Category Gates – Devils Handmaiden

Dec 26 2022

There is No Defense to Hypersonic Missiles & Russia’s Plans to Expand


Armstrong Economics Blog/Economics Re-Posted Dec 26, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Russia announced yesterday that it will increase its military strength from 1 million to 1.5 million. The Western Press keeps putting out the propaganda that that this is all because Russia has lost momentum and many soldiers in Ukraine. I reported before that sources from Ukraine, not Russia, put the death toll at over 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers. That was also in the draft speech of the head of the EU, but it was removed to keep up the image that Ukraine is winning.

What is not being said here is that Poland has been instructed by the US to increase its military from 100,000 to 250,000 making it the largest force in NATO. It is only a 14-hour drive from Warsaw to Moscow. This in addition to NATO’s plans to incorporate Finland and Sweden, has also played a role in this decision.

The Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu declared that the country needs a force of 1.5 million “to guarantee the fulfillment of tasks to ensure Russia’s security.” China has about 2 million and the USA has about 1.4 million. North Korea has 1,280,000 active with another 600,000 in reserve. Belarus has an army of only 62,000 with 344,750 in reserve.

Currently in Russia, the regular draft, calls up 120,000 to 140,000 men twice a year for a one-year tour of compulsory service. What is becoming very obvious is that the West wants war. There is no desire for peace whatsoever. This has changed the game. The Western Press keeps just putting out propaganda about Ukraine winning, while it is ignoring the mobilization of NATO which is clearly anticipating war. This is not going to be just about Ukraine as we head into 2023. You have to be blind not to see that the West is clearly preparing for war. This is what Russia is now responding to. With Poland raising its army to 250,000, that presents a serious threat to Russia for the exceeds the active personnel in Belarus.

On top of all of this, Putin has wisely instructed that they should be studying how the weapons the US has been handing Ukraine and to regard these as valuable lessons to be learned during the fighting to modernize the armed forces. Thus, Ukraine has been an experiment to study the weapons systems of one’s opponent on both sides.

Putin also made it clear that Russia will start to deploy more hypersonic weapons, noting that the first warship equipped with state-of-the-art Zircon hypersonic missiles will be commissioned by the navy next month. There is no question that defense against Russia’s hypersonic weapons is not something that may be possible. Russia has been using some hypersonic missiles in Ukraine. It is believed among our sources that this may have been more to intimidate NATO and the United States. Obviously, the conventional wisdom has been that there is just no effective defense against hypersonic weapons. Hence, their use has been to intimidate the USA and NATO, but this does not seem to have succeeded.

The USA is exploring how to defend itself against hypersonic missiles. One theory is the exploration of “boundary layer phenomenology,” which is the idea that disrupting the airflow surrounding a hypersonic projectile may throw it off course. Disrupting the airflow may send it off course, but it will still hit something. The other hope is to deploy lower-flying networked satellites in an effort to establish a continuous targeting track of an approaching hypersonic weapon.

The reason there is no defense is that a hypersonic projectile will travel much too fast to track them because it will move from one radar aperture to another, making it virtually impossible to establish a consistent targeting track or lock.

Meanwhile, our brilliant world leaders are playing with everyone’s life all because they prefer war rather than reform whereby they might lose power.

Dec 24 2022

The Aftermath of Republican Betrayal + AMA | Rich Baris, Pedro Gonzalez | The Charlie Kirk Show LIVE


The Charlie Kirk Show Published originally on Rumble on December 23, 2022 

After his bombshell testimony, Rich Baris joins to break down exactly what he told the court in the Kari Lake lawsuit against Maricopa County. Pedro Gonzalez from Chronicles Magazine and the “Contra” Substack joins to break down the Senate Republicans latest and unforgivable betrayal. Send your questions to Freedom@CharlieKirk.com for an hour 2 Ask Charlie Anything. The Charlie Kirk Show is LIVE on Salem Radio stations across the country and simulcasting on Real America’s Voice.

Dec 24 2022

The Crumbling of the United States


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Dec 23, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: I just want to say that Socrates was the only correct forecast for the elections. It said the Republicans would take the House but not the Senate and there would be no red wave. I appreciate the nonbiased views that are refreshing.

Keep up the good work

Pat

REPLY: If we put aside personal desires and the fact that people tend to judge others by themselves, just looking at the numbers will always reveal the truth. What is taking place is propaganda and the further division of the country. Just look at these charts which are the total number of seats on Capitol Hill occupied by each party as a percentage of the total. You can see that the Democrats are well below the Downtrend Line and the Republicans just edged ever so slightly above their 50.65% against 50.57%.

When I have warned that Socrates is forecasting this is the fall of socialism, this is not my personal opinion. The Democrats have been losing ground. Holding a majority and ramrodding through their agenda with less than a 51% holding is seriously destroying the country and it is creating such a deep fissure that there will be no choice but to watch the United States crumble. There are plenty of unheard separatist movements in the United States. There is a big one in California to break up the state, but there was also a movement that wanted to separate from the United States if Trump was reelected. Then since 2014, there has been a growing movement to separate New York City that wants nothing to do with New York City. Even going back to 2012, there were petitions involving 36 states where people wanted to secede from the United States. All of these tensions will increase dramatically starting in 2023 into the capitulation by 2032.

Dec 24 2022

Your Home Is The Alamo, Act Like It


Posted originally on the CTH on December 23, 2022 | Sundance

Perhaps the #1 question I see raised in our discussion is a variation on “what are we going to do about it?”

It is a profoundly understandable question, yet it would take volumes of manuscript and dozens of hours of conversation to adequately answer.  That said, the reason for the complexity of the answer is very simple.

Approximately, 72% of a healthy adult American population took an experimental COVID-19 shot as recommended by, and later demanded by, government.  That’s essentially 3 out of every four Americans.

In a recent poll of the 190,000 followers to CTH on Twitter, we asked did you take the shot?   More than 80% of the respondents said no.

In a national population where approximately 1 out of every 4 declined the shot, the CTH audience consists of a population where 4 out of 5 declined the shot. The CTH audience is essentially the inverse of the national population.  This is a context for looking at the original question.

The proverbial ‘we’ are in agreement as to the scope of the national problem.  However, ‘we’ in the larger context are in the minority.  That doesn’t mean we are powerless, nor does it mean we cannot affect the change we desire. However, that context does structure the nature of the challenge, and form the baseline for any proposal that would be considered an answer.

Again, in general terms, CTH readers are far ahead in understanding the scale of the problem as compared to the general population.  It has been more than a decade since we first outlined the corrupt nature of the Dept of Justice and the specific political activity of the FBI as it was happening.  At the time, people said we were nuts; generally saying we took analysis of how the domestic intelligence state was corrupted by politics, too far.

Well, here we are a decade later and the larger population of the American people are now openly accepting the DOJ, FBI and Intelligence Community are corrupted by politics.  The very small minority position is now the slightly larger majority position. But it took a decade.

How long did it take the majority to realize ‘ballots’ -vs- ‘votes’ was a real problem?   We have had THREE election cycles decided by ballot collection. The BETA test in California (2018 midterm), the national ballot collection rollout in 2020, and finally the midterm election in 2022.   Five years since the original data showed ‘ballots’ were the election control mechanism, not ‘votes’.  Now, people are awake to the problem, but again it took five years.

Another example:  Take the basic construct of our UniParty political system…

♦The RNC wants money.
♠The DNC wants power.

♦The RNC uses power to get money.
♠The DNC uses money to get power.

♦The donor activity of the RNC drives their ideology.
♠The ideology of the DNC drives their donor activity.

This is the essential difference in the two private corporations’ political business models. It is a very nuanced distinction, but it is a distinction.  Nothing within that system can change until the people who engage in that system admit this is the system.  Right now, less than 10% (my estimation) of the Republican Party followers understand this.

Most self-admitted Republicans think that by changing the head of the RNC, the corporation will adapt a new business model.  The majority of those believers are willing to support an RNC corporation insider like Harmeet Dhillon as the change agent.   The history of the Club does not support this expectation, yet they believe it.

Those whose hold on power depends on deception are always able to find an audience of those willing to be deceived.

Now, the audience of those willing to be deceived is a flexible group in terms of numbers and identities. Even those who have been in that audience for some time may one day walk away from it. What is it that makes folks stay in that audience? What price are they afraid of paying? What deception are they unwilling to let go of?

While we use the word passive to describe this “willingness to continue in deception,” this is not an experience shaded in peaceful lavenders, mint greens and dappled sunlight. This is the deadly passivity of muscles that no longer fire; tiny electrical charges that no longer leap from one synapse to the next.

This is as passivity says: “I won’t begin resisting, because I know that once begun, I must continue. Rather than assert myself and perhaps fail (or get really scared), I will sustain myself where I am trapped. I will muffle my moans so as not to risk exposure, and I will call it self-control. Winston Churchill would have called it cowardice, but I will call it pragmatic caution.”

And within that framework, there’s the answer to the question, “What are we going to do about it?”

The very first step that’s desperately necessary for our survival, is that we become disillusioned–and quickly.  We must stop pretending.

In the interim, if you are one of the 1 in 4 independent-minded Americans, you need to think about your home, the physical surroundings of yourself and your community, as the Alamo.

Fortify your defenses literally in your family.

Then, only if your home is secure, move forward using tactical civics to influence the local election level, city council, school boards, sheriff, judges etc.  Each of these local level engagements should be looked upon as setting perimeter defenses against federal and state intrusion.

Once you are confident in your home and family security, and once you have established the safe perimeter to keep your community guarded, then you expand to the larger state offices, via state legislature, state senate and state governor.

Through this process you are constantly leveraging the majority.   You are not in the minority within your home; and hopefully you will not be in the minority within your county.

If you are stuck in a blue region, retain the disposition of an insurgent.  The rebellion can formulate underground.

You have the better arguments; you believe in freedom. Continued assembly-building will gain the numbers needed to be in the majority.

Keep focused on spreading disillusionment by using the atomic sledgehammer of truth.  Never accept the false pretenses that underpin the status quo. The opposition’s arguments are weak, and they are built upon fraud.  They require a constant pretending.  Denial of truth permits easier trespass.

Use truth as a weapon by learning the core issues better than the other side.  Read the history of how events unfolded. Learn the hidden constructs behind the motives carried by those who created the events.  Learn their arguments and learn how to deconstruct them.

Then, when you are intellectually armed and fully prepared, openly stop pretending and ask the questions in public that will awaken the audience around you.

Dec 23 2022

Egg Prices Surge to Record Levels as Christmas Grocery Prices Hit Consumers


Posted originally on the CTH on December 22, 2022 | Sundance 

The price for a dozen eggs continues climbing as explanations turn toward blaming bird flu.  However, the avian influenza may explain a recent spike, but the longer duration of escalating food price commodities is much deeper than momentary fluctuations.  These are energy dependent products.

As CTH noted last year, watch egg prices as a general gauge for overall food inflation (eggs hit almost every process in the supply chain), and watch potato availability to gauge overall row crop stability (staple commodity on every plate, venue).

Additionally, as previously noted, as energy prices continue rising pay attention to the prices on ‘organic’ products.  Rising energy prices drive up costs for large commercially processed food supplies at a much higher rate than smaller organic production.  People are starting to notice the ‘organic’ option is almost at price parity.

Wall Street Journal – […] Wholesale prices of Midwest large eggs hit a record $5.36 a dozen in December, according to the research firm Urner Barry. Retail egg prices have increased more than any other supermarket item so far this year, climbing more than 30% from January to early December compared with the same period a year earlier, and outpacing overall food and beverage prices, according to the data firm Information Resources Inc.

For supermarkets, eggs are a staple product that most consumers pick up on trips to the grocery store, similar to milk and butter. To maintain store traffic, grocers said they have been sacrificing some profits on eggs to keep prices for consumers competitive. Some suppliers are projecting potential relief in price by February or March, but cold weather could hamper production in the near term, executives said.

[…] Grocery prices have continued to increase this year because of what companies have said are higher costs of labor, ingredients and logistics, helping supermarkets generate higher sales and profits. Those factors have propelled egg prices, too. As eggs get more costly, some supermarkets are selling more organic eggs that are sometimes less expensive than conventional varieties, while suppliers say consumer demand has remained steady despite higher prices. (read more)

Additionally, the overall price for a Christmas meal is much higher than it was in 2021.

(Via Fox) […] The holiday dinner grocery basket is estimated to cost an average of $60.29, according to data from Datasembly. That’s 16.4% higher than last year’s basket when comparing the same exact basket of goods. It’s also double the year-over-year increase reported last year at 8.2%, according to the retail data firm.

[…] The 13 products included stuffing mix, corn, green beans, frozen apple pie, whipped topping, butter, cranberry sauce, bone-in spiral-cut ham, egg nog, homestyle biscuits, russet potatoes, white frozen young turkey and homestyle roasted turkey gravy.

According to the data, biscuits had the highest price increase year-over-year, rising 47.7%. Butter and russet potatoes weren’t far behind with prices rising 38% and 32.6%, respectively, the data showed. (read more)

Keep in mind, this week you should be seeing competitive pricing on beef, specifically standing rib roasts.  Retailers will be competing with each other on the staple table items, and this creates an opportunity to buy and freeze beef at a lower price.

2023 will be a year when shopping smart will become increasingly important.  Prices are likely to continue rising; one thing is certain, as long as energy costs keep increasing, food prices will not drop.  Use the season(s) and holiday sales as opportunities to purchase specific items at lower prices; then store, freeze or can at home for use when the price of those same items is much higher.

Eggs at Christmas 2020 $1.79/doz.  -VS-  Eggs October 2022 $7.29/doz.

Dec 22 2022

Unprecedented Migration Crisis Continues as the White House Must Replace Disenfranchised Americans


Posted originally on the CTH on December 21, 2022 | Sundance

Ask the why question five times to any complex problem and you get to the core of the matter.

Why is the Biden administration allowing tens of thousands of illegal aliens, aka ‘migrants’, to cross the southern border every day?

The answer is not complex.

Because the Biden administration wants tens of thousands of illegal aliens to cross the southern border every day.

If they didn’t, they wouldn’t.

The question is not why are they crossing, the question is why does the White House want them to cross?

A person of reasonable disposition would recognize that a corrupt and illegitimate administration, installed by an apparatus of government, is not really calling the shots.

As the Twitter Files have shown, albeit filtered as they are, U.S. candidate Joe Biden was installed by the collective weight of an intentionally manipulated information control operation, run and influenced by the United States intelligence community.

The installation itself sets the cornerstone for the understanding of every action that flows from it.

In general terms, the daily number of the inbound aliens must necessarily exceed the daily number of the American people who awaken to accept they are being victimized by the installed apparatus.

If 10,000 more Americans are negatively impacted every day and as a result awaken every day to the internal corruption, it only makes sense -from the perspective of the people in control- that 10,000 plus one is needed as replacements to retain stasis.

The scale of the inbound population must match the scale of the loss of support for the regime that exists amid the current population.  In the larger measure that sets the forward looking standard for the influx.

If fewer people were inbound than the number awakened, the regime remains under threat.  It’s a math issue.

Consider the 30,000 ft mindset of a Fabian socialist, or an ideology based on fundamental change, the threat is always a growing numerator.  The denominator must expand to compensate for the growing numerator.

Now, keep history of the Solidarity movement at the forefront of thinking.  In the U.S. example the numerator is awakening Americans and the denominator is the U.S. workforce.

Put aside armed or violent conflict for a moment and consider the ultimate threat to the regime as represented by the historic reference of the Solidarity movement.  If millions of Americans went on a general labor strike in protest to the political policies that are creating a diminished lifestyle, they would be striking from the position of knowing greater benefit in the past.  The population, in this case the U.S. workers, would be striking because they are losing something.  They are losing their standard of living.

How do you mitigate that risk?

The easiest way to mitigate the risk is to replace the disgruntled population with a new population who view the current standard of living as better than what they had.

The diminished standard is still far higher than the living standard the migrant holds as a reference. Therefore, if there is any national movement to push back against the regime, the new migrants have no vested interest in it.  They simply replace the workforce that is protesting.

How would the Polish Solidarity movement have succeeded if Lithuanian, German and Ukrainian workers flowed into Poland to replace the striking masses.  Or for this context, how does an American worker solidarity movement succeed if Mexican, Honduran, Guatemalan and El Salvadorian workers simply replace them.

You ask me why I continue to say the U.S. labor unions need to dispatch their communist leadership and quickly align with MAGA?   This is why….

NEW YORK — Some of the biggest cities and states led by Democrats are expecting an influx of migrants as soon as the nation’s Title 42 border restrictions are lifted — and they’re worried they won’t be able to handle the surge.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said the state is scrambling to find housing ahead of the bitter cold winter while Chicago received more than two dozen migrants on Tuesday. New York Mayor Eric Adams is predicting 1,000 migrants a week will arrive in the city and is already weighing reopening a controversial tent encampment to accommodate them.

“Our shelter system is full, and we are nearly out of money, staff, and space,” Adams said this week. “If corrective measures are not taken soon, we may very well be forced to cut or curtail programs New Yorkers rely on, and the pathway to house thousands more is uncertain.” His administration is calling the migrant issue an “unprecedented emergency.

Title 42, an immigration policy put into place during the pandemic, was scheduled to be lifted Wednesday, but Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the border rule at the urging of 19 Republican-led states, which appealed the plan to open up the nation’s borders again.

The stay by Roberts is temporary, and states are bracing for what’s next if — and when — Title 42 is eventually lifted. There’s added anxiety too over whether Republican governors will transport thousands of migrants to Democratic-led strongholds by bus or plane, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did this year.

Over the last month, thousands of migrants have crossed into the U.S. at the Texas border ahead of the expiration of Title 42, a Trump administration pandemic policy that allows the U.S. to expel migrants in order to stem the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Last weekend, the mayor of El Paso declared a state of emergency to help manage the rush of people while Abbott deployed hundreds of Texas national guard and state troopers along the border to block migrants from entering the U.S. (read more)

The illegitimate regime of Joe Biden was installed by the collective weight of an intentionally manipulated domestic information control operation. That operation was run and influenced by the United States intelligence community, through the U.S. social media system (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), with the full support of a complicit legislative branch.

Set that cornerstone and then everything that comes after that process, including the need to control future elections, is a process of risk mitigation.

That reality is the ultimate reason why there is a disconnect between the American people and our government.

Every government and social institution are now predicated on the retention of fraud.  The U.S. system of government is now exhausting itself, spending the majority of time and institutional energy, maintaining the lies that underpin it.

One of the key institutions charged with maintaining that pretense is, wait for it…  the FBI.

Things making sense now?

P

Dec 8 2022

COVID-19 Vaccines: What They Are, How They Work and Possible Causes of Injuries


Senator Ron Johnson Published originally on Rumble on December 7, 2022 

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson will lead a roundtable discussion, COVID-19 Vaccines: What They Are, How They Work, and Possible Causes of Injuries, to shed light on the current state of knowledge surrounding the vaccine and the path forward. Medical experts and doctors who specialize in COVID-19 vaccine research and treatment will join Sen. Johnson at the roundtable.