World News
The More the EU Tightens Its Grip, the More Countries Slip Through Its Fingers
They believed in the power of coercion being stronger than the will of the British people.
Penned by Tom Luongo at Gold Goats N Guns
It finally looks like the four-and-a-half-year saga of Brexit is coming to an ignominious end. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the final bluff of the incompetent bureaucrats in Brussels, walking away from trade talks while leaving the door open.
But that door is only open if the EU is willing to crawl in on its knees and give the UK what it wants, a minimal free trade deal, Canada-style, which was offered by then President of the European Council Donald Tusk.
The EU played hardball giving zero ground for four years while undermining the UK from within its own political and bureaucratic structures. It was as transparent as it was cynical, but it couldn’t sway the British people and that gave Johnson the political will to just say no.
And it was this hardball negotiating stance that had worked in the past finally broke like waves along the Cliffs of Dover. The reason why it failed was that arrogance was fueled by powerful forces having their back,
They believed in the power of coercion being stronger than the will of the British people.
And they were wrong. Dead wrong.
In an instant this past weekend the entire façade of he the EU’s inevitability vaporized as Johnson went on TV and told the world to prepare for a No-Deal Brexit, regardless of whether that was the optimal outcome or not.
It signaled to the rest of Europe that no longer do you have to take the diktats of a bunch of feckless, unelected technocrats if you don’t want to. And this failure to secure submission of the Brits will have immense consequences during this next election cycle in Europe.
This is why the fiction of the Second Wave of the Coronapocalypse persists all across the continent. Germany, France, Spain and other countries are implementing the worst kind of draconian lockdowns on people hanging on by a thread while the pols in Brussels scheme as to how best to continue advancing their plans for a future with the people trapped in the neo-feudalism of the EU corporatocracy.
These lockdowns have nothing to do with public health. They have everything to do with maintaining the political health of the current ruling classes. Nothing more.
And I include the UK in this as well but for different reasons. It’s my feeling that even though Johnson may have given the EU ‘two fingers up’ the EU and those behind it aren’t done with the Brits yet.
Walking away from narcissists inevitably invokes anger. There is too much at stake for the European Project for the annoying Brits to just walk away from it and give everyone else the wrong idea.
So, I feel very strongly we should be watching for more signs of the same color revolution tactics on display in the U.S. to depose Donald Trump showing up in the UK. I don’t rule out an attempted coup against Johnson in the next seven weeks.
This is why I think he’s imposing similar lock downs in the UK to manage the inevitable activation of ‘ground forces’ once things get down to the wire later this year.
Brexit has exposed a myriad of fault lines within the EU, most notably between the two heavyweights, Germany and France. And Johnson, for all his shambolic organization, understood this perfectly, playing Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron off each other capturing their agendas in amber so when crunch-time came, they were paralyzed with inaction.
Weasels on both sides of the channel refused to accept the vote for any number of reasons but it didn’t matter.
The UK always had the upper hand in this situation if it stood its ground, made its demands known and negotiated like an equal rather than a wayward child.
Ever the abusive parent, the EU Council and its Chief Negotiator continue to treat the Brits like they treated Greece in 2015 and are now openly furious that no one is taking them seriously.
But why should anyone take Brussels seriously, other than because it is backed by the failing and sclerotic post-WWII institutions revealed to be complicit in the wholesale destruction of Western culture and economic vitality who are pushing a Great Reset on them whether they want it or not?
One need look no further than the insipid way Merkel has handled the obvious intelligence job surrounding Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Navalny is a nobody outside the halls of the CIA and MI-6 who, through the media, sell him to the West as a major thorn in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s side.
But he’s nothing of the sort. He has fewer people show up to his ‘rallies’ now than Joe Biden. So, the idea that Putin would poison this bozo is laughable. And yet, because the EU, and specifically Germany, are so scared of angering the U.S. they entertained this fantasy hoping the Russians would bail them out and play along with the fiction, publicly threatening the completion of the Nordstream 2 pipeline over it.
Putin told Merkel to go scratch, and why not? She’ll be out of the picture in a year.
So, now she has personally lost Russia as a potential ally for Germany. Instead of finally choosing a side, Merkel, ever the dutiful soldier, kept playing the U.S. and Russia off each other alienating both.
Germany will get no help from Russia when a vindictive second-term Trump tightens the screws on her even more. Because stop looking at polls designed to gaslight you and look at what’s happening in the U.S. People will walk over broken glass to vote for Trump. The biggest worry about Biden is whether he’ll soil his Depends.
Merkel ham-fistedly played for time hoping to run out the clock on Trump and Johnson both over the U.S. election and it will cost Germany everything in the long run. She has a chance post-election to make things right with Putin but don’t bet on it.
Once she loses Russia, she’ll lose the Visegrad nations as the U.S. abandons Europe and the 21st century will turn most unkind on a hubristic and vainglorious European elite.
If the EU leadership want to be taken seriously then they need to act like world leaders and not like a bunch of vindictive high schoolers vying for class president. That these incompetent people are leading some of the most powerful countries in the world should frighten you.
They also reflect very poorly on the people who stand behind them, who I like to call The Davos Crowd, whose policies they were chosen to implement.
And now that the best of all possible Brexits is near at hand, the rest of Europe is going to get an object lesson in just how much it costs to keep them around as the UK thrives in the post-Brexit world and why they shouldn’t be afraid of the EU’s wrath.
World News
The CEO Of Blackstone Is Warning That “A Real Shortage Of Energy” Will Cause Social Unrest All Over The Planet
And as energy prices escalate, that will push all prices throughout our economic system higher and higher and higher.
We are facing an unprecedented global energy crunch. Demand for energy is continually rising, and the production of energy is not keeping pace. One of the biggest reasons for this is that large financial institutions have become extremely hesitant to fund any new energy projects that will add more carbon emissions to the environment. Instead, they want to fund projects that will help us transition to the new “green economy”, but meanwhile we are getting to a point where we will soon see widespread shortages of traditional forms of energy. So now we all get to suffer. A lack of oil is pushing the price of gasoline to alarming heights, shortages of natural gas are already causing tremendous disruptions in Asia and Europe, we are being told that we are facing a propane “armageddon” this winter, and supplies of coal have dropped to dangerously low levels around the world.
In other words, we are potentially heading into the most painful global energy crisis in modern history.
When CNN asked Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman about this, he openly admitted that we are “going to end up with a real shortage of energy”…
Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman warned Tuesday that high energy prices will likely set off social unrest around the world.
“We’re going to end up with a real shortage of energy. And when you have a shortage, it’s going to cost more. And it’s probably going to cost a lot more,” the private-equity billionaire told CNN International’s Richard Quest at a conference in Saudi Arabia.
When the power goes out, people are not going to be happy.
And people are really not going to be happy if it goes out for an extended period of time.
According to Schwarzman, we will soon see “very unhappy people” all over the globe…
“You’re going to get very unhappy people around the world in the emerging markets in particular but in the developed world,” Schwarzman said at the Future Investment Initiative. “What happens then, Richard, is you’ve got real unrest. This challenges the political system and it’s all utterly unnecessary.”
Sadly, he is right that this global energy crisis did not have to happen.
If the global elite had continued to fund traditional energy projects at the pace that was needed, we could have avoided this nightmare to a very large degree.
But traditional forms of energy are now being shunned, and billions of people will suffer as a result.
Meanwhile, prices throughout our economic system continue to rise at a very alarming pace. Just check out what has been happening to the price of turkey…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, for example, released data recently showing the average wholesale price of Grade A frozen 8- to 16-pound turkey has spiked by 21.91% since last year. That means what cost $1.15 per pound a year ago will now ring at at $1.41. And just for context, the same would have cost 96 cents in 2019 and 84 cents in 2018.
If math isn’t your thing, that’s a 68% wholesale price increase in just two years.
Overall, we are being told that this upcoming Thanksgiving will be the most expensive Thanksgiving that any of us have ever experienced…
Matthew McClure paid 20% more this month than he did last year for the 25 pasture-raised turkeys he plans to roast at the Hive, the Bentonville, Arkansas, restaurant where he is the executive chef. And Norman Brown, director of sweet-potato sales for Wada Farms in Raleigh, North Carolina, is paying truckers nearly twice as much as usual to haul the crop to other parts of the country.
“I never seen anything like it, and I’ve been running sweet potatoes for 38 or 39 years,” Brown said. “I don’t know what the answer is, but in the end it’s all going to get passed on to the consumer.”
Unfortunately, more price hikes are on the horizon.
In fact, Kimberly-Clark is opening warning that they are going to be boosting prices even higher…
Prices of toilet paper, diapers, facial tissues and paper towels will likely rise in coming weeks as Irving-based consumer giant Kimberly-Clark warned Monday that inflation and supply chain concerns aren’t “likely to be resolved quickly.”
So I would stock up on paper products while you still can.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, inflation is eventually going to get far worse than what we witnessed during the 1970s.
At this point, even many top Democrats are warning that high inflation is with us to stay. Here is one recent example…
Former President Barack Obama’s chief of global development on Tuesday predicted inflation was here to stay, despite the Biden administration’s protestations to the contrary.
Prices “will go higher, and the Fed has misread the inflation dynamics in a big way,” former Global Development Council Chairman Mohamed El Erian said in an afternoon interview with Fox News’ Sandra Smith, adding that the Federal Reserve was “still hostage to this notion that it’s transitory.”
And the shortages that we are currently experiencing are ultimately going to get worse too.
Right now, we are already facing the worst shortage of alcoholic beverages since the 1930s. When asked about his empty shelves by a reporter, one gas station owner said that he has “never seen anything like this”…
Supply chain issues are impacting the alcohol supply in the U.S., and it’s making alcohol more expensive and difficult for bars and liquor stores to get.
“I have so many empty shelves. In the two years of doing this, I’ve never seen anything like this,” gas station chain owner Ali Ali said.
As I discussed yesterday, now Biden wants to take countless more truck drivers off the road, and that will make our supply chain headaches a whole lot worse.
And as energy prices escalate, that will push all prices throughout our economic system higher and higher and higher.
Yes, all of this is really happening.
This is not a drill.
We are in the early chapters of a full-blown economic meltdown of epic proportions, and nothing will ever be the same after this.
If you want to keep waiting for conditions to “return to normal”, you are going to be waiting for a really, really long time.
We have entered a truly horrible nightmare, and there will be no waking up from this.
World News
Georgian Protesters Storm LGBT Office, Tear Down Pride Flags And Replace Them With National Flag
Will Biden target them with drone strikes in order to spread “our values?”
Georgian protesters on Monday forced the cancellation of an LGBT pride march after storming the office of an LGBT lobby group, tearing down their pride flags and replacing them with Georgia’s national flag.
This is what anti-imperialism looks like:
#Georgia 🇬🇪: a man on a scooter reportedly tried to drive into a group of journalists as they were reporting on the anti-pride violence in #Tbilisi.
— Thomas van Linge (@ThomasVLinge) July 5, 2021
Source: https://t.co/SpUIIzAzRa pic.twitter.com/HSffPvAoVL
From Reuters, “LGBT+ campaigners in Georgia call off pride match after office attack”:
LGBT+ campaigners in Georgia called off plans to stage a pride march on Monday after violent groups opposed to the event stormed and ransacked their office in the capital Tbilisi and targeted activists and journalists.
Activists launched five days of LGBT+ Pride celebrations last Thursday and had planned a “March for Dignity” on Monday in central Tbilisi, shrugging off criticism from the church and conservatives who said the event had no place in Georgia.
[…] Video footage posted by LGBT+ activists showed their opponents scaling their building to reach their balcony where they tore down rainbow flags and were seen entering the office of Tbilisi Pride.
[…] Campaigners said some of their equipment had been broken in the attack and that they had been forced to cancel.
Will Biden target them with drone strikes in order to spread “our values?”
World News
Pfizer vaccine losing effectiveness amid Delta variant surge, Israeli Health Ministry says as it mulls 3rd shot & new restrictions
In addition to booster shots, health officials are also mulling whether to revive some pandemic restrictions.
Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine has dropped to 64% effectiveness in preventing infection amid the spread of the Delta variant in Israel, the Health Ministry said, as officials consider the need for booster shots and new restrictions.
The vaccine fell to 64% effectiveness in preventing symptomatic infection over the last month, the Health Ministry reported on Monday, noting that the decrease coincided with the rapid spread of the more contagious Delta variant across Israel. However, health officials said the Pfizer shot still offers strong protection against severe illness and hospitalization, reporting 93% efficacy.
While the ministry did not give the previous figures in its statement, a report published in May said the Pfizer vaccine was 97% effective against severe illness after two doses. In March, private Israeli researchers also found the immunization to be 91.2% effective against any level of symptomatic infection.
The new data comes amid a small surge across Israel, where the number of active cases hit 2,766 on Monday after 369 new infections, with the Delta variant believed to make up more than 90% of the overall total. As of July 4, around 70 patients were hospitalized, half of them in serious condition, compared to 21 with severe illness on June 19.
The fast spread of the Delta variant, which was first observed in India, has prompted Health Minister Nitzan Horowtiz to order two medical studies looking at the need for a third vaccine dose, saying they would provide “vital information” to policymakers. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office added that the studies will “evaluate the efficacy of the vaccine and the rate at which it wears off over time.”
While nearly 60% of Israel’s population of 9.3 million have received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine – helping to bring daily infections down from their peak of around 10,000 in January – cases are still cropping up among the immunized. Last Friday, more than half of the new infections reported were in patients that had been vaccinated, according to Ynet, underscoring the need for further study.
In addition to booster shots, health officials are also mulling whether to revive some pandemic restrictions, most of which were lifted in March, as well as bringing back some version of its coronavirus ‘passport’ system, the Jerusalem Post reported. An indoor mask mandate had previously been dropped, but was brought back in late June as daily cases began to accelerate.
Foreign travelers could also face additional testing and quarantine protocols in the coming weeks, though the Health Ministry has yet to make a decision.


