplanes into the sky over Ukraine to create a “humanitarian no-fly zone” or, failing that, to provide Ukraine itself with warplanes.

“Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people,” Zelensky told Congress.

Zelensky knows very well that the establishment of a “humanitarian no-fly zone” would require U.S. forces to shoot down Russian jets.

And he also understands that this would spark a shooting war between the United States and Russia.

But you can’t blame Zelensky for trying. He is trying to save his own skin, and the best way to do that is to drag the United States into the war.

Needless to say, the establishment media in the western world absolutely adored Zelensky’s speech. The following example comes from CNN…

Zelensky’s words are not only destined for the history books. They will likely energize support for Ukraine’s defense against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine and reverberate across the US.

When America’s top Democrats and Republicans rose side by side to give Zelensky a standing ovation, we knew the Ukrainian President had made his mark. Zelensky, reminding Americans what freedom really means after the country has spent years devaluing it in petty political battles, proves there is a new seriousness in the nation.

And most members of Congress ate it up as well. Following the speech, Senator Jeanne Shaheen boldly declared that “more must be done to assist Ukraine”…

“It is clear that more must be done to assist Ukraine and hold Putin to account,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat, said in a statement following Zelenskeyy’s virtual address. “The images we watched today underscore the horrific violence – the war crimes – being committed by Putin. He will pay for what he has done.”

And Senator Joni Ernst said that Zelensky’s speech made her want to put on a uniform and “go help”…

‘It’s hurtful to see anything like, you know, thinking about if it were my child, if that were my family, that were my people. You know, I’d be doing the exact same thing that President Zelensky is,’ Ernst said.

‘I would be appealing to every nation possible to get whatever it takes to defeat the Russians and get them the heck out of my country. You know, it makes me want to throw on my uniform, you know, and go help.’

Actually, I would love to see that.

In fact, I would love to see U.S., Ukrainian and Russian politicians all flown to an island where they would resolve this conflict “Battle Royale” style.

But instead, all of the politicians are safe and warm while millions upon millions of Ukrainians deeply suffer.

One of the biggest warmongers in the U.S. Senate, Lindsey Graham, has decided that it is time to start calling Vladimir Putin “a war criminal”…

“It’s time for him to go. He’s a war criminal,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an erstwhile standard bearer for the Republican Party’s Reagan-era foreign policies, told reporters shortly after Zelenskeyy’s address. “I am asking the Russian people to rise up and end his rein of terror.”

Joe Biden also referred to Putin as a “war criminal” on Wednesday, and he announced that an additional 800 million dollars in military aid would be given to the Ukrainian government.

To be honest, it is quite an impressive list that the Ukrainians will be receiving…

800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems
2,000 Javelin, 1,000 light anti-armor weapons, and 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems
100 Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems
100 grenade launchers, 5,000 rifles, 1,000 pistols, 400 machine guns and 400 shotguns
Over 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenade launcher and mortar rounds
25,000 sets of body armor
25,000 helmets

But of course this is not nearly enough for some of the warmongers in Congress.

In fact, 40 Republican senators just signed a letter “in which they strongly disagreed with the decision to not transfer aircraft and air defense systems to Ukraine from Poland”.

Biden was hesitant to take such a step because it might start a shooting war with Russia, but apparently that is a risk that most Republican senators are willing to take.

Thankfully, most Americans do not actually want a shooting war with Russia.

But according to one new survey, more than a third of all Americans “would favor military action even if it risks nuclear conflict with Russia”…

However, most Americans (62%) say they would oppose the U.S. “taking military action even if it risks a nuclear conflict with Russia.” About a third (35%) of Americans say they would favor military action in this scenario. Comparable shares in both parties (36% of Republicans, 35% of Democrats) say they would favor military action even if it risks nuclear conflict with Russia.

Those of us in the majority need to be much louder than those in the minority, because if the warmongers get their way we could eventually find ourselves in the middle of a nuclear conflict.

And if that happens, there won’t be a future for our country.

Speaking of World War 3, Joe Biden is also escalating matters with China by sending thousands of U.S. troops to Australia…

The Pentagon is to deploy over two thousand troops to Australia by September to join an established rotational force of 200 in anticipation of a conflict with China, according to reports.

The Daily Mail notes that “The contingent is part of an ongoing US initiative in the Indo-Pacific region to prepare for a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan in coming years.”

The report notes that 1000 marines have already arrived in the country.

The battle lines are being drawn.

Once World War 3 fully erupts, it will be the United States on one side, and Russia and China on the other.

If Americans truly understood what was at stake, there would be massive demonstrations in the streets of every major U.S. city right now.

But the general population just doesn’t get it.

They just assume that war is something that happens on the other side of the globe and that our leaders have everything under control.

Unfortunately, our leaders most definitely do not have everything under control, and when World War 3 fully erupts the death and destruction that we will witness will be absolutely unimaginable.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Oh Great, Now We Could Lose The Petrodollar…

March 15, 2022March 15, 2022 by Michael

The economic sanctions that have been imposed upon Russia have caused immense damage, but a loss of the petrodollar would be absolutely devastating for the U.S. economy. Since making an agreement with the Nixon administration in 1974, the Saudis have traded oil exclusively for U.S. dollars. Today, approximately 80 percent of all oil produced in the entire world is traded for dollars, and the “petrodollar” has become one of the foundational pillars of the current global financial system. Most Americans don’t realize this, but far more dollars are actually used outside of the United States than inside the United States, and having the reserve currency of the world is a massive advantage for us. Up to this point, there has been an insatiable demand for U.S. dollars all over the planet, and that has allowed us to enjoy a standard of living that is way above what we actually deserve.

Unfortunately, all of that could be about to change. As I have stated many times over the past year, Joe Biden is surrounded by the worst foreign policy team in U.S. history, and that is really saying something.

Thanks to this catastrophically bad foreign policy team, our relations with both Saudi Arabia and China have greatly deteriorated, and this has resulted in them developing closer relations with one another. In fact, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that it looks like the Saudis could soon start pricing the oil that it sells to China in Chinese currency…

The U.S. dollar may be on its way out as the global reserve currency.

Saudi Arabia is actively engaging in negotiations with Chinese officials to price oil sales to China in yuan instead of the U.S. dollar, the Wall Street Journal reported.

If the two countries decide to conduct business using the Chinese yuan instead of the U.S. dollar, this could mean trouble for America’s dominance as the global economic hegemon.

This would be a tremendous blow to the U.S., and the Saudis know it.

So perhaps Biden should not have called Saudi Arabia a “pariah”, and perhaps his foreign policy team should not have angered the Saudis multiple times over the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, the Chinese still understand the art of diplomacy, and they are reportedly offering “everything you could possibly imagine” for the Saudis to make this move…

“The dynamics have dramatically changed. The U.S. relationship with the Saudis has changed, China is the world’s biggest crude importer and they are offering many lucrative incentives to the kingdom,” said a Saudi official familiar with the talks.

“China has been offering everything you could possibly imagine to the kingdom,” the official said.

In retrospect, we now know the reason why MBS wasn’t taking Biden’s phone calls.

At one time, the Chinese may have been afraid to threaten U.S. interests so openly, but not anymore.

As I discussed a few days ago, U.S. relations with China are rapidly falling apart. One of the reasons for this is because of how strongly aligned China has become with Russia…

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made clear during talks with his Chinese counterpart on Monday that the U.S. has “deep concerns about China’s alignment with Russia at this time.”

He was direct about “the potential implications and consequences of certain actions,” a senior administration official said.

Sullivan should definitely have “deep concerns”, because he is one of the key figures that has helped to create this mess.

After what he has pulled over the years, there is no way that he should ever be hired for another government job under any circumstances.

But instead, he is the national security adviser to the president of the United States.

What in the world was Biden thinking when he picked him?

Sullivan is deeply disliked all over the globe, and it certainly isn’t an accident that he was put on the list of U.S. officials that the Russians sanctioned on Tuesday…

US President Joe Biden
Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley
National security adviser Jacob Sullivan
CIA Director William Burns
White House press secretary Jen Psaki
Daleep Singh, Biden’s deputy national security adviser for international economics
United States Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power
President Biden’s son Hunter Biden
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo
Reta Jo Lewis, president and chairman of the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank

Ultimately, this was just a symbolic move by the Russians.

Those sanctions won’t really hurt anyone on that list.

However, another move that Vladimir Putin made this week will definitely cause a bit of pain for the western world…

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that will allow Russian airlines to take control of hundreds of the Western-built planes leased from international firms, Russian news agency TASS reported, per The Wall Street Journal.

The jets will be added to the country’s aircraft register and be deployed on domestic routes, according to Reuters. The news comes on the heels of the island of Bermuda revoking the airworthiness certificates for over 700 leased aircraft in Russia, which went into effect Saturday night.

Western powers and the Russians both continue to escalate the economic war that has now begun, and that is a very dangerous game.

But in the long-term, what the Chinese and the Saudis are up to could have far graver implications.

Currency is the number one thing that the U.S. exports, and if the rest of the world decides it doesn’t need our currency anymore we will be in really big trouble.

Everything would change. If you think that inflation is bad now, just wait until that happens.

Previous administrations understood the importance of the petrodollar, and they were often willing to go to great lengths to defend it.

Unfortunately, now Biden and his team of nitwits is in charge, and everything that they touch seems to get ruined.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

6 Years Of Being Manipulated By Manufactured Waves Of Outrage With No End In Sight

March 14, 2022March 14, 2022 by Michael

Are you starting to notice a pattern by now? For the past six years, the American people have been emotionally manipulated by what I call “manufactured waves of outrage”. Once the corporate media identifies a trigger, it will obsessively focus on it for weeks or months on end, and the narrative that develops will be echoed and magnified by millions upon millions of social media denizens. Before too long, much of the population is whipped up into an irrational emotional frenzy, and that frenzy is used to move certain agendas forward.

To me, this new era began in 2016. Donald Trump was a political candidate like no other, and the elite absolutely hated the fact that he did not follow their rules and that they could not control him.

So when he actually won, it truly was a catastrophic event for them.

From that moment forward, most corporate media outlets relentlessly demonized Trump. Never before in U.S. history had a sitting U.S. president been treated in such a fashion, and we may never see anything like it ever again.

The anti-Trump narratives which were being pumped out by the corporate media were constantly fed to social media influencers on both sides of the political spectrum, and that ultimately created extremely deep political divisions in this country which still exist to this day.

Many on the left are entirely convinced that Trump is the devil, while many on the right believe that he is the greatest American that ever lived.

Of course the truth is that Trump is not actually on the far end of the political spectrum that currently exists in this country. There is a lot about Trump that liberals should actually like, and there is a lot about Trump that conservatives should actually be criticizing.

But that is not how the debate has been framed. If you hate Trump you are on the left, and if you love Trump you are on the right, and that is the end of the story.

In 2020, a couple things happened that caused new manufactured waves of outrage.

One was the tragic death of George Floyd. His death sparked the BLM movement, and our country was whipped up into an emotional frenzy. Protests, civil unrest and riots erupted all over the nation, and the level of violence that we witnessed shocked the entire planet.

But if you did not support the protesters, you were suddenly a bad person.

Instead, it was the police that were relentlessly demonized by the media, and this greatly upset a lot of us that are very supportive of the police.

Without a doubt, the U.S. has had problems with police brutality. And without a doubt, there is a lot of racism out there. I have been boldly speaking out against racism for many years, and I will continue to speak out against it. I believe that every man, woman and child on the entire planet was created equal, and I believe that every single one of us possesses immense value.

But there were millions upon millions of us that did not agree with the political agenda of the BLM movement, and many of the specific political positions that the organization adopted were deeply alarming.

Does that make us bad just because we don’t agree with their far left agenda?

2020 also brought us the COVID pandemic.

Our societal divisions became deeper than ever before as we endlessly debated about masks, vaccines, mandates and other restrictions.

Manufactured waves of outrage about COVID dominated our national discourse for nearly two full years, but we were finally getting to a point where we were almost ready to put it all behind us.

And then the Ukraine war came along, and now everyone has a reason to be outraged again.

I think that Elon Musk summed things up very well in one of his latest tweets.

pic.twitter.com/CfoJ3qdCRJ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2022

You may have noticed that hordes of social media lemmings are plastering their profiles with Ukrainian flags these days.

Next month, they may have to switch back to COVID again.

Then in May, the hot topic may be racial injustice.

Of course every June is reserved for the alphabet people.

Social media has become a very clear reflection of society as a whole, and so much of what goes on in our world today is being driven by social media.

Last week, I was stunned to learn that the Biden administration had actually conducted a briefing on the war in Ukraine for 30 key TikTok influencers…

To get ahead of misinformation and spread its messaging, the Biden administration on Thursday briefed 30 top TikTok stars on key information regarding the war in Ukraine, The Washington Post reports.

The online influencers received updates about the U.S.’ “strategic goals in the region” while National Security Council staffers and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki “answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO, and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.”

Can you imagine the Reagan administration doing such a thing?

Of course not.

But the world has changed.

Today, the elite need the support of influencers on social media, because those social media influencers can whip up tremendous waves of manufactured outrage.

If you asked random U.S. social media users to tell you what caused the war in Ukraine, the vast majority of them could not give you any sort of a coherent answer.

And the vast majority of them would not be able to point out Ukraine on a blank map of the world.

But they do know that Russia is really bad and Ukraine is really good, and that is all that the elite really need for them to know.

For years, I have been encouraging my readers to think for themselves.

Because if you don’t learn to think for yourself, there are others that will be more than happy to do your thinking for you.

That can be a tempting path to follow, but when you let others do your thinking for you it is way too easy for them to manipulate your emotions with the latest wave of manufactured outrage.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Catastrophic Inflation: “I’ve Never Seen Prices Jump This High, This Fast”

March 13, 2022March 13, 2022 by Michael

This is what the early chapters of an inflationary meltdown look like. Last week, we were informed that “consumer prices were 7.9% higher in February than a year ago”, and that was being touted as the highest figure “in 40 years”. Of course those that follow my website on a regular basis already know that the reality is much worse than that. If the inflation rate was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would be over 15 percent right now. We are already experiencing the sort of painful inflation that Americans were forced to endure during the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s, and now the war in Ukraine is going to completely change the game moving forward.

Last week, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States rose 13 percent, and since this time last year it is up 38 percent.

And now that the war in Ukraine is shifting the global energy crisis into overdrive, Americans are going to be feeling the pain of higher energy prices in a whole host of different ways…

Americans are facing sticker shock at gas stations across the country, but surging global energy costs are rippling through the economy in other ways, too: Airlines are scaling back on flights. Truckers are adding fuel surcharges. And lawn care companies and mobile dog groomers are upping their service fees.

One trucking company executive that was asked about this said that he has “never seen prices jump this high, this fast”…

“Customers really don’t want to hear it, but fuel prices are going through the roof so we’re having to charge more,” said John Migliorini, vice president of Lakeville Trucking in Rochester, N.Y., where diesel costs have nearly doubled to about $400,000 a month. “What choice do we have? I’ve never seen prices jump this high, this fast.”

And he is exactly correct.

Ever since the full-blown invasion of Ukraine was launched on February 24th, we have seen prices spiral out of control all over the country.

Joe Biden knows that the American people are getting restless, and he is trying to pin the blame for our inflation nightmare on Vladimir Putin.

But Vladimir Putin didn’t borrow and spend trillions upon trillions of dollars that we did not have over the last two years.

Our leaders in Washington did that.

And Vladimir Putin didn’t create trillions upon trillions of fresh dollars out of thin air and use them to prop up our financial system.

The Federal Reserve did that.

This inflation crisis started long before the war in Ukraine, but without a doubt the war in Ukraine is going to make things even worse.

In fact, the UN is now warning that global food prices could soon jump by as much as 22 percent “above their already elevated levels”…

With dozens of countries around the world relying heavily on both Ukraine and Russia for food supplies, the United Nations warned Friday, the ongoing war is likely to significantly drive up global food prices and worsen malnourishment in the Global South. With both Ukraine and Russia’s ability to produce and export food uncertain, a global supply gap “could push up international food and feed prices by 8% to 22% above their already elevated levels,” said the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has killed more than 560 civilians and forced more than 2.5 million people to flee the country, FAO said up to 30% of Ukrainian wheat fields will not be harvested in the 2022 to 2023 season due to the violence.

For the billions that are already living in poverty all over the planet, that is really, really bad news.

Here in the United States, one Oklahoma farmer told Laura Ingraham of Fox News that we are “going to get hit on every front”…

“We’re going to get hit on every front, on every expense possible,” Oklahoma farmer Ben Neal told Ingraham, “From fertilizers to fuel to labor, insurance – everything in between [including] our packing supplies.”

Neal’s farm operates on a farm-to-market business model, so he has direct fuel costs for transportation. But every farmer essentially faces the same thing – crops need to be transported to processors and final markets and there are increasing fuel costs to power the trucks, trains, barges and ships that make that happen.

In other words, groceries are going to be getting more expensive.

A lot more expensive.

Meanwhile, our economic war with Russia continues to escalate.

Over the past few weeks, the U.S. has hit the Russians with a slew of economic sanctions, and without a doubt those sanctions are really starting to hurt…

European energy is only one part of the sanctions piece. Financially Europe and the US have frozen deposits of euros, dollars and sterling held by Russia’s central bank, cutting Russia off from a large part of its net reserves. In manufactured goods Russia is now isolated from spare parts supplies for Boeing and Airbus aircraft and for almost every private car in Russia. Russia is also cut off from new supplies of servers (cloud computing cannot expand capacity), software and a range of high-end chips which Russia cannot yet manufacture.

Some commercial software (particularly in the oil and gas industry) only operates with regular provision of unlock keys, which will not now arrive. Some millions of Russian employees of Western companies are now functionally unemployed, while all Russians are now cut off from travel to Europe and North America. Imports of western goods of all kinds to Russia are now stalled for lack of sanctioned shipping, while exports of oil and metals are under threat from sanctions on shipowners.

The Russian economy will never be the same after this.

But will ours?

We have already been suffering through a pretty painful chip shortage for the last two years, and now the war in Ukraine threatens to take it to an entirely new level…

The ongoing geopolitical tussle between Russia and Ukraine is likely to have another casualty – the semiconductor chip. Palladium and neon are two resources that are key to the production of semiconductor chips.

Given that Russia supplies over 40 percent of the world’s supply of palladium and Ukraine produces 70 percent of the global supply of neon, we can expect the global chip shortage to worsen should the military conflict persist, Tim Uy, of Moody’s Analytics wrote in a recent report.

It would be difficult to overstate the seriousness of what we are potentially facing.

Almost every industry in America relies on equipment that contains computer chips.

So what will our economy look like if the chip shortage becomes extremely severe?

And this is just one way out of hundreds that our economic war with Russia is going to hurt us.

Most Americans simply do not understand how horrible things will become if this thing stretches on for an extended period of time.

We should be hoping for peace, but instead most prominent voices seem to want to escalate matters with Russia even more.

What we are watching play out right in front of our eyes should sadden us all, because there will be no going back after this.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Nearly 2.8 Million Birds (Mostly Chickens And Turkeys) Have Died In The First Month Of America’s Raging New Bird Flu Pandemic

March 9, 2022March 9, 2022 by Michael

On top of everything else, now a highly pathogenic avian influenza pandemic is ripping across the United States, and it has already resulted in the deaths of almost 2.8 million birds. Most of the birds that have died have been chickens or turkeys. And since this was just in the very first month of the pandemic, there is no telling how bad it could eventually become. What will the eventual death toll look like? Will it be in the tens of millions? That is definitely a possibility. And what would happen if the bird flu mutates into a version that spreads easily among humans? We might want to start thinking about that, because that is possible too.

I knew that the bird flu outbreak was bad, but I didn’t know that it had gotten this bad. The following comes from a prominent farming website…

With new outbreaks in Iowa and Missouri, nearly 2.8 million birds — almost entirely chickens and turkeys — have died in one month due to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), the Agriculture Department said on Monday. The viral disease has been identified in 23 poultry farms and backyard flocks in a dozen states since February 8, when the first report of “high path” bird flu in a domestic flock was reported.

2.8 million dead birds in just one month.

Will next month be even worse?

And the number of states that have detected bird flu has actually gone up since that article came out. Nebraska just became the 13th state to detect a positive case of HPAI.

To me, one of the most alarming things is that this flu just keeps hitting more commercial flocks. On Monday, officials announced that a commercial flock of turkeys in northwest Iowa had been affected…

Officials announced Monday that they have identified bird flu in a commercial flock of 50,000 turkeys in northwest Iowa, the state’s second case of a virus that has been identified in multiple U.S. states.

Iowa agriculture officials and the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed the case in Buena Vista County, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of the case identified March 1 in a backyard flock of 42 ducks and chickens in Pottawattamie County.

When one bird in a flock tests positive, all of the birds have to be put down.

That is how authorities try to contain the disease.

But it just keeps popping up in widely diverse places. Just check out what has taken place within the past few days…

In the past few days officials have identified the virus on a southeast Missouri farm with 240,000 broiler chickens, a commercial mixed species flock in southeastern South Dakota and an egg-laying hen operation in northeast Maryland.

This is truly a nightmare.

And we just learned that the H5N1 strain has been detected at yet another poultry farm in Delaware…

Another Delaware poultry farm has identified the highly pathogenic avian influenza strain among their population, according to Delaware Department of Agriculture officials.

According to officials, a pullet operation in New Castle County identified the H5N1 strain following federal laboratory testing.

All of the chickens at that facility were rapidly “depopulated”, and officials are assuring us that no infected birds will enter the food system…

It is the first time since 2004 that avian influenza was identified in an area broiler farm, officials with the Delmarva Chicken Association (DCA) said Wednesday. All affected premises have been quarantines, and birds are being or have been depopulated to prevent spread. Birds from affected flocks will not be distributed to the food system, officials said.

At this point, this pandemic is not just limited to one geographic area.

There have been lots of cases on the east coast, and there have been cases as far west as Nebraska and South Dakota.

Basically, the area that has been affected already covers about half the nation, and we are just one month into this new plague.

Let us hope that it stays just in birds, because if it jumps to humans we are going to have a real disaster on our hands.

Since 1997, bird flu has had about a 50 percent death rate in humans…

From 1997 to now, more than 880 people worldwide were infected, with approximately a 50% case fatality proportion. That includes 20 cases and seven deaths in Hong Kong between 1997 and 2003.

The good news is that the strains that are circulating around the globe right now do not spread easily to humans.

But just like COVID, bird flu is mutating all the time.

And scientists have warned us that it could eventually mutate into a strain that does spread easily among humans.

Late last year, two people in China died after catching a strain of the bird flu known as H5N6…

China has reported to more H5N6 avian flu infections in humans, both fatal in people who were sick in November and died in early December, Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said in a statement today.

The patients are a 12-year-old girl and a 79-year-old man, both from the city of Liuzhou in Guangxi province. They had both been at a live-poultry market before they got sick and started experiencing symptoms 1 day apart from each other, suggesting that they might be family members. The girl and the man died 1 day apart, the man on Dec 3 and the girl on Dec 4.

Personally, I have always been more concerned about H5N1, but the truth is that if any strain were to begin spreading like wildfire among humans the death toll would be catastrophic.

But even if this bird flu pandemic stays only in birds, we are going to lose millions upon millions of chickens and turkeys at a time when food prices have already been soaring into the stratosphere.

The global food crisis that we have been warned about is already here, and so this new plague has come at a really, really bad time.

We continue to be hit by one thing after another, and it seems like each new day brings even more bad news.

If you enjoy eating chicken or turkey, I would stock up now, because prices are only going to go higher from here.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Commodity Catastrophe! The Ukraine War Has Thrown Global Markets Into A State Of Complete And Utter Chaos

March 7, 2022March 7, 2022 by Michael

There are some people out there that thought that global financial markets would be largely unaffected by the war in Ukraine. Those people were wrong. This week, investors have received a very rude wake up call. Stock prices are plunging, commodity prices are going completely nuts, and a very thick cloud of fear has descended upon Wall Street. The fact that this war has permanently changed economic and financial conditions is starting to sink in, and it is likely that the level of panic will continue to rise in the days ahead.

At this point, even average people on the street are having discussions about the price of oil. Just a few hours ago, it briefly spiked to 139 dollars a barrel…

US crude futures jumped 6% to trade at $123 a barrel. Brent crude, the global benchmark, briefly spiked as high as $139 a barrel before easing back to $125. That’s still a leap of more than 35% in just one month.

We all knew that the price of oil was going to be going up, but very few of us expected this sort of dramatic movement so soon.

And as the price of oil goes up, so does the average price of gasoline in the United States. According to Gas Buddy, the all-time record was just broken for the very first time since 2008…

The national average price of gasoline in the U.S. today broke the existing record, rewriting the all-time high to today’s $4.104 per gallon, according to GasBuddy, the leading fuel savings platform saving North American drivers the most money on gas. The previous all-time high was set back in 2008 at $4.103 per gallon, just ahead of the U.S. Great Recession and housing crisis. The national average price of diesel is also nearing a new record, now at $4.63 per gallon, likely to break the record of $4.846 per gallon in the next two weeks.

If you can believe it, some investors are anticipating that things will get much, much worse in the weeks ahead…

Prices to buy call options at higher prices surged Monday as the market assessed the possibility of a supply cut-off from Russia, one of the world’s biggest exporters. More than 1,200 contracts for the option to buy May Brent futures at $200 a barrel traded on Monday, according to ICE Futures Europe data. The options expire March 28, three days before the contract settles. The price to buy them jumped 152% to $2.39 a barrel.

A $150-a-barrel call option for the June Brent contract doubled from Friday, according to ICE, while the cost of $180 call options jumped 110%.

It may not happen immediately, but I do believe that we will eventually see oil trade for $200 a barrel.

Of course the Russians are even more pessimistic. They are telling us that it could actually reach $300 a barrel.

Instead of doing something to fix this crisis, the Biden administration continues to act as if we are living in some sort of a fantasy world. On Monday, Vice-President Kamala Harris was trotted out to encourage everyone to transition to electric vehicles…

‘We are all in the midst of a turning point. We have the technologies to transition to a zero emission fleet,’ Harris said during the announcement. ‘We can address the climate crisis and grow our economy at the same time.’

Perhaps someone should explain to Harris that the vast majority of Americans can’t afford to purchase a new electric vehicle at this moment.

Most of us are just going to have to get by with the vehicles that we have right now, and filling up those vehicles with gasoline is going to become really, really painful.

Meanwhile, wheat futures closed “limit up” once again on Monday…

Among other commodities, the type that actually matter when considering social unrest and revolutions, wheat futures closed limit up again at a record $1,425 translating into an all time high $12.94 per bushel on fear Ukraine and Russian output will be cut off.

The price of wheat has been going higher and higher and higher.

Yesterday, when I warned that we were headed into an unprecedented global food crisis, I was not exaggerating one bit.

The era of cheap bread is over. It won’t be too long before five dollars for a loaf of bread is considered to be a bargain, and so I would encourage you to stock up now.

I warned about a coming global famine in Lost Prophecies, and I warned about it again in 7 Year Apocalypse. This is not a game, and the things that so many of us have been warning about are starting to come to pass right in front of our eyes.

Other commodities are going up even faster than the price of wheat.

If you can believe it, the price of nickel had risen by 82 percent at one point on Monday…

Nickel prices soared as much as 82% to $52,700 a metric ton, the highest in the 35-year history of the contract trading on the London Metal Exchange, as fears over Russian supplies triggered a historic short squeeze according to Bloomberg.

The metal added more than $22,700 to trade at a record-high $52,700 a metric ton. That builds on nickel’s 19% surge last week as banks cut exposure to Russian commodity suppliers because of Western sanctions and shippers, such as Maersk, stay clear of Russian and Ukrainian ports.

82 percent in one day!

Nickel is used in countless products. You will find it in batteries, in stainless steel, in coins and even in guitar strings.

And it turns out that Russia is a significant player in the global nickel industry…

Russia is a large producer of nickel, supplying about 6% of global demand, according to Bloomberg. Over 70% of the nickel production is used in stainless steel. And 7% goes into EV batteries, where demand is growing in leaps and bounds. But EV batteries use highly pure “Class-1” nickel, of which Russia’s MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC produces 17% of the supply.

As commodities soar, stock prices continue their alarming plunge.

On Monday, we actually witnessed the worst day of the year for both the Dow and the S&P 500…

Stocks fell again on Monday, following four straight weeks of declines, as investors grew increasingly concerned higher energy prices stemming from the Russia-Ukraine conflict would slow the economy and raise inflation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 797.42 points to close at 32,817.38, dragged down by a nearly 8% loss in American Express. The S&P 500 declined close to 3% to 4,201.09, falling deeper into correction territory. The 500-stock average sits more than 12% from its record close. The Nasdaq Composite lost 3.6% to 12,830.96, and now sits in bear market territory, more than 20% from its all-time close.

The fact that the Nasdaq is now in bear market territory doesn’t tell the whole story.

At this point, there are quite a few tech stocks that are already down more than 75 percent from their all-time highs.

There is carnage everywhere that you look on Wall Street, and many are wondering if the big crash is finally upon us.

I don’t have an answer to that question, but things certainly don’t look good.

The markets have been teetering on the brink of a precipice for a long time, and now the war in Ukraine may finally be the event that pushes us over the edge.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

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