Michael Snyder – November 23, 2021

If you think that inflation is bad now, just wait until we get into early next year.  As you will see below, some of the biggest corporations in the entire country have just announced major price increases which will take effect during the first few months of 2022.  So if there are some things that you want to stock up on, you may want to do it now, because your money won’t stretch as far once we get a few months down the road.  I really wish that I had better news for you.  I really wish that I could tell you that prices are going to level off and that economic conditions will return to normal soon.  Unfortunately, the truth is that it appears that our problems will soon be accelerating.

Earlier today, I was stunned to learn that General Mills has announced that prices on “hundreds of items” will be jacked up dramatically in early 2022.  In some cases, prices “will go up by around 20%”…

General Mills (GIS) notified retail customers that it’s raising prices in mid-January on hundreds of items across dozens of brands. They include Annie’s, Progresso, Yoplait, Fruit Roll-Ups, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charm’s, Wheaties, Reese’s Puffs, Trix and more, according to letters General Mills sent to at least one major regional wholesale supplier last week.

For some items, prices will go up by around 20% beginning next year.

Ouch.

When you go to the grocery store after the holiday season is over, get ready for a case of severe sticker shock.

Of course General Mills is not the only large corporation that will be doing this.

According to CNN, Tyson Foods, the Kraft Heinz Company, Procter & Gamble, and Kimberly Clark have all announced significant price increases for 2022…

General Mills’ plans are the latest evidence that rising prices won’t be going away anytime soon for some of the most recognizable food and household brands. The company is the latest consumer manufacturer to announce price hikes beginning next year, joining Tyson (TSN), Kraft Heinz (KHC), Mondelez (MDLZ), Procter & Gamble (PG), Kimberly Clark (KMB) and others.

In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this.

https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Human Events Staff  |  November 17, 2021

The U.S. recorded its highest number of drug-overdose deaths in a one year period, according to the CDC.

There were an estimated 100,306 drug deaths in the 12 months running through April, the latest data shows. This marks a nearly 29% rise from the deaths recorded in the same period the previous year, per the Wall Street Journal. 

“It’s telling us that 2021 looks like it will be worse than 2020,” Robert Anderson, chief of the CDC mortality statistics branch, said.

Opioid-related deaths, mainly caused by fentanyl, accounted for about 75 percent of the deaths through April.

Indeed, the pandemic worsened opioid overdoses due to isolation. The number of overdoses in 2020 surged to a record of about 93,330.

https://humanevents.com

Right to Life UK – Nov 10, 2021

As New Zealand’s euthanasia legislation comes into effect, anti-euthanasia campaigners have launched an initiative to begin the path towards repealing the legislation and protecting the vulnerable.

After becoming the first country in the world to introduce assisted suicide and euthanasia by popular vote in a binding referendum, New Zealand’s End of Life Choice Act (EOLCA) came into effect last Sunday. In response, DefendNZ has launched a new campaign to “protect” the vulnerable from the new law, and to “expose and improve” the law as it is written.

Their spokesperson, Henoch Kloosterboer, said: “Some may have wrongly assumed that this debate was over now that the EOLCA has come into force, when what this actually means is that our advocacy for the vulnerable put at risk by this law is more critical than ever before”.

He described the introduction of assisted suicide and euthanasia into New Zealand as “one of the most seismic shifts in law, healthcare and medical ethics in its entire history. As of this moment, some New Zealanders now wield the state-sanctioned legal power to deliberately end the lives of others, or to assist in their suicides”.

“To think that there will be no harms that will come from this is to be unaware of the many problems unfolding overseas in the limited number of places that have also legalised these practices – and this includes the harm of wrongful killings”.

https://www.lifenews.com

Micaiah Bilger – November 19, 2021

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey criticized Democrats on Thursday for trying to force taxpayers to pay for the killing of unborn babies in abortions through a massive spending bill.

Democrats’ $2 trillion “Build Back Better” bill, which passed the U.S. House on Friday, does not include any of the long-standing bans on taxpayer-funded abortions. If it passes the U.S. Senate, Americans could be forced to pay for the killing of unborn babies in elective abortions both in the United States and in other countries.

Smith, a leading pro-life voice in Congress, said it’s shocking that Democrats removed the Hyde Amendment and other measures that protect American taxpayers and unborn babies.

“It is time, I believe, for more of us to face the harsh reality of what abortion does to children and look beyond the sound bites and slogans,” Smith said. “No one in the media ever bothers to expose the violent methods of abortion that include dismemberment of a child’s fragile body, including decapitation, and that drugs like RU-486 starve the baby to death.”

He urged lawmakers to restore the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding for abortions in Medicaid and other federal programs, as well as the Helms Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding for abortions in other countries.

“Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize or facilitate the killing of an unborn child,” Smith said, pointing to recent polls showing strong public opposition to taxpayer-funded abortions.

The massive spending bill mandates abortion coverage in the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and includes a number of other funding measures that could pay for abortions, Smith continued.

https://www.lifenews.com

Cryptogon – November 1, 2021

Dealing with physical gold in fractions of a gram seems extremely cumbersome, and, are vendors confident that they’re being paid in actual gold?

With the use of cryptocurrencies booming in Venezuela, I wonder if people are using any of the gold backed cryptos for the purposes described in this piece?

The most bugeyed Cryptogon readers will wave red flags and warn that these gold schemes could be scams. I understand this sentiment.

But…

If the point of using the physical gold is the protection it offers against the maniac state’s fiat emissions, it might make sense to use tokenized gold for day-to-day business operations. While tokenized gold isn’t physical gold, my guess is that there’s a good chance that alleged physical gold isn’t actual physical gold, in some cases.

If I was running a business and accepting payments in gold, I’d rather have tokenized gold than some yellow shiny stuff that came across the counter. Tokenized gold can be easily transferred anywhere, divided and, depending on the crypto, ultimately redeemed as physical gold. Allegedly physical gold, that is.

Keep in mind, actual physical gold can’t be disappeared by an EMP, a teenage hacker or a quantum computer.

Maybe business people could use tokenized gold for small amounts and eventually sweep these into a larger bar, or some other asset, for long term wealth preservation.

https://www.cryptogon.com

Bob Unruh – November 10, 2021

A senior contributor at the Federalist, Stella Morabito, has published a warning to parents that if leftists are not stopped in their agenda, moms and dads soon could need a “license” to raise their own children.

“Licensing of parents might still sound fringy, but it’s an old social engineering dream that dies hard. And they’re busily building the road to get there. Unless there is aggressive and sustained pushback, you can count on the idea invading the mainstream,” she explained.

“So parents can’t let down their guard. They hold the key to getting through this wild ride.”

In her warning, published at the organization’s website, she cited the factors that are at issue now: the racist critical race theory that teaches all whites are racist in schools, “extremist” sex education that includes pornography, “social and emotional learning” instruction to tell children how they should feel, COVID-19 masks and vaccine mandates and more.

“All of these directives hijack the role of parents as the emotional and moral guides of their children,” she said. “Parents ought to be asking: What next? If those trends are left unchecked, I think the answer could be the state licensing of parents.”

While it may sound extreme, she pointed out that “let’s not forget that critical race theory and transgenderism were once laughed off as fringy academic notions before they burst into newsrooms, then into classrooms and public libraries.”

She pointed to instructor Hugh LaFollette who outlined “Licensing Parents” in a 1980 article, which suggested biological parent should be vetted under the same requirements as adoptive parents, with psychological testing and more.

Key was his claim that parents should not be considered to have “natural dominion” over their children.

https://www.wnd.com

Micaiah Bilger – November 10, 2021

A European human rights commissioner demanded Wednesday that Poland legalize the killing of unborn babies in abortions, claiming this destruction of innocent human beings is a “human right” and abortion bans amount to “torture.”

Politico reports Dunja Mijatović, the commissioner for human rights for the Council of Europe, criticized Poland’s protections for unborn babies in a report to the European Court of Human Rights.

Her report came out ahead of an expected vote Thursday in European Parliament on a resolution to condemn Poland for its pro-life laws, according to the report.

Poland is one of the few countries in Europe that protects unborn babies from abortions. In 2020, its high court struck down an exception allowing abortions on unborn babies with disabilities. The country now allows abortions only in cases of rape, incest or threats to the mother’s life.

In her report this week, Mijatović argued that the 2020 ruling had a “harmful impact on women’s human rights” in Poland, and countries have a “human rights” obligation to legalize abortion on demand.

She insisted that Poland urgently overturn its pro-life laws and make abortion legal and easily accessible.

Abortions destroy the most basic human right of all, the right to life for babies in the womb. Yet, international leaders and abortion activists are trying to spin the issue by claiming the killing of unborn babies is a human right and laws that protect them are “cruel” and “torture.”

Mijatović did this in her report, quoting the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which claims that “criminalization of abortion, denial or delay of safe abortion and/or post-abortion care, forced continuation of pregnancy … are forms of gender-based violence that, depending on the circumstances, may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

However, these international human rights leaders completely ignore the inhumane cruelty and torture that unborn babies suffer when they are killed in abortions. Some unborn babies are dismembered alive while their hearts are still beating, others are stabbed in the heart with poison.

https://www.lifenews.com

AFP and TOI staff – November 3, 2021

Nine-year-old Parwana dug her heels into the ground as she tried to resist being taken from her family home after she was sold into marriage with a 55-year-old man in northwest Afghanistan last week.

Village and displaced people’s camp leaders say the numbers of young girls getting betrothed started to rise during a 2018 famine and surged this year when the rains failed once more.

Parwana’s family has lived in poverty for years, but life has gotten harder for them since the Taliban takeover of the country earlier this year and as international aid has dried up.

Abdul Malik, Parwana’s father, told CNN ahead of the sale that he was “broken” with guilt and worry, but had no choice as the family is unable to afford food.

Several months ago he sold Parwana’s 12-year-old sister, and he already knows the money from the sale of Parwana won’t last long.

Ahead of the sale, Parwana said that she was sold because the family doesn’t have money for food.

“He has sold me to an old man,” said the girl, who had dreamed of becoming a teacher.

On October 24, a man named Qorban paid 200,000 Afghanis (approximately $2,200) and was given Parwana in a ceremony in the displacement camp on the outskirts of Qala-e-Naw, in Afghanistan’s Badghis province.

“[Parwana] was cheap, and her father was very poor and he needs money,” Qorban told CNN. “She will be working in my home. I won’t beat her. I will treat her like a family member. I will be kind.”

Child marriage has been practiced in Afghanistan for centuries, but war and climate change-related poverty have driven many families to resort to striking deals earlier and earlier in girls’ lives.

Boys’ parents can drive a harder bargain and secure younger girls, spacing out the repayments.

The World Food Program warned last week that more than half the population of Afghanistan, around 22.8 million people, will face acute food insecurity from this month.

https://www.timesofisrael.com

Michael Snyder – October 26, 2021

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.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Nick Gilbertson – October 28, 2021

A Florida school board member reportedly accompanied elementary school students on a field trip to a gay bar.

“I was SO honored to be invited to chaperone Wilton Manors Elementary’s field trip to the incredible Rosie’s!” Broward County School Board member Sarah Leonardi wrote in a Facebook post, reported by Fox News. “The students and I had a fun walk over and learned a lot about our community! A huge thank you to Rosie’s Bar and Grill for hosting this special field trip every year!”

Photographs included in the Facebook post show the elementary school students at Rosie’s Bar and Grill, a gay bar in Wilton Manors, Florida.

The post has ignited outrage on social media outlets.

“Leave out everything else – why in God’s name are they bringing elementary school kids to establishments that aren’t supposed to admit anyone under 21?” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted. “Also, homeschool your kids!”

https://www.breitbart.com