Sometimes old ways are the best ways
Languishing Walnuts Show How Shipping Crisis Is Hurting U.S. Farmers
Reuters December 9, 2021
By Sharon Bernstein and Nathan Frandino
ESCALON, Calif., Dec 9 (Reuters) – The shrink-wrapped boxes of fresh California walnuts stacked almost to the ceiling in Don Barton’s California packing facility should be headed to Europe for holiday baking and to Asia for New Year celebrations.
Instead, newly cleaned and shelled nuts – about $10 million worth – are stuck at his processing plant near Sacramento, thousands of miles from their destinations, as the global supply chain crisis squeezes ports.
Transportation and supply-chain problems are hurting farmers across the U.S. West Coast, a major global supplier of specialty crops like fruits and nuts popular at year-end celebrations.
Ships that would normally pick up walnuts from Barton’s company, Gold River Orchards, are skipping the Port of Oakland where the nuts are usually exported, or showing up at odd or unexpected times that make it difficult to get the product to the docks.
“We are shipping right now less than half of what we should be shipping and could be shipping this time of the year, simply because there’s not equipment available,” said Barton, standing amid towering processing machinery and pallets loaded with boxes marked for shipment abroad.
Ships are also skipping the Northwest Seaport complex in Seattle and Tacoma where hay, apples and beans wait to be exported. At the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, freighters wait for weeks for a berth in the harbor, only to then leave abruptly, in many cases without picking up goods for export.
Much of the shipping crunch resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic. Home-bound Americans flush with unspent travel and entertainment dollars and government stimulus splurged on everything from food and refrigerators to toys and exercise equipment. The demand for imports overwhelmed supply chains and prompted container shipping lines to focus on the most profitable routes between China and the Port of Los Angeles, skipping others.
Farmers who agreed to deliver fruit, nuts and other products in time for the holidays are defaulting on their contracts, losing business to foreign growers they say may never come back.
At the Port of Oakland, just 679 vessels stopped to pick up goods during the first nine months of 2021, compared with 959 the prior year, said spokeswoman Marilyn Sandifur, although some of the drop was made up by additional cargo carried by larger ships.
“A lot of people count on the high-quality American food products and there’s a demand for them overseas,” Sandifur said. “The challenge is getting them over there.”
German importers have struggled to get California inshell walnuts, a popular seasonal snack, into supermarkets in time for Christmas due to delays of six to eight weeks in ships leaving, said Jens Borchert of German importer Mariani of California.
California’s walnut industry exported 47% fewer nuts in the shell, and 16% fewer shelled nuts during September and October of 2021 than it did in the previous year, the California Walnut Board said in a report. Almond industry data shows a 19% drop in exports in the three months ending Oct. 31 compared with the year-ago period.
Barton says his exports were down by about 75% in October from the previous year. A key contract, to supply walnuts for the holiday season to supermarket chains in Sweden, was canceled after the nuts got held up for weeks waiting for a ship, he said.
ERRATIC SHIPPING SCHEDULES
For Dairy America, a cooperative that is the world’s largest supplier of powdered skim milk, shipping costs have increased by 30% to 40% and contracts have been canceled because of erratic shipping schedules, said Derik Toy, the Fresno group’s supply-chain director.
Last month, the cooperative had to find storage for 18 containers full of powdered milk in Arizona, after numerous scheduling changes by a shipping line contracted to take them from Los Angeles to Colombia. The cooperative will now have to pay late fees on the containers it rented to carry the milk.
Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition, said his members reported drops in exports by 22% during the first four months of 2021 alone.
The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest seaport complex, have dominated media coverage of supply-chain woes. But congestion has made it harder for farmers to export their goods across the nation, Friedmann said.
At the ports in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, exports are down 11% this year and 20% off from the five-year average, said Steve Balaski, interim director of business development for the Northwest Seaport Alliance.
More:
https://gcaptain.com/languishing-walnuts-show-how-shipping-crisis-is-hurting-u-s-farmers/
Largest Safety Signal in the History of Medicine
By any objective measure, the COVID shots are the most dangerous drugs ever launched. The safety signal is absolutely massive. Here’s a screenshot summary from OpenVAERS’ November 19, 2021, report (the latest available at the time of this article),4 listing some of the most common effects reported following the COVID jab.
According to calculations by Steve Kirsch, executive director of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, adverse events are conservatively underreported by a factor of 41,5 so it’s possible we need to multiply these numbers by 41 to get closer to the real-world impact.
For a visual illustration of how dangerous the COVID shots are in comparison to all other vaccines on the market, just look at this OpenVAERS graph. It speaks for itself.
>>110438 (me)
OOOOPS! should be:
Canada #25 >>>/qresearch/15164242
Miscarriages and Other Tragic Side Effects of the mRNA Shots
December 8, 2021
Dr. Mercola, Guest
Waking Times
With each passing day, the list of people suffering tragic consequences from the novel gene therapies marketed as COVID “vaccines” gets longer. Slews of professional and amateur athletes have collapsed and died in recent weeks, and mainstream media act as if those things are either normal or inexplicable.
They’re neither. They’re abnormal, and totally explainable when you know how the COVID shot destroys your heart and clumps your blood. Among the latest victims is Florian Dagoury, world record holder in static breath-hold freediving. Before his Pfizer jabs, he was able to hold his breath for 10 minutes and 30 seconds.
After his second dose, his diving performance was slashed by about 30%, and he’s been diagnosed with myocarditis, pericarditis and trivial mitral regurgitation, a condition in which the mitral valve in the heart gets leaky, allowing blood to flow backward into the left ventricle.
Dagoury shared his experience on Instagram:1,2
“After my 2nd dose I noticed that my heart rate was way higher than normal and my breath hold capacities went down significantly. During sleep, I’m at 65-70bpm instead of 37-45bpm. During the day, I’m now always over 100bpm instead of 65bpm, even when I sit down and relax. Once I even reach[ed] 177bpm while having dinner with friends!
Ten days after my 2nd jab, I went to see a cardiologist and he told me it’s a common side effect of Pfizer vaccine, nothing to worry about, just rest, it will pass. 40 days after 2nd jab, I had no progress so I went to see another cardiologist and got diagnosed with myocarditis and trivial mitral regurgitation!
Which is basically an inflammation of the heart muscles cause by the immune system and some tiny leaks of blood from the valves that no longer close properly. I’m now struggling to reach 8 min breath hold, 150m dyn[amic apnea freediving] and I even have a strong urge to breath[e] doing 40m dives. 30% decrease on my diving performance roughly.”
Many Athletes Are Losing Their Careers
Other professional athletes whose careers are now on hold include French tennis player Jeremy Chardy, who commented on his situation:3
“Since I had my vaccine … I am struggling. I can’t train. I can’t play … It’s frustrating, especially that I don’t have 10 years left to play. I regret having the vaccine, but I could not have known that this would happen … it’s difficult because I was having fun and I want to play longer.”
Another one is Antoine Mechin, a 32-year-old triathlete whose career is on indefinite hold, as he developed pulmonary embolism after taking his second dose of Moderna. What makes it all the more tragic is that Mechin suffered pain and shortness of breath after the first shot, but he was told his symptoms were probably just stress and fatigue. He went ahead with the second, and now has severe lung damage. Mechin said:
“Damaging healthy people to preserve the health of the weakest, a choice of backward logic. I would not get vaccinated again if it had to be done again.”
Largest Safety Signal in the History of Medicine
By any objective measure, the COVID shots are the most dangerous drugs ever launched. The safety signal is absolutely massive. Here’s a screenshot summary from OpenVAERS’ November 19, 2021, report (the latest available at the time of this article),4 listing some of the most common effects reported following the COVID jab.
According to calculations by Steve Kirsch, executive director of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, adverse events are conservatively underreported by a factor of 41,5 so it’s possible we need to multiply these numbers by 41 to get closer to the real-world impact.
More:
https://www.wakingtimes.com/miscarriages-and-other-tragic-side-effects-of-the-mrna-shots/
Jury Finds Actor Jussie Smollett Guilty on 5 of 6 Charges That He Faked Attack
By Don Babwin and Sara Burnett • Published December 9, 2021 • Updated 5 hours ago
Jurors have found former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett guilty on five of six counts of staging a racist and anti-gay attack on himself in downtown Chicago nearly three years ago.
The decision comes after jurors heard several days of testimony from several witnesses and Smollett himself, who called claims that he staged the attack “100% false.”
The jury in Smollett's trial was tasked with deciding whether Smollett is guilty on six counts of a low-level felony for making what prosecutors say was a false police report about the alleged attack. He faces one count of felony disorderly conduct for each time he gave a report to three different officers.
Special prosecutor Dan Webb told the jury Wednesday that the evidence against Smollett is “overwhelming,” and that what he did in January 2019 caused Chicago police to spend enormous amounts of time and resources investigating an alleged crime that turned out to be fake. Smollett, who is Black and gay, told police someone put a noose around his neck and yelled racist and homophobic slurs.
“Besides being against the law, it is just plain wrong to outright denigrate something as serious as a real hate crime and then make sure it involved words and symbols that have such historical significance in our country," Webb said.
He also accused Smollett of lying to jurors, saying surveillance video from before the alleged attack and that night contradicts key moments of Smollett’s testimony.
“At the end of the day, he lacks any credibility whatsoever," Webb said.
Jussie Smollett's defense attorney told jurors that the charges against the actor rely on the testimony of brothers who are “sophisticated liars” and “the worst type of criminals.”
Attorney Nenye Uche said in his closing argument that during testimony last week in the Chicago courtroom, one of the brothers “said ‘I don’t recall' so many times, it is ridiculous.”
“The entire prosecution’s case, including the foundation of the case, is built like a house of cards," Uche said.
Taking the witness stand this week, Smollett repeatedly denied the attack was a fake, telling a prosecutor “there was no hoax on my part” and that two brothers who testified against him are “liars.”
The disorderly conduct charge is a class 4 felony that carries a prison sentence of up to three years, but experts have said if Smollett is convicted, he would likely be placed on probation and ordered to perform community service.
NBC Chicago/Associated Press
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/entertainment-news/breaking-verdict-reached-in-jussie-smollett-trial/3443395/
General Research #19189 >>>/qresearch/15168673
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