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)

Interview: Prepare for War, Higher Energy Prices & Significant Civil Unrest


Armstrong Economics Blog/Armstrong in the Media Re-Posted Jul 9, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Click here to read Greg Hunter’s summary of the interview and view other content on USAWatchdog.

Schwab’s Puppet Falls?


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

Former PM of Japan Assassinated


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

Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been assassinated in a rare violent attack in Japan. He was shot while delivering a speech in Nara. He was pronounced dead at 5:03 p.m. local time at the hospital. The assassin was captured, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, who may have served in the Maritime Self-Defense Force back in the 2000s. He apparently used a homemade gun, which shows that in a country with some of the strictest gun laws in the entire world, it still does not prevent such acts.

Violent crime in the United States peaked in 1991 and bottomed in 2014 with our model on civil unrest and the war cycle. It appears that because of the lockdowns, this may have pushed many on-the-edge people over the edge for we are witnessing mass shootings and senseless violent crimes like people killing someone over a parking spot. This appears to be unfolding worldwide. In this case, the guy made his own gun. This is a trend that is starting to appear in the United States where guns are not traceable.

The Georgia Guidestones Destroyed


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

Who is the mysterious R.C. Christian who erected the Georgia Guidestones in March 1980? These four nearly 20-feet monuments were mysteriously built decades ago before they were destroyed this week on July 6, 2022. After the initial bombing, the government destroyed the rest of the monument under the excuse of it being a structural hazard.

There is a theory that the structure was originally constructed during the Cold War to act as a guide to survivors of a nuclear disaster. Fears of impending nuclear war were widespread back then, and someone, likely a group, provided a guide for how to rebuild civilization. Let these be Guidestones to an Age of Reason,” are etched into the stone that contains writing in English, Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, Hebrew, Swahili, Spanish, and Hindi. Those responsible wanted to ensure that their message was read by whoever survived doomsday.

The 10 commands on the Guidestones seem eerily similar to the World Economic Forum’s current plans.

  1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
  2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
  3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
  4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
  5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
  6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
  7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
  8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
  9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
  10. Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

(Image by Quentin Melson – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118062388)

In the above documentary, there are numerous people who claim to have met the mysterious R.C. Christian, but this cannot be confirmed. The man did exist, however, and mysteriously disappeared shortly after the construction of the monument. He left behind a tablet explaining the astrological significance of where he placed the stones. The four giant granite tablets are aligned with the celestial poles, while the middle stone contains an eye-level hole that points to the North Star and aligns with sun solstices and equinoxes. There was a sundial calendar of sorts placed within the structure as the sun would shine through the slit at noon every day.

A lot of detail went into the placement and message placed on this structure that has remained an unsolved mystery for decades. There are deeper connections to this monument and ongoing globalist groups who also desire to unite a decreased population under one language in a one-world socialist government. Who destroyed the monument this week and why?

British Politics – Johnson Resigns Taking the Pound With Him


Armstrong Economics Blog/BRITAIN Re-Posted Jul 7, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You rather bluntly rejected meeting with our PM. It looks like you were correct. Will we now turn to Labour to kill the British pound?

HJ

ANSWER: Boris Johnson is a disgrace. I had heard that he was untrustworthy and I think he has tried to lie his way out of too many scandals. The Conservatives upheld him in the last no-confidence vote and that in itself was disgusting. The Conservatives had completed a 13-year run. Labour was in for 13 years before. Maggie had placed the Conservatives in power and that lasted for 18 years until the Conservatives mounted a coup because they wanted to take the pound into the euro.

It was only the ERM Crisis when they overvalued the pound which created the opportunity for Soros that prevented the Conservatives from joining the euro. Ironically, it was George Soros that prevented the pound from joining the euro which made him rich, and then he used his money to try to prevent Britain from exiting the EU.

I wrote that report and gave it the name “It’s Just Time” after Maggie Thatcher. She had a natural instinct about cycles. Without asking me about what the computer was forecasting, she said the Conservatives would lose years in advance because they had been in power too long. She said to me: “It’s just time.” She flew to the States to speak at our World Economic Conference back in the ’90s.

Johnson came to power after exiting Britain from the European Union and the 2019 election victory gave the Tories their largest House of Commons majority since Thatcher’s day in the mid-1980s. Johnson has mismanaged the British economy from stupid lockdowns and holding secret drunken parties while locking down the country. It was Britain that started the lockdowns with the childish computer program that was no better than the game Sim City. Gates seems to have bought and paid for the entire British lockdown that was then sold to the rest of the world. Johnson’s reign of economic terror has come to an end, but not without taking the pound with him.

Johnson was forced to resign thanks to mass resignations. This was on time for the July turning point but now look at August that the computer targeted as a Panic Cycle. We still see the British pound testing the 1985 low of $1.03 and it will eventually break that low in the years ahead. Our forecast for the decline and fall of the British pound keeps unfolding with uncanny accuracy.

President Trump Releases a Statement Following Assassination Attempt on Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 8, 2022 | Sundance

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Donald Trump were friends before Mr. Trump entered politics.  First lady Melania Trump and Akie Abe were also friends, and the two couples spent a great deal of time together before and during President Trump’s term in office.

Following the assassination attempt, President Trump released the following statement via Truth Social:  “Absolutely devastating news that former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, a truly great man and leader, has been shot, and is in very serious condition. He was a true friend of mine and, much more importantly, America. This is a tremendous blow to the wonderful people of Japan, who loved and admired him so much. We are all praying for Shinzo and his beautiful family!”

Shinzo Abe Has Been Shot, Gravely Injured in Assassination Attempt


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 7, 2022 | Sundance 

The very popular Shinzo Abe, a longtime friend of President Trump, stepped down as Prime Minister of Japan in 2020, but has been campaigning for various politicians as he remains active in politics.   An assassin shot him moments ago:

TOKYO — Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and gravely injured while campaigning Friday in south-central Japan, according to public broadcaster NHK.

Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, was giving a speech in the city of Nara when he was shot around 11:30 a.m. (10:30 p.m. Thursday ET). NHK, citing the local fire department, reported that Abe was in a state of “cardiopulmonary arrest.” It said the suspected shooter appeared to have been apprehended.

Elections for the upper house of the Japanese Parliament are Sunday. Abe, 67, who stepped down in 2020, was campaigning for other members of the governing Liberal Democratic Party but is not a candidate himself. (LINK)

UPDATE:  Shinzo Abe was shot from behind by a 40-year-old assassin using a shotgun.  Shooter fired two shots.  Shinzo Abe fell after the second shot. UPDATE 2: NO VITAL SIGNS

Pictures below of Abe and the shooter.  Warning.  Disturbing.

JAPAN – Former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has been shot on the street in the western prefecture of Nara.  Police arrested a man at the scene.

Abe was making a speech for an election campaign in Nara City. He collapsed at around 11: 30 a.m., after people on the scene heard what sounded like a gun going off twice.

Abe was taken to a hospital. The fire department says he is showing no vital signs.

Police arrested 41-year-old Yamagami Tetsuya in Nara City for allegedly attempting murder. They say they seized a gun at the site which the suspect was apparently holding.

Abe was transferred by medevac to Nara Medical University Hospital in Kashihara City in the prefecture. Police say Abe appears to have been shot from behind.

An NHK reporter who was at the scene says Abe was bleeding.

The site is near Yamatosaidaiji Station in Nara City. Abe was campaigning for a Liberal Democratic Party candidate before the Upper House election scheduled on Sunday. (more)

Shooter:

Livestream:

President Trump and Shinzo Abe were close personal friends long before Donald Trump entered politics.

Oil and Gasoline Prices Start Moderating as Economy and Consumer Demand Drops


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 7, 2022 | Sundance

The Energy Information Agency has finally updated “on road” diesel prices after a month of frozen data [SEE HERE].  Conspicuously, the technical “glitch” correction is resolved [statement here] as the price for diesel starts to drop a little.

Oil prices are showing a drop in price, and subsequently gasoline prices are starting to moderate.  Unfortunately, as noted at The Hill, the drop in price is not related to an increase in production, but rather a decline in consumer demand.

WASHINGTON – The price of U.S. crude oil was hovering around $98 per barrel on Wednesday afternoon, down from about $108 late last week. Brent crude fell to about $101 per barrel, down from about $111 late last week. 

[…] “We’re on the cusp of seeing more savings,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at gas price tracking site GasBuddy. “I’m trying to be a little bit optimistic here that this relief could make its entire way to the pump in the weeks ahead.” 

[…]  “The average price per gallon could fall 40 to 65 cents over the coming weeks,” he said, adding that the drop could be over a three- to six-week period. 

“Stations are getting lower prices already,” he added. “Prices could go down a penny or two every day or two for the next six weeks as long as nothing changes.” 

Experts say the decline is a double-edged sword, since the cheaper price isn’t due to any real changes on the supply side but rather to consumers scaling back their expenses and pulling down the expectation of demand.  (read more)

With factory demand dropping precipitously, claims for unemployment starting to increase, consumers being squeezed by continued inflation in energy, gasoline, food and housing, we would expect to see a drop in oil prices for all the wrong reasons.   Supply is not increasing, consumers are cutting back on all activities, including driving.   A recession always leads to lower oil prices.

This information comes on the heels of Reuters publishing an explosive article about oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve being released and sold to foreign countries rather than used for refineries in the United States.

(Reuters) – More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs. (read more)