Taiwanese Government pledges to “fight to the last Taiwanese” in defense of American “democracy”

Here Is Why 37 Percent Of U.S. Farmers In The Western Half Of The Country Are Killing Their Own Crops

The 17 states including and north of Texas, up along the Central Plains to North Dakota and west to California are vital to the U.S. agricultural sector, supporting nearly half of the nation’s $364 billion production by value. This includes 74% of beef cattle, responsible (in total) for 18% of U.S. agricultural production by value; 50% of dairy production, responsible (in total) for 11% of U.S. agricultural production by value, over 80% of wheat production by value and over 70% of vegetable, fruit and tree nut production by value. Drought conditions, which have persisted well into 2022, put production of these commodities at risk, along with the stability of farms, ranches and local economies reliant on crops, livestock and downstream products and services for income.

This year’s drought conditions are taking a harder toll than last year’s, as 37% of farmers said they are plowing through and killing existing crops that won’t reach maturity because of dry conditions.

Farmers in Texas are being forced to sell off their cattle herds earlier than normal due to extreme drought — as water sources dry out and grass burns up. Farmers in the Lone Star state reported the largest reduction in herd size, down 50%, followed by New Mexico and Oregon at 43% and 41% respectively.

Thanks to the unending economic symptoms of the pandemic and 2022’s inflation double-punch, average beef prices are currently about twice what they were in 2019. Add in the deepening widespread drought, a shortage of hay and feed, skyrocketing prices, transport costs, and various other metrics, some Southwest Oklahoma beef producers suggest cheap ground beef could eventually top $50 per pound.

Inflation-weary shoppers are pulling back on buying pricey steaks and switching to cheaper chicken at the grocery store.

Tyson (TSN), the meat processing giant, said Monday that “demand for chicken is extremely strong,” while demand for its higher-priced cuts of beef has softened.

France’s fruit and vegetable crops have fallen by nearly 35% due to the extreme drought this summer, Jacques Rouchausse, president of the French national association of vegetable producers, Legumes de France, said on Tuesday.

“We have losses on the yields. For the moment, we estimate that these losses are between 25% and 35 percent. We have to stress that if we want food sovereignty, if we want food security, we really have to find ways to continue producing on our territory,” Rouchausse said on air of Radio Franceinfo.

Drought is gripping the Horn of Africa, leaving some 26 million people facing food shortages in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia over the next six months. More than 7 million livestock animals have already been wiped out. Across East Africa as a whole, some 50 million people are facing acute food insecurity.

In a video message to the meeting, UN chief António Guterres commended the partners for joining forces at what he called “this critical moment”, noting that the number of people who are severely food insecure has doubled in the last two years.

“We face a real risk of multiple famines this year. And next year could be even worse. But we can avoid this catastrophe if we act now,” said Mr. Guterres.

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Ingredients

Reminder on China’s “White Paper”

China released a “white paper” on the Taiwan reunification issue. It’s comprehensive and explicit. China has explicitly explained – in great detail – what will happen, and how.

• Taiwan will be reunified with China just like HK and Macao have been.
• Taiwan will keep it’s own governance system.
• Taiwan is not permitted to possess political parties that promote separatist movements. They must be disbanded, and then banned.
• Taiwan will have complete access to the great resources of the mainland China.
• Taiwanese citizens get automatic citizenship and all residency documents will automatically be converted to regional “household registers”.
• Taiwan will have significant representation in the Chinese government.
• China will not hurt, harm, or attack any Taiwanese citizen, as they are Chinese citizens, UNLESS they are working in behalf of a foreign government.
• There can be ZERO foreign interference.
• If there is foreign interference, China will go to war against that foreign nation and all forces, and “tricks” at it’s disposal will be used. There will be no restraint.
• Any foreign interference suggesting, funding, supplying or actuating interference in the reunification process is a war-generating “red line”.
• The foreign government will be viewed as the enemy of the reunification process. Not the Taiwanese people.

And much, much more. Of course, it’s not being reported in the Western “news”, but China has made the situation very EXPLICITLY clear.

My video on this issue is HERE

Here are two examples, and there are many more alikes if you need.

In Linyi City, east China’s Shandong Province, policeman Zeng Chang was on duty at a local primary school at 8 a.m before class today (Sept. 28). He noticed a schoolgirl standing next to the entrance for a while, seeming helpless. So he went over to see what was bothering the little girl, and found out that she got up late and her mom didn’t have enough time to tie her hair up.

And the girl asked Zeng, “ Uncle Policeman, would you please help tie my hair up?”

Then that’s what we can see in the video: Zeng did it, skillfully, for her. And she then went into the school.

I can only find the video for the story in Chinese for you. “警察叔叔，你能帮我扎一下头发吗？”

Also in the link, there is another similar story, but happened a bit earlier in another province.

In Haining City, east China’s Zhejiang Province on September 19, policeman Shen Ren told fairy tales to a 4-year-old girl, who was unexpectedly locked out of her home.

Shen and his colleagues then contacted the parents and kept her company as she waited. To relieve her stress, Shen read her four storybooks until her parents returned.

And actually, when my son was little and we often told him whenever he met any problems outside without us, the first one to seek for help should be the police.

So, if all parents are willing to trust their kids to the police, do you think we’ll be afraid of them? I think, only those with hidden reasons would be.

Will Catastrophic Crop Losses In 2022 Lead To Unprecedented Shortages In 2023?

August 16, 2022 by Michael

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Crops are failing all over the globe this summer, but most people don’t even know that this is happening because the big television news channels aren’t talking much about it.  Instead, they remain intensely focused on politics day after day.  Without a doubt, the political realm is important, but there should also be plenty of time to discuss a raging global crisis which is going to deeply affect all of us.  The food that is not being grown this year is not going to be on our plates next year, but the vast majority of the population doesn’t understand this.  They see plenty of food in the stores now and they just assume that everything is going to be okay.

Unfortunately, everything is not going to be okay.  Over in the UK, a major British news source is warning of “widespread crop failures across England”…

Experts have warned of widespread crop failures across England, as charities and farmers criticised water companies for dithering over hosepipe bans despite drought being declared across much of the country.

So what sort of losses are we talking about?

Well, it is now being projected that losses could reach up to 50 percent for a wide variety of crops…

Half of the potato crop is expected to fail as it cannot be irrigated, and even crops that are usually drought-tolerant, such as maize, have been failing.

The group was told “irrigation options are diminishing with reservoirs being emptied fast”, and losses of 10-50% are expected for crops including carrots, onions, sugar beet, apples and hops. Milk production is also down nationally because of a lack of food for cows, and wildfires are putting large areas of farmland at risk.

The British are assuming that they will just get enough food to feed their population from someone else.

But that is what everyone else is assuming too.

As global food supplies get tighter and tighter, the wealthy countries will buy up food at elevated prices, and many poor countries will be left out and will suffer tremendously.

Things are even worse in Italy.  As I covered the other day, some farmers in Italy have already lost “up to 80% of their harvest”…

In Italy, farmers in some parts of the country have lost up to 80% of their harvest this year due to severe weather anomalies, the Coldretti farming association said Thursday.

So where will Italy get enough food to feed their population?

Just like the British, the plan to get it from someone else.

But who is the someone else going to be?

Here in the United States, agricultural production is going to be way below expectations because of the endless drought that is plaguing about half the country.

Just yesterday, I wrote an article about how tomato production is being absolutely devastated in the state of California.

It is being reported that tomato paste prices have already increased by up to 80 percent, and we are being warned that if rain doesn’t come soon there simply will not be enough tomatoes to meet demand.

That means that there won’t be enough spaghetti sauce and pizza sauce to go around.

For a lot of my readers, that statement is really going to hit home.

Over in Texas, the cotton crop is going to be bitterly disappointing this year…

US cotton prices continued to surge above the boom days of 2010-11 after a massive crop estimate cut by the USDA, shocking Wall Street analysts and traders, due primarily to a megadrought scorching farmland of Texas, according to Bloomberg.

Futures in New York for December delivery were up 4.5% to $1.1359 a pound and up more than 21% this month.

Normally, there would be vast fields of cotton being grown all over the state at this time of the summer.

But this year many of those fields look like barren wastelands…

Last Friday, the USDA’s bigger-than-expected cut to domestic cotton crop stunned many on Wall Street. Crop output plunged to 12.57 million bales, the lowest in a decade. The cut also pushed down the US from the world’s third-largest producer to the world’s fourth.

Barbera said the western Texas region (around Lubbock and Lamesa), the epicenter of America’s cotton-growing belt, has “literally nothing” in fields that are just desert sand. He said fields that had drip irrigation were harvestable, but ones that weren’t weren’t salvageable.

So are we going to experience a shortage of cotton in 2023?

If so, that would be really bad news.  Cotton is used in thousands of different products.

Without enough water, we cannot grow the things that we need.

I don’t know why this is so hard for people to grasp.

And the truth is that our entire way of life depends on sufficient supplies of fresh water.  Right now, there are seven western states that are facing the prospect of emergency water restrictions in the months ahead because the Colorado River is rapidly drying up…

Two months ago, federal officials took the unprecedented step of telling the seven states that depend on Colorado River water to prepare for emergency cuts next year to prevent reservoirs from dropping to dangerously low levels.

The states and managers of affected water agencies were told to come up with plans to reduce water use drastically, by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet, by mid-August. After weeks of negotiations, which some participants say have at times grown tense and acrimonious, the parties have yet to reach an agreement.

Nobody wants to give up their water.

In the end, all of those states are going to have to make severe sacrifices.  At a minimum, the amount of water being taken from the Colorado River needs to be reduced by 2 million acre-feet, and that is an amount of water that is four times greater than the entire city of Los Angeles uses in an entire year…

The latest round of closed-door talks occurred Thursday in Denver. Participants said they wouldn’t publicly discuss the offers of water reductions made, but they acknowledged those offers have amounted to far less than 2 million acre-feet. For comparison, the total annual water use of Los Angeles is nearly 500,000 acre-feet.

Needless to say, this is going to affect agriculture in a major way.

Farmers and ranchers use a tremendous amount of water, and they are about to be hit with restrictions that will be extraordinarily painful.

Everything that I have discussed in this article is happening in the context of a horrifying global food crisis that is getting worse with each passing month.

But don’t worry, the elite have a plan.

For a long time they have touted the benefits of eating bugs, and now such products are actually on our store shelves…

On Sunday, carnivore diet guru Dr. Shawn Baker tweeted a photo of a bag of cheddar cheese puffs, only instead of being made of corn meal these snack foods were chock-full of insect protein.

The snack item from Canadian brand Actually Foods states the puffs are “powered by crickets” to the tune of 10 grams of protein per serving.

The ingredients label on the back of the bag indicates “organic cricket flour” was used in the puffs’ production, and an allergy warning on the back of the bag also cautions, “People who are allergic to shellfish may also be allergic to crickets.”

Doesn’t that sound delicious?

Instead of suffering through the nightmarish global famines that are coming, we can all eat “cricket puffs” instead.

Unfortunately, the truth is that they can’t make enough “cricket puffs” to rescue us from the “perfect storm” that has hit global food production.

There simply is not going to be enough food for everyone in 2023, and it will be the poorest countries that will suffer the most.

Lenochka

She was so little and exhausted, that she forgot her last name. She lost a whole family; mother, grandmother, elder brother…

A special group of skinny girls found her – they were going from apartment to apartment during a terrible blockade winter looking for children whose parents had died or were dying…

This is how they discovered Lenochka and could evacuate her. She didn’t remember being carried across the ice with other children in a shaking truck, she didn’t remember getting to the orphanage; she was little. Like a skinny midget with a big head on a thin neck…

And she refused to eat anymore. This is what happens with dystrophy. She was laying in bed or sitting in a chair by the stove. She was getting hot. And she kept her mouth shut. They thought Lenochka would die. Many children died already during the evacuation; severe exhaustion and no strength to live and eat. And to play. And to breathe…

One-legged topper, war veteran uncle Kolja, about twenty years old, unpacked a doll from an old towel. Somehow he cut it, folded it, sewn it and it became an ugly doll. He drew the doll’s eyes and mouth with an indelible pencil. And a crooked nose.

He gave a doll to Lenochka and seriously said:

"You, Lenochka, cradle the doll. And teach her to eat well! You are now a mommy doll. Take good care of her. "

And this Lenochka suddenly grabbed a doll and pressed it together. She began to pet her with thin hands. At dinner, she fed the doll porridge and whispered something loving to her. And in the end, she ate porridge and a piece of bread herself…

And so Lenochka slept with the doll and warmed her by the stove, hugged her, and got upset because of her. Because of an ugly doll made of an old towel with painted eyes …

The girl has survived.

Because she couldn’t die; she had to take care of the doll, you know?

HAVING SOMEONE TO TAKE CARE OF IS A HUGE LIFE FOR SOME PEOPLE.

For people like this girl was. Who later became a nurse and lived a long life. And her hands were always busy.

And she had a heart full of love.

Ukraine Artillery Hits Reactor Cooling System and Nuke Waste Containers

This is maybe not your usual friendship. I was 22 years old, and that man was 65 years old. He was my real friend, the best friend I ever had and I took him for granted.

To avoid any doubt, no, there never been any sexual activity involved. (If you have doubt in your mind, please be considerate enough not to leave rude comments, we are talking about a person who has passed away)

We met online when I was looking for a job, he hired me as his marketing manager for his business. I worked for him for 2 years but unfortunately the business didn’t take off, but the friendship remained.

He took me under his wing, he taught me about life, I accepted my bipolar outbreak every now and then. He supported my dreams, helped me financially, and was always there for me. He was my safety net. I moved to his place to save money as I wasn’t able to afford rent, I’ve been his roommate for 7 years.

Last year he fell off his motorbike and needed operation, he went home to UK and after a few months, he still needed some help. While he was waiting for his recovery, he caught Covid-19. A month after, he passed away in his sleep.

I called him and video chatted with him while he was in Covid ward. Everyday I checked up on him. Due to time difference, I called 3 times a day – when I woke up, when he was alert and before I went to sleep. I could only speak with him once a day but I called the nurses just to get an update.

I told him that I didn’t want to live in a world where he’s not in it. He said he knew and he will be okay. Every single day I checked up on him as I was the only person who ever called him. Never once did he say his goodbye and I didn’t want to say goodbye to him.

I promised him that I would call, but on 6 May 2020, the hospital was busy. I called the hospital 3 times a day, every day, to check up on him. They said that they will call me the next day. 2 hours later, they did call me and informed me how sorry they were that my granddad passed away in his sleep.

This picture was taken 8 years ago, a few weeks after we met. And I don’t have any other pictures of us together. I thought we had time.

You can’t choose your family, but this is the only family that I ever chose. Who thought a 22 years old Indonesian can be a best friend with a 65 years old British man?

RIP, Grandpa.

I miss you every single day, you took a huge part of me when you died.

Nigel

Three Kittens

My wife passed away last summer (not from Covid), right after things had pretty much been locked down.

We had been married over 40 years, during which we had a dog, and then two cats. The last cat died several years ago. My wife never wanted to get another, because she was afraid the cat would outlive us.

During her last couple of months, when she knew she didn’t have much time left, I let her know that after she was gone I wanted to adopt a kitten to keep me company. Actually two, so they could keep themselves company when I was working. (Even though I am 74, I still work full-time and have no plans on retiring.) She was okay with that.

So a few days after my wife passed, a friend took me to a pet adoption center. Since we had only had black and white (“tuxedo”) cats before, I was planning on getting something different. But there were three black kittens (one with white paws) in a cage who got our eye, and they were put in a small room for us to play with. They were about ten weeks old.

I immediately knew these were the ones. I couldn’t leave one behind, so I adopted all three. Two brothers and a sister.

Here they are, just after I brought them home:

Here they are again, five months later. This how I wake up in the morning now.

They just had their one-year birthday a couple of weeks ago. I am so glad I have them to keep me company. I never realized three kitties from the same litter could grow up to have completely different personalities.

I’ve been working from home for over a year now, and will probably continue doing so for a while longer. If I do starting going back into work, I’ll know they’ll look after each other during the day, and I’ll look forward to coming home to them in the evening.

Kaymakli Underground City

The year is 1963, a Turkish man is renovating his basement when he finds a strange old stone wall, which he promptly breaks through.

What he found was a large pitch-black dank space, a cold void behind the wall. Armed with a torch, our intrepid home renovator crawled through the hole and found a series of barrel roofed rooms, that had been carved from the volcanic bedrock.

Those first mysterious rooms turned out to be just a small section of what was actually an ancient labyrinth of living spaces, communal areas and tunnel networks, comprising 13 levels the deepest being 85 metres underground. This ancient place was large enough to house 20,000 people, a massive forgotten underground city.

Complete with multiple wells fed from an almost unlimited source of water having vast aquifers aka subterranean lakes, directly beneath the city.

Having explored the nearest rooms and tunnels, our renovator eventually reached a narrow passageway blocked by a huge circular stone, similar to a giant millstone, only this one seemed to have been intentionally rolled into place to block further progress into the subterranean city.

Imagine setting out to renovate your basement, perhaps intending to create your own Man Cave, but instead, you discover an ancient underground city, right beneath your house.

This is just one of several ancient underground cities that have since been discovered in this region, Kaymakli Underground City being another fantastic example, Derinkuyu and Kaymakli are linked by a well-built tunnel, many miles long.

While no exact age has been established, these large underground cities are thought to have been first built at least 2,800 years ago. But potentially the first caves in the soft volcanic bedrock could have been inhabited far earlier.

What is certain, is that for more than a thousand years various cultures lived in these underground cities, including early Indo-Europeans, then Greek-speaking people, then the Romans interacted with these underground civilisations, then early Christians sheltered here, they expanded the city and built underground churches, chapels and even schools.

Later during the age of the Byzantine Empire, these two cities were linked together by miles of tunnels and became a thriving hidden society, a safe haven for many thousands when the Muslim Arabs raided, and later when Mongol and Steppe tribes pillaged these regions, they likely had no idea that thriving cities with vast populations were directly beneath the hooves of their steeds.

While some of these strange ancient cities built beneath the earth continued to be used until the 14th century, they were all abandoned and forgotten in the following centuries. Yet some of these cities show evidence of being briefly used since then, by Jewish and Christian groups as sanctuaries during times of horrific persecution, as recently as two hundred years ago.

How to lose with dignity.

This is Ray Reardon.

He’s a former professional snooker player who pretty much dominated the game in the 1970s when he won the World Championship six times.

He didn’t win all the time of course particularly in his later years when his form started to fail and younger players came along.

The point is whatever the result of the match he always had a huge smile on his face. When he lost and his opponent had potted the final ball, he’d get out of his seat immediately and go over to his opponent with a wide smile on his face to shake his hand, congratulate him warmly and put his arm around his shoulders as they left the auditorium together.

I once saw him interviewed when he was asked why he had such a big smile on his face even when he’d lost. The interviewer actually said to him…

“Don’t you mind losing?” (not a great question to ask a professional sports person!).

His response was…

“Actually I hate losing more than you would know. The point is I love this sport and I see it as part of my role to promote the game and show it in a good light whenever I can. And I can't do that with an angry, upset look on my face. Snooker is bigger and more important than I am!”

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to lose with dignity.

My sweet Itty bitty.

This beautiful girl is Itty bitty.

Itty bitty found me in a dope house. She was almost 3 weeks old, eyes swelled shut with infection, so starved she had no muscle left on her at all. Someone had hurt her throat so she couldn’t even meow. She broke my heart. I thought I was bringing her home to die because she was so far gone.

She held onto my shirt the whole ride home.

I was determined to at least give her a full belly and a warm place with lots of love the time she had left.

She’s a fighter though and here she is today.

My sweet Itty bitty.

Russia warns of ‘direct military clash’ with US