Month: July 2022

By Jack Deleo of FreightWaves

After spending billions doubling the size of its fulfillment network during the pandemic, Amazon finds itself in a perilous position.

In the first quarter of 2022, the e-commerce giant reported a $3.8 billion net loss after raking in an $8.1 billion profit in Q1 2021. That includes $6 billion in added costs — the bulk of which can be traced back to that same fulfillment network.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company chose to expand its warehouse network based on “the high end of a very volatile demand outlook.” So far this year, though, it has shut down or delayed plans for at least 16 scheduled facilities.

“We currently have some excess capacity in the network that we need to grow into,” Olsavsky told investors on Amazon’s Q1 2022 earnings call. “So, we’ve brought down our build expectations. Note again that many of the build decisions were made 18 to 24 months ago, so there are limitations on what we can adjust midyear.”

Below are the 16 planned warehouses Amazon has canceled or delayed in 2022:

What it all means

Evidently, demand came in near the lower end of Amazon’s outlook. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, American retail e-commerce sales in Q1 2022 grew 2.4%, adjusted for seasonal variation, compared to the final quarter of 2021. But e-commerce sales as a percentage of total retail sales actually declined slightly on an adjusted quarter-over-quarter (q/q) basis.

In March, e-commerce sales declined from the same period last year while in-person sales rose, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. That hasn’t happened since the pandemic began, and it marked the first year-over-year (y/y) decline in online spending since 2013.

The slowdown can be attributed to a few different factors. Many point to inflation as the main culprit — with less disposable income, shoppers are trying to save by spending less online, putting their money into things like travel and fuel. Subsiding pandemic fears are also driving a departure from e-commerce and a return to in-person shopping.

Even with the pullback on new warehouse plans, Amazon boasts a fulfillment footprint no other company can rival. According to data from supply chain consulting firm MWPVL International, it boasts almost 1,200 active distribution centers covering 376 million square feet. For comparison, Walmart operates close to 200 active facilities with less than half the square footage.

The scale of Amazon’s network isn’t the issue as it would still have more warehouses than any company in America even if it halved its footprint. The real problem is what’s happening in those warehouses.

Known for its worker-productivity quotas, Amazon isn’t happy with the efficiency of its facilities. According to CFO Olsavsky, the massive marketplace overcorrected for its labor issues, going from understaffed to overstaffed in a matter of months. That reportedly tanked productivity.

“We hired more people and then found ourselves overstaffed when the omicron variant subsided rather quickly, at least from our standpoint in warehouses,” Olsavsky said. “So, the issue has switched from disruption to productivity losses to overcapacity on labor.”

Marc Wulfraat, president and founder of MWPVL, estimated reduced productivity due to overstaffing accounted for about a third of Amazon’s $6 billion worth of added costs in Q1. But that could be the least of the company’s problems. A leaked company memo, viewed by Recode in June, revealed the e-commerce giant could dry up its warehouse labor force by 2024.

“If we continue business as usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the U.S. network by 2024,” the memo warned.

If you’re wondering how that’s possible, consider Amazon’s unmatched turnover rate. A New York Times investigation uncovered that even before the pandemic, it was as high as 150%. That means there are more employees leaving Amazon warehouses each year than there are being hired.

In fact, there has been so much turnover that Amazon began tracking it weekly and found it loses an estimated 3% of its warehouse workers every seven days. That means the e-commerce powerhouse sifts through its entire supply of warehouse labor every eight months on average. 

Simply put, the strategy isn’t sustainable long term. Still, Wulfraat believes Amazon can weather the storm.

“It will take some time to iron out the wrinkles, but they will get through it,” he told Supply Chain Dive.

Amazon is dealing with some pretty massive wrinkles, so it will need to use an industrial-sized iron. Already, the company is shaking up its workforce with the addition of fully autonomous warehouse robots, the first of six “levers” it said it could pull to get it through a rough stretch, per the leaked memo. Scaling back warehouse production may be the second.

A veteran former D.E. Shaw & Co. fund manager won $52.1 million from his old firm this week after a FINRA arbitration about whether or not he was defamed when he was fired in 2018 for “offensive conduct”.

The amount is one of the largest of its kind in recent memory. 

The manager, Daniel Michalow, originally had sought $600 million from the firm. In addition to the firm, the case also targeted four top executives – all of whom declined to comment on the award, according to a mid-week Bloomberg wrap up of the story. 

A firm spokesperson said of the award: “We were disappointed by the outcome of the arbitration, and we stand by the decision we made in 2018 to terminate Mr. Michalow’s employment with the firm.”

The firm had accused Michalow of “gross violations of our standards and values” back in 2018 and said that complaints about his “abusive and offensive conduct” in turn triggered a company-led investigation. This investigation led to Michalow’s firing.

Michalow wrote to company founder David Shaw afterward, calling himself a “scapegoat with a proverbial hanging in the town square”. He admitted that he “hugged colleagues in parting” and made “inappropriate jokes,” but said he didn’t discriminate, nor did he “go around touching people inappropriately”.

“While I was surely an abrasive boss and perhaps deserved to be fired for my style, there is no basis for the whisper campaign about anything sexual,” he wrote, according to the Bloomberg wrap up. 

The arbitration panel eventually found that he “did not commit sexual misconduct.”

One lawyer who specializes in arbitration said the award was “freaking massive”, and went on to say if “you get $1 million [in arbitration], you’re an outlier for that year.” 

Michalow’s original letter to Shaw can be read here:

This is the letter D. E. Shaw spent all day trying to make sure you couldn’t readhttps://t.co/I7lecZlNTY

— Daniel Michalow (@DanielMichalow) May 7, 2018

 

Russian authorities are saying that a series of strikes rocked one of its cities near the border with Ukraine. Russia is calling it a “deliberate” Ukrainian attack on its territory in the early hours of Sunday morning, which reportedly killed at least four people in the city of Belgorod.

“The regional governor said the blasts hit dozens of residential buildings and air defenses had been activated,” BBC reports. “The Kremlin said that Sunday’s attack had been a deliberate attempt by Ukrainian forces to target civilians.”

However, as BBC also notes, “Ukraine dismissed the claim, saying the Russians had lied about similar incidents in the past.”

Belgorod is near Ukraine’s large northern city of Kharkiv. Lying just 25 miles north across the Ukrainian border, the major city in Russia’s south has 370,000 residents.

It’s not the first time potentially ‘errant’ missiles have struck Russian territory – or also it’s not the first time Russia has accused Ukraine of a deliberate cross-border attack, but the damage and death toll is the most significant and extensive thus far, with a major emergency response at the scenes of impact ongoing.

An Al Jazeera war reporter inside Ukraine said of the alleged incident: “We are trying to piece together exactly what happened through social media reports. Al Jazeera cannot confirm anything that either side is saying at this point.”

This is how the site of the explosion on Mayakovsky Street in Belgorod looks like now pic.twitter.com/RUd2jhKuAG

— Spriteer (@spriteer_774400) July 3, 2022

Correspondent Alan Fisher added: “What appears is that somewhere around 25 missiles were fired towards the airport which is a Russian base in Belgorod. It appears that some of those missiles may have hit a residential area. That’s certainly what the media is saying …”

If this figure of a volley of more than two dozen rockets proves accurate, it would indeed strongly suggest the Russian city was deliberately targeted, and wasn’t merely an incident with a few errant missiles.

Еще видео из Белгород pic.twitter.com/VjvRFBIL8l

— IgorGirkin (@GirkinGirkin) July 3, 2022

Meanwhile, some observers are speculating that Ukraine could possibly have used recently provided US long-range rockets to hit deep within Russia’s borders, which if true would signal massive escalation in the war.

Starting a week ago, Ukraine began touting that its US-suppled M142 HIMARS, a high mobility artillery rocket system with a range of 40-50 miles (the range of the version of the system Washington transferred last month), is having success against Russian forces on the battlefield.

Reports today that Ukraine is using US missile systems to strike *inside* Russia (Belgorod) — which would be exactly the thing that the Biden Administration claimed it received “assurances” that Ukraine would not do if it received the missile systems. Gee, who could’ve predicted

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) July 3, 2022

Al Jazeera’s Fisher framed it as possibly a ‘revenge’ attack by the Ukrainian side, commenting, “This of course comes  on the back of a Russian attack last week which hit a shopping centre and then on Friday we saw 21 people killed in Odesa and the Ukrainians were accusing the Russians of deliberately targeting residential areas.” Additionally Russia just captured all of Luhansk province with the fall of Lysychansk.

Later in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry updated the death toll from three killed to four:

“Russian ant-aircraft defences shot down three Tochka-U cluster missiles launched by Ukrainian nationalists against Belgorod,” Russia’s defense ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, said Sunday. “After the destruction of the Ukrainian missiles, the debris of one of them fell on a house”.

Another two bodies were pulled from the rubble Sunday morning, news outlet Baza reported.  

So far there’s been outside independent media confirmation of the Russian statements. But social media videos are widely circulating that appear to confirm major strikes on the city.

Video of a large explosion in Belgorod last night.https://t.co/33JABmd5U4https://t.co/qeGiGIt4oxhttps://t.co/3VPvqTuoe1 pic.twitter.com/mhIoAghn8u

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) July 3, 2022

Russian media video appears to show Russian anti-air defenses active over the city…

В Белгороде после взрывов в городе из-за срабатывания ПВО трое погибших, четверо пострадавших, частично разрушены 11 многоквартирных домов и не менее 39 частных домов, из них пять полностью — губернатор области Гладков pic.twitter.com/5h835a5HbT

— Рустем Адагамов (@adagamov) July 3, 2022

The local Russian governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, cited extensive damage to the city from the strikes, describing that at least 11 apartment buildings and 39 residential houses have been damaged or destroyed. He also said Russian defensive anti-air systems were triggered amid the attack, but this also remains unconfirmed. 

Russia has lately been ramping up its attacks on locations further West in Ukraine, including on “decision-making centers” – actions which will likely only now increase with this latest Belgorod incident, also as Western powers are being warned not to provide long-range weapons.

Authored by Joe Moffett via BitcoinMagazine.com,

The Democrat and Republican parties have been wielding social movements as weapons in a culture war. Is it time the Libertarian Party wields the Bitcoin hammer in the battle against the Federal Reserve?

In the cypherpunk mailing list, Satoshi Nakamoto had a back-and-forth exchange with an unknown cryptographer:

“You will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography.” — Unknown cryptographer

“Yes, but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.

“Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.” — Satoshi Nakamoto 

Between Nakamoto’s emails, the Bitcoin white paper and the source code, there was probably nothing they said with a more aloof tone than this quote. I have to imagine they understood the economic ramifications that would come with developing such a system and this was likely why they remained anonymous. Then again, maybe they were blissfully unaware that there is no more dangerous enemy to the power of the state than economically free people.

Many early adopters of bitcoin were more likely software and tech gurus than they were economists or libertarians, but this comment by Nakamoto was profoundly libertarian. After all, if the government can wage war on poverty, drugs, crime and terror, why can’t libertarians and Bitcoiners alike wage war on money printing? It’s hard to overstate the phrasing here: “[W]e can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom.”

The Libertarian Party, under new management, recognizes just how important Bitcoin is in this battle. Angela McArdle, chair of the Libertarian National Committee, embraces the importance of bitcoin’s scarcity, self-sovereignty, and censorship resistance. On a phone interview, McArdle shared:

“Inflation is being reported at 8.6%, but if you fill up the gas in your car, you know that it must be higher than that. No one knows the real rate of inflation, but what I do know is you cannot print more bitcoin. You can print dollars perpetually until it’s worthless like Venezuela, but you can’t print more bitcoin.”

Sure, the Libertarian Party is using the language, “Declare your independence from the Fed,” in a metaphorical way, but we can never forget that our country was founded on a very real Declaration of Independence that led to something very tangible.

“We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual.” — The Libertarian Party’s Statement of Principles

Today more than ever, the enforcement tool of the so-called “omnipotent state” and those in power is their monetary policy. The monopolization of fiat currency and the burden of taxes have become weapons of the state to empower Washington and disenfranchise the people. Libertarians and Austrian economists have been sounding the alarms for decades, but as Ron Paul has attributed to George Orwell, “Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”

At a certain point however, the truth comes out.

Jerome Powell: “I think we now understand better how little we understand about inflation.”

Host: “That’s not very reassuring”

Jerome : “This was unpredicted”

Only the “experts” and the media didn’t see this coming.
Just about everyone else did.

Sound ON pic.twitter.com/6Gv35rXPrW

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) June 29, 2022

This inflation was either due to incompetence or deliberate debasing of the U.S. dollar, but Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve Board, admitted that he doesn’t understand basic economics. I would have preferred him to come out and admit he lied.

Our favorite Bitcoiner, Peter “Gold” Schiff, along with every Austrian economist, pointed out how inflation works when the money printer started in March 2020 (when Schiff comes to the same realization as Bitcoiners, we will welcome him with open arms),

As the Fed will create all this money out of thin air the people will pay the cost through inflation. Consumer prices are about to soar, wiping out the savings of millions of Americans, and destroying the purchasing power of wages for millions more.

— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) March 27, 2020

So here we are, July Fourth is coming up and we, the people, are in a quandary. Our leaders lie, our media covers for them, our financial institutions are corrupt and consent of the governed sounds more like a brand slogan than the foundation of our government.

So what options do we have?

Fix the money, fix the world.

Bitcoin is the greatest peaceful revolution the world may ever know. Back to that seemingly innocuous Nakamoto quote, “[W]e can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.” The arms race they must be referring to is power — political and economic — of governments versus economic power in the hands of individuals. Maybe it’s time to turn Rosie the Riveter into Dolores the Diamond Hands.

(Painting/J. Howard Miller)

Libertarians and Bitcoiners are allies in the fight for sound monetary policy. Speaking of a Bitcoiner and Libertarian alliance, McArdle said, “It’s important for us to build a parallel economy, so in the event the dollar collapses completely, or some kind of financial crash, we have something to shift over to laterally. The more people that have Bitcoin and understand it, the better.”

Nakamoto had this revelation when they said, “It’s very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly. I’m better with code than with words though.” Clearly, they weren’t wrong. Nakamoto’s creation spawned a movement without a speech or catchy slogan, just code and believers. Some of us libertarians may have been a bit late to bitcoin, myself included, but the troops are coming. 

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” — King Henry in “Henry V” by William Shakespeare

The Libertarian Party is hosting a livestream event at 2:00PM EST on July 3, 2022. Join the call and declare your independence from the Fed.

Declare your independence from the Fed

Join the Libertarian Chair Angela McArdle and Vice Chair Joshua Smith July 3 at 2:00 PM EST with the Bitcoin experts Saifedean Ammous, Marty Bent, Stephan Livera, Jameson Lopp and Guy Swann.

Think about doing three things in preparation for Independence Day:

1. Watch the livestream and donate some sats (bitcoin) for liberty

2. Stack some sats for yourself

3. Help one friend or family member stack their first sats

I want you… to buy bitcoin.

(Source)

We have previously said that the bear market won’t bottom until all the permabulls – such as JPMorgan’s Marko Kolanovic who has told the bank’s clients to buy stocks starting the first week of the year and then continuing each and every week into this bear market – have thrown in the towel and turned bearish.

Every time JPM says BTFD (which is every other day), stocks puke.

Someone just pay mARKKo to turn bearish

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 9, 2022

Well, we have some good news for the bulls: we are almost at the point where JPM is about to capitulate because on Friday, after refusing to admit for months what has been painfully obvious to all, JPMorgan’s chief US economist, Michael Feroli, cut his US economic growth forecast “perilously close” to recession. That this happens on the day the US unofficially entered a recession when the Atlanta Fed slashed its Q2 GDP estimate to -2.1%..

… indicates that it’s one of those “too little too late” moments from the largest US bank which for the duration of this cycle has been almost as far behind the curve as the Fed itself.

But while JPM’s “epiphany” is laughably late to the point of being farcical, it is important in that it will force Marko – whose opinion is still closely watched by some – to finally turn bearish, just as the Fed is about to confirm its dovish pivot at this year’s Jackson Hole symposium in under two months and send risk soaring.

That said, the Croatian quant is not the only one who capitulation is much needed to trigger buying: one of his Wall Street peers, Goldman flow trader Scott Rubner, has been almost as bullish as Marko for the duration of this bear market. However, as he writes in his latest note, the make or break moment for this market is fast approaching, and if stocks can’t break upward during what is the best two-week period of the year – between July 1 and 15 – then Rubner warns he may finally throw in the bullish towel as well, to wit:

Do we bounce right now?… We are entering the best two week period of the year. That’s when money comes in. If it doesn’t I am worried about the path. We are looking to fade, “the rally” if it comes later in the month.

The rest of Rubner’s note (available to professional subs in the usual place), focuses on the usual flow and liquidity aspect that paint a rather mixed picture. We excerpt from the note, which focuses on the “new month, new quarter, new half” and consists of 20 observations, below:

1. The US 60/40 “World’s Retirement Portfolio” just logged the second worst start to the year since 1900, that is 122 years. (-17%)

2. The worst start to the year in the past 122 years happened during The Great Depression in 1932 (Market bottom July 8th, 1932).

3. US bonds had their worst start to the year on record dating back to 1900.

4. The S&P 500 logged its worst start since 1970 (Richard Nixon was president 52 years ago), and the 4th worth start on record, only 1932, 1962, and 1970 started off worse.

5. Past performance is certainly not indicative of future returns, however in 1970 the S&P closed unchanged and rallied +27% in 2H, 1962 rallied +15%, and 1932 +56% in 2H.

6. The last 4th of July, investors were opening their half-year statements with a +14.41% gain for the S&P, and the 60/40 hasn’t seen a down first half in the past 11 years.

7. My biggest risk for 2H is that investors have not seen their 1H half statements and decide to reduce risk.

8. There have been no unwinds from the largest and most important owner of the market, and I don’t know if that is common knowledge for folks that don’t have Bloomberg IB or watch CNBC.  It is time for a thread.

9. US Households own 38% of the $76 Trillion US Stock Market. US households have more impact on market direction than anyone else.

10. After the second worst start to the 60/40 since 1900, there has been almost NO risk reduction. We show that equity exposure dropped a modest 300bps from 47% percentage points to 44% percentage points.

11. How can this be? The top 1% own 54% of the equity market and the top 10% own 89% of the market. Can equities be an inflation hedge for the largest percentage of incomes, who have the ability to sustain a drawdown within their own investor portfolios? It’s a thought.

12. After all of the hoopla, the work from home trader, who started trading during the Covid 2020 era, is now no longer a market force and I can’t even see this impact on my longer term charts. As always, for the last 20 years, I give you my outperformer (US Corporates) and underperformer (Issuance) in the flow-of-funds world for the first half of the year.  Any slow down in corporate repurchases in 2H after lower guidance?

13. Total US Equity and Equity linked issuance for 1H 22 is $45B, this is the lowest 1H since 1995 ($38B)

14. US corporate authorizations  for 1H 22 were $727B, the best year on record. This exceeds 1H 21 which was $600B, by +20%.

15. The Net impact (Buybacks ex-issuance) of $682B is the best on record and is >$276B larger than the prior impact record in 2019.

16. For comparison purposes following ’08, issuance exceeded buybacks in 2009, and had negative impact.

17. Second place for the largest buyer was “passive equity funds” who have seen >$1.349 Trillion worth of inflows over the past 84 weeks.

18. Second place for the largest seller was “foreigner investors” aka Central bankers who no longer want US “tech” stocks as a key allocation. Does this continue? It was heavy going into the end of 1H.

19. Do we bounce right now? We are here. We are entering the best two week period of the year.

… That’s when money comes in.

… If it doesn’t I am worried about the path. We are looking to fade, “the rally” if it comes later in the month.

20. 1H July is the best period from now until July 17. 2H June was the was worst. We are watching the seasonal, robotic allocation, that happens every quarter. Will keep you posted.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

How much are you willing to sacrifice for “the future of the liberal world order”?  As you will see below, the Biden administration is trying to convince us that supporting the “liberal world order” is far more important than any short-term economic pain that we are experiencing right now.  So are you willing to pay ridiculously high gas prices for the foreseeable future and suffer through a very serious economic downturn in order to put pressure on Vladimir Putin and Russia?  Some Americans would be willing to do that, but most would not.

On Friday, we learned that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction a lot quicker than most of the “experts” had anticipated.  The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model is currently projecting that economic growth for the second quarter of 2022 will be negative 2.1 percent…

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2022 is -2.1 percent on July 1, down from -1.0 percent on June 30. After this morning’s Manufacturing ISM Report On Business from the Institute for Supply Management and the construction report from the US Census Bureau, the nowcasts of second-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real gross private domestic investment growth decreased from 1.7 percent and -13.2 percent, respectively, to 0.8 percent and -15.2 percent, respectively.

U.S. GDP growth was negative during the first quarter, and if U.S. GDP growth is negative again in the second quarter that will mean that we are already in a recession right now.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model should be taken very seriously, because it has a very strong track record of accuracy…

“GDPNow has a strong track record, and the closer we get to July 28th’s release [of the initial Q2 GDP estimate] the more accurate it becomes,” wrote Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research.

If it is confirmed later this month that we are already in a recession, it won’t exactly be a surprise, but the good news is that so far this new economic downturn is not that severe.

Unfortunately, we continue to see more signs that things will soon get much worse.

The pace of layoffs is really starting to accelerate and this is especially true in the tech industry.

At this point, even Facebook is looking to thin the ranks…

In addition to the hiring freeze, Zuckerberg also noted the company was leaving some vacant positions at the company unfilled and “turning up the heat” on performance management to weed out staffers who are unable to meet certain KPIs.

“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said, adding, “Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me.”

Meanwhile, we are seeing Americans cut back on their spending at a frightening pace.

In fact, one recent survey discovered that a whopping 83 percent of all Americans have “slashed personal spending due to soaring prices”…

Provident Bank, based in New Jersey, found that 83% of respondents slashed personal spending due to soaring prices of food and gasoline, with 23% indicating they had to make “drastic changes” to their spending for financial survival. 

According to the survey results of 600 adults, 10.5% of respondents eliminated all non-essential purchases, and nearly 72% said they made at least some changes to personal travel habits.

And Wall Street seems to have finally gotten the message that very hard times are ahead.

The first half of 2022 was the worst first half of a year for the S&P 500 since 1970, and the index has now plunged into bear market territory…

This all came a day after the S&P 500 posted a more than 16% quarterly loss – its biggest one-quarter fall since March 2020. For the first half, the broader market index dropped 20.6% for its largest first-half decline since 1970. It also tumbled into bear market territory, down more than 21% from a record high set early January.

The Biden administration is openly admitting that more economic suffering is on the way, but we are being told that it is necessary.

On Wednesday, CNN interviewed a key economic adviser to Joe Biden named Brian Deese, and what Deese said during that interview is making headlines all over the globe…

CNN anchor Victor Blackwell interviewed Deese on Thursday and cited that Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on Wednesday the war between Russia and Ukraine could be a “grinding struggle” for years.

Blackwell said, “I think everybody understands why this is happening, but is it sustainable? What do you say to those families who say, listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years? This is not sustainable.”

Deese – who was formerly the global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock – replied, “What we heard from the president today was about the stakes. This is about the future of the liberal world order, and we have to stand firm.”

No thank you.

I don’t want anything to do with a “liberal world order”, and I am sure that most of you don’t either.

In the old days they called it a “new world order”, but that phrase now has so many negative connotations to it that they decided to come up with something new.

Will someone please tell them that “liberal world order” is even worse?

These guys really stink at branding.

Why do we even need to have a “world order” in the first place?

Why can’t we just try to get along with everyone instead of trying to force our twisted values on the entire planet?

I really wish that the U.S. and Russia would have just left Ukraine alone and would have allowed them to determine their own fate.

Needless to say, that was never going to happen, and now the U.S. and Russia are engaged in a horrifying proxy war and countless Ukrainians are being sacrificed like pawns on a chessboard.

If both sides continue to escalate this conflict, it could ultimately bring us to the brink of nuclear war.

But at least we will be supporting “the future of the liberal world order”, and isn’t that what is really important?

Many of us have been relentlessly warning about where all of this foolishness will eventually lead us, but most of the population doesn’t want to listen.

Sadly, many will just continue to support “the current thing” no matter what the consequences are.

The first half of 2022 has been full of surprises, but I am expecting global events to accelerate even more during the second half of this year.

So hold on to your hats, because I believe that things are about to start getting really, really crazy out there.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

Fresh of their victory over the key stronghold of Sievierodonetsk, Russian forces have claimed victory over its sister city of Lysychansk, which puts Russia in total control of the Luhansk province. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu affirmed as much in a Sunday statement, while the Ukrainian regional governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said the “city is on fire”. 

“Sergei Shoigu has informed the commander in chief of the Russian armed forces, Vladimir Putin, of the liberation of the People’s Republic of Luhansk [LPR],” the defense ministry said in a statement.

Russia’s military and its separatist allies are now “full control of Lysychansk and other nearby towns, notably Belogorovka, Novodruzhesk, Maloryazantseve and Bila Hora,” the statement added.

As for the aforementioned regional governor Haidai, he wrote on Telegram that “the Russians are reinforcing their positions in the Lysychansk region.”

“The Russians are entrenched in the Lysychansk district, the city is on fire. The occupiers probably deployed all their forces at Lysychansk. They attacked the city with inexplicably brutal tactics,” Haidai said.

As Luhansk and its breakaway pro-Russian republic is one of the two key regions that form Donbas, this puts Moscow a major step closer to achieving its stated goal of liberating all of the Donbas.

A representative of the LPR militia, Andrei Marochko, said the city was being “cleared of Ukrainian nationalists” and said “victory flags have already been installed” near Lysychansk, as cited in CNN. Some reports have said that local pro-Russian citizens have erected a Soviet flag at a central city monument.

According to a battlefield update issued by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Saturday night:

…the cities of the Luhansk region were “the epicenter” of the hostilities. In his nightly address on Saturday, Zelensky acknowledged that more than 2,600 Ukrainian cities and towns were under Russian control.

“The Russian army continued to fire missiles at our cities,” Zelensky said, urging people to “help the army, help volunteers, help everyone who was left alone at this time” and to use their contacts to “spread the truth about the war and about the crimes of the occupiers on our land.”

A Ukrainian soldier launching a Javelin ATGM from the back of a pick up truck. https://t.co/qvHg6LU1Li pic.twitter.com/gj9P03zLFJ

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) July 2, 2022

An Al Jazeera war correspondent observed of Lysychansk’s capture by Russian forces, “That is strategically significant because that is where the Russians moved their military attention to after they failed to move into Kyiv in the early days of the war when they were beaten back from the capital.”

Last week, in virtual speeches before the G7 and NATO summits, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used the imminent fall of these eastern cities to highlight that his forces are in urgent need of more and heavier weaponry. He even suggested Putin could eventually go on to attack NATO “next year”.

He said that before next year’s NATO annual summit, it could be that “several other states, possible members of the alliance, come under fire from Russia” and expressed hope he will attend the meeting in-person by then.

Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams,

In a last-ditch effort to avoid extradition to the United States, lawyers for jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday appealed to the United Kingdom’s High Court to block the transfer. Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told Reuters that the Australian publisher’s legal team appealed his extradition, which was formally approved by U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel last month.

“We also urge the Australian government to intervene immediately in the case to end this nightmare,” Shipton said.

Supporters of Assange held protests ahead of his 51st birthday on Saturday, including one in an open-top double-decker London tour bus that passed by British government buildings in Westminster on Friday. One of the demonstrators, 79-year-old Gloria Wildman, told Agence France-Presse that Assange has “been in prison for telling the truth.”

“If Julian Assange is not free, neither are we; none of us is free,” she added. Myriad human rights, journalistic, and other groups have condemned Assange’s impending extradition and the U.S. government’s targeting of a journalist who exposed American war crimes. In a Thursday statement, the Australian Journalists Union said that “the charges against Assange are an affront to journalists everywhere and a threat to press freedom.”

Assange—who suffers from physical and mental health problems including heart and respiratory issues—faces U.S. charges including Espionage Act violations for which he faces up to 175 years behind bars if fully convicted.

Among the classified materials published by WikiLeaks—many provided by whistleblower Chelsea Manning—are the infamous “Collateral Murder” video showing a U.S. Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians, the Afghan War Diary, and the Iraq War Logs,  which revealed American and allied war crimes.

According to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Assange has been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom since he was arrested on December 7, 2010. Since then he has been held under house arrest, confined for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London while he was protected by the administration of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, and jailed in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison.

Advocates contested Patel’s assurance that the extradition would not be “incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression.” In a video published by WikiLeaks on Friday, Conservative British parliamentarian David Davis said that “the simple truth is, Assange won’t get what we think of as a fair trial in the U.S.”

New: Conservative MP David Davis on the inbalanced UK-US extradition treaty: “Julian Assange won’t get what we think of as a fair trial in the US” @DavidDavisMP pic.twitter.com/uno3s25Csj

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 1, 2022

“And in addition to that, there’s a wider issue of imbalance in the U.K.-U.S. extradition treaty,” he asserted. “When America requests an extradition from Britain, they have to have reasonable suspicion and the home secretary must process the request.”

“When Britain requests an extradition to America, we have to demonstrate probable cause, and the American secretary of state may process our request, he’s not forced to process that request,” Davis noted. “The effect of this shows up in the statistics: Many, many more people are sent to America than are sent to Britain to face criminal trial.”

The MP added that extradited Britons “face an alien justice system” in which “they’re frog-marched in chains, they’re jailed with hardened criminals, they’re denied access to legal papers, they face really coercive plea-bargain systems which essentially say either plead guilty or face a huge length of time in prison.”

“That sort of thing,” Davis said, “does not give the sort of justice system that we’re used to in the United Kingdom.”

A record 42 million Americans are expected to hit the highways this Independence Day weekend. A new report warned roads across the country will be the most dangerous in years. 

The National Safety Council (NSC), a 501 nonprofit that promotes health and safety, estimated that 462 people might lose their lives on roadways this holiday weekend in preventable crashes. 

“On a typical day, more than 100 people die on our roads, and that number is climbing,” Mark Chung, executive vice president of roadway practice at NSC, said in a statement. 

In a separate report, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration expects roads will be the most dangerous in 16 years. Independence Day weekend appears to be the riskiest time to drive of the year. 

NSC didn’t explain why the Fourth of July holiday celebrating the Declaration of Independence, ratified on July 4, 1776, is the most dangerous period of the year to drive, beating out New Year’s Eve.

Independence Day is associated with fireworks, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, parties, and vacations. However, if we must opine, what else is there to do on a federal holiday when everything is closed? … drink, of course. 

Law enforcement agencies are boosting patrols starting tonight and will through Monday night. Their biggest concern is drunk drivers. This also means authorities will operate overnight sobriety checkpoints throughout the weekend, a move to curb drinking and driving.

The average cost of a DUI is upwards of $20,000 – and that doesn’t include property damage or anyone harmed. It’s cheaper to Uber or Lyft this holiday weekend than risk a DUI.