Yes, our nation experienced massive shortages during the Great Depression; however, they were not predicted nor announced BEFORE the problem. It was only after the stock market crashed that they followed.

Here, we have a different scenario. A sitting US President has information considered so reliable that the population deserves to be ‘warned’ of dwindling food supplies. Wouldn’t that be the information one would keep classified, as we wouldn’t want the public to panic or begin hoarding? Journalist Mike Gonzales wrote about purported ‘food shortages’ being used as a weapon by the Left to promote the expansion of the Welfare State.

https://www.heritage.org/hunger-and-food-programs/commentary/significant-food-shortages-rare-america

My recent post discussed a patient’s observation that the government was encouraging farmers and ranchers not to produce and destroy their crops and cattle. While I could not confirm this, we now have other disturbing information that suggests it may be true. There may be a plan by our government afoot to create a food shortage.

First, a Maricopa County, Arizona, food bank recently and mysteriously caught fire which destroyed some 50,000 pounds of food. The timing was also suspicious for arson as it occurred just 15 minutes after the Maricopa Food Pantry closed on a Monday morning.

https://t.co/ltJ8clwAJI

Dr. Benjamin Braddock reported on Twitter a number of these unusual food-related fires. There was a massive fire at a Salinas food processing plant. The facility produces for Taylor Farms.

Dr. Ben Braddock reports on at least a dozen more suspicious fires targeting similar facilities – Smithfield Foods, Deli Star Meat, Hot Pockets, Tyson Poultry, Bonanza Meat, Mair-Rite Steak, JBS Beef, McCrum Potato, Kellogg’s, and Cargill-Nutrena.

https://twitter.com/DylanRMarshall/status/1516858367599267842?s=20&t=5j9vtdQxmHpYZb19RXvc-w

Braddock reports on an explosion that destroyed a large North Carolina fertilizer plant February 1, 2022.

The North Carolina city of Winston-Salem is asking people within one mile of a raging blaze at a fertilizer plant to evacuate due to the possibility of a large explosion. Authorities say evacuees should plan on staying away for up to two days. https://t.co/dZchMB3CT2

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 1, 2022

Finally, he reports that Taiwan may be experiencing similar unexplained fires coincidentally targeting food facilities.

https://t.co/0qGtQeukdn

Interestingly, any resulting food shortage will likely and officially be blamed on Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. After all, the Ukraine is known as the World’s Breadbasket, and the war has throttled their crop production. But, of course, Putin, Biden’s scapegoat for everything, has also shouldered the blame for runaway gas prices and unprecedented inflation.

But if we examine this more closely, it begins to sound more and more like the World Economic Forum and the Great Reset agenda. The WEF is grounded in technocracy and ‘stakeholder capitalism,’ a fancy term for Fascism, the melding of Government and Corporatism into a totalitarian control over the average citizen.

https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/techno-facism-techno-feudalism-or?r=17wv6g&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

The WEF is the elite Oligarchy that are pulling the strings of our various prime ministers and presidents and orchestrating Woke Ideology, Climate Change, Pandemics, Wars, and now Concocted Food Shortages to create a scenario where citizens will embrace global control – to the point where we will all be happy merely to survive, but own nothing, by 2030.

Is it possible our own government is betraying us?

Is it possible that the United States of America, the envy of the world, has been so infiltrated by monied interests that it would turn on its own and devour its young – all to benefit a few elites that control the money, the media, and narrative?

Once again, we call for all freedom-loving Americans and citizens to awaken and spread the word. The time now is not for panic, but it is a time for action to defeat unjust laws, action to elect new Congressmen and Senators, and action to defeat censorship in any way we can. Now, not later, is the time for all to speak out.

Dr. Justus R. Hope, writer’s pseudonym, graduated summa cum laude from Wabash College where he was named a Lilly Scholar. He attended Baylor College of Medicine where he was awarded the M.D. degree. He completed a residency in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at The University of California Irvine Medical Center. He is board-certified and has taught at The University of California Davis Medical Center in the departments of Family Practice and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. He has practiced medicine for over 35 years and maintains a private practice in Northern California.

Source: https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/food-shortage—by-design/article_3fada3f4-c4bd-11ec-be1a-a3c822925ee5.html

The post Food Shortage – By Design first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Following the sanctions that were placed on Russia by the U.S. government as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion into Ukraine, Biden is predicting that groceries across the country will be in short supply, and pricier than ever before.

“With regard to food shortage, yes we did talk about food shortages, and it’s gonna be real,” Biden said during a press conference at a NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium. “The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”

Russia and Ukraine are considered the “breadbaskets of Europe” due to their expansive wheat production. The two countries combine for nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports.

Since a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, prices of wheat surged 55%. Ports in Ukraine that send wheat and other food staples worldwide to be made into bread, noodles, and animal feed were shut down as millions flee or stay to fight in the war.

Ukraine also is a major supplier of corn and the global leader in sunflower oil, used in food processing. The war could reduce food supplies globally, which could create food insecurity and throw more people into poverty in places like Lebanon and Egypt, where diets are dominated by bread.

It will also affect people in the U.S. living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to afford food for their families.

“It comes at an absolutely horrible time for American consumers because we’re looking every day at inflation almost reaching 10%,” Dan Varroney, a supply chain expert, told Fox Business. “Last month’s figures were close to 8%. And that means that consumers, including those that are living paycheck to paycheck, are going to pay more for food.”

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/president-biden-warns-real-grocery-172618556.html

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The post Russians experience heavy losses in Ukraine first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

(CNN) After a devastating week for the Lone Star state, finally some relief.

The post Here’s how a week of frigid weather and catastrophe unfolded in Texas first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Supply Lines is a daily newsletter that tracks Covid-19’s impact on trade. Sign up here, and subscribe to our Covid-19 podcast for the latest news and analysis on the pandemic.

Food is piling up in all the wrong places, thanks to carriers hauling empty shipping containers.

Global competition for the ribbed steel containers means that Thailand can’t ship its rice, Canada is stuck with peas and India can’t offload its mountain of sugar. Shipping empty boxes back to China has become so profitable that even some American soybean shippers are having to fight for containers to supply hungry Asian buyers.

“People aren’t getting their goods where they need them,” said Steve Kranig, director of logistics at IM-EX Global Inc., a freight forwarder that handles cargoes including rice, bananas, and dumplings from Asia to the U.S. “One of my customers ships 8 to 10 containers of rice every week from Thailand to Los Angeles. But he can only ship 2 to 3 containers a week right now.”

The core issue is that China, which has recovered faster from Covid-19, has revved up its export economy and is paying huge premiums for containers, making it far more profitable to send them back empty than to refill them.

Shipping containers next to gantry cranes at the Yangshan Deepwater Port in Shanghai, China, on Monday, Jan, 11, 2021.

There are signs that the soaring freight rates are boosting the cost of some foods. White sugar prices surged to a three-year high last month, and delays in food-grade soybean shipments from the U.S. could mean higher tofu and soy milk costs for consumers in Asia, said Eric Wenberg, executive director of the Specialty Soya and Grains Alliance.

Food Costs

While it’s not entirely uncommon for containers to transit back empty after a voyage, carriers usually try to backfill them to profit from shipping rates in both directions. But the cost of carrying goods from China to the U.S. is almost 10 times higher than the opposite journey, prompting liners to favor empty boxes instead of loading them, Freightos data showed.

At the port of Los Angeles, the U.S.’s biggest for container cargo, three in every four boxes going back to Asia are traveling empty compared with the normal 50% rate, said Executive Director Gene Seroka. In Vancouver, containers remain in the yards. Terminals have shortened the time to transport the stuffed boxes onto ships from three days to as little as seven hours, said Jordan Atkins, vice president of WTC Group.

“It’s not possible to get the amount of volume we have here in Vancouver to return containers in those tight windows,” said Atkins. “Pulses, in general, are struggling getting on the ships,” he said, referring to crops like peas and lentils. Canada is the world’s second-largest producer of pulses.

India, the world’s second-largest sugar producer, exported only 70,000 metric tons in January, less than a fifth of the volume shipped a year earlier, said Ravi Gupta, president of Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd, the nation’s top refiner.

Vietnam, the largest producer of the robusta coffee beans used to make instant drinks and espresso, is also struggling to export. Shipments dropped more than 20% in November and December, said Le Tien Hung, chairman of Simexco Dak Lak, Vietnam’s No. 2 exporter.

Warehouses in Vietnam are full due to seasonal selling and low exports following the shortage of containers, Volcafe Ltd., the coffee unit of commodities trader ED&F Man Holdings Ltd., said in a report.

Around the world, some foodstuff buyers are waiting while others have halted purchases altogether, traders say.

‘Shortage of Everything’

“It’s been like that since December,” said Kranig of IM-EX Global. “You’re going to get not only a shortage of food but a shortage of everything. I would not be surprised to hear some beneficial cargo owners’ freight rates for 2021-2022 shipping season double from previous years.”

If that prediction bears out, once the bulk of North Americans and Europeans are vaccinated, some of those high freight rates could be passed on to them as they return to cafes, restaurants, and office towers.

The container crunch comes just as American shippers are trying to boost exports of everything from soybeans to grain meals to Asia. China is scooping up American crops to feed a hog herd that’s recovering from a deadly pig disease faster than most expected. The situation is so dire that some buyers are canceling contracts, opting for bulk shipping methods, the most common for feed products, or delaying purchases to avoid high freight costs.

“We know that some of the industry’s largest and most consistent buyers of soybean containers in Asia over the years are now electing to buy bulk vessel supplies,” said Doug Grennan, vice president for select global grain and oilseeds at Scoular Co., a century-old trader that’s one of the U.S.’s largest shippers of agricultural goods in containers. “And certainly like others, we had some booking cancellations.”

Still, a major global spike in food costs is unlikely. Only a small percentage of grains and oilseeds is traded in containers, said Arnaud Petit, executive director of the International Grains Council in London, with the rest going bulk cargo. It’s also unclear how much of the rise in shipping costs companies will be able to pass on to consumers, given the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus.

Suspending Shipments

Hapag-Lloyd AG last year told customers it was suspending overseas container shipments of North American agriculture products to reposition empty containers back to Asia. Nico Hecker, director of global container logistics at the German sea-freight company, said in November that the firm was experiencing the strongest increase in demand for 40-foot containers following one of the biggest decreases ever.

“As containers became scarce in Asia, demand outpaced supply” along all container routes, said Judah Levine, research lead at Freightos. Some carriers have canceled sailings in coming weeks to catch up from delays, he added.

The pandemic has also upended flows of refrigerated containers. In China, boxes are piling up at ports as workers have to comply with strict Covid-testing procedures as well as disinfection of meat and seafood products after frozen-food imports were blamed for the spread of the virus. There are so many cold containers in Dalian that the port is running out of power plugs to keep them on.

As imports are being held up, wholesale pork prices in China, the world’s top consumer, jumped to the highest since September. That’s prompted the government to boost sales of state pork reserves to meet booming demand ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.

Labor shortages due to the spread of the coronavirus are slowing operations at ports, and worsening the container shortage. Strikes in Argentina have also boosted demand for American agriculture products to supply Asia, increasing competition for boxes.

“It’s a bit of a perfect storm,” said Grennan. ”You have pent-up demand in Asia for agriculture products and that’s at the same time you have a pretty substantial consumer goods demand in the U.S. When you add to that some of these labor issues, that’s what really crated the scarcity you are seeing.”

— With assistance by Marcy Nicholson, Mai Ngoc Chau, Shuping Niu, Megan Durisin, and Pratik Parija

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-02/the-global-food-trade-has-been-upended-by-a-container-crisis

The post The Global Food Trade Has Been Upended by a Container Crisis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

We were warned that hospitals would be overrun.  They were sure to run out of ventilators, if not hospital beds.  Car companies were recruited to manufacture ventilators instead of cars.  Now nobody knows what to do with them all, and they’re being shipped to other countries all over the world.  Decisions that upended and impoverished millions were made based on predictions that were wildly inaccurate.  But don’t worry, they’ll all get “government money.”

The illness is real, not a hoax.  But “reporting” on the matter is a story unto itself.  This isn’t the media’s first rodeo.  Maybe they believe they’re getting better at perpetuating these frauds on the American public.  They spent three years trying to make us believe that General Michael Flynn was a Russian agent, and said those very words on the air.  They were sure or wanted all of us to be sure, that Trump was doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin, and said as much so many times you couldn’t count them.  (That’s all blowing up in their faces with new revelations this week.  Documents that prove the whole thing was a frame job have been released.  For some unknown reason the DOJ and FBI have been sitting on these all this time, and they prove what we’ve known for nearly three years.  But the mainstream still hasn’t a clue.)  After manipulating the public for years with nonsense that was obvious to anyone not relying on the mainstream papers and networks, we’re supposed to buy the panic they’re selling?

It looks like they’re inflating the numbers of illnesses and deaths.  We know all the early projections were four and five times the actual COVID numbers are as queer as several of the news anchors who report them.  There are numerous anecdotal examples, unreported in the mainstream press, to show that illnesses and deaths are being attributed to the virus on the basis of assumption.  The reason may have something to do with the allocation of “government money.”

But it’s a smirkfest on CNN.  A video is played of the President stating that he hopes to be able to hold rallies again, beginning sometime before the November election.  When the camera returns to the anchor desk you get a series of knowing looks (Don Lemon), a disgusted scowl, and an exasperated shaking of the head.  They just cannot believe what a dork we’ve got for president, or that any sane person wouldn’t agree.

Speaking of queer numbers, have you seen how badly Joe Biden is going to beat President Trump in the upcoming election?  Oh yeah, he’s going to beat Trump as soundly as Hillary Clinton did, maybe worse.  They love their numbers, don’t they?  Especially when their numbers are impossibly bad for President Trump.  Then they sneer at us for rejecting “facts.”  Given their recent and continuing record, it becomes clear, this is no accident.  They’ve pushed one false narrative after the other, beating each to death. But nothing works on the public like fear.

The great toilet paper crisis was utterly unnecessary.  But stand by.  They are pushing a meat shortage now, and one will probably be created leaving empty counters at the supermarket.  Apparently, that’s already the case in some places.  The news people are terribly skeptical about states allowing people to go about their lives while the “death count” is still rising.  But then, they haven’t been very good about predictions.

The reaction to the pandemic has been like an exercise in socialism.  We’re seeing dictatorial actions that make little logical sense, and then more drastic clampdowns when people do what they want anyway.  Like what happened at California beaches last weekend.  Aerial photos made it appear as though people were allowing a lot more than six feet between families. But there were thousands out there and governor Newsom was incensed that his “orders” had been disobeyed.  So this weekend he’s ordered the beaches closed.  Get back indoors, where it’s safe and healthy!  The other thing is the flood of money the government is distributing.  A couple or three trillion is out the door, and we’re beginning to wonder if there’s any end to it.  Are there no longer any consequences when the national debt explodes?

A headline today says the pandemic could last two years.  If the media has anything to say about it, it’s probably all we’ll hear for at least that long.

There’s still no visible sign of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.  Nobody’s sure if he’s sick or dead, or just partying with the concubines at a seaside resort.  At least no one is lowering their children down manhole passages, worrying that a missile strike could come at any moment.  Now we’re wondering what ridiculous “orders” we will be under, and whether the police will jail otherwise law-abiding citizens while letting actual criminals run free.  It’s the “new normal.”  (Forgive me.)

It looks as though we’ll be holding our meetings for the Feast of Tabernacles this year unless Dr. Fauci says otherwise.  Maybe even if he does.  We’ve got more to think about than the latest report, and it’s nice to think about something else for a change.  We’re holding a Sabbath service tomorrow at the regular time and hope things will be normal for everybody soon.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 1 May 2020 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A department store in Pyongyang. Photo: AP

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National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho provided the updated figure Thursday at a news conference in Jakarta.
The disasters struck Palu and surrounding districts in Central Sulawesi province last Friday.

Nugroho said other victims still are buried in the mud and debris and have not yet been recovered.

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/death-toll-from-indonesia-earthquake-tsunami-now-1424/articleshow/66067722.cms

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