Two More Gone, The Prime Minister of Estonia and the Prime Minister of Italy Tender Their Resignations


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 14, 2022 | sundance 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned.  Days later, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated. A few days passed and both the President and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, resigned and fled the country.  Today, with their ruling governments in a state of turmoil, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi have both tendered their resignations.

The collapse of each of these national leaders is not necessarily connected; however, the global political system is reverberating with tremors directly connected to the post-pandemic economic turmoil.  It would be naïve not to see these governing issues as consequences.  The legitimacy of the governing class is slipping; perhaps it would be fair to say, some have ‘lost’ their legitimacy altogether.

Estonia is part of the EU and a member of NATO:

HELSINKI — Estonia’s president on Thursday asked Prime Minister Kaja Kallas to form a new government after she tendered the resignation of her one-party minority Cabinet, ending a more than month-long political stalemate in the Baltic nation.

President Alar Karis said in a tweet after meeting with Kallas that “I signed the resignation request of Prime Minister @kajakallas but also asked her to form a new government which could start working quickly and deal with all important issues of Estonian life.”

Estonia’s government crisis culminated in early June as Kallas, leader of the ruling center-right Reform Party, kicked out the left-leaning Center Party from the two-party coalition. The parties had substantial differences over spending and welfare policies amid increasing Estonian household costs because of high inflation. (more)

Italy is a member of the G7, a part of the EU and a member of NATO:

ROME — Italian Premier Mario Draghi offered to step down Thursday after a populist coalition partner refused to vote for a key bill in Parliament, but the nation’s president quickly rebuffed him, leaving one of Western Europe’s main leaders at the helm for now.

The rejection of the tendered resignation left in limbo the future of Draghi’s 17-month-old government, officially known as a national unity coalition, but with its survival sorely tested by increasingly sharp divergences within the coalition.

Draghi’s broad coalition government — which includes parties from the right, the left, the center and the populist 5-Star Movement — was designed to help Italy recover from the coronavirus pandemic. (read more)

The parliamentary coalitions are fracturing.  New alliances are being formed.  One recent example that stunned everyone in the EU was the far-right and far-left in the French parliament joining forces to defeat the coalition government of Emmanuel Macron as he tried, and failed, to extend emergency COVID rules.

FRANCE – It was the first bill in the new legislature, and the Assemblée Nationale has already embarrassed the government. On Tuesday night, the Assemblée rejected one of the key articles in the bill on Covid-19 aimed at extending certain measures for the fight against the pandemic.

During the debate, the coalition backing President Emmanuel Macron was outvoted several times by parts of the left-wing Nouvelle Union Populaire, Ecologique et Sociale (NUPES), the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). But the government, represented by Health Minister François Braun, adopted what was left of the bill at 1:45 am, which the help LR votes and Socialist abstentions. (more)

The COVID rules in France are set to expire on July 31st. The first parliamentary goal for President Macron was to extend the COVID emergency and keep his powers.  However, the legislative effort was rejected by 219 votes to 195, destroying the goals of Macron.  Both populist groups joined forces to defeat the Macron coalition.

Yes, amid all of the economic damage created by western leaders and their Build Back Better efforts, the geopolitical world is having spasms as the rulers are being rejected by the ruled.

In the parliamentary systems, the voices of the angry people are rising up. Those shouts are entering the halls of government through the direct representatives closest to the people.  The ruling coalitions are no longer able to hold together as the people demand change.   That is the connective tissue behind these resignations and departures.

Western government leaders like Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson and Jacinda Ardern have the audacity to stand atop a two-year mountain of unilateral fiats, rules, regulations and mandates and then decry “autocracy” and threats to the “global order.”    All of them have destroyed their own legitimacy by pretending to represent western democracy while carrying out two years of totalitarian power.

As the AP tried to spin it:

[…] “A poll conducted last year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 16% of Americans say democracy is working well or extremely well. Another 38% said it’s working only somewhat well.

Other surveys reveal how many people in the United States now doubt the mediapoliticiansscience and even each other.

The distrust has gone so deep that even groups that seem ideologically aligned are questioning each others’ motives and intentions. (more)

We the citizens of the ‘western democracies’ are in an abusive relationship with our own governments’.  The yellow vests in France, the MAGA movement in the U.S., the Australian labor unions, the Canadian Truckers and now the Dutch farmers are the precursor tremors for seismic political shifts.

They all followed the same instructions from the World Economic Forum, and western leaders have shown absolutely no desire to pull back and listen to the people.  Quite the opposite is happening.

Collectively those same leaders are charging head strong into their Build Back Better agenda, regardless of what that does to the global economy.  The collective sanctions placed against Russia are being felt as increased inflation by the citizens of Europe and the United States.  Their “climate change’ agenda and energy policies are creating economic turmoil and now food insecurity

Inflation pressure has built up like a pressure cooker.   People are growing increasingly desperate, and now the absence of food stability will change things.

The looming shortage of food could be the pressure point that fractures the tectonic political plates.

Bank of Canada Raises Interest Rates 1 Percent Claiming Excess Demand in Economy is Driving Inflation


Posted originally on the Conservative tree House on July 13, 2022 | Sundance

Folks, the Build Back Better western alliance are fully vested in the pretending game.  It is just one big insufferable game of pretending, and the citizens of the western government powers, You and Me, are the victims.

Seriously, it’s stunning, yet oddly not surprising, that the same multinational forces who created the global inflation crisis as a result of following the World Economic Forum spending agenda, are now claiming the global economy is simply too hot, too successful, there is just too much demand, and that justifies their raising of interest rates:

OTTAWA, July 13 (Reuters)– The Bank of Canada surprised on Wednesday with a full-percentage-point increase to its policy rate, a super-sized hike last seen in 1998, citing “higher and more persistent” inflation and the increased risk of those price gains becoming entrenched.

The central bank, in a regular rate decision, raised its policy rate to 2.5% from 1.5%, and said more hikes would be needed. The move was more forceful than the 75-basis point increase economists and money markets had forecast.

….”With the economy clearly in excess demand, inflation high and broadening, and more businesses and consumers expecting high inflation to persist for longer, the Governing Council decided to front-load the path to higher interest rates,” the bank said. [LINK]

This is the actual justification from the Bank of Canada.

Read it carefully: “With the economy clearly in excess demand.”

Yes folks, I have always said that in order to retain their ideological positions, the leftists in control of policy have to pretend not to know things.  That right there is the Bank of Canada pretending not to know the Canadian economy is contracting.  Exactly the same as Treasury Secretary Yellen and Fed Chairman Powell pretending not to know the U.S. economy is contracting.

Do you see what happened, and what they are doing?

The Build Back Better energy policy of the collective western governments’ is driving supply side inflation.  It’s the new climate change energy policy, all being implemented by the same institutional elements, that is creating the massive increases in overall prices.

It’s the energy policy driving inflation, NOT consumer DEMAND.

The western multinationals, government and multinational/central banks, all carry the same ideological mindset.  All of them are collectively supporting the Build Back Better agenda from execution of infrastructure shifts to their direct control over ESG investment in only “sustainable energy” projects.

The fascist assembly of western government and western banks working together to create this great international game of pretending. All of it so they do not have to admit their ideological climate agenda is destroying economies.   Thus, to keep up the pretense, they raise interest rates into a contracting economy.  This is why I keep saying the pretense is what’s going to end up starving people, creating desperation and ultimately killing people.

Energy demand is no different today than it was pre-pandemic 2018 and 2019.  It’s the energy supply, and all of the downstream industrial energy processes that are being blocked, that has created the supply-side issue.

The post-pandemic Build Back Better agenda has shifted the entire energy sector and created all of these inflationary outcomes.

The World Economic Forum, the Bank of Canada, central banks in Europe and Secretary Janet Yellen and Chairman Jerome Powell are all pretending not to know these issues are outcomes of energy policy.  The collective western nations all took the same path.  All of the outcomes are identical, and now all of their denials and pretenses are being maintained in a collective justification filled with bullshit.

World Bank: The Poor Will Suffer From Carbon Taxes


Armstrong Economics Blog/Energy Re-Posted Jul 13, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The World Economic Forum is praising Denmark for implementing the world’s strictest carbon tax laws. Companies will soon be forced to pay $159 for every tonne of CO2 emitted, marking an additional $53 per tonne. The government claims this will cut CO2 levels by 3.7 million tonnes in just one year.

“This incentivizes companies to clean up for themselves,” the WEF reported. In the midst of an extreme energy crisis, punishing energy suppliers will undoubtedly backfire. These costs will be passed along to the already struggling consumer. Even the World Bank admitted that the poor will suffer from the carbon tax.

The World Bank stated on its blog:

“There are good reasons why governments may not want to use carbon taxes, and one of them relates to their welfare impacts. For example, a carbon tax on fossil fuels is often regressive in its impact- hurting poorer people relatively more than richer ones. Even when it might be progressive, poorer people still suffer a welfare loss when prices rise, making their consumption basket more expensive.”

Furthermore, they admitted that the carbon tax “aims to restructure economies by raising the cost of a critical resource – the juice that makes it run.” Precisely. We NEED fossil fuels right now, there is no other viable alternative available to provide energy to the world. Since nations have succumbed to the climate change agenda, they have lost their energy-independent status. Europe shot itself in the foot by eliminating any diplomatic relations with their number one supplier of gas for a country that they did not acknowledge prior to February 2022.

Other nations with the ability will drill and sell oil to those under WEF leadership at a premium. India is already buying Russian oil at a discount, refining it, and selling it to the US for a premium. This is more than just bad business as it is a clear attempt to cut off a “critical resource” to “restructure economies” as seen fit by the WEF.

Sri Lanka’s Economy Completely Collapsed


Armstrong Economics Blog/Tyranny Re-Posted Jul 12, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Protestors swarmed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s palace in Sri Lanka, forcing him to flee and step down. The entire government in Sri Lanka will be restructured. When the people are hungry, no amount of rules and restrictions will prevent them from protesting. Sri Lanka ran out of food and ran out of fuel to cook whatever happened to be available.

The country’s foreign reserves were depleted. The government began to cut the power grids daily for increasingly longer periods. There was not enough fuel to power generatorsInflation soared to 45.3% in May, with food costs rising 58%. The United Nations estimated that 22% of the entire population had become food insecure and 86% of families  “are resorting to at least one coping mechanism, including eating less, eating less nutritious food and even skipping meals altogether.”

“Gota Go Gama” (Gama meaning village) or GGG protests arose throughout the nation. Labor migration rose 286% this year, according to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment. The government owes $51 billion in debt and cannot make any payments on loans. Their currency collapsed 80% and was basically worthless. Tourism halted after the pandemic, adding to the crisis. The people had hit rock bottom and knew exactly who to blame. President Rajapaksa and his brother, former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, are extremely corrupt. They allowed the problem to become a crisis; living lavishly as their people starved.

The revolutionary wave has only just begun. I warned that it would first come for emerging countries. However, do not think this incident will be isolated to one nation. Unrest is rising as living standards decline.

In the Aftermath of Political Violence, Japan Gives Big Election Win to Prime Minister Kishida Fumio in Tribute to Assassinated Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 11, 2022 | Sundance

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan, the party of current Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has scored a major election victory.

The election was held only three days after Shinzo Abe was assassinated, and the results reflect the Japanese people giving Fumio the opportunity to cement the legacy of the man he replaced.   Prime Minister Abe was an advocate for reforming the Japanese pacifist constitution, which has not been modified or amended since 1947.

Current Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, the leader of the LDP, now has a super-majority in the upper house, controlling more than two-thirds of the seats.  Fumio will have this majority for at least three years and will be able to structure amendments to the Japanese constitution, a life-long ambition of Shinzo Abe who was a hawk to the influence of Chinese aggression in the region.

With the people supporting him, Kishida Fumio now has a major mandate to fulfill the legacy of Abe and keep a focus in the economic and security needs of the average Japanese citizen.  This is a rare moment of almost universal control within the Japanese political system.  Western media are writing the typeset with furrowed brows and gritted teeth.  Meanwhile, the Beijing dragon is fuming behind the panda mask.

Washington Post –  Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, and its coalition partners have secured a two-thirds supermajority in the nation’s parliament, according to Sunday’s election results, a powerful showing that could allow the LDP to carry forward former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s biggest ambitions in the aftermath of his assassination.

The overwhelming victory could usher in at least three years of political stability for Kishida. It would clear the way for him to enact some of the party’s most controversial goals, including increasing defense spending and pursuing Abe’s long-running desire to amend Japan’s pacifist postwar constitution so that Japan can become a stronger global military power.

“When they get ahold of these ‘golden three years’ the focus will be on what the Kishida administration will hammer out,” said Yu Uchiyama, Japanese politics professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “If the Kishida administration can come up with policies that appeal to the people, there is a strong possibility that the administration will last long-term.” (read more)

NHK NEWS – Japan’s ruling coalition scored a sweeping victory in Sunday’s Upper House election.  The Liberal Democratic Party was able to win more than half the open seats without the help of its coalition partner, Komeito.

Prime Minister Kishida Fumio on Sunday night said he was grateful for the outcome. He promised to address the biggest issues facing the nation, including the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the soaring cost of living. He vowed to revive the Japanese economy.

The main opposition force, the Constitutional Democratic Party, lost seats in the Upper House under its new leader, Izumi Kenta. He said, “With our party’s approval ratings still low, we need to work on ourselves, and restore support.”

The ruling coalition and two other parties, Nippon Ishin Japan Innovation Party and the Democratic Party for the People, support amending the Constitution.

Together they now control more than two-thirds of the chamber’s seats. (more)

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I ain’t gonna lie…. 

….It still hurts.

[…] Slain former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be laid to rest at a Tuesday funeral attended by close friends and family, according to media reports. 

Prior to the funeral, a vigil is scheduled for Monday night, but officials in Japan have not released any plans for a public memorial service for the country’s longest serving prime minister. (more)

If They Lose, You Will Eat Bugs – Dutch Farmer Spokesperson Explains How EU Climate Change Goals Will Reduce Farm Production


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 10, 2022 | Sundance

Despite the U.S. media not giving any time, attention or discussion to the rise of farmer protests in Europe, everyone should pay attention because the same climate change goals being enforced in the European Union are coming to North America.

The global food manipulators within the World Economic Forum have established the farming policy that aligns with their climate change goals. As noted in this Sky News discussion this is the Great Reset. It’s not just Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte pushing the agenda, in 2020 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave an identical outline, with an identical timeline, for the exact same process [SEE HERE]. The collective WEF political leaders are all singing from the same hymnal.

In this discussion and interview segment, the spokesperson for Netherlands, Agricultural and Horticultural Organization Wytse Sonnema, outlines why there is such a broad sense of “frustration, anger, even despair” amongst farmers amid proposals for nitrogen reduction target plans.  This will be coming to North America soon. WATCH:

In very simple terms, the politicians cannot reduce the farming process for industrial food production without reducing the farming yield.  It is just commonsense.

You do not need to be a farmer to understand that nitrogen/phosphorus-based industrial fertilizer has been the reason why farm yields have generated massive amounts of food on a global basis.  The United States, U.K. and places like the Netherlands have massively increased their ability to generate food for export, in large part due to the success of improved fertilizer and crop saving modern pesticides.

Larger discussion continues below….

It is a simple matter of math that if North American and European farmers are forced by climate policy to reduce their food production, there will be a shortage of food.

There will be a significant gap between the food needed and the new climate driven limits on commercial food production.

This intentional curtailing of food production, that creates the purposeful shortage of food, is where Bill Gates, the WEF and the synthetic meat and bugs for food advocates enter the picture.  It appears the plan is to replace the missing global calories by changing the food supply.  Changing what and how people eat.

Lab grown (synthetic) meat, nut/soy milk to replace dairy and bugs being used as replacements for protein sources are three approaches advocated by the climate change advocates that you are likely familiar with.  However, as we saw in the pandemic response to food consumption, there is going to be a massive problem as the WEF attempts to shift food delivery within their Great Reset.

Think of the United States like a massive global farm and in this context the parallels between the U.S. and the Netherlands are quite remarkable.

Specifically, because of advancements in farming over the past two decades the United States food production has increased massively.  The same is true for North America as a whole with Mexico and Canada included.  Industrial farming advancements have made it possible to export billions of tons of food every year from our farms in North America to the rest of the world.

The Dutch farmers are like the U.S. farmers in their high productivity.  In fact, the Netherlands is the second biggest agriculture and food exporter in the world.  Even with a small population of 17 million people, the Netherlands has consistently been among the top contenders in the food export market {LINK}.  The reason is simple, they are good at it.

Dutch farmers, like American farmers, are excellent at producing food.  The Netherlands is one of the largest countries in the world when it comes to the export of agricultural goods such as meat, dairy, eggs, vegetables, and fruit.  Unfortunately, this is why the climate change activists in the World Economic Forum have targeted them.

The Dutch farmers do not have as good a political shield as the U.S. farmer have via lobbyists.  The reason the Dutch farmers have more vulnerability on a political front is because there are far more independent farmers who operate without the influence of large multinational agricultural corporations.

In the United States farming is Big Corporate Agriculture.  Those massive ‘for profit’ multinational corporations have massive lobbying power in congress.  If Biden wants to drop U.S. food production, for now he is going to run up against the interests of Big Ag, who make money from exports and control of U.S. farm harvests.  In the Netherlands, the farmers are more independent, that makes them more vulnerable to the political influences.

It’s a weird dynamic, but U.S. farmers are both exploited by, and somewhat protected by, the Big Ag mafia.  The Dutch farmers have remained stubbornly independent in their operations with less multinational influence.  Unfortunately, right now that makes them less represented in the politics of the European Union.

The Dutch farmers are fighting back against the climate change politicians in the only way they can, a grassroots uprising.  This is the battle right now in the EU, and the Dutch are being joined by their brothers and sisters in Germany, Poland and Italy. {Source}

This is not just a battle within the Netherlands and the EU to save farmers, this is a battle over the future of food in the world.

The western politicians, those who assemble under the banner of the World Economic Forum, want a world where ‘climate change’ policy drives the dictates of all human activity.  Essentially, a government policy position that allows politicians to control the behavior of humans under the guise of climate mitigation.  Ultimately it is the control part of this dynamic that is more important than the climate aspect.

The stakes in this Dutch farming protest are much bigger than just Dutch farmers.

If the farmers lose this war, we are all one step closer to eating bugs and fake meat.

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Can you see how all of these ideological policies converge?

The World in Chaos


Armstrong Economics Blog/Opinion Re-Posted Jul 10, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, it has become so apparent that sites like _____ always promote gold so they refuse ever to quote you for they are doing the very same thing of creating a cancel culture. It is their commentary or nothing else. I have stopped reading them. Then you said that your computer showed this was a year of worldwide political chaos. The events in Sri Lanka and the collapse of the British government seem to be only a tease for the midterm elections.

On top of all of this, Socrates targeted Ukraine as the hot spot and that was in 2013. I attended your 2017 Euro conference in Frankfurt. Here is a photo if you don’t have one. I admit I was skeptical of your forecast back then. You were correct when nobody else saw this collapse coming.  It seems as plain as the nose on our faces that there are some fools desperate to try to prevent people from listening to the forecasts of Socrates. That means only one thing. They are trying to manipulate the world in their own direction. If they refuse to ever quote you on gold and others are constantly trying to bash you for whatever they can twist, this means that Socrates has been right and they have been wrong.

Our politicians here in Europe are only preaching war. I concur that this appears to be a cover-up for the financial crisis they have created. Looking at Sri Lanka and how the people rose up in the face of hyperinflation because of their default on the debt, is a warning I think. Is this the same dark future for Europe since they destroyed the bond market here?  Can you shed any light on our future?

Respectfully, from Frankfurt

HM

ANSWER: The negative interest rates since 2014 has destroyed the European sovereign debt market. The REPO Crisis of 2019 was US banks refusing to lend to European. I can confirm that the top banks in NYC will no longer accept any EU sovereign debt as collateral. So Europe is there now as Sri Lanka but the ECB still has some confidence at this moment. But that does not look to be sustainable. We are probably looking at the final collapse by 2027.

A lot of people from Germany are buying land in Uruguay and Paraguay. It appears while people are flocking across the border here in the US with free money as long as they vote Democrat, but the US will probably reinstitute the draft and these newly created Democrats may find themselves dying on the battlefields of Europe. Then there is a silent exodus unfolding behind the headlines for the places that seem to be out of the way of this political chaos/war is South America and Africa.

Yes, our computer had targeted 2022 and a Panic Cycle in global politics. We are cursed with politicians who are only concerned with their own power and not the people or their countries. They are pushing for war as a distraction from the financial crisis they have created borrowing year after year with no intention of ever paying anything back. We have seen the impact of this policy in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Lebanon. It will get far worse for this economic system is collapsing.

This is a game of distraction. All they are doing is trying to create issue after issue to distract us from their economic decline. They have listened to Schwab and his WEF because he is preaching authoritarianism which will keep them in power, end democracy, and control society with an iron fist because this system is collapsing.

What they are counting on is that war with Russia will be contained conventionally and that they BELIEVE they can in fact wipe Russia from the fact of the earth as the head of the UK Army has been instructing British troops. A friend here in Florida had their son enlist and now he has been told to prepare for war in Europe. These people want war. They see this as their escape plan to prevent the financial collapse where we storm their palaces and start swimming in their pools.

They are trapped. This is their plan to retain power. Schwab has even told you that upfront – end of democracy. They are on a course to totalitarianism. They have destroyed the world economy already with their sanctions. Yet their fatal mistake will be that they will be defeated in war and it will NOT remain conventional.

They are playing Russian Roulette, but there is more than one bullet in the chamber.

Protest Crowd Storms Presidential Palace in Sri Lanka as Fuel and Food Shortages Create Desperation, Prime Minister Resigns, President Tries to Hang on


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 9, 2022 | Sundance

It was not long ago when we noted the absence of food will change things.   While Dutch farmers are fighting the government and trying to keep producing food, in Sri Lanka the shortages of food and fuel have reached a boiling point.  Angry citizens have taken control of the presidential palace, set fire to the Prime Minister’s house, and overwhelmed government offices.

Fearing for his life, “Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he would resign after just two months in office after protesters stormed and occupied the president’s residence and office amid public anger over the country’s deepening sovereign-debt crisis.” (WSJ link)

The U.S. State Department and the ambassador to Sri Lanka, Julie Chung, are asking for protestors to remain peaceful as if their hunger is ‘transitory’.  However, videos from the country highlight the futility of platitudes amid tens of thousands of angry citizens who are desperate.  It is a hot mess that’s likely to surface in other nations quickly.

(Via WSJ) – Braving tear gas and water cannons in the capital, Colombo, protesters—many waving the national flag and wearing helmets—also entered the president’s office on Saturday, in one of the largest antigovernment demonstrations in the country this year.

Television news footage showed large crowds overrunning security barricades before breaching the official residence of President Rajapaksa. Some were later seen taking a dip in the compound’s swimming pool. Videos purportedly filmed by protesters and shared widely on social media showed scores of men rifling through drawers, sitting in chairs and lounging on a four-poster bed inside a bedroom of the residence. One man was shown doing bicep curls in a gym. (more)

The crisis had been building for weeks as the protesting crowds had continued to get larger.

As noted by the Wall Street Journal report, “responding to calls by protest organizers to congregate in Colombo for mass demonstrations this weekend, Sri Lankans from far and wide improvised around acute fuel shortages by piling into semitrailer trucks, trains and overcrowded buses to reach the capital. Some walked miles to join the demonstrations.”

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This next video shows how large the crowd was just before they stormed the buildings.

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There is no way to stop a crowd of this size.  I’m not sure how many people are in/around that compound, but it looks like hundreds of thousands.

Neil Oliver, The Governing Class Discovers that People Owning Nothing Does Not Make Them Happy


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 9, 2022 | Sundance

In his weekly monologue Neil Oliver gives his perspective on the changing of the guard at #10 Downing Street.  Meet the potential new boss, same as the old boss etc.   While drawing attention to the detached and aloof viewpoints of the self-installed ‘ruling class’, Oliver riffs one of the best lines from this week:

“Two years ago, I gave scant thought to acronyms like WHO, UN, WEF.  Now I watch them with the same attention I give to dogs that look like they might bite.”…

Damned if that isn’t the truth.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – The running of this country has precious little to do with we, the people – that much becomes more obvious every day. Ever more blatantly the powers that be are treating us like the sitting tenants in a property they want to knock down so they can sell the plot for profit to their pals and assorted foreign carpet baggers.

We the people, with our individual opinions and ambitions and dreams are just in the way of their anti-human fantasy of a so-called progressive future. They got fed up waiting for us to die of old age in our armchairs, in front of three bar electric fires we can’t afford to switch on, and have set about demolishing the old place while we’re still living in it.

Love him or loathe him – and I’ve been no fan of him or of any of the leaders we find ourselves saddled with in the West – PM Boris Johnson was brought down last week not by the millions who had voted for him, as might have been appropriate given any meaningful understanding of the concept of democracy – but by a hellish coupling of media and the self-worshipping political class that appointed themselves judge, jury and executioner. Together they wanted Johnson gone, and so he was gone.

The party atmosphere after his resignation – the glee and the gloating by those journalists that had conspired and shared in the taking of his scalp was plain to see. I really don’t think it’s supposed to be that way.

In the aftermath of Johnson’s defenestration there was a suggestion from former Tory PM John Major that the process of anointing the next leader of the Conservatives should bypass party members altogether – presumably in case troublesome proles with their taste for Brexit and borders, even for Britain itself, picked the wrong person again. Far better, thought the likes of Major, if Tory MPs just exercised their superior intellects and morals and did the choosing for them.

Hoary old Tory and arch-remainer Michael Heseltine’s cage was evidently rattled by all the noise and in predictable style he was instantly crowing that the passing of Johnson should mean the end of Brexit.

Once more the proof that those regarding themselves as our intellectual superiors still regard a decision made by an undeniable majority of British people only as evidence of the stupidity of the great unwashed.

In displays of audacity and temerity that are beyond the reach of adjectives, those that plotted Johnson’s demise are falling over one another to take his place. It’s like looking through a microscope at something revolting happening in a petri dish. Former chancellor Rishi Sunak had his slick and glossy show reel ready for broadcast before his former boss had delivered his resignation speech. I wonder when he performed for that instead of doing more damage to the economy. I don’t feel like having any of their names in my mouth, I really don’t.

So I will just say that for me the thought of any that stood for lockdowns, for damaging children’s physical and mental wellbeing, that oversaw the crashing of the economy, watched uncounted lives physically and mentally destroyed, advocated mask wearing on the street and cheer led the unholy pressure to take experimental injections or lose jobs and or reputations as a consequence … that called for digital vaccine passports or anything like them … that won’t shout from the highest hill that the green agenda and Net Zero are a disaster and must be scrapped immediately … the thought of any that demanded it all, or stayed silent while it all played out, should now occupy No. 10 and contemplate more of the same in the months ahead makes me sick to my stomach.

For me the change of PM is nothing more than a change of drivers on a train. The train we’re on is going where it’s scheduled and timetabled to go, on rails already laid, and in the face of its forward momentum we the people, it would seem, count for nothing.

From behind one podium after another, western leaders and their lackeys talk more and more openly about a liberal world order – even a rules-based liberal world order. The more I hear and see about a world ordered by self-described liberals and their rules, the less I like it. I certainly don’t recall ever being invited to vote for it. Two years ago I gave scant thought to acronyms like WHO, UN, WEF. Now I watch them with the same attention I give to dogs that look like they might bite.

At some point in the past – and I missed that point too, whenever it was, I will freely admit – the governing class decided they were done with serving us and that they own us and rule us instead. That cancerous thought has metastasized in recent years, so that it’s not just governments and their bureaucrats and preferred scientists who presume to lord it over us, to tell us what to do, what to think.

That same deranged thought is there throughout the greediest capitalist corporations now as well. The technocrats took free speech by the throat long ago, so as to preserve and push their own self-described progressive ideologies. Now that same superiority complex is everywhere else as well.

Halifax bank got on their high horse about pronouns and loftily declared that customers who didn’t like seeing staff wearing such on their badges should take their business elsewhere. And so, customers duly did, right enough, taking their hard-earned cash with them.

Since when did money-grubbing corporations decide it was appropriate to start telling customers what to think about sex and gender?

Ice Cream vendors Ben and Jerrys got on their soap box to criticize the British government’s plan to offshore asylum seekers to Rwanda – when surely their time would be better spent learning more about obesity and diabetes and their likeliest causes.

So here we are – we the British people are held in low regard not just by politicians and their ilk, not just by the awkward savants of the search engines and social media platforms, but even by High Street banks and ice cream vendors.

It feels like there is a club somewhere, or a positive feedback loop, in which everyone involved, and it’s definitely not us – politicians of all stripes, faceless bureaucrats, journalists, bankers and corporations – feels entitled to make all the decisions about every aspect of our lives and then to tell us how it’s going to be. We the people are to be downtrodden, demoralized and deceived.

In the wider world, it is farmers who are the latest citizens pushed beyond breaking point. In a replay of the Truckers’ protest in Canada that so captivated many of us, gave us hope however brief that an end to the deliberately destructive madness might be in sight, there are tractor protests in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Italy, in Poland.

When those who grow and raise the food we eat are angry and scared enough to down tools and take to the streets to fight for their very existence, when those who drive the trucks that bring us everything we depend upon for our daily lives have done likewise … perhaps it’s finally time to pay attention to the unfolding catastrophe.

Among the Dutch farmers the anger was pushed above boiling point by government diktats regarding emissions of nitrogen and ammonia into the environment. Plans to reduce those emissions by as much as 70 percent will, farmers say, put many of them out of business altogether. They say it’s not about saving nature, but about leftist government plans to change land use in the Netherlands, forcing farmers to sell their land and to cut the national cattle herd by as much as 50 per cent.

Dutch farmers are among the most productive in the world – exporting 100 billion dollars worth of dairy and crops every year. Their banners say No farmers, no food.

The world is in a time of food insecurity and still governments would apparently prefer to contemplate a future in which people will suffer in every conceivable way. And in the future presently shaping up, people will most definitely suffer. Those governments are plainly not in the business of fixing anything, rather making matters worse.

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau – he that forcibly shut down the truckers’ protest in his own county and seized their bank accounts – has his country on a similar path to that of the Dutch. In a time of global food insecurity – blamed in part on war in Ukraine – ideologically driven administrations are stamping their metaphorical boots down upon their farmers’ backs.

In Holland, shots have been fired – allegedly by police, at one tractor. This is how basic things are becoming, how near the bone. Here in the west, in the 21st century, we are being prepared not just for a future without cars, but a future of less energy… less warmth… and even less food.

I knew there was something badly wrong with all that’s going on when I realized my response to what was happening, to all that we were being told, was physical. All of this actually makes me feel ill, to my bones.

I have never in my life before listened to government policy – and to the policies of governments all around the world – and felt endangered. But I do now. If you feel that too – a deep physiological response to the last two years, and a growing sense of something malevolent – then you are not alone. Sometimes it feels like society itself has been poisoned – and that all that society is being offered is yet more poisonous nonsense.

We should notice that it is from among us, the ordinary people, that the farmers and the truckers come – so that it is we who really have the power that matters in the end.

In Sri Lanka, they’re quite a bit further down the line than us – although hardly out of sight. Thousands of people, driven beyond endurance by economic collapse and the worst food and fuel shortages in living memory, found they had nothing left to lose. I read this morning about protestors there storming and occupying their president’s official residence in the city of Colombo.

Desperate people and desperate measures. It’s interesting to note that, contrary to what Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum might think … it turns out that when some people find they actually do own nothing anymore – they’re really not very happy at all. (LINK)

Schwab’s Puppet Falls?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Humor Re-Posted Jul 8, 2022 by Martin Armstrong