Tuesday, June 17, 2025

THE WAR THAT NEVER ENDS: Martin Armstrong, Cycles of Conflict, and the Profit of Perpetual Crisis. Explore Martin Armstrong’s insights on perpetual war, global instability, and why markets and geopolitics follow the same human-driven cycles.

Gold to hit $5000 and silver to rise to $50 is forecast by the maverick maven Martin Armstrong. 

     

In a world teetering on the brink of regional upheaval, with wars in Eastern Europe, tensions in the Middle East, and global markets roiling with uncertainty, many wonder if we are approaching another World War. Economist and forecaster Martin Armstrong offers a sobering yet clarifying framework for understanding this global disarray—not through ideology or emotion, but through the predictable cycles of human nature. His message: war is not the exception; it's the pattern.

Armstrong’s controversial but compelling worldview rests on seven interwoven themes, each grounded in data, history, and lived experience. From financial crashes to geopolitical gambits, his forecast is less about the apocalypse and more about the pendulum swing of civilizations—repeating, reverberating, and rarely learning.

Markets and Mobs: The Pendulum of Panic

Armstrong argues that markets behave like pendulums, not engines of reason. Investors swing wildly from euphoria to despair, driven by sentiment, not fundamentals. Crashes occur not because of shadowy saboteurs, but because everyone rushes to the same side of the boat, and when it tips, there’s no bid left to catch the fall.

This same pendulum logic applies to geopolitics. Nations don’t stumble into war because of singular events, but because pressure builds, alliances entangle, and irrational overconfidence overtakes cooler judgment—until something snaps.

Cycles Repeat Because Human Nature Doesn't Change

Armstrong’s AI system, Socrates, catalogs patterns in human behavior across centuries and continents. It recognizes that despite technological advancement, the core impulses—greed, fear, pride, revenge—remain constant. Whether it’s the 1929 crash, the 1987 Black Monday, or the 2008 meltdown, the underlying behavioral script is the same.

Applied to foreign policy, this explains why Russia has been targeted repeatedly across history—by Sweden, Napoleon, Hitler, and now NATO expansionists. The motive? Power and resources. The method? Manufactured fear. The result? Predictable escalation.

War Is Business by Other Means

Armstrong’s most scathing critique is reserved for neoconservatives and globalist actors who, in his view, keep the world in perpetual conflict not to win, but to profit. He argues that wars like Ukraine and Iraq were never about freedom or democracy, but about regime change, defense contracts, and natural resources.

He recounts the scuttled peace deal in Ukraine—allegedly shut down by Boris Johnson on behalf of Western interests—as proof that peace is bad for business. War keeps the machinery turning. Lives lost are collateral damage in the pursuit of economic dominance.

The Myth of Inflation: Gold Rises with Geopolitical Risk

Contrary to popular belief, Armstrong says precious metals like gold and silver don’t rise with inflation, but with geopolitical instability. In other words, when trust in governments evaporates, people hedge with tangible assets—not because bread is more expensive, but because civilization is more fragile.

Thus, his forecast for gold at $5,000 and silver at $50 isn’t rooted in CPI indexes, but in the likelihood of military escalation, civil unrest, and the collapse of monetary credibility in Western governments.

Civilizations Collapse from Within

Armstrong highlights how Europe, not just the battlefield of war, but the womb of its causes, is heading toward internal collapse. He blames mass migration, cultural fragmentation, and economic stagnation for a growing tide of unrest. Cities are powder kegs, not due to poverty, but because of irreconcilable worldviews, religious tensions, and leadership failure.

As with Rome, revolutions often start with bread and end with ideology. His concern is not just for the borders of Europe, but for its cities and streets, which may become battlegrounds of a new kind—civil wars within once-stable societies.

The "Contagion Effect": War Is Never Contained

From Ukraine to the South China Sea, from Israel to Iran, Armstrong insists conflict is not compartmentalized. Like a virus, it spreads—militarily, economically, and psychologically. The Balkan powder keg of 1914 needed only an archduke’s assassination to ignite a world war. Today’s tripwires are more numerous, more complex, and far more explosive.

He observes that historical rivalries—Greece vs. Turkey, India vs. Pakistan, China vs. Taiwan—are all flaring simultaneously. These are not isolated quarrels; they are symptoms of a deeper global dislocation, like tectonic plates grinding toward a mega-quake.

False Flags and Manufactured Consent

Armstrong doesn’t shy away from pointing to the historical use of false flags to justify wars—from Operation Northwoods to Pearl Harbor, from WMDs in Iraq to recent whisperings about Ukrainian plots involving Soviet torpedoes. His claim is not that every war is a conspiracy, but that leaders frequently exploit fear and deception to gain public support for aggression.

He argues that "truth" is often a narrative weapon, not a fixed reality. And those who control the narrative—mainstream media, intelligence agencies, and aligned corporations—can make war palatable, even virtuous.

Final Reflection: A War Without End

Armstrong’s forecast is not one of doom, but of sobering realism. The dream of global peace, he suggests, is naïve unless human nature itself is reformed—which history shows no signs of happening. As long as fear is profitable, truth is malleable, and governments remain unaccountable, wars will continue—not as exceptions, but as the default setting of fallen empires.

In his view, we are not heading for Armageddon as a singular apocalypse. We are already living through it—slowly, region by region, headline by headline. It is not mushroom clouds we should fear, but the unrelenting erosion of sovereignty, sanity, and the sacred value of life.

While many dismiss Armstrong as a provocateur or outlier, his track record and model speak volumes. Whether or not we heed his warnings, one thing is certain: the pendulum always swings back, and it often knocks down empires when it does.

Saturday, June 7, 2025

THE RULE OF CRIMINALS IS UNKNOWN FOR MOST, UNTIL THEY ARE CAUGHT. Yet Even Then There Are Names That You Probably Never Heard Before With Material Wealth Beyond Imagination. The reality being that while they may have thought the champagne wouldn’t stop flowing, eventually it does.

This exposé on the world’s richest mob bosses presents more than just a chronicle of crime and excess—it reveals the evolution of organized crime from street-level brutality to sophisticated global empires that rival governments and how timid corrupt officials allow environmental degradation, while expressing outrage that it takes place. 

Below is a critical analysis of its key themes, narrative tone, and cultural implications:

🔍 1. Narrative Structure & Tone

The storytelling adopts a sensationalist documentary style, emphasizing shock value and cinematic grandeur. Every paragraph is packed with details designed to evoke awe, envy, or horror—from “diamond-encrusted pistols” to “private zoos with exotic animals.” The structure moves rank by rank from the lesser rich to the wealthiest, escalating both wealth and wickedness.

  • Effect: This escalating structure mirrors the viewer’s psychological journey—curiosity turns to disbelief, then to moral reckoning.

  • Tone: The language is vivid and visual, often glamorizing criminal wealth even while pointing to its brutality (“lavish parties,” “blood money,” “swimming pools shaped like Colombia”).

💰 2. Wealth as Power: Crime’s Infiltration into High Society

These mob bosses amassed billions not just through brute force but by integrating crime into legitimate sectors:

  • Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno dominated New York gambling and loan sharking.

  • Griselda Blanco turned Miami into a cocaine capital.

  • Susumu Ishii invested in stock markets, real estate, and legitimate corporations.

  • Francesco Schiavone used construction and waste management to launder billions.

Observation: What begins with vice often ends in white-collar camouflage—criminals learn to wear suits, attend golf clubs, and host diplomats.

Implication: It suggests that the deeper evil lies not in street-level crime but in the invisible merger between criminal wealth and institutional legitimacy.

🧱 3. Criminal Architecture: Palaces, Islands, Fortresses

Each figure described lives in almost mythological surroundings:

  • Capone’s fortress in Miami had bulletproof walls and secret passages.

  • El Chapo had homes with escape tunnels, mountain hideouts, and a tunnel-built prison break.

  • Schiavone had palatial compounds, private zoos, and art stolen from museums.

This isn't just about luxury; it's about dominioncontrolling space to secure power, escape detection, and entertain allies. These environments function both as status symbols and tactical strongholds.

⚖️ 4. The Illusion of Invincibility & Inevitable Fall

Despite their empires, all of them fall:

  • Salerno, Zaza, Blanco, and El Chapo all land in prison or die in captivity.

  • Dinaro evaded capture for decades before cancer and the law caught up with him.

  • Sharich and Schiavone were ultimately dismantled through international cooperation.

This arc reinforces the classic rise-and-fall narrative: even the most extravagant empire is built on foundations too corrupt to endure.

But the real takeaway is this: while the individuals fell, their structures, influence, and money laundering techniques often live on, absorbed into larger systems or taken over by successors.

🌍 5. Geographic Spread & Globalization of Crime

The list spans continents:

  • 🇮🇹 Italy (Zaza, Dinaro, Schiavone)

  • 🇺🇸 USA (Salerno, Capone, Blanco)

  • 🇯🇵 Japan (Ishii)

  • 🇲🇽 Mexico (El Chapo)

  • 🇷🇸 Serbia (Sharich)

  • 🇨🇴 Colombia (Blanco again)

This international roster shows how organized crime transcended local borders, adapting to the global economy. Cocaine from South America funded villas in Europe. Yakuza investments penetrated Western stock markets. Waste management scams polluted ecosystems while enriching criminals.

Insight: Crime evolved into a global enterprise, mirroring multinational corporations, with diversified portfolios and international logistics.

🧠 6. Intelligence, Strategy, and Brutality

These mob bosses weren’t just thugs—they were strategic masterminds:

  • Ishii’s Yakuza turned a crime syndicate into a stock-investing conglomerate.

  • El Chapo’s tunnels and prison breaks were feats of engineering.

  • Schiavone’s empire used environmental crime to rake in billions.

Yet, brutality was never absent. These bosses used fear as currency—murder, torture, and terror were operational tools, not moral dilemmas.

This tension between intellect and violence is central to the modern mob archetype: well-dressed, business-savvy murderers.

⚠️ 7. Cultural Glorification vs. Moral Warning

The video, designed to fascinate, walks a fine line between glorification and condemnation.

  • On one hand, it marvels at their wealth, lifestyle, and cunning.

  • On the other, it acknowledges the cost—murder, corruption, and societal decay.

But the language leans heavily toward spectacle, which risks desensitizing audiences or even glamorizing the very evils it reports.

Example: The phrase “champagne never stopped flowing” is used for effect, not critique.

📌 Conclusion: What This Tells Us About Power

This exposé is more than a roll call of notorious crime bosses. It's a revelation of the blurred boundaries between criminality and elite society, where crime becomes commerce, violence becomes negotiation, and wealth sanitizes sin.

Key takeaways:

  • Organized crime evolves, adapts, and embeds itself within legal frameworks.

  • Wealth gained from vice rarely ends well—but often outlives its founder.

  • The true power of crime lies not in bloodshed, but in its ability to replicate corporate, political, and cultural legitimacy.

In the end, these stories reflect back on us—a society where criminal brilliance can be admired, even envied, and where justice comes slowly, if at all, to those who wear wealth like a shield.

The—“the champagne never stopped flowing” is poetic, but misleading.

✅ In reality: The champagne did stop.

Every single one of these mob bosses—no matter how powerful, wealthy, or untouchable they seemed—lost everything in the end. Their luxury faded, their networks collapsed, and the flow of champagne was replaced by prison food, sickness, or a bullet.

That line—though dramatic—reflects a deeper cultural tension:

We’re fascinated by the illusion of endless pleasure, but history always tells a different story.

So yes, the champagne stopped.

And with it, the parties, the wealth, the bravado—all of it proved temporary.

If there's a better summation of criminal power, it's probably this:

The fall is always quieter than the rise, but it is just as certain.

Most people know names like Al Capone or El Chapo, but figures like Darko Šarić, Michele Zaza, Matteo Messina Denaro, Francesco Schiavone, Fat Tony Salerno, and Susumu Ishii operated in less publicized but equally dangerous and influential circles.

Here’s why they might have escaped broader recognition—and why they matter:

🔍 1. Darko Šarić – $27 Billion

  • Why Unknown: Balkan politics and regional crime receive less international media attention.

  • Why Significant: He built one of the largest European cocaine pipelines from South America. His scale of wealth ($27B) rivals Fortune 500 CEOs. He turned Serbia and Montenegro into narco-trafficking hubs.

🔍 2. Michele Zaza – $700 Million
  • Why Unknown: Operated in post-war Italy under the radar, and was part of the Camorra, not the more famous Sicilian Mafia (Cosa Nostra).

  • Why Significant: Innovated cigarette smuggling at a time when it was incredibly profitable in Europe. Later expanded into heroin. Helped professionalize Camorra operations.

🔍 3. Matteo Messina Denaro – €4 Billion
  • Why Unknown: A fugitive for 30 years, avoiding cameras and digital trails. Only caught in 2023.

  • Why Significant: Believed to have run the Sicilian Mafia's post-Toto Riina empire. Connected to political corruption, terror bombings in Italy, and international drug/arms trafficking.

🔍 4. Francesco Schiavone (Sandokan) – $47 Billion Clan
  • Why Unknown: Italian media focused more on the Sicilian mafia and 'Ndrangheta.

  • Why Significant: Led the Casalesi Clan (a Camorra faction), which essentially controlled the construction and waste industries in southern Italy. His clan illegally dumped toxic waste across Italy—profiting billions while causing a public health crisis.

🔍 5. Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno – $600 Million
  • Why Unknown: Overshadowed by flashier figures like John Gotti in popular mafia lore.

  • Why Significant: Head of the Genovese crime family, considered the most powerful of NYC’s Five Families. Ran high-level gambling, loan sharking, and racketeering operations that influenced city politics.

🔍 6. Susumu Ishii – $1 Billion
  • Why Unknown: Westerners rarely hear about Japan’s Yakuza in crime retrospectives.

  • Why Significant: Head of Inagawa-kai, one of Japan's largest Yakuza syndicates. Ishii professionalized organized crime by heavily investing in real estate and the Tokyo stock market during Japan’s economic bubble.

📌 Takeaway:

These aren’t Hollywood gangsters—they’re corporate-criminal hybrids who used influence, business acumen, and systemic corruption to build empires. Many operated in quiet, strategic, and long-lasting ways that eluded international spectacle.

You hadn’t heard of them because:

  • They weren’t as theatrical

  • Their crimes blurred the line between “illegal” and “political”

  • Their media exposure was localized, censored, or complicated by geopolitics

But make no mistake—they shaped entire regions, and in some cases, entire economies.

***

What can we say about this corrupt elite and the empires of ashes they ruled.

They built empires not with laws, but with bullets and bribes. Their wealth dwarfed that of corporate titans. Their influence reached from back alleys to parliaments. And yet—every last one of them fell. This is the story of the world’s richest mob bosses—men and women who bathed in wealth, corrupted systems, and devastated lives, only to discover that power built on blood and deception inevitably crumbles into dust.

Wealth Beyond Imagination

We often hear of tech billionaires and oil magnates, but the criminal underworld has quietly birthed fortunes just as vast—if not larger. Take Darko Šarić, a Serbian drug lord whose estimated $27 billion empire pumped South American cocaine into Europe like an industrial pipeline. Or Francesco Schiavone, the feared head of the Casalesi clan, whose criminal holdings—spanning waste disposal, construction, and retail—were valued at $47 billion.

These weren’t backroom hustlers. They were financiers, landowners, and untraceable shareholders in sprawling networks of "legitimate" businesses. Susumu Ishii, head of Japan’s Inagawa-kai Yakuza group, invested mob money into Tokyo's real estate and stock market boom in the 1980s, mingling with bankers, politicians, and CEOs. By the time police even recognized his economic reach, he was living in million-dollar mansions adorned with Zen gardens and tea ceremony chambers—untouchable, or so it seemed.

Even infamous names like Griselda Blanco, the “Cocaine Godmother,” who earned a $2 billion fortune smuggling drugs into the U.S., flaunted their wealth shamelessly: diamond pistols, gold-plated fixtures, speedboats, and island getaways. The American public never knew her by name until her arrest—and by then, the damage was done.

Influence That Rivaled Governments

It’s easy to dismiss gangsters as thugs with money. But that’s only half the picture. These individuals exercised a level of influence and control that often rivaled, or directly manipulated, elected governments.

El Chapo Guzmán, head of the Sinaloa cartel, had operatives in nearly every layer of Mexican law enforcement. He escaped not once but twice from maximum-security prisons—once in a laundry cart, once through a mile-long tunnel with lighting and ventilation—thanks to well-placed bribes and systemic corruption.

Schiavone’s Casalesi clan dictated the terms of infrastructure contracts in southern Italy. If a building went up, they got paid. His organization didn’t just "infiltrate" the construction and waste sectors—it effectively owned them. Politicians, public officials, and business leaders either bowed to the clan or were removed—sometimes violently.

In Japan, Ishii sat at the intersection of tradition and capitalism, using the Yakuza’s historical status as "outlaw gentlemen" to justify protection rackets and deeply entrenched political connections. His group’s operations included stock trading, insider manipulation, and land speculation, all behind the veil of Japanese respectability.

Harm That Spanned Generations

Behind every gold-plated faucet or silk suit lies a trail of destruction. These aren’t just stories of flashy wealth—they are chronicles of profound societal harm.

Šarić’s European cocaine network helped flood cities with drugs, sparking addiction crises from Serbia to Spain. His profits came directly from human suffering—families destroyed, lives lost, entire neighborhoods destabilized.

Griselda Blanco’s reign in Miami turned the city into a war zone. Drive-by shootings, assassinations, and bombings were routine in the 1980s. Hundreds died as a direct result of her bloody turf wars. Her wealth grew with every kilo moved, and every body dropped.

Matteo Messina Denaro, the elusive Sicilian boss, orchestrated bombings in Florence, Milan, and Rome in the 1990s that killed innocent civilians and damaged priceless cultural landmarks. He was linked to dozens of murders, including judges and journalists, yet remained on the run for nearly 30 years, sending hand-written notes to orchestrate operations while undergoing plastic surgery and blending into civilian life.

Schiavone’s environmental crimes may be the most insidious of all. His illegal toxic waste dumping across Italy’s Campania region caused spikes in cancer and birth defects. For billions in profit, he poisoned land, water, and generations of human lives.

Corruption Without Borders

These criminal titans didn’t just corrupt men—they corrupted systems. Justice systems. Political institutions. Financial markets.

Corruption wasn’t an accident of their rise; it was their most essential tool. With it, they bent governments to their will.

Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, made New York’s judicial and political elite dance to his tune. His influence extended into construction unions, city contracts, and federal protection rackets. Even after his conviction in the 1986 Commission Trial, many of the corrupt officials he worked with escaped scrutiny.

Bribery was an operating expense. El Chapo paid millions to prison guards, police, and even politicians. Zaza, the Italian cigarette smuggler, ran a shadow state in Naples through his web of bribes and threats, outmaneuvering investigators for decades.

And Ishii? His real estate holdings were so intertwined with government infrastructure projects that authorities hesitated to move against him, fearing economic fallout.

This level of rot shows a disturbing truth: in many places, organized crime is not outside the system—it is inside it.

The Futility of It All

Yet for all their wealth, power, and influence, every one of them fell.

Fat Tony died in prison. El Chapo will never leave a U.S. federal cell. Griselda Blanco was gunned down in Medellín. Denaro, who evaded capture for 30 years, was caught dying of cancer. Schiavone, once Italy’s most feared man, now rots in prison—his once-mighty empire shattered. Ishii died before full prosecution, but his operations dissolved in the economic crash.

Their fortunes—often in the billions—are mostly gone. Seized. Lost. Hidden. Their legacies are not dynasties, but case files and crumbling estates.

And perhaps that is the bitterest irony: despite all their cunning and cruelty, they were never building anything permanent. Their lives were like palaces made of sand—grand to behold, but unable to withstand the tides of justice and mortality.

Conclusion: Power Without Peace

These crime lords built worlds where the law was irrelevant, morality optional, and wealth unlimited. But what they gained in gold, they lost in peace, legacy, and freedom.

Their empires harmed millions, corrupted thousands, and enriched only a few—briefly.

And in the end, the champagne stopped flowing. Death had its say: what has begun lasts longer than anyone's imagination.

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

BEE POPULATIONS AREN’T DECLINING; THEY’RE RISING. But We Were Told They Were Dying. Not according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, honeybee populations in the United States, Canada and Europe have been stable or growing for the two decades.




Crisis shift? Bees may not be facing apocalypse but what about beekeepers?


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Beekeeping tends to be more on the commercial side.Beekeeping tends to be more on the commercial side.
Scientists are now in agreement that we are not facing a beepocalypse as many in the media environmental activists and journalists have been predicting. Bee populations aren’t declining; they’re rising. According to statistics kept by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, honeybee populations in the United StatesCanada and Europe have been stable or growing for the two decades
But the latest statistics have not stemmed the tide of dire warnings. The focus has shifted from the pollinators themselves to beekeepers. Tim Tucker, president of the American Beekeeping Federation recently said: “It’s not the bees that are in jeopardy. …. I believe we’ll always have bees. … [But] unless things change, what’s in jeopardy is the commercial beekeeping industry.”
University of Maryland bee researcher Dennis van Englesdrop echoed the sentiment: “We’re not worried about the bees going extinct …. We’re worried about the beekeepers going extinct.”
Beekeeping is challenging
“Beekeepers are indeed “working nearly twice as hard as ever,” as Tucker has said. Beekeepers report having to split their hives more often to make up for losses, entailing more work than in previous decades.  And for commercial beekeepers maintaining thousands of bee hives, all of this additional work means more employees, more salaries, and more expenses.
The major driver of these challenges is the near-global spread of parasites like the varroa mite and the dozens of other diseases that beset commercial honey bees, which require a great deal more work and expense for both commercial and hobbyist beekeepers. Varroa mite counts must be carefully monitored, and mite control preparations applied at precisely the right times.  Otherwise, mite infestations can get ahead of beekeepers, propagate and devastate the hives.
But the hard work and increased challenges of beekeeping today don’t necessarily translate into economic calamity — especially for the more sophisticated beekeepers who have modernized their operations and kept abreast of changing conditions.
As beekeeper and independent researcher Randy Oliver, who runs the well regarded Scientific Beekeeping blog, points out, “In beekeeping today, many progressive beekeepers are finding beekeeping to be more profitable than ever.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s economic statistics bear this out.  Demand for honey has almost doubled over the past quarter century to 468.3 million pounds by 2013. Per capita honey consumption in the U.S. is up nearly 50 percent over the same period.
When demand is high, prices go up. The retail price of honey has risen more than 50 percent in the last decade, (about the same as beeswax), with total revenue from honey production reaching $2.835 billion in 2012.
Farm gate and retail honey prices and total value, 2006-12Screen Shot 2015-09-24 at 10.01.09 AM2015 Almond Forecast
Source: USDA-NASS QuickStats
Source: USDA-NASS Quick Stats
Commercial beekeepers have also prospered from a parallel boom in the market for almonds, which is critically dependent on bees for pollination. In fact, as much as 75 percent of all U.S. commercial beehives are committed to almond growing, the bees trucked into California in the first quarter of each year to pollinate the to 870,000 acres of almond groves (which have more than doubled in size since the mid-1980s).
With rising pollination services demand, hive rental fees for almond pollination have risen to record levels, with prices up a staggering 428% (or about $150 extra per colony) since the 1990s.
Source: California State Beekeepers Association Annual Pollination Surveys
Source: California State Beekeepers Association Annual Pollination Surveys
Together with other pollinated crops, including sunflowers, canola, grapes, apples, cherries, watermelons, and blueberries, total revenue for pollination services added up to $655.6 million in 2012, the most recently available data.
Stress problems
While the cross-continent pollination treks made by beekeepers are highly profitable, the huge stresses imposed on the bees themselves helps explain the less than optimum health of many commercial bee colonies.Screen Shot 2015-09-24 at 10.03.02 AM
One result is that despite the fact that we now have more bee colonies than we have had in 20 years, the volume of U.S. honey production and the per-colony honey yield — as opposed to the price per pound of honey — has been on a general decline. United States honey production in 2013 is about 35 percent lower than in 1989.
While a number of factors contribute to this trend, USDA notes, “With proportionally more colonies being sent to pollinate almond orchards—as opposed to crops that are more valuable for honey production — a lower average volume of useable honey per colony can be expected.”
The downward trend in U.S. honey production means that U.S. beekeepers now satisfy less than 1/3 of total U.S. honey demand. The difference is made up from imports from other nations – chiefly Argentina, Vietnam, India, Brazil, Canada, Uruguay, Mexico, Ukraine, Turkey and Taiwan.
Despite all this foreign competition, however, high U.S. demand has continued to exert upward pressure on U.S. honey prices, which have more than doubled to $2.12 per pound since the Colony Collapse Disorder crisis of 2006.
All this is economics, not catastrophe. Consumers may not like the higher prices for honey, but higher prices are certainly sweet news for beekeepers. As beekeeper and researcher Randy Oliver has commented,  “the market for honey is offering opportunity for those not involved in pollination.  And the market for bee sales is ravenous.”
Oliver sums up the beekeeping’s economic outlook this way: “The free market has solved the problem of beekeeping being more difficult and costly these days by better compensating beekeepers.  The law of supply and demand is working just fine.”
Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a Senior Fellow at the World Food Center Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, University of California-Davis.

Sunday, June 23, 2024

Many Australian men are seeking love from overseas women and are scammed out of their life savings. Here is some great advice from an attempt to scam Happy Riches.

Happy Riches was contacted by a Filipina Angelle (pronounced, “Angel”) Gonzalez two weeks before Easter. She told him that she liked him and would like to visit him. She had no money, of course, and was at the end of her nursing contract. Before entering her next contract, she said she would like to come to Perth and have a holiday. Only she did not have the money, but she did have a current passport and a visa would be no problem for her because she holds a master’s degree in nursing.
Happy says he detected a sting, having been involved in an attempt to set him as a mule to transfer funds overseas that were deposited into his bank account. Information provided by Happy helped authorities break a $30 million bankcard fraud in November, 2012.
 This current sting was the usual set up that occurs when overseas grifters set up a mark.
First Angelle claims she is interested in his personality. She sets up phone calls and seeks information about her mark. Then sends photos of herself at different locations. Sends a letter expressing how depressing her life is without someone to love and take care of, and someone who would love her. Angelle then tells her mark how she has just come to the end of her nursing contract and will be off for a month or until she can get a new contract for five years. While she has the month off she would love to visit her mark but has not got the money. She hopes that she would be able to sleep with him to see if the chemistry is right. Just to show that she is an honest and reputable girl she emails copies of her passport and a police clearance stating she does not have a derogatory record. Now if only she had the $150 to get her visa and medical for immigration purposes. Angelle provides a dodgy receipt from Australia Post for her visa from the immigration dept.
The mark forks out the $150 sending it by Western Union, as it is faster than bank transfer and can be  done in minutes and there is not much time to waste as she needs to get everything done by Wednesday 12 noon if she is to get the cheap airline ticket. All she now needs is the $750 for the tickets. The mark usually obliges, but Happy, for fun, says that he will go you halves and tells her how generous he has been in the past and about how the girl in Azerbaijan is spending time in jail for trying to con him. Angelle, has only eyes on the money. Happy sends her $400. Angelle contacts him saying she cannot raise the other $350. After four hours, with phone calls between them and other matters, Angelle claims she is $50 short and cannot come over if she doesn’t get the money, even though she has put the rest on deposit on the ticket. Happy decides to send her $200 more to pay for incidental expenses airport taxes and a bite to eat and drink for the trip. More alarm bells ring when Happy is provided with dodgy receipt for an airline ticket and copies of tickets with incorrect dates from Brunei Airline that does not fly to Perth. Happy points this out.
On Good Friday, Angelle provides two more copies of dodgy airline tickets with incorrect dates, and insists that she needs $1000 for show money, so immigration will permit her to leave the Philippines. While Happy is speaking to Angelle on skype, he receives a phone call from a man claiming to be from the Immigration Dept, but the call drops out. Then Angelle provides a mobile number for the Immigration Dept., to confirm that she need to show the $1000.
Happy went as far as he was prepared to go. He had sufficient details to send to authorities for fraud, impersonation of immigration officials, and forgery. However, the next step would have been I have lost the money and need another $1000 or I have lost both the traveler's cheque and tickets and missed the plane. Now I will need to do it all again, and because my visa to depart was only until Easter Sunday the 20th and the ticket was non-fundable, I cannot get a refund. If you want me to come over, you will have to help me. I will need another two grand.
People like Angelle Gonzalez (if that is really her name) see nothing wrong in scamming old men out of their life's savings.


THE USUAL TELL TALE SIGNS OF A CON

The woman makes contact through a dating agency, or claims she found your name at a dating agency and she is seeking marriage. Emails are sent to unsuspecting victims and a case is presented to capture a person’s curiosity in the hope of a reply. The people who lose the most are older men who are lonely and vulnerable to solicitation.

Typically, the vixen will be from a third world country or ex-communist country, but there are the exceptions. Naturally, the woman is looking for help. She appeals to her victim’s sense of compassion. She suffers from a lack of resources that are always  Financial, but are the result of a lack of education due to:
  • Childhood poverty
  • Broken family
  • Abusive parents
  • Alcoholic or drug addicted parents
  • Death of father or mother, or both parents
An aborted education due to:
  • Illness
  • Illness of parents
  • Death of parents
  • Having to look after younger siblings
  • Insufficient money
  • Persecution because of race or religion or culture.
Being a woman seeking a man, she will naturally appeal to his sexual desires.
Explicit sexual pornography is not a part of this deal. The woman is after money, without being a common prostitute. She is suggestive of:
  • Romance
  • Intimacy
  • Life-long relationship

And she will always tell of a relationship that she feels she has to confess of when she had this boyfriend who was cruel to her and someone to whom she could not say no, but who has now left the country, is in jail, or is died in an accident.

She obtains finance from her mark by:
  • Claiming lost birth certificate
  • Need for registration of new identity documents
  • Costs of obtaining passport and visa
  • Cost of airline ticket which has to be a return ticket
  • Airport costs
  • Travel costs to airport
  • Traveler’s check for living expenses to be provided on departure to demonstrate she has the capacity to pay for living expenses and is not thought to be a prostitute or do something immoral or illegal
  • Delays and the unexpected expenses
  • Stolen tickets, passports and money that has to be replaced.

And of course there is always a sense of urgency because she only has a week or two take this window of opportunity and be with her mark.

When the scam is done well, the process cleans some men out of their life savings.

In most cases authorities are helpless to anything, but at least there is always the memory of what could have been.


Nothing left but one sofa and the memory of the pain.

Friday, May 10, 2019

TRUTH OR FICTION ABOUT THE RICHEST FAMILY THE WORLD HAS KNOWN.


We live in a time where the world’s most recognizable people are celebrities: thanks to the media these are the people plastered on every television, movie, and magazine cover. Being a banker is difficult due the public’s overwhelming negative attitude towards banking, but even more so with celebrities who are constantly being exposed to the public. Before the media got into full swing with celebrity exposure, there was one family that was still recognizable: the Rothschild family.
A lot can be said for the Rothschild family: they had an impossible amount of money and power across the world, and were influential in how some of the most important moments in the last two centuries played out. For today’s society, it’s hard to know too much about the Rothschild family since they are so secretive, and that they don’t appear to have the same influence over world affairs as they once did after a spread of wealth. Heck, some people still think that they are lizard people of the New World Order that are using us all as puppets, and flying black helicopters over our houses.
Basically, people just know that the Rothschilds were the world’s richest people, and based out of Europe. There are some interesting facts about the family that you should know about as well. They include everything from secret societies, wars, incest, and just about everything else you would expect from a dysfunctional family, not a wealthy one. Here are 10 dark secrets from the wealthiest family in world history: the Rothschild.

#10 – There Is A Long Line Of Incest

When your family has a lot more money than people know what to do with, and just as much power, it can be tempting to not want to have that compromised by outside families marrying their way in. The way that the Rothschild family kept out some of the people that were only after their money: was by marrying each other. As weird as it sounds, it was at least a good financial strategy.
The entire incestual movement was spearheaded by the founder of the family: Mayer Amschel Rothschild. He set the whole line up so that the female members of the Rothschild family were very limited in their marriage options when it came to getting their inheritance. The only way to make absolutely sure that they would be getting money in the future was by marrying their cousins.

#9 – Some Were Very Power Hungry

Money can be the root of all evil, and it can also make someone a bit power hungry if they aren’t careful. A lot of the members of the Rothschild family were thought to have a huge interest on the power of their country, and considered themselves to be even above the laws and lawmakers. Amschel Rothschild is claimed to have once said: “Give me control of the economics of a country; and I care not who makes her laws.”
What that essentially boils down to, is that they believed that they could set their own rules as long as they had enough money. And as you could probably tell: a lot of them did have enough money to set themselves above kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers, and whatever type of ruler each country had. It was an impressive collection of power that the Rothschild owned.

#8 – They Dictated The Price Of Gold

Some would argue that the price of gold is still to this day being decided by the Rothschild family. In 2004, Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Sons pulled out of the gold business, and any other precious metals, giving up their spot to Barclays. The Rothschild family having a say in the price of gold started back in 1919: when the five leading traders of the industry met twice a day to set the price.
This gave the Rothschild family and their colleagues a lot of power over the people that held onto gold as their most valuable asset, and a lot of people are still doing it today. For that long span between 1919 and 2004, the meetings were held each day at the N M Rothschild and Sons offices. There have been several allegations of corruption in the time that they were still fixing the price, and after it.

#7 – And The US Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve System is a bank that is privately owned, and is where the United States keeps most of its money. One of the major US Federal Reserve banks is located in New York City, and is owned by those outside of the country. It is widely believed that both the Rothschild family, and Rockefeller family both had a major say in the US Federal Reserve.
Now, the extent of their interest in the Federal Reserve has been massively debated. Some claim that there was no interest at all, but others believe that the Rothschild family had just as much power in America as they did in many of the European countries, and that owning all of the major banks was a secret that the Rothschild family could keep. The full amount of American money was never disclosed.

#6 – Many Are Believed To Be Satanists

Here is another secret that will be debated until the end of time: many of the witnesses that entered their home claim that the Rothschild family were filled with Satan worshippers. According to these same witnesses, the Rothschild family would set a spot at the table for the Dark Lord himself, and that nobody was allowed to sit in it. This one has been hard to confirm, but the reports have been numerous.
To add a little more intrigue to the situation, some of the family members would sign their name on documents with the Seal of Solomon. Although the seal is mainly regarded as a symbol of the Jewish people, it was not the official symbol at the time. Instead it was seen as a largely unused symbol that was used only by magicians, and Satanists in previous years. That is another debate that will still rage on.

#5 – They Had Ties To Secret Societies

You have heard many conspiracy theorists talk about secret societies like the Illuminati and the Freemasons, but most of that talk started with the Rothschild family. Either they are completely embracing the rumors and cracking fun at the situation, or they truly do have some interest in the secret underworld and its finances. Because there are those that will always try to expose the members in the supposed Illuminati, there are a lot of clues that were uncovered.
One interesting clue that might suggest that the Rothschild family really is invested into secret societies: is stemming from World War I. Since the Rothschild family was present for the treaty that was signed at the end, people reported that a part of the treaty included them taking over the Bavarian Illuminati that was founded in 1776. Since the society is secret, you may never find out the details.

#4 – They Have Bankrolled Many Major Wars

Since the Rothschild family controlled reportedly half of the money in the world, they were the ones that were able to fund most of the major wars that have happened over the past 200 or so years. The Rothschild family has funded everything from the Napoleonic Wars to the World Wars of the 20th century. By loaning money to governments instead of individuals, it has been able to make them the most powerful family in the history of the world.
At the end of each war, the Rothschild family started to see dollar signs when the loans started coming back, and more money was needed by other countries for their rebuilding efforts. When the banks were all decimated because of the war, there was only one place to turn, and that was the Rothschild. Perhaps this is why they considered themselves to be above the law in most countries.

#3 – They Had Very Strange Parties

One thing that doesn’t help the Illuminati rumors in the slightest: are the odd parties that the Rothschild family has held. The most notable, and telling, one that there are photographs from was back in 1972. Just to get it started: the invitations were sent in reverse so that you needed a mirror to see what was written on the invitation, and when you arrived at the building the lights out front were completely red.
A lot of these parties involved some very odd choices in style that included: wearing animal style heads, and masks with multiple faces. The photos of the party seemed like it was something straight out of a Lady Gaga video, if that gives you any clue on how weird it really was. They also had a strange fascination with birdcages, but that’s perhaps because Salvador Dali was a family friend.

#2 – They Could Be Hiding Up To $650 Billion

The Rothschild family is, without a doubt, the richest family in the history of the world. It is strange to not see any of their names listed on Forbes each year in terms of the richest individuals, but as a family, they are still rich. The family has claimed that through assets they have a net worth estimated to be at about $350 billion. The reason for this being that spreading the bloodline away from incest has caused some deluding in the assets.
However, there are many that still estimate that the Rothschild family is still the world’s leader, with over $1 trillion in net worth. That’s because for some, it is hard to believe that a family who has someone that is worth $4 billion (Jacob Rothschild) and $20 billion (Sir Evelyn De Rothschild) can only be worth that $350 billion when all of them are added up.

#1 – Nathan Rothschild Cheated His Way To Owning England’s Finances

Perhaps something that nobody would be able to get away with now, Nathan Rothschild essentially owned all of England’s finances after the Battle of Waterloo. Since he had connections, Nathan was able to get word before anybody else that the Battle of Waterloo was not a lost cause. Everyone else, on the other hand, considered it to be a loss that would devastate the country.
From there it’s believed that Nathan went directly to the London Stock Exchange, and sold all of his bonds in the British government. When seen doing so, everyone else in the building did the same thing, causing the price to drop to almost nothing. When the prices were at a new low, Nathan bought back all of his bonds, as well as everyone else that sold their’s in a way of getting even more power.