Eric Zuesse 

Because of Joe Biden’s career-long consistent neoconservatism — he never met a U.S. invasion or coup that he didn’t didn’t like and didn’t assist to happen — he is losing all three of America’s current wars, and each one of them (each of which he inherited from the prior Administrations, because at least since 1980 all U.S. Presidents have been neocons) is a proxy-war by a U.S. client-state or “colony” against an enemy that the U.S. Government has long wanted to “regime-change” (i.e., to take control over):

ISRAEL’S WAR AGAINST PALESTINIANS

Oddly, the neoconservative candidate who pretends not to be, which is RFK Jr., actually gave the most coherent neocon defense of the U.S.’s basic policy regarding America’s 51st state — the undeclared U.S. state in the Middle East, which is Israel:

“Israel is critical, and the reason it’s critical is that it’s the bulwark for us in the mid-east; it’s almost like an aircraft carrier in the mid-east, Israel is our ambassador, it’s our presence, it’s our beachhead in the mid-east; it gives us ears, eyes in the mid-east, it gives us intelligence; it gives us the capacity to take influence in affairs in the mid-east. If Israel disappeared, Russia and China would be controlling and they’d control 90% of the world’s oil supply, and that would be cataclysmic to national security.”

The basic neocon position is that the top strategic objective of U.S. foreign polices isn’t to protect the American people, but instead to retain America’s position as being the world’s most powerful country, #1 in the global pecking-order, especially militarily, so that in any international disagreement, America’s billionaires — the individuals whom America’s Government serves and is controlled by — will have their way regardless of what international law says, and will stand above prosecution, never under prosecution, but instead under the U.S.-imposed “international rules-based order,” which must come to replace any international-law based order (from the U.N.). Irrespective of the truthfulness of RFK Jr.’s statement in that video-clip (and I think it is loaded with lies), the part of it that asserts “If Israel disappeared, Russia and China would be controlling and they’d control 90% of the world’s oil supply, and that would be cataclysmic to national security,” is wildly neocon and false; and here is why:

That 90% figure is exceedingly unlikely, not only because even under the highest estimates of the percentage of global oil (and gas) that Israel might control or even be able to affect, Israel can’t affect more than about 3% — nowhere near 90%. But furthermore: if Israel’s goal of ethnically cleansing all Gazans out of Gaza will succeed, then not ONLY Israel, but ALSO the United States (which provides Israel the weapons and the backup threats against Iran, etc.) will be so much hated in all Muslim-majority countries, so that no Arab potentate will any longer side publicly with the U.S. That international isolation of the U.S. would be vastly more of a danger to U.S. national security than any other outcome in this war (such as America abandoning Israel, and Israel failing to ethnically cleanse Gaza) could even possibly be.

Moreover: all neocons are rabid for regime-change in both Russia and China — and by that measure, RFK Jr.’s statement there (which falsely argues that continued success of China and of Russia would inevitably turn out to be “cataclysmic” — that international relations can’t possibly be win-win for all of mankind) likewise was archetypally neoconservative).

[…]

Joe Biden never speaks so well as RFK Jr. does; but, if ever he were to give a coherent statement of his policies regarding Israel, then this statement from RFK Jr. is as close as I can imagine it being. And, obviously, if Israel will succeed in annihilating or forcing out all Gazans (which is Israel’s policy), then America’s standing in the world will never recover from that.

[…]

And America’s siding now with Israel’s genocide against Gazans will mean that America is going to lose the war in the Middle East, because Israel will lose that war even if its genocide succeeds.

UKRAINE’S WAR AGAINST RUSSIA

Ukraine was neutral between Russia and America until Obama’s brilliantly executed Ukrainian coup, which his Administration started planning by no later than June 2011, culminated successfully in February 2014 and promptly appointed a rabid anti-Russian to impose in regions that rejected the new anti-Russian U.S.-controlled goverment an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” to kill protesters, and, ultimately, to terrorize the residents in those regions in order to kill as many of them as possible and to force the others to flee into Russia so that when elections would be held, pro-Russian voters would no longer be in the electorate.

The war in Ukriane started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said; but Russia responded militarily on 24 February 2022 in order to prevent Ukraine from allowing the U.S. to place a missile there a mere 317 miles or five minutes of missile-flying-time away from The Kremlin and thus too brief for Russia to respond before its central command would already be beheaded by America’s nuclear strike.

However, even after at least $360 billion in support to Ukraine’s war against Russia after Russia’s invasion, from the U.S. and its colonies and their IMF, Ukraiine’s prospects of winning against Russia have been declining not increasing throughout the course of the war and are now close to nil.

AMERICA’S WAR AGAINST CHINA

Whereas in 2015, America was, by a margin of 0.29%, larger an economy than China was, China now is, by a margin of 3.4%, a larger economy than America is; and China’s economic dominance on the basis of economic size is increasing every year because each and every year, China grows its economy by a bigger and bigger percentage than America’s does, as a consequence of which, China is leaving the U.S. farther and farther behind each and every year.

Furthermore, whereas in 1980, the EU, which America’s CIA had created, was 4.54% larger an economy than the U.S. itself was, the EU’s economy in 2015 was 1.07% smaller than #1 America’s was, and 0.78% smaller than #2 China’s was: the EU was #3.

Whereas the U.S. was 21.32% of the world’s economy in 1980, it became 15.42% in 2023 — a 28% decline: clearly a declining economic power. So: by the time of 2015, the U.S. decided for war against China, but also against Europe — despite Europe’s declining faster than the U.S. did. That’s the reason why the U.S. Government, which is controlled by America’s thousand-or-so billionaires, sharply ratcheted-up their anti-China propaganda at that time. And it’s also the reason why America’s sanctions against Russia harmed also America’s European ‘allies’: America’s billionaires aim to be #1 again.

[…]

Via https://theduran.com/bidens-america-is-now-losing-three-wars-simultaneously/

Days before the arrests, “two Palestinian paramedics had been arrested by the Israeli occupation forces”, said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from southern Gaza on Thursday.

“This gives a clear sign that there is no immunity inside the Gaza Strip, neither for medical workers, civil defence crews or even journalists, as the attacks have reached all classes in the Palestinian community.”

Al-Shifa Hospital has been a major focus of Israel’s ground offensive in northern Gaza. The army ordered an evacuation of the facility on Saturday, but the handful of staff remaining there say there are about 180 patients still inside.

The Israeli army, which raided the hospital last week, allege that Hamas fighters used a tunnel complex beneath the facility in Gaza City to stage attacks. Hamas and hospital officials have repeatedly denied the claims.

Indonesian Hospital

Meanwhile on Thursday, Munir al-Bursh, the director-general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the Israeli army gave people in the Indonesian Hospital just hours to evacuate the facility in northern Gaza.

He said there are about 200 patients left at the hospital after some 450 patients were evacuated yesterday, and he told Al Jazeera that bombing continues from all sides in the vicinity.

“This hospital is considered to be the main central hospital that is still operating in the north of the Gaza Strip, alongside another two central hospitals,” Al Jazeera’s Abu Azzoum said, adding that there are patients, medical workers and displaced people inside.

“Both hospitals [al-Shifa and the Indonesian hospital] are witnessing a very serious and even critical condition as the Israeli troops are still encircling and even exerting significant control,” our correspondent said.

On Wednesday, the UN’s humanitarian office said the Israeli army “obstructed” a convoy of ambulances transporting 190 wounded and sick patients from al-Shifa Hospital to the south, resulting in the journey taking almost 20 hours.

The lengthy delay at the Israeli military checkpoint dividing north and south Gaza put “the lives of the wounded and sick people in danger”, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

The medical service has earlier said that 14 of its ambulances, two UN buses and other vehicles were involved in the evacuation of the patients, as well as “a number of medical teams” from al-Shifa Hospital.

The PRCS said three paramedics and a companion of one of the wounded patients were detained for more than three hours in the cold, while the patients were transferred to hospitals in the south.

[…]

Via https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/al-shifa-hospital-director-arrested-by-israeli-army-in-gaza

Etruscan goddess Vamp (origin of English words vamp and vampire)

Episode 5 The Etruscan Afterlife

The Mysterious Etruscans

Dr Steven L Tuck (2016)

Film Review

Most details about Etruscan civilization come from the writings of Roman historians, including Cicero and the emperor Claudius.

Like the Sumerians (as portrayed in the epic of Gigamesh), the Etruscans believed the deceased voyaged across the sea to an island paradise. In early civilization, it was fairly typical for the deceased to cross rivers to reach Paradise. In the Bible, four rivers surround the Garden of Eden. Five rivers, including the River Styx, border the Greek afterlife.

Etruscans traveled to their afterlife on the back of a hippocampus, aea monster with a horse’s head and neck and a fish’s body. They were guided by an winged Etruscan deity known as Vamp (origin of the English words vamp and vampire).

The Etruscans’ afterlife featured, dancing, music, athletic games, feasting, flowers that bloomed year-round and weather that was never rainy or cold. There were no buildings, crops, roads, government, religion or crafts in the Etruscan afterlife.

The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who founded a famous school in the Greek colony of Cronton in southern Italy, described the Etruscan afterlife as a place of “ideal peace and harmony.” According to Tuck, as the Etruscans adopted aspects of the Greek underworld, it lost if color and was filled with mists.

Hate (Hades) and Persepne (Persephone), the Greek king and queen of Hades, appear in Etruscan mythology after the fourth century. Likewise serpents and demons appear in afterlife depictions in Etruscan tombs. This seems to reflect an increased atmosphere of chaos and pessimism stemming from continual military attacks from Greece and Rome.*

After the fourth century BC, Keru waits at the entrance to the afterlife, along with Vamp. He and various monsters and demons holding snakes try to block admittance to people who don’t belong there.**

In some depictions, the Etruscan Scylla (an attractive woman with a dolphin tail with vicious dogs sprouting from her waist) also guards the afterlife entrance.

*Etruria’s military downfall began in 474 BC, when they allied with Athens to declare war on Syracuse. This led to reprisal attacks on numerous Etruscan cities. In 350 BC they also lost a battle against the Celts in Italy’s northern Po Valley.

**This may stem from Hades’ kidnapping (in Greek mythology) of Persephone and dragging her to the underworld before her time.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/239710/239619

By Jeffrey Tucker

An enduring mystery for three years is how Donald Trump came to be the president who shut down American society for what turned out to be a manageable respiratory virus, setting off an unspeakable crisis with waves of destructive fallout that continue to this day.

Let’s review the timeline and offer some well-founded speculations about what happened.

On March 9, 2020, Trump was still of the opinion that the virus could be handled by normal means.

Two days later, he changed his tune. He was ready to use the full power of the federal government in a war on the virus.

What changed? Deborah Birx reports in her book that Trump had a friend die in a New York hospital and this is what shifted his opinion. Jared Kushner reports that he simply listened to reason. Mike Pence says he was persuaded that his staff would respect him more. No question (and based on all existing reports) that he found himself surrounded by “trusted advisors” amounting to about 5 or so people (including Mike Pence and Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb)

It was only a week later when Trump issued the edict to close all “indoor and outdoor venues where people congregate,” initiating the biggest regime change in US history that flew in the face of all rights and liberties Americans had previously taken for granted. It was the ultimate in political triangulation: as John F. Kennedy cut taxes, Nixon opened China, and Clinton reformed welfare, Trump shut down the economy he promised to revive. This action confounded critics on all sides.

A month later, Trump said his decision to have “turned off” the economy saved millions of lives, later even claiming to have saved billions. He has yet to admit error.

Even as late as June 23rd of that year, Trump was demanding credit for having followed all of Fauci’s recommendations. Why do they love him and hate me, he wanted to know.

Something about this story has never really added up. How could one person have been so persuaded by a handful of others such as Fauci, Birx, Pence, and Kushner and his friends? He surely had other sources of information – some other scenario or intelligence – that fed into his disastrous decision.

In one version of events, his advisors simply pointed to the supposed success of Xi Jinping in enacting lockdowns in Wuhan, which the World Health Organization claimed had stopped infections and brought the virus under control. Perhaps his advisors flattered Trump with the observation that he is at least as great as the president of China so he should be bold and enact the same policies here.

One problem with this scenario is timing. The Oval Office meetings that preceded his March 16, 2020, edict took place the weekend of the 14th and 15th, Friday and Saturday. It was already clear by the 11th that Trump was ready for lockdowns. This was the same day as Fauci’s deliberately misleading testimony to the House Oversight Committee in which he rattled the room with predictions of Hollywood-style carnage.

On the 12th, Trump shut all travel from Europe, the UK, and Australia, causing huge human pile-ups at international airports. On the 13th, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a classified document that transferred control of pandemic policy from the CDC to the National Security Council and eventually the Department of Homeland Security. By the time that Trump met with Fauci and Birx in that legendary weekend, the country was already under quasi-martial law.

Isolating the date in the trajectory here, it is apparent that whatever happened to change Trump occurred on March 10, 2020, the day after his Tweet saying there should be no shutdowns and one day before Fauci’s testimony.

That something very likely revolves around the most substantial discovery we’ve made in three years of investigations. It was Debbie Lerman who first cracked the code: Covid policy was forged not by the public-health bureaucracies but by the national-security sector of the administrative state. She has further explained that this occurred because of two critical features of the response: 1) the belief that this virus came from a lab leak, and 2) the vaccine was the biosecurity countermeasure pushed by the same people as the fix. 

Knowing this, we gain greater insight into 1) why Trump changed his mind, 2) why he has never explained this momentous decision and otherwise completely avoids the topic, and 3) why it has been so unbearably difficult to find out any information about these mysterious few days other than the pablum served up in books designed to earn royalties for authors like Birx, Pence, and Kushner.

Based on a number of second-hand reports, all available clues we have assembled, and the context of the times, the following scenario seems most likely. On March 10, and in response to Trump’s dismissive tweet the day before, some trusted sources within and around the National Security Council (Matthew Pottinger and Michael Callahan, for example), and probably involving some from military command and others, came to Trump to let him know a highly classified secret.

Imagine a scene from Get Smart with the Cone of Silence, for example. These are the events in the life of statecraft that infuse powerful people with a sense of their personal awesomeness. The fate of all of society rests on their shoulders and the decisions they make at this point. Of course they are sworn to intense secrecy following the great reveal.

The revelation was that the virus was not a textbook virus but something far more threatening and terrible. It came from a research lab in Wuhan. It might in fact be a bioweapon. This is why Xi had to do extreme things to protect his people. The US should do the same, they said, and there is a fix available too and it is being carefully guarded by the military.

It seems that the virus had already been mapped in order to make a vaccine to protect the population. Thanks to 20 years of research on mRNA platforms, they told him,  this vaccine can be rolled out in months, not years. That means that Trump can lock down and distribute vaccines to save everyone from the China virus, all in time for the election. Doing this would not only assure his reelection but guarantee that he would go down in history as one of the greatest US presidents of all time.

This meeting might only have lasted an hour or two – and might have included a parade of people with the highest-level security clearances – but it was enough to convince Trump. After all, he had battled China for two previous years, imposing tariffs and making all sorts of threats. It was easy to believe at that point that China might have initiated biological warfare as retaliation. That’s why he made the decision to use all the power of the presidency to push a lockdown under emergency rule.

To be sure, the Constitution does not allow him to override the discretion of the states but with the weight of the office complete with enough funding and persuasion, he could make it happen. And thus did he make the fateful decision that not only wrecked his presidency but the country too, imposing harms that will last a generation.

It only took a few weeks for Trump to become suspicious about what happened. For weeks and months, he toggled between believing that he was tricked and believing that he did the right thing. He had already approved another 30 days of lockdowns and even inveighed against Georgia and later Florida for opening. He went so far as to claim that no state could open without his approval.

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/how-they-convinced-trump-to-lock-down/

Robert Webster (left) and Lee Harvey Oswald (right)

Kit Klarenberg

Few things unite Americans like the certainty that John F. Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. This November 22, on the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, polls show the overwhelming majority of US citizens do not believe accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted without accomplices. Many contend the Communist “lone nut” shooter was in fact merely an innocent “patsy”, as he himself proclaimed not long before being snuffed out by mafioso Jack Ruby.

That such skepticism overflowed in the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, and has endured ever since, is highly unusual. Almost without exception, mainstream politicians, pundits, and journalists have enforced the official narrative of a single bullet taking Kennedy down. Along the way, Western audiences have been deluged with articles, books, “documentaries” and more reinforcing the findings of the Warren Commission, a politicized whitewash set up by Kennedy’s successor Lyndon B. Johnson, specifically to convict Oswald, and Oswald alone.

This is despite the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluding Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” The CIA aggressively stonewalled that probe, and has since engaged in extensive information warfare efforts to publicly defend the Commission and its conclusions, while discrediting what it calls “conspiracy theories.”

In 1967, the Agency circulated an internal brief calling upon its operatives “[to] discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors [and] employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics… Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

The CIA’s concerns were well-founded, and remain so. The Warren Commission and HSCA each unearthed enormous amounts of primary source material and eyewitnesses pointing away from Oswald’s guilt, and towards the Agency and its assets. Both struggled to provide any satisfactory resolution to the innumerable discrepancies, anomalies, oddities and suspicions its own investigators uncovered, which have perplexed and bedeviled independent researchers ever since. Chief among them, incontrovertible indications Oswald was being impersonated at numerous junctures prior to Kennedy’s assassination.

Strikingly too, Oswald “doubles” were often found in close quarters with US intelligence operatives, and assets. The existence of these impersonators is evidenced by ample documentation. In its totality, the paper trail documenting Oswald’s doppelgangers may provide the best proof of a JFK assassination plot orchestrated by elements of the CIA.

A tale of two defectors

Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959. Just weeks earlier, he had received a dependency discharge from active service in the Marines after three years, as his mother needed care. Despite espousing pro-communist sentiments and employing Russian phraseology so frequently his fellow soldiers nicknamed him “Oswaldskovich,” he was given clearance to operate at a secretive US naval base in Atsugi, Japan, a launching pad for U-2 spy flights over Moscow, and a hub for CIA psychedelic drug research, among other sensitive postings.

Oswald arrived in Moscow on October 16. His tourist visa, which was granted in Helsinki, Finland while en route, was set to expire five days later. But the US Marine had other ideas. He immediately applied for Soviet citizenship, and by his own account began telling any local official who would listen about his love for the “Grand Soviet Union.” The application was rejected on the day his visa expired, prompting him to slash his left wrist, which necessitated a hospital trip.

While recuperating, Oswald was allowed to remain in the country, and on October 31st, he marched into the US embassy in Moscow. There, he declared his intention to not only renounce his citizenship, but to also supply the Soviets with information “of special interest” acquired at Atsugi. As the building was extensively bugged and surveilled, his incendiary promise was inevitably heard loud and clear by the KGB.

Oswald’s defection also caught the attention of US and international media. A contemporary Associated Press report noted he was one of several Americans to apply for citizenship after arriving in Moscow “in recent months.” Another, AP noted, was Robert Webster. Unmentioned was that like Oswald, he was a US military veteran. He had renounced his US citizenship on October 17, a day after Oswald’s arrival.

After leaving the army, Webster worked for the Pentagon-funded RAND Corporation, and repeatedly traveled to Moscow to represent the organization at a Moscow trade exhibition. He later secured his Soviet citizenship by sharing secret RAND technology with Moscow. Along the way, he became romantically involved with a local waitress. He also met Marina Prusakova, the daughter of a KGB colonel, and Oswald’s future wife.

Officially, the Soviet Union’s population at this time was almost 209 million, meaning Marina crossing paths with both US defectors within weeks of each other was highly unlikely. The remarkable twist of fate ostensibly resulted from Marina being moved by authorities to Minsk, due to dating foreign visitors to Moscow. Oswald was then posted there by authorities to work in a radio and TV manufacturing plant and was under constant surveillance after his citizenship application was finally approved.

Even more peculiar was that Oswald and Webster were quite so similar in appearance, Marina and officials at the US embassy apparently mistook the former for the latter. Coincidentally too, they left the Soviet Union for the US within a month of each other – Webster in May 1962, and Oswald in June 1962 with Marina in tow. Their treatment upon arrival back home differed wildly.

As historian Chad Nagle and other analysts have noted, Webster was greeted at Greater Pittsburgh Airport by a 200-strong crowd of journalists, FBI officers, and State Department officials. The CIA then debriefed him in Washington over the course of two weeks, with 15 personnel representing several separate departments in attendance. This reflects his significant intelligence value – the Agency felt Webster could “provide a great deal” of invaluable “OI [Operational Interest] and realities data.”

By contrast, Oswald made his way back without any fanfare. Unable to fund the voyage himself, he approached the US embassy, suggesting he and Marina “could catch a military hop back to the States, from Berlin,” a strange belief for an individual who’d renounced his US citizenship and promised to share state secrets with an enemy power. As it was, he received a resettlement loan from the State Department and was not subject to a CIA debriefing upon arrival. Oddly, his return generated absolutely no press interest.

The CIA’s infamous counterintelligence agent James Jesus Angleton opened “201 files” on both Oswald and Webster following their defections. This designation applied to potential subjects of counterintelligence interest – individuals who represented potential security risks, or assets for recruitment. Webster’s was closed after his CIA debrief. Oswald’s remained open on November 22, 1963. Spanning eight volumes, and over 50,000 pages in length, it is among many JFK assassination-related papers the White House refuses to release in full to this day.

Researcher Gary Hill concluded in his 2020 book, The Other Oswald: A Wilderness of Mirrors:

“When [Oswald] the self-professed turncoat returned to the US no one was interested. No media, no debriefing, nothing…It seems clear to me US Intelligence was finished with Webster and Oswald was still working for them.”

Imposters, or doppelgangers, or both?

Complicating matters even further were the numerous instances of a Lee Harvey Oswald – or Lee Oswald, or Harvey Oswald – cropping up in the US while Oswald toiled in Minsk. In June 1960, longtime FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover issued concerns to the State Department (see below) that “there is a possibility that an imposter” was using Oswald’s birth certificate for nefarious purposes, and requesting any relevant information be forwarded to the Bureau.

In March 1961, a representative of the State Department’s passport division referenced this memo in a note to fellow staffers, asking if the FBI was “receiving information about Harvey [emphasis added] on a continuing basis” from their office. They enclosed a Bureau memo from February that year, the nature of which document has never been ascertained. In response, one of the recipients echoed Hoover’s concern about Oswald’s birth certificate being abused by an imposter.

[…]

Via https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/22/jfk-assassination-oswald-doubles-cia-plot/

Dr Eddy Betterman

Did you know that electricity prices in Germany are triple the cost of electricity here in the United States, all due to Germany’s “green” energy policies?

In recent years, Germany has been phasing out coal and nuclear energy in a way that has been described in German media as “not well coordinated with the European Union.” As a result, Germans are paying sky-high prices for energy that are completely unsustainable if the Germany economy is to stay afloat.

There are generally three main goals with effective energy policy: low prices, security of supply, and environmental protection with regard to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions – the latter one is debatable, of course. Germany’s energy policy fails in all three categories.

Combined with the economic fallout of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “pandemic,” Germany’s aggressively green energy agenda is wrecking the nation’s economy as various industries are forced to either pack up and leave or simply shut down.

Bayer, a massive German pharmaceutical giant, recently announced “massive job cuts” stemming from the economic problems that continue to plague the country. The company cited lacking business performance as the impetus.

Then there is Eisenwerk Hasenclever & Sohn, a 250-year-old German iron foundry that recently filed for insolvency. Eisenwerk Hasenclever & Sohn has long supplied well-known car manufacturers such as Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ford, and Porsche with parts, however it is no longer able to survive in the failing German economy.

“We can only speculate what happens next at this iron foundry. Will it be sold off in pieces and scattered abroad – leaving the region a rust belt?” asks Watts Up With That.

(Related: Earlier this year after Germany shut down its last three nuclear power plants, there was such a deficit of electricity throughout the county that Germany started buying nuclear power from nearby France.)

German machine builder Homag lays off 600 workers

Another German company that is shedding many of its employees is machine builder Homag, which announced the layoff of 600 workers worldwide, including around 35 at its Schopfloch, Baden-Württemberg-based headquarters.

According to reports, declining demand for its products is the reason why Homag is shedding workers. The goal is to save around 25 million euros next year, and around 50 million euros annually in 2025 and beyond.

“Despite the demand for woodworking machines in many branches of industry, the company expects the coming year to be challenging due to unexpectedly weak order figures,” reports explain.

While this story focuses on Germany, Europe’s largest economy is a bellwether of sorts for the rest of the world. As of late, we have been reporting on many U.S.-based companies that are laying off workers as well, and for many of the same reasons.

The global, Western-led economy would seem to be in its final death throes. We have yet to completely fall over the cliff, but such a fate is quickly coming into view as inflation soars across all sectors and new wars brew on multiple fronts, including in Ukraine and the Middle East.

“There are no optimistic economic signals in sight. Energy prices, inflation and catastrophic economic policies are rapidly sinking the German economic battleship and prosperity,” contends Watts Up With That.

One of the few companies that seems to be doing things right is Toyota, which resisted the electric vehicle (EV) hype and carefully treaded into even the hybrid market with caution. As a result, the car company reported record-breaking profit, in large part due to the sale of hybrids, which it now sells more of than any other automaker out there.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2023/11/23/german-economy-collapsing-energy-soaring-industries-implode/