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https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/07/23/nord-stream-2-deal-not-american-concession-its-admission-of-defeat/

Nord Stream 2 ‘Deal’ Is Not an American Concession, It’s Admission of Defeat  

After much arm-twisting, bullying and foghorn diplomacy towards its European allies, the United States appears to have finally given up on trying to block the giant Nord Stream 2 project with Russia. What an epic saga it has been, revealing much about American relations with Europe and Washington’s geopolitical objectives, as well as, ultimately, the historic decline in U.S. global power.

In the end, sanity and natural justice seem to have prevailed. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea will double the existing flow of Russia’s prodigious natural gas to Germany and the rest of Europe. The fuel is economical and environmentally clean compared with coal, oil and the shale gas that the Americans were vying with Russia to export.

Russia’s vast energy resources will ensure Europe’s economies and households are reliably and efficiently fueled for the future. Germany, the economic engine of the European Union, has a particular vital interest in securing the Nord Stream 2 project which augments an existing Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Both follow the same Baltic Sea route of approximately 1,222 kilometers – the longest pipeline in the world – taking Russian natural gas from its arctic region to the northern shores of Germany. For Germany’s export-led economy, Russian fuel is essential for future growth, and hence benefiting the rest of Europe.

It was always a natural fit between Russia and the European Union. Geographically and economically, the two parties are compatible traders and Nord Stream 2 is merely the culmination of decades of efficient energy relations.

Enter the Americans. Washington has been seething over the strategic energy trade between Russia and Europe. The opposition escalated under the Trump administration (so much for Trump being an alleged Russian stooge!) when his ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, fired off threatening letters to German and other European companies arrogantly warning that they would be hit with sanctions if they dared proceed with Nord Stream 2. Pipe-laying work was indeed interrupted last year by U.S. sanctions. (So much for European sovereignty and alleged meddling in internal affairs by Russia!)

The ostensible American rationale was always absurd. Washington claimed that Russia would exploit its strategic role as gas supplier by extracting malicious concessions from Europe. It was also claimed that Russia would “weaponize” energy trade to enable alleged aggression towards Ukraine and other Eastern European states. The rationale reflects the twisted Machiavellian mentality of the Americans and their supporters in Europe – Poland and the Baltic states, as well as the Kiev regime in Ukraine. Such mentality is shot-through with irrational Russophobia.

The ridiculous paranoid claims against Russia are of course an inversion of reality. It is the Americans and their European surrogates who are weaponizing a mundane matter of commercial trade that in reality offers a win-win relationship. Part of the real objective is to distort market economics by demonizing Russia in order for the United States to export their own vastly more expensive and environmentally dirty liquefied natural gas to Europe. (So much for American free-market capitalism!)

Another vital objective for Washington is to thwart any normal relations developing between Russia and the rest of Europe. American hegemony and its hyper-militaristic economy depend on dividing and ruling other nations as so-called “allies” and “adversaries”. This has been a long-time necessity ever since the Second World War and during the subsequent Cold War decades, the latter constantly revived by Washington against Russia. (So much for American claims that Russia is a “revisionist power”!)

However, there is a fundamental objective problem for the Americans. The empirical decline of U.S. global power means that Washington can no longer bully other nations in the way it has been accustomed to doing for decades. The old Cold War caricatures of demonizing others have lost their allure and potency because the objective world we live in today simply does not make them plausible or credible. The Russian gas trade with the European Union is a consummate case in point. In short, Germany and the EU are not going to shoot themselves in the foot, economically speaking, simply on the orders of Uncle Sam.

President Joe Biden had enough common sense – unlike the egotistical Trump – to realize that American opposition to Nord Stream 2 was futile. Biden is more in tune with the Washington establishment than his maverick predecessor. Hence Biden began waiving sanctions imposed under Trump. Finally this week, the White House announced that it had come to an agreement with Germany to permit Nord Stream 2 to go ahead. The Financial Times called it a “truce” while the Wall Street Journal referred to a “deal” between Washington and Berlin. (Ironically, American non-interference is presented as a “deal”!)

The implication is that the United States was magnanimously giving a “concession” to Europe. The reality is the Americans were tacitly admitting they can’t stop the strategic convergence between Russia and the rest of Europe on a vital matter of energy supply.

In spinning the eventuality, Washington has continued to accuse Russia of “weaponizing” trade. It warns that if Russia is perceived to be abusing relations with Ukraine and Europe then the United States will slap more sanctions on Moscow. This amounts to the defeated bully hyperventilating.

Another geopolitical factor is China. The Biden administration has prioritized confrontation with China as the main long-term concern for repairing U.S. decline. Again, Biden is more in tune with the imperial planners in Washington than Trump was. They know that in order for the United States to have a chance of undermining China as a geopolitical rival the Europeans must be aligned with U.S. policy. Trump’s boorish browbeating of Europeans and Germany in particular over NATO budgets and other petty issues resulted in an unprecedented rift in the “transatlantic alliance” – the euphemism for American dominance over Europe. By appearing to concede to Germany over Nord Stream 2, Washington is really aiming to shore up its anti-China policy. This too is an admission of defeat whereby American power is unable to confront China alone. The bully needs European lackeys to align, and so is obliged to offer a “deal” over Russia’s energy trade.

All in all, Washington’s virtue-signaling is one helluva gas!

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https://truthunmuted.org/global-supply-chains-at-risk-prepare-now/

Prepare Now! Global Supply Chains at Risk 

How pandemics, cyber attacks, and natural disasters are threatening the global supply chain 

One of the ways the global cabal is attempting to implement The Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution is by putting global supply chains at risk to bring the economy to its knees. I warned about this looming threat in my article What the Future Portends: 10 Predictions for 2021 and Beyond.

The narrative being sold to the public goes like this. The new wave of COVID-19 infections caused by various Greek-letter variants, major disruptions due to natural disasters (attributed to climate change), and cyber-attacks targeting key industries are causing worker shortages and the inability for ships and other major transport systems to reach their destinations. This “shortage” of workers and goods such as food and computer chips plays right into globalist stooges hands. As prices skyrocket, the economy will further deteriorate and panic will rule the day. People desperate for basic necessities will turn to looting and violence which will give governments a new excuse to lockdown and subdue their populations.

The true narrative points to global forces using these unfolding calamities as the perfect convergence of manufactured “problem-reaction-solution” scenarios. These “existential” crises are deliberately put in motion to move the world towards global governance based on the UN (Agenda 2030) Sustainable Development goals, a new blockchain based financial system, and a China-like surveillance state.

Pandemics, climate change, cyber terror, and manufactured supply shortages are trojan horses used to remove individual rights, destroy nations and governments, and push people into a new technocratic society. All of these events allow governments to implement “emergency” measures while consolidating more power. As these scenarios play out, control mechanisms such as biometric surveillance, smart technology, social credit, Universal Basic Income, mandatory vaccination, and digital ID/wallet systems are steadily materializing.

A new article in the Insurance Journal provides details to the changes rapidly taking place as the global supply chain is threatened. The article states:

Events have conspired to drive global supply chains towards breaking point, threatening the fragile flow of raw materials, parts and consumer goods, according to companies, economists and shipping specialists.

The Delta variant of the coronavirus has devastated parts of Asia and prompted many nations to cut off land access for sailors. That’s left captains unable to rotate weary crews and about 100,000 seafarers stranded at sea beyond their stints in a flashback to 2020 and the height of lockdowns.

Meanwhile, deadly floods in economic giants China and Germany have further ruptured global supply lines that had yet to recover from the first wave of the pandemic, compromising trillions of dollars of economic activity that rely on them.

Manufacturing industries are reeling.

Automakers, for example, are again being forced to stop production because of disruptions caused by COVID-19 outbreaks. Toyota Motor Corp said this week it had to halt operations at plants in Thailand and Japan because they couldn’t get parts.

Buckling supply chains are hitting the United States and China, the world’s economic motors that together account for more 40% of global economic output. This could lead to a slowdown in the global economy, along with rising prices for all manner of goods and raw materials.

Ports across the globe are suffering the kinds of logjams not seen in decades, according to industry players.

The China Port and Harbour Association said on Wednesday that freight capacity continued to be tight.

A cyber attack hit South African container ports in Cape Town and Durban this week, adding further disruptions at the terminals.

If all that were not enough, in Britain the official health app has told hundreds of thousands of workers to isolate following contact with someone with COVID-19 — leading to supermarkets warning of a short supply and some petrol stations closing.

Richard Walker, managing director of supermarket group Iceland Foods, turned to Twitter to urge people not to panic buy.

“We need to be able to supply stores, stock shelves and deliver food,” he wrote.

Another recent article from The Conversation details how extensive the shortages are, stating:

It expands to include a whole range of products like lumber and other building materials, tools, foodstuffs, seeds, furniture, cleaning supplies, aluminum cans, jars, pools and pool equipment, chemicals, bicycles, camping gear, household appliances and replacement parts of all kinds.

In many cases supply chains have been simultaneously squeezed on both ends — supply and demand.

The empty store shelves that dotted the landscape at the beginning of last year’s plandemic is only a taste of what is to come. Manufactured famine would be the perfect way to introduce complete control of the food supply. The ultimate goal is to eliminate meat-eating and increase consumption of GMO crops and synthetic food as only a few major corporations would control the entire world’s food supply. This is why Bill Gates is now the largest landowner in the U.S.

Recently there have already been major “cyber attacks” by mysterious hacker groups on a major U.S. gasoline pipeline (Colonial) and global food supplier (JBS). The power grid failure in Texas this past February created shortages of water, food, and heat for short periods, but caused much devastation and even death. In March, a container ship blocked both lanes of the Suez Canal and kept vessels from crossing for an entire week leading to inflated oil prices and long shipping delays. Current drought conditions in the western United States exacerbated by wildfires and extreme high temperatures are ruining vegetation and impacting the water supply.

These events along with a “cyber pandemic” could easily trigger a worldwide crisis. World Economic Forum frontman and globalist stooge Klaus Schwab has warned of an event to come that could make the coronavirus “pandemic” seem like a small disturbance. The World Economic Forum sponsored Cyber Polygon events have been creating simulations of massive cyber-attacks that could completely disrupt finance, global trade, power grids, and life as we know it. Will these simulations go live in the near future?

If you’re reading this you are ahead of the curve as most people are still marching along like sheep to the slaughter. But don’t wait! Take action now and stock up on needed goods and supplies before it is too late. Discuss these scenarios with your loved ones and formulate a plan that can help you stay above water if and when calamity strikes.