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Jan. 26, 2023 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
02:21:27
Situation Update, 1/26/23 - Germany and USA push Russia toward nuclear escalation...
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All right, friends.
Buckle up.
We've got a real interesting show for you today.
It's Thursday, January 26th, 2023.
This is Mike Adams here with Brighteon.com and NaturalNews.com.
This is the Situation Update.
Let's see.
The big stories we're going to cover here, and there was just a bombshell released a few hours ago by Project Veritas of a Pfizer executive caught on camera admitting that the company mutates COVID and SARS-CoV-2 using, quote, "directed evolution so that the company can continue to profit from vaccines," saying that COVID is going to be a cash cow for us and, "That is not what we say to the public.
People won't like that.
Don't tell anyone." So this is all caught on camera.
This is probably one of the biggest stories ever from Project Veritas and James O'Keefe, who is...
Let's just admit it.
One of the greatest journalists of all time.
Not just living today, but James O'Keefe is a hero for humanity, a hero for journalism.
But it's the kind of journalism that the establishment does not want to take place because this is questioning the corporate overlords, right?
So we're going to get into that in a little more detail.
We may play a clip.
I'm not sure.
But if you want to check that out, just go to ProjectVeritas.com.
The other major story that we have to cover...
The United States has approved M1 Abrams' main battle tanks for Ukraine, and also Germany has given its green light approval for the Leopard 2 battle tanks, and other countries have chimed in and have since approved it as well.
So, folks, we are going to war with Russia.
World War III is now...
It's on.
It's a certainty.
The U.S. is going to escalate.
NATO countries are going to escalate.
It's going to be a full-on confrontation with Russia.
Today, it's battle tanks.
Tomorrow, it's F-16s.
You know...
Another few weeks or a few months down the road, it's going to be F-35s.
It's going to escalate.
It's going to be ballistic missiles.
It's going to be maybe potentially a nuclear exchange.
This is not a good situation.
In fact, we are being ruled by crazy, insane, criminal madmen and women.
Give equal credit.
Into the total destruction of the West is where it's potentially headed.
So we're going to talk about that.
I may have a special report for you on that.
A quick announcement, though, before we get into that, I've got a lab announcement.
You may be familiar with the story that's been going viral that tractor supply has been accused by some chicken farmers of selling chicken feed that they say has been reformulated with potentially lower amounts of protein or potentially contaminants that are causing hens to not lay eggs.
Now, for the record, this is merely an accusation.
I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm going to do a laboratory analysis and share it publicly.
So my announcement right here today is because we have a food science lab, as you know, we are going to purchase from Tractor Supply in Texas.
We're going to purchase some different brands of chicken feed, including the one brand that's being accused of this.
And we're going to subject that feed to the following tests.
We're going to test for heavy metals, which includes lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury, but it'll also give us a look at things like strontium and copper as well.
And strontium is actually good for laying eggs, believe it or not.
But anyway, we're going to do that.
We're going to look at glyphosate contamination to see if it is potentially heavily contaminated with that weed killer herbicide.
We're going to look at aflatoxins because aflatoxin is one of the things that we test for in our own food supply.
And as you know, at the Health Ranger store, we are the only retailer in the world that I'm aware of that conducts all these tests for our own food.
And we conduct aflatoxin testing for all of the nuts and seeds that we sell, by the way.
So we have aflatoxin testing.
We're going to subject it to that.
In addition, we're going to do microbiology testing because that's also something that we routinely do for our own products.
So we're going to be testing the tractor supply chicken feed for E. coli, salmonella, yeast and mold, and total plate count.
And then all these results are going to be shared publicly.
And just for the record, these results may show that there's no problem that we can see with tractor supply chicken feed, right?
Or potentially they may show a problem.
Whatever they show, we're going to share it with you publicly.
And, you know, I can't have any preconceived notion about what it might be.
But I would say that we do know aflatoxins are very toxic to chickens and also horses and cattle and so on.
So that's something we absolutely want to look at and see if there's aflatoxin contamination.
Now, there is a plausible theory as to why aflatoxins may be present in chicken feed.
Now, for the record, I'm not accusing tractor supply of this scenario that I'm about to describe, but I'm just explaining to you how this works.
And this stems from the fact that a lot of grains, when they are held up and not transported quickly by rail to the packing locations, they sit on rail cars, the grains do, or they sit on the side of the Mississippi River, which we saw because of the problem with barges not being able to navigate the Mississippi due to drought and low water levels and so on.
When these grains sit, especially in even semi-humid environments, they grow fungi, certain strains of fungi that produce these toxins as a byproduct of their own metabolism.
That's what aflatoxins are.
You know, you could say mold or fungi, spores, what have you.
They end up producing aflatoxins.
These are highly toxic to the liver.
So since we are in a country right now where we have transportation log jams with the barges, we have trains that are not running on time at all.
Union Pacific is having major problems.
You saw that Foster Farms in California, they were sending out a major warning about cattle starving to death and chickens starving to death because Union Pacific was not delivering grain on the rail cars.
And then they had to appeal to the federal government to have an emergency kind of interdiction, like, please deliver grain to Foster Farms to save the farm.
So we know that rail delivery is not happening in a timely manner.
So it is very plausible that That some grains in some agricultural products may have been sitting in rail cars for far too long or sitting in silos or even on the sides of rivers waiting to be loaded onto barges.
They may have been sitting for far too long.
They may have grown fungi and they may be heavily contaminated with aflatoxins.
We're going to check that.
But I just wanted to let you know that this is high on our priority list right now and that part of what we do is a public service use of our laboratory where we have, as you know, multiple mass spec instruments and we're ISO accredited, 17-025, and we do food science testing every day, day in and day out.
I don't know how many thousands of samples a year that we test just from our own operation, but it's a lot.
It is a lot.
And now we're going to use it for the public good for tractor supply.
And if anybody's listening from tractor supply, feel free to contact us if you'd like a copy of our lab results.
But then I guess you can just find it on naturalnews.com when we publish it.
Good or bad?
I'm hoping it's good.
But even if it isn't, we're going to publish it anyway.
So prepare accordingly.
Now, before we get into the really serious, heavy stuff here, I have to share kind of a funny story with you today.
And it's an example of my life, the unpredictability of my own life, and living with so many ranch animals and so on.
By the way, I'm a customer of Tractor Supply.
I go to Traction Supply and other agricultural retail establishments because I live on a ranch and I have animals and I take care of animals.
You know, donkeys.
You've heard me talk about the chickens and the dogs and the goats.
And so I had a really funny thing happen to me today that I had to share with you.
I had a business meeting earlier this evening.
And so I needed to drive down the highway to get to this business meeting.
And I had decided to take...
My dog with me.
And this was my new dog that I had adopted not too long ago.
I talked about it a couple of months ago.
I decided to take my dog because she likes to hang out in the back of the vehicle when I'm in a meeting or at a restaurant.
And since the weather is quite cool in Texas right now, she likes to just sit on a pillow in the back of the vehicle.
And it's cool outside and that's fun.
But the thing to know about dogs is that if you're on a ranch with other animals, such as donkeys, and I've mentioned this before, but dogs tend to like to eat donkey poo.
And they just think they're amazing nuggets, like an endless buffet.
And when I'm walking my dogs and they come across some donkey poo pods there, this is not the Tide Pod Challenge.
This is the donkey poo pod challenge.
They just dig in and start eating the poo.
But then the other thing that I've learned about animals is that all kinds of animals, they like to roll their fur or rub their fur into the dirt.
For example, donkeys, they, and it's kind of a self-care activity.
They, in order to get rid of bugs and flies and maybe, who knows, mites and whatever, they like to rub their fur in the dirt and they get a good coating of dirt all in their fur.
They do it on purpose and it protects them from bugs and such.
Chickens do the same thing.
And chickens love to lay down in a pile of wood ash, I've learned, because I have a wood-burning stove and so I have ash piles.
And they love to lay in the ash, obviously after it's cooled.
And then they lay down and they open their feathers and then they use their feathers and their feet, their wings, and they try to stuff like wood ash all in their feathers.
And they take basically an ash bath.
This is a very common behavior among chickens and it's similar to what donkeys do with the dirt.
So animals naturally will use Dirt or ash or whatever as a kind of an insecticide treatment.
Well, one of the things that dogs do, and I've noticed this appears to be fully natural behavior among dogs, they like to roll their fur in animal poo.
And the nastier the poo, the more the dog gets a benefit from it.
So if you're walking your dog and they find a pile of donkey poo, which is not very nasty on the poo scale...
This is slightly different from the Richter scale, but it is orders of magnitude, as you'll see soon.
If you rub in donkey poo, you get just a little bit of protection from insects and so on.
But if they find something crazier, like, dare I say, cow poo...
Like a fresh cow patty.
Oh man, that's golden to one of these dogs.
And they're like, oh my gosh, I will definitely keep the insects off with this cow poo.
And they'll roll over and they'll rub the cow poo all on the back of their neck and the back of their shoulders, like the top part of their body where ticks or insects might end up being.
So they self-treat using whatever nasty poo that they can find.
Well, it turns out that earlier today when I was walking my animals, this dog had apparently discovered some fresh batch of some crazy high Richter scale poo.
And I did not realize this because I was in a rush to get to the meeting.
And so I loaded her up and like, you know, jump on in, come in, get in the vehicle, and we go.
Now, I had also turned on a podcast.
Because I always listen while I'm driving.
I'm always learning.
I'm listening to audiobooks or podcasts.
And in this case, I had turned on a podcast Scott Ritter, you know, the UN weapons inspector.
And I think this was from a website called scottridderextra.com.
And the host of that, whose name I apologize, I do not recall at the moment, but the host, he challenges his guests to recommend songs that are meaningful in their life in some way, some meaningful multiple music tracks.
And then this host plays that music.
And so as I'm barreling down the highway to my meeting, Scott Ritter recommends on the podcast this Russian opera song.
And the host says, okay, I'm going to play the Russian opera song.
It starts playing, and at this exact moment, I realize the dog in the back of my vehicle is completely saturated with intense cow poo.
I should have realized it earlier, but I was kind of talking myself out of it.
I'm like, no, that must have been the poo from last week.
But it was at this moment when I realized this is fresh poo.
And I have a joke on the ranch.
You know, some people walk around with too much perfume and my dogs walk around with poo fume.
So this was a heavy dose of poo fume.
That was suddenly let loose inside my vehicle at the exact moment that this Russian opera recommended by Scott Ritter started playing.
And so I realized, barreling down the highway, I'm gonna have to roll down all four windows.
Just to be able to stand this.
So I roll down the windows.
The cold Texas night air is rushing in.
It's like buffeting me inside the vehicle.
Russian opera is playing.
And my car smells like total crap, like wild animal or cow poo.
I've got this dog in the back that's like, what's going on?
You know, the dog's trying to protect herself from insects.
I'm trying to breathe.
And if anybody had driven up next to me at that moment, Like, who is this crazy person screaming Russian opera with the windows down going down the highway, and they smell like crap?
That was me, actually, it turns out.
And I thought to myself in that moment, you know, at least life isn't boring, right?
At least.
I would hate to be bored, and this is not boring at all.
And so, you know, I continued on, went to the dinner meeting.
Had dinner.
I had to roll up the windows most of the way, so when I came back from dinner, it was like the full poo-fume treatment for the interior of the vehicle.
And made it an interesting evening.
And I guess I have Scott Ritter to thank for that extra Russian battle opera song that gave this whole thing a really unique memory that I thought I would share with you.
But there you go.
That's my real but hilarious moment of the day.
Now, speaking of hilarious, I've got to share this headline with you because this is just too funny.
From the Daily Mail.
Here it is.
Expert warns that miracle weight loss drug Ozempic can cause facial aging.
Vomiting.
As if facial aging wasn't bad enough.
You might also vomit.
And other health issues as guinea pigs take to TikTok to complain about their symptoms.
So apparently these drugs called Wegovy and Ozempic have exploded in popularity for quick weight loss.
And TikTok is filled with videos of women sharing weight loss stories about Ozempic.
But many people are reporting unwanted side effects, including facial aging, dubbed Ozempic Face.
Is that kind of like meth mouth, where people lose all their teeth from doing too much meth?
Plus nausea and vomiting.
So if it's not nauseating enough to look at yourself in the mirror and realize, oh my god, I've just aged five years overnight, You also have actual vomiting as a side effect of this drug.
What's not to like?
My, honey, you look so much thinner but older today.
How are they going to sustain the marketing campaign on this drug?
I'm just wondering.
Alright, the good news is you're going to drop 15 pounds in 30 days.
The bad news is you're going to look like your grandparents.
So, it's like...
Well, you can't have it all, especially not with a pharmaceutical.
Oh, and by the way, did you know you have to inject this drug?
It's not a pill.
It's an injection.
So there's a New York Times article about this.
They're quoting some gal, 41 years old.
She uses this drug to lose weight after her pregnancy.
She injected the drug into her thigh, her stomach, and And arms, and lost 20 pounds.
But then she said, quote, that her face started to look very gaunt.
I remember looking in the mirror, and it was almost like I didn't even recognize myself.
My body looked great, but my face looked exhausted and old.
Well, honey, just tell your date that's what beer is for.
Your face can look as old as you want, as long as he or she has enough beer.
Ugh.
So let's see, a doctor on this says, yeah, weight loss may turn back your biological age, but it tends to turn your facial clock forward.
So everything neck down is going backwards in time.
Everything neck up is aging rapidly to, you know, where you look like Madonna or something.
It's super freaky.
And then about this thing called Ozempic Face.
This doctor says, I see it every day in my office.
A 50-year-old patient will come in and suddenly she's super skinny.
And then she needs filler, which she never needed before.
I look at her and say, how long have you been on Ozempic?
And I'm right 100% of the time.
It's the drug of choice these days.
You just have to inject yourself and make your face really old looking.
What's not to like?
Hey, I have a suggestion, folks.
Instead of injecting yourself with weird, like, face time machine altering drugs, try eating healthy and exercising.
There you go.
Old school.
Your face and your body can both look younger with some sustained effort.
There are no shortcuts.
No shortcuts.
It's daily habits.
It's like the interview I did yesterday with Dr.
Bashima Williams.
It's the daily habits.
You want to have a health revolution.
It's not going to happen overnight.
Probably doesn't involve a needle.
And you're going to have to earn it.
You're going to have to earn it day by day.
But it's well worth it because...
You're not killing yourself.
You're not rapidly aging to get to some weight goal.
And by the way, what happens when you stop injecting yourself with this stuff?
Do you rapidly gain the weight and your face is older too?
Because that's not going to reverse, I don't think.
So what a nightmare scenario.
It's like, hey, nice to see you, Jane, or whatever.
Yeah, you're looking about the same, but your face is 10 years older.
What happened?
Oh, well, I went on the drug, I injected myself, I lost all this weight, face got really old, and then I went off the drug, and then the body weight came right back on.
Now...
I'm just old looking, like older than I actually am.
And the weight loss didn't really work long term.
That is not a good medical intervention.
So what is it about the shortcut society, you know?
Everybody wants a shortcut.
Don't want to put in the time, the effort.
Don't want to make the smoothies.
Folks, even I make smoothies.
You know, I spend time every day.
I'm growing plants.
I'm growing kale.
I'm making smoothies.
I'm slicing the avocados, whatever.
It takes time.
There's not a shortcut.
There's no super shortcut smoothie.
You got to actually have fresh avocados and fresh bananas and use good quality ingredients and just do it every day.
No shortcuts.
Can you imagine some of the people using this drug get together next Christmas at the family Christmas dinner or whatever?
And family members are like, oh yeah, hey there.
Hey there, Martha.
That's interesting.
It's only been a year since we've seen you, but it seems like 10 based on your face.
Has the last year been tough on you?
What's been going on?
You know, polite conversation at family dinners.
People scream, drama, tears and yelling.
It's like, it's the damn drug.
Transported my face in a time machine to the future of being old.
Okay.
All right.
We got to move on.
But there are obviously endless, endless satire that can come from this.
But please don't use this drug unless you just feel your face is just way too young looking and you'd like to add 10 years to your face.
But I'm not going to be using this, obviously.
Oh, this is crazy.
Okay, but one more.
One more joke for men on this.
Because you saw in the media recently, they're pushing Viagra as almost kind of a life extension type of drug.
Did you see those stories?
They were saying that men who take Viagra live longer.
And frankly, it's probably because Viagra does increase blood flow, not just to the one organ, but it increases it elsewhere as well.
I mean, you could probably get the same overall longevity effect, I'm guessing, from nitric oxide type of supplements.
I mean, I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that.
But can you imagine if there are...
Let's say you have...
A man in his 50s, and he's a little bit overweight, and so he takes this crazy drug, and he's taking Viagra because he wants to live longer and have all the Viagra effects.
And so...
You end up with a guy, if he were on a first date, it'd be like, hi, I'm Brad.
My penis is 19.
My face is 75.
Which one do you want to interface with?
It's just like, what is wrong with the chronology of your body?
Can't we just age gracefully all at the same time?
Do we have to have body parts that are younger and older and different?
Or can we just be ourselves and be okay with the fact that we are going to get more wrinkles?
It's okay.
We are going to have more gray hair.
It's okay.
Some of us are going to have some hair loss.
It's totally okay.
You're not 19 anymore.
You're not going to have sex five times a day.
It's okay.
That was actually a waste of time.
If you think about it, you don't need to be 19 again.
In fact, if you think about how crazy you were when you were 19, you probably don't want to be that again.
You're probably a lot more mature at this point, and thank God for that.
Anyway, enough.
We've got to move on.
Young penis, old face.
There we go.
Okay, moving on.
Okay, the U.S. FDA proposes limits on lead in processed baby food.
This is from Reuters.
So think about what this headline is admitting.
It's admitting there are no limits on lead in baby food.
Did you know that?
Because I've been hammering this point for years.
I've told people there's no limits on lead.
There's no limits on mercury in the food, not in America.
No limits on arsenic, cadmium, frankly, any metals.
Aluminum, there's no limits at all.
Now, there are limits in the EU. There are very strict limits.
There are strict limits in Canada.
There are strict limits in Japan.
There are limits in, you know, even Taiwan, for that matter, or Australia.
Not America.
Not America.
Any amount of lead is still okay with the FDA, which is why now the FDA is saying, maybe we should limit lead in baby food, you know, because...
Mental retardation.
Neurological development being stunted.
That seems kind of bad.
Let's maybe limit lead.
So the FDA has released some new guidance or draft guidance, and they've issued a little statement here.
They say, although it is not possible to remove these elements entirely from the food supply, which is true, by the way, we expect that the recommended action levels will cause manufacturers to implement agricultural and processing measures to lower lead levels.
Isn't that interesting?
Now, here's what's interesting to me about the FDA's guidance.
They are proposing a limit of 10 parts per billion for fruits and vegetables and mixtures like grain and meat-based mixtures and yogurts, custards, puddings, that kind of thing.
20 parts per billion limit for root vegetables and 20 parts per billion for dry cereals.
Now, why do I find this interesting?
Number one, because these are actually some pretty strict limits.
And I can tell you, I can assure you, Especially their 20 part per billion limit for root vegetables.
There are all kinds of root vegetables right now in the food supply that vastly exceed 20 parts per billion lead.
Now, I like the fact that the FDA is actually using a parts per billion designation here.
Instead of what Prop 65 uses in California, which is a horrible law, Prop 65 is based on a limit of 0.5 micrograms of lead intake per day based on the recommended serving size that's on the label of that food. Prop 65 is based on a limit of 0.5 micrograms So it's an aggregate daily intake question rather than a parts per billion question.
Well, the aggregate daily intake can be modified by the manufacturer simply changing the serving size on the label.
So in other words, there could be a food that has some lead in it that violates Prop 65.
And if the manufacturer changes the label and reduces the serving size, but doesn't change the food, then suddenly that food can be perfectly legal and it passes Prop 65 without any formulation changes whatsoever.
And also the Prop 65 limits are pretty insanely low for certain types of foods.
And that's why you've seen in the media recently a lot of stories about, oh, the chocolate!
Trader Joe's chocolate bars contain lead.
Well, I did a story about that.
It was like seven years ago, lead in all these chocolate bars.
I mean, when I went on Dr.
Oz, his show many years ago, it was about lead in moringa herb and lead in cacao, which is what makes chocolate, and lead in other things like that.
So I've been trying to hammer this issue for many years.
Well, the FDA, to their credit, Is actually, their recommendations here look good to me.
And I know you're shocked to hear me say that because I normally have nothing good to say about the FDA. But frankly, from a food science point of view, their proposed limits of 10 parts per billion and 20 parts per billion are pretty good.
Pretty darn good.
And if you go to my website, lowheavymetalsverified.org, where I've published the chart that we use, and if you look at the levels, the ratings, we have A++++ down to F. You would find that a food that is only 10 parts per billion lead earns an A++ rating.
Because you'll see it's 0.025 ppm, which is 25 parts per billion.
Remember, it's three orders of magnitude difference between million versus billion.
So...
25 parts per billion or less earns an A triple plus rating on our scale, which means that if these baby foods meet these new FDA limits on lead, that they would earn that rating, at least for lead.
But we also have limits on arsenic.
And the FDA is not proposing arsenic limits.
So our limit on arsenic is 0.62 ppm, or you could say 620 parts per billion.
And there is arsenic in a lot of baby foods that are based on rice.
Because there's a lot of arsenic in rice, especially rice from China.
Not so much rice from the US, by the way.
We've tested rice from California.
It's been very clean.
We've tested rice from Texas.
Very clean.
The contaminated rice that we've seen comes from China.
And sometimes India, by the way, as well, but mostly China.
So we test, you know, four elements and mercury has to be below six parts per billion and cadmium has to be below 100 parts per billion.
If you meet all four of those things, then you get the A triple plus rating, which is our best rating.
So the FDA is moving in the right direction, in my opinion.
I hope that these rules are implemented.
It makes perfect sense to me.
If it is implemented, we're going to go out and buy a bunch of baby food and see who is meeting these new standards and who is not.
I can pretty much go into the grocery store and I can look at the baby food.
I can look at the ingredients and pretty much pick out the ones that are going to violate this because I have, after testing, I don't know, 10,000 plus samples over many, many years, we have a pretty good idea of where the metals are going to be found.
The other final note on this from a lab science point of view is that lead is one of the easiest elements to test.
Some elements are very difficult, more squirrely.
They have instrument problems and interference problems and so on, but lead is not one of those.
Lead is very easy to test.
In fact, you can test multiple lead isotopes very easily via ICP-MS, which is what we do.
We key off of lead 206.
Typically, this is lead 206 and 208.
These are different isotopes.
You can look up isotopic abundance ratios of lead But 206 and 208 are what we quantify, or that's what we use for our quantitation standards and so on.
And anyway, it's very easy to test in food.
So there you go.
What do you know?
What a surprising day.
The FDA is actually doing something useful.
Wow.
Okay.
Oh, speaking of metals, by the way, I forgot to tell you, I've got a really great interview coming up today with the CEO of our metals sponsor.
I'm talking about gold and silver in this case, which is Treasure Island Coins and Precious Metals Company.
He's got new intel.
He called me earlier and said, Mike, I've got some intel.
Something has flipped.
Major inflection point.
There is a glut of silver supply in the industry because people or wholesalers overordered like crazy.
So there's this massive oversupply.
Premiums have plummeted.
And acquiring physical silver and gold right now is at one of the best prices, even though spot prices have risen.
Premiums have fallen.
And it's actually a good time to acquire gold and silver because a lot of the wholesalers are kind of almost desperately trying to get rid of it now.
because they ordered too much and then demand kind of fell off late last year So gold and silver retailers are sitting on huge supply and they don't want to pay interest on the loans to keep that supply.
They're trying to offload it and that's why premiums are low.
We're going to interview Chris Olson here.
You'll hear it coming up.
Also, I asked him about the old bait and switch tactics because I've been getting multiple complaints from people across the industry who are getting, they've come to realize they've been ripped off by other gold retailers who are kind of heavily advertising and heavy sponsors of, you know, various content.
And people are getting talked into kind of rip-off purchases of so-called proof gold and silver that has their semi-numismatics.
The premiums can be 40% to 50% over the melt price and people are getting majorly ripped off.
And I'm hearing a lot more of that.
And so I asked Chris Olson about that in the upcoming interview.
And I asked him, how can people get the most ounces of gold and silver per dollar and not overpay?
Because a lot of people are overpaying.
And a lot of people don't know the difference between just regular bullion gold versus, quote, proof gold or semi-numismatic gold.
And so my job is to help educate you about this so that you don't get ripped off and you get the most metal for your dollars if you're acquiring metals.
But let's hope it's just gold and silver and not lead from baby food.
I can see someone like, oh, you've been stacking gold?
I've been collecting lead, man.
Buying baby food before the FDA limits kick in.
Ah, crazy world.
All right, you know what?
Let's just go to that interview because I think it's about 30 minutes.
Let's go to that interview.
We'll come back.
We'll talk about Russia, the main battle tanks, and World War III on the other side, okay?
So here we go.
Enjoy the interview with Chris Olson, the CEO of Treasure Island Coins and Precious Metals Company.
You will want to listen to this so that you don't get ripped off When you're purchasing gold or silver.
And there are a lot of ripoff operations running today as they have always run through the history of precious metals, frankly.
So get informed.
Here you go.
All right, welcome to this featured interview.
I'm Mike Adams, of course, the founder of Brighteon.com.
And one of the advantages of having a longtime sponsor in the precious metals space is that I get a lot of intel from people in the industry who are seeing what's happening with inventory levels and changes in premium and so on.
And earlier today, Chris Olson, who is the CEO of the Treasure Island Coins and Precious Metals Company, which is our sponsor, He contacted me with some very interesting intel about some inventory whiplash that's taking place.
And I thought, we've got to share this with you.
So I asked him to come on.
It's late at night.
But thank you, Chris Olson, for joining me so late to give us this update.
I appreciate your time.
Thanks, Mike.
My pleasure.
So, let's just jump right into it.
We've got a couple of things to pass along to customers.
Tell us, kind of as you told me earlier today, what's happening with inventory and premiums right now in gold and silver?
Well, to explain what's happening right now, we'd have to go to a bit of the backstory.
And as you and many of your listeners know, throughout 2020 and 21 and well into 2022, we've had record demand Pretty much every year, year on year, increases in demand for physical precious metal, bullion, gold and silver, coins and bars.
And really, it's been unprecedented.
And so as that demand just never slackened, it was always so tight, it caused the major players in the industry, such as ourselves, to go out and attempt to acquire as much product as we could to meet the demand. to go out and attempt to acquire as much product
And that meant that we were contacting refineries, mints, other suppliers, any sources we could find, and buying up all of their available production and all of their forecasted inventory for months out.
And that's the key here, is that you were buying future production quite a few months ahead, right?
Yeah, it was the only way to stay ahead because if you didn't do that, you wouldn't get it because the delivery timelines just kept getting pushed out.
There was only so much productive capacity in the industry to meet the unprecedented demand.
So everybody in the industry is basically doing that and that's part of what drives up the premium, which is the price of the coin or the bar above what's called the spot price.
So the spot price could stay the same while the premiums continue to increase due to the supply and demand pricing that's happening in the retail bullion market for the finished product.
Now, let me interrupt for a second.
What was the peak premium for silver that you saw over the last year or two?
Because at one point, it was insane.
It was almost half the cost of the silver.
Yeah, it depended on the product.
Products like the U.S. Silver Eagle were probably the highest due to just a severe supply shortage and inability of the U.S. to meet the demand.
There was a shortage of blanks.
We had blanks that were going to other mints because there's only one supplier right now of blanks to the U.S. mint.
And their supply was being divvied up amongst other mints as well.
So there was a lack of productive capacity there.
I think the premiums on Silver Eagles were probably well into near $15 over spot.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah, and that's just reflective of just the popularity and the demand for that particular product.
Other products like the 90% silver, which, of course, there is no new vintage of the old coins, the silver quarters and dimes pre-1965.
There's only what exists currently.
We'll ever be able to be bought or sold.
There's no new mintage of that.
So that's always the first product to have the premiums shoot up when there's an increase in demand.
And I think premiums for that were in the $10, $12 neighborhood above the spot price.
But everything was affected.
Every coin, every bar.
So then when did this flip?
Well, you started to see the demand slacken towards the end of summer a bit, but really it was kind of following the rate hikes from the Federal Reserve as they began to tighten monetary policy, raise rates.
It began to tamper down inflation dramatically.
And inflation expectations.
They started contracting the money supply by hundreds of billions of dollars.
I think 400 and some billion dollars have come off of M1 at this point.
Maybe more.
Don't quote me on it.
But there's a lot of money coming out of the money supply.
And this happens right near holiday season starts kicking in.
November comes.
People are thinking about Thanksgiving, getting ready for Christmas, traveling for the holidays.
People don't want to worry about doom and gloom.
They need a break.
So that combined with higher interest rates and uncertainty, we just saw demand just kind of drop off a cliff right about the middle of November.
And into December, it really kind of bopped out.
It was a great time for everybody to take a break.
Yeah, good point.
But then from what you said earlier, this was also the time when a lot of the pre-orders were arriving.
So physical inventory was showing up at a lot of silver wholesalers and retailers at the same time that demand was really plummeting.
Absolutely.
Exactly.
So we were invested well into months of production ahead of this, just trying to keep up demand and forecast it.
And many others are in the same situation.
And so demand has picked back up a little bit, but not enough to deal with the supply issue.
So for the last two and a half years, it's been nothing but a supply crunch.
And now we have an overabundance of Physical product live in the warehouse and in the vault.
And I want to be clear, you're not talking about just your company.
You're saying industry-wide, there is a glut of supply that is in the hands of the wholesalers across the board.
And so this is why premiums are plummeting.
Exactly.
And so, yes, premiums are plummeting as a result.
Interest rates are higher so the cost to carry the inventory is also higher.
You have some guys where they go and tap into their lines of credits with their banks to maintain that supply and if you don't have the demand to back up the sales, Right.
So not only do they have more inventory than they need and lower sales, now they're paying higher interest rates.
So they're incentivized to try to get rid of that inventory, which means you have to drop your premiums and everybody's higher sale on bullion right now.
So then, yeah, right now across the board, there's all this downward pressure on premiums.
So the $15 per ounce premium that you mentioned on US Mint Silver Eagles, what has that dropped to roughly just as an industry average?
Well, I'm not exactly sure what the average is.
Just off the top of my head, looking around, I'm seeing prices on, say, sovereign one-out silver coins ranging anywhere from $4 to $5.
Maybe upper threes, maybe mid-fives on some of the higher-end stuff.
And that's overspot, just to be clear to the audience.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Overspot, over-the-spot price, of course.
So the premiums have, in some cases, fallen by, you could say, as much as two-thirds?
Oh yeah, definitely.
Silver Eagles are still high.
We still see those probably $9, $10, $12 over spot, depending on where you look.
They're still hard to come by, but we've got Silver listed right now on our website.
10-ounce bars, $2.50 over spot, which in the last two and a half years was really unheard of for that size of a bar.
Yeah, and actually that brings up an important point I want to mention.
The effective price to get silver in your hands right now for a consumer is in many cases cheaper than it was six months ago.
Even though spot prices have risen, premiums have fallen more than that.
To the point where a lot of these silver coins are more affordable today.
Am I correct in stating that?
Absolutely.
Yeah, there's a lot of products right now that, you know, if you bought it six months ago or even a year ago when the spot was lower than it is right now, you could get it cheaper today than back then.
And that's just reflective of the supply and demand situation, which has changed so rapidly.
And how long do you think this oversupply Glut, if I dare call it that, is going to last because obviously this is a temporary situation.
Yeah, it's an interesting phenomenon.
So it's kind of an overcorrection.
People were just getting as much as they could coming to them.
And so with interest rates being high and the need to replenish capital and get rid of inventory, I think the fire sale will continue for probably through February as people try to work through it, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
I mean, we know that this market and geopolitics can turn on a dime right now.
But I would expect, you know, probably through early March.
And at that point, I think premiums are going to start to come back up because, like I said, interest rates are higher.
The cost to carry the commodities are higher.
And just in general, costs are higher across the board.
Inflation is still a real issue, despite what the Biden administration seems to think.
They don't have it under control.
Right.
Well, and as I've also said in the podcast, gold and silver prices are just one Russian missile away from, you know, really exploding, at least in my mind.
I mean, folks, that's not a forward-looking investment statement or anything.
I'm just saying that, I mean, look what happened last year when Russia invaded Ukraine.
What happened to gold?
Didn't it go to 2050 or something?
Yep.
Yeah.
Something like that, I don't know right off the top of my head.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was like, I'm pretty sure it was 2050.
That was a spot or close to that.
But anyway, when there's uncertainty in the world, people obviously tend to want to go to safety.
Let me just give up.
It was about that in March.
March, about 2050.
March, exactly.
So, folks, the website, I mean, The Treasure Island Coins and Precious Metals Company, they are a sponsor of ours.
So I want to give out the website where you can contact them.
And they have very honest pricing.
And in fact, I'm going to ask Chris here about that because there's some not so honest pricing in the industry.
But they have very honest pricing.
You can see the prices on their website.
You can get there if you wish by going to metalswithmike.com.
It doesn't pay me any affiliate thing.
The prices are exactly the same if you just go to the Treasure Island website directly.
It's just that Chris will know that you heard it through us if you go through metalswithmike.com.
But give them a call or look at the pricing on their website, see their inventory.
It's available right now and you'll have discreet secure delivery if that's something that you're interested in.
But Chris, one of my questions to you is I've received some alerts from some people who had bad experiences with some other gold retailers What's going on with
that?
You've been in this industry a long time.
What's happening?
What you're describing there is a very old playbook that's been around for As long as I've been in the industry, and I've been doing this full-time for 22 years since coming to work with my dad, who's been in it since the mid-70s.
Wow.
And this has been going on really forever.
And the angle is that what some of these companies will try to do is sell people a gold coin or a silver coin that is semi-collectible or numismatic.
And there is an IRS rule which allows IRAs to include certain types of collectibles like the proof gold eagle and the proof American silver eagle.
Typically, in an IRA, you can't hold a collectible in a self-directed IRA, not that type of a collectible.
You can own gold and silver of a certain purity, but all of it is bullion except for these very few exceptions where due to the way the law is worded, they can sell you a proof gold eagle, which means that the coin is struck they can sell you a proof gold eagle, which means that the coin is struck twice as hard on a very highly polished die and it It's got a certificate of authenticity, and it looks really fancy.
It's a beautiful coin.
But those coins are typically marked up far above the comparable Bullion coin version of the same coin.
And so if you're calling to invest in gold and you want to buy gold and silver, what these companies will do is try to steer you into these other types of gold and silver, which have much higher premiums.
And they tell you a lot of stories as to why you should do it.
But that's what we call the bait and switch.
And how much more premium does that involve?
Let's just say, let's take a round number.
If a one-ounce gold coin, a regular one, is let's say $2,000, which I know it's not that expensive at the moment, but if it were $2,000, what would a proof semi-numismatic version be sold for?
They can go anywhere from...
$2,300 to $2,800.
It really depends on who you're talking to.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but just in the interest of time, if that customer takes that proof gold coin and then goes to a local gold dealer and tries to sell it back the next day, how much would they get for it?
It's going to depend.
You know, it really fluctuates.
They could lose $300, $400, $500 on the coin if they tried to liquidate it right at that time.
Right now, I don't know exactly what they're selling it for.
That's typically not the kind of market that we're into.
But I can tell you that this type of gold coin, the proof gold eagle right now, Is trading in the wholesale realm at around $600 above the melt value.
Wow.
And that's for any of them.
That's $600.
So this premium, most of this is just pure profit for that retailer.
Yeah, it's hype.
Well, the premium, the $600 I'm talking about, that's in the wholesale market amongst the dealers that buy and sell amongst themselves.
So the retailers are using that as their base price.
And so they're probably selling it for $750, $800.
But that entire price, that entire $800, whatever it is at the end of the transaction, all of that is speculative.
That could all be wiped out.
Gold coin could go down to the melt value of gold.
So you could be out the $750 an ounce.
That premium is very, very volatile and speculative, and it's subject to hype.
So a person that, let's say someone wants to really stack up on gold, and they call up one of these retailers and say, I have $100,000 to put into gold, and they get talked into buying these proof gold semi-numismatic coins, they will not end up with $100,000 worth of gold metal.
Not even close.
Not the melt failure.
Not the melt failure.
If it were to be melted down, you're going to be missing out on a very large percentage of that, which right now, the way it's priced, it's about 25% Okay, just in the wholesale.
Because I noticed that there are some players out there that are doing this, and they seem to be rolling in all kinds of money.
And it's obvious to me they're taking that money from customers who don't have the knowledge to know that they're engaging in a transaction that is not in their own best interest.
Yeah, and that's something that's plagued the industry for a long time.
And one of the red flags to look out for is if you're dealing with a company, see if they publish their pricing somewhere publicly.
Ah, good point.
Take a look at their website.
Do they have their prices up?
Is it fully transparent?
And that's what I love about your company and your service.
People can go to your website, again, metalswithmike.com.
They can see real-time pricing on the inventory that you have right there.
You can see the numbers.
Whereas I notice that a lot of these other sites, they say, call us.
Just call this number.
Contact us.
Get them on the phone.
And then on the phone...
talk people into things.
And I'm sorry to say that there are a lot of sort of wealthy, slightly older individuals, shall we say, who are perhaps a little more easily talked into things when they don't have a full understanding that they're kind of being ripped off.
Well, it's, it's, it's a situation right now more than ever where the majority of the people that we've spoken to over the last two and a half years are new to precious metals.
They've never bought it before, but suddenly they see the value in it.
They want to get into it while they still can.
But they don't really know exactly what they're doing.
So they're looking for someone to trust.
They're looking for someone to explain it to them.
And in that type of a situation, it's easy for a person to get taken advantage of if they just don't understand how the market actually functions and how pricing functions.
And so we try to be very transparent about all of that with our customers.
Yeah, and I'll go ahead and share this publicly.
I'm not going to name any names, but folks, I was contacted by one of these companies that wanted to Pay me crazy, insane amounts of money to switch to them.
And I found out they were doing this bait and switch thing.
And of course, I rejected that.
No thanks.
You can't pay me to promote something that's going to rip people off.
There's no...
That's just insane.
And that's why I love working with you, Chris, because your company, you're solid, you have high integrity, you're honest with people.
So if someone's buying gold or silver right now, and they just want the most ounces, but in a one-ounce coin format, because they like the one-ounce format, what's the best deal?
I mean, I don't mean super sale or whatever, but the best value right now that you can offer.
So, one ounce minted coins, sovereign coins, like a sovereign government.
The best deal we have right now is from the Perth Mint in Australia, the Silver Kangaroo.
We have those at $3.49 over the spot price.
Did you say $3?
I actually didn't hear the number.
Was it $2 or $3.49?
$3.49 over the spot price.
Okay.
That still sounds really amazing because I remember that being much, much higher a few months ago.
Okay.
So $3.49 over spot.
What about gold?
With gold, there's a couple different things that we have going on right now.
And this is a perfect example as well of the difference in pricing.
So we were talking about those proof gold eagles that people are often being recommended by their advisors that they get on the phone.
And right now, The wholesale rate on those is actually, I was just checking it, it's about 30% over melt.
And the retailer, they're going to add, who knows, another 5%, maybe 10%.
I don't know what these guys do these days.
But we can sell, as an example, we have one ounce gold maples right now, which are in varied condition where they might have slight marks or nicks on the coins.
And they're at $45 per coin over melt, which basically...
Wow.
That's about 2.3%.
So compare 2.3%.
You could acquire gold for a 2.3% over melt premium versus what some of these other guys are recommending all the time to their customers at 30% and higher premiums.
Like, why would you even recommend?
Well, so there you go, folks.
I mean, that's the main point I wanted to get to.
You could be acquiring gold at 2.3 or maybe 2.5% over spot price or silver at some also, what, $3.50 over spot instead of paying 30 to 40% premiums.
Yeah.
And with silver, the comparable on silver in these IRA bait-and-switch tactics is the proof Silver Eagle, which right now in the wholesale market, those are trading at $78 to $80 a piece.
You're probably going to see another $5 markup from the typical retailer that's into that kind of thing.
And then you're going to see these trade, you know, $85 for an ounce of silver.
That's crazy.
Whereas, you know, you could buy a perfectly good silver coin for an investment from us for $27.50, $28.
So that's the problem that people run into is they're not being steered in the right direction when it comes to their precious metal investments.
And I've heard people say, oh, you know, I just got $25,000 worth of silver.
And I ask them, well, okay, what'd you get?
Tell me.
And they tell me what they got.
And I'm like, that's not $25,000 worth of silver.
That's not even 20,000 worth of silver.
Where did you get that?
I'm hearing these stories.
There's always a premium.
Like I said, it's been very high here for the last two and a half years, but it all represents supply and demand.
You have to educate yourself and look at what is the value proposition?
What is the worst case scenario for what I'm buying?
The worst case scenario for any gold or silver product is melt.
You melt it down.
That type of scenario happens sometimes if Sober were to spike up to $50 in a period of months or even years, you'd see premiums evaporate because you'd have so many people selling into that high price and taking profits.
There'd just be a glut of supply.
And so the refinery would become the buyer of last resort for a lot of that supply.
Oh, that's a really good point, yeah.
But it would be a good problem to have, too, you know?
If you bought silver at $24 for $350 over spot, now silver's $75 and you have to sell it for spot, well, you didn't lose.
You won.
Yeah, exactly.
But that's how premiums work.
I'm really glad you covered all of this, and I really want to thank you for taking time, even a little extra time here in the evening, but...
Since our audience, the primary reason people are stacking gold or silver is because they have assets.
They want those assets simply preserved.
They're not buying for speculation.
They're not even considering this, quote, investments.
They just want to hit the pause button on their assets and still have something of value, hopefully close to 100% of value after a currency collapse or a global war or a cyber wipeout of the financial institutions, whatever.
And so they want to get as close to the actual melt value as possible, as close as you can, but also maybe not in 100-ounce bars.
They want something like one ounce that they can still trade with if they have to.
So the information that you just gave us, I think, is really vital for people to get the maximum amount of ounces out of every dollar that you're putting into this.
That's exactly right.
And one thing I just want to leave you with before we end here, with the smart money.
The smart money is going into gold right now.
And I was just doing a little research.
This is from the World Gold Council.
So in 2021, central banks accumulated 463 tons, metric tons of gold.
Look up how much a metric ton is.
You'll be surprised by how many ounces of gold that is.
They accumulated 463 tons in 2021, which was 82% more than 2020.
And at that point, they said this is a 30-year high.
The report just came out a couple months ago that in the third quarter of 2022, central banks bought nearly 400 tons in a single quarter.
Nearly the same amount they bought in the entirety of 2021, and this was a record purchase by central banks.
I remember that report because wasn't something like 300 of those tons just purchased by China alone?
I don't recall.
I don't recall.
I think that was the case.
And I remember being really blown away by China's accumulation.
But you make a really important point, and that was one quarter.
Any idea what the total purchases for 2022 are going to look like by central banks?
Well, the total in 2022, I don't know.
I don't have the number right in front of me.
But it's certainly going to be well over double what they bought in 2021.
And I doubt they're going to slow down in 2023.
And this was despite a strong dollar.
And so that's part of the reason that gold has performed so well right now in the face of high interest rates, in the face of a strong dollar.
Because the BRICS countries, OPEC +, the Global South, which we've got nations with alliances now representing over half the global population, they've decided that they don't want to trade their natural resources for a currency where they're going to lose a real rate of return of negative 7% every year.
They'd rather keep their oil in the ground, or maybe they're going to take it and convert it into gold.
Or some other kind of hard asset.
So that's the situation.
Okay, that's really excellent intel, Chris.
And just the takeaways from this are, number one, a lot of excess inventory right now in silver and gold at retailers.
Premiums have plunged, which means that right now is actually a very good time to acquire this, frankly, at a temporarily good deal because premiums are so low.
And then the other takeaway is do your homework, folks.
Don't get taken, don't get talked into proof coins with crazy premiums where you're not getting the value for the dollars or whatever currency you're using to buy this, but get the most ounces that you can for the money that you're putting into this.
Is that anything to add to that, Chris, or is that pretty much the summary?
That's pretty much it, and just make sure whatever product you're looking at, that it has liquidity, that it's popular, that there's a good two-way market.
Some products are very cheap, but they're also garbage, and you don't want to hold on to those.
So you want to stick to the standard popular product.
So, I'm sorry, one more question, but let's say the silver coins that you were talking about today, the Kangaroos, $3.50 over or $3.49 over spot right now.
What is your spread today on that coin?
What are you buying those back for right now if someone were to sell them to you today?
Yeah, right now, I'm going to have to pull it up.
I didn't have that number in front of me.
Oh, sorry.
I kind of sprung it on you there.
No, that's okay.
I can look it up real quick.
Right now on those, I'm buying those at $1.50 over a spot.
So the spread on that is about $2.
Okay.
All right.
So that spread's about $2.
And then between buy and sell, which is very reasonable, especially in this industry, what about a gold coin spread right now?
What's that look like?
The gold coin spread is going to be...
In the realm of 2% to 3%, depending on the particular product that you're looking for.
That's kind of the average.
Wow.
Okay.
That number can change also depending on the size of the deal, depending on the product.
You know, the larger the deal, the more room we have to work with that.
Okay.
So 2-3%, that's less than a typical credit card merchant transaction fee, by the way.
So that's a really good, from my point of view, that's a really reasonable spread for something that's just going to hold value, at least historically.
And that's also an indication of where premiums are right now.
Spreads widen as the premiums become more volatile.
As premiums get higher, spreads will get wider because there's a lot more uncertainty.
And so when you're a market maker, you have to widen your spreads.
Otherwise, you could get stuck with a lot of inventory that you can't hedge the premium.
You can hedge the volatility of the gold or the silver component, but you can't hedge that premium.
That's factored in there.
So right now spreads are tight because the volumes are low and the premiums are in a normal range where there's a lot of risk is no longer wrapped up into that price.
So it is a very good time to buy or even to sell if you had to, but I wouldn't recommend selling because I think premiums will go back up.
Yeah.
I don't think I've ever sold any silver or gold.
From time to time, I buy some, never sold it, but there might be a day where that makes sense, and I'm certainly willing to do that when it does make sense, but we'll see where it goes.
I want to thank you, and also just in terms of disclosure, I want to remind the audience that Chris Olson's company here, Treasure Island, is a regular sponsor of my podcast.
They do not pay me a commission.
They pay me a flat compensation for mentioning them in the podcast, but I have not received any payment for this particular interview.
This is simply kind of an extra intel analysis of the industry, but I am compensated for plugging them in the podcast.
But I hope you agree with me that I'm very careful about who I recommend.
I don't want myself or my reputation to ever get burned by anybody Engaging in shenanigans or overcharging people or generating complaints.
And that's why I stick with Treasure Island.
And Chris Olson runs his business with super high integrity, along with David and others there.
You can call them up.
You can talk to them.
They will answer your questions.
And they will not try to push crazy inflated products onto you.
They will give you the most value for your dollar or whatever currency you're using.
So I just wanted to disclose all that.
And thank you, Chris, for spending time with me.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, happy to be here, Mike.
Thanks again.
Final note to everybody listening.
Feel free to repost this interview.
I always say that, but feel free to if you wish.
And just give credit to Chris Olson there at Treasure Island.
And once again, if you choose to...
Check their prices or contact them.
You can reach it at metalswithmike.com.
Just easy to remember.
But again, I don't receive any compensation for purchases.
No affiliate compensation of any kind.
So I just want you to know that.
Thank you for listening, everybody.
Stay informed.
Choose wisely.
Get good financial advice and make very sharp decisions about this because money is getting harder to come by each and every day.
So thank you for listening.
God bless you all.
Take care.
Okay, hope you enjoyed that interview.
Very informative.
Now, moving forward, we're going to talk about the main battle tanks being approved by the U.S. and Germany to go to Ukraine, obviously, and escalate the situation with Russia probably into World War III. This is not looking good.
I invited a first-time guest for an interview to talk about this and the China-Taiwan situation.
And this guest, his name is Mike Shelby.
He is with Forward Observer, and the website for that is forwardobserver.com.
And he and his group of ex-Army analysts, intelligence analysts, and special forces people, they analyze information to try to present a strategic and geopolitical view of world events and give people a good analysis of kind of what's happening and where it's headed.
So I invited him on and we finished that interview a couple of hours ago and I think it's very valuable and since we do talk about Russia and main battle tanks and everything, I'd like to just play that interview for you here.
I think the duration is about 40 minutes or so and I realize this is a double interview podcast for you today but there's a lot to cover.
I just want to mention that Mike Shelby, he speaks in perhaps a little more reserved way, which is appropriate for what he's doing.
He's an analyst.
He's not an opinion maker.
He's not out there to push strong opinions.
He's there to analyze and present information that he can back up with data and with the support of his other analysts.
So you may find that this conversation is slightly more reserved, but don't worry.
On the other side of that, I have a special report for you that I recorded earlier that is totally untamed.
It's my analysis and opinion on what this means with the main battle tanks being sent to Ukraine and how that's going to lead us to World War III and probably, at least in my estimation, a very high risk of Berlin getting nuked.
And not just Berlin, but perhaps Washington, D.C.
So this is the lineup.
We're going to talk to Mike Shelby at Forward Observer, a little more reserved, and then I'll play that other report for you of myself being a lot more uncensored and speculative about where this might be heading.
So we're going to transition into the Mike Shelby interview right now.
Enjoy.
And I'll talk to you on the other side.
All right.
Welcome, folks, to today's featured interview.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon.com.
And today we're joined by a first-time guest.
But I'm a longtime fan of the work of this individual and his group, which is called Forward Observer.
And the website is forwardobserver.com.
And this gentleman joining us, his name is Mike Shelby, and he's a former Intel analyst, worked for the U.S. Army.
And he and his sort of colleagues there, who are a lot of them are special ops guys, are former special ops.
They offer an independent analysis at the strategic level, typically, of what's happening in the world.
Pretty much unfiltered through any government or any political lens, just trying to give you a straight-up analysis of what's happening geopolitically and strategically and also with wars that are going on.
So that's the scoop.
Here we go.
Mike Shelby, thank you so much, sir, for joining us today.
It's a great honor to have you on.
Hey, Mike.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
Now, did I get the intro pretty much correct, or is there anything you want to add or take away from what I said?
Yeah, it's spot on.
I just think it's important.
I mean, there's just so much information coming out that's filtered through government approved talking points.
And that just does not help the American people.
It helps the elites.
And what we're trying to do is provide the same high level of intelligence that's available to senior decision makers, but provide that to Americans so that they can better prepare for the future.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think there's a lot of value in that.
I also want to mention you have a YouTube channel.
It's also called Forward Observer, and you post a lot of video clips there.
And you said to me before we started, you have a daily live stream for subscribers as well.
Is that correct?
We do.
We publish a report every morning at 8 a.m., and then at 9, we go live for subscribers and talk our way through the report, provide a little more analysis and background on the day's topics.
Okay, fantastic.
Now, I guess you get asked this question and answer this in whatever way you're comfortable, but is this all open source intelligence?
Is it media intel?
Is it Guys on the ground feeding you stuff from different regions of the world?
Is it a combination?
Where are you getting the info overall, to the extent that you can speak about it?
Sure.
Yeah, it's mostly open source.
We monitor a lot of foreign media sources as well.
And on occasion, we reach out to friends.
I'm not going to jail, and neither is anyone else, for producing classified information, of course.
Sure.
But yeah, a little bit of extra color on what's actually happening on the ground in places.
We provide that to the extent that we can.
Yeah, well, these days, apparently there's classified information in every house and garage of every former official, especially if you own a Corvette for some reason.
But I understand.
You practice operational security, obviously, to protect the lives of the men and women in uniform.
I respect that, too.
I'm not going to, obviously, try to push for anything that would compromise that, nor would you offer it, but I just want to be clear about that for all of our listeners.
Given that situation, then, do you talk publicly about roughly how large is your organization or how many analysts or observers that you have or how big is your team?
Is that okay to talk about?
I don't know.
Yeah, sure.
One, two, three, four.
We're up to six full-time analysts now.
And we've got a couple of part-time guys working for us.
And yeah, I tell you, there's a real hunger out there for people who want the ground truth.
And so, yeah, we've been able to bring on some real studs onto the team and grow over the past several years.
Yeah, okay, that's fantastic.
Really great to hear.
Now, let's talk about...
I do want to talk about China and Taiwan, of course, and I want to ask you about U.S. power grid sabotage, but I want to start with Ukraine, Russia, and one of the most frustrating things about that whole scenario has been that, of course, the Russian propaganda side is...
Difficult to believe, but the Ukraine propaganda side has been insane.
And then the U.S. State Department propaganda side.
So you have this triangle, these three points of disinfo.
And how do you sort through any of that?
Yeah, determining what is accurate is very difficult.
And it's not just what's accurate, because decisions change and thinking changes.
And I think a big part of the problem is on the U.S. side, you know, we've heard U.S. officials come out and say, oh, we're not doing this for Ukraine.
We're not going to do that for Ukraine.
And now we're giving them Abrams tanks, which was not a possibility, you know, three plus months ago.
So I think part of it is just the chaos of decision making.
And I don't know if that's cloudy thinking or divergent opinions or just the inability to to stick to a strategic game plan.
But decisions are changing.
And that I mean, that makes the situation fluid.
And so beyond the propaganda, it can be difficult to tell what's going to happen tomorrow, much less three to six months from now.
Do you find that and this is my opinion, but I want your reaction to it, that the players in today's Biden administration and the State Department in particular, they seem very inexperienced and incompetent compared to almost any, even like the George Bush administration.
Those people were more competent whether or not you agree with their politics They were very competent.
The Reagan administration, even the Clinton administration, The people in the State Department were way more competent, in my opinion.
Would you agree or disagree with that broad characterization?
Well, yes, I think there is a competency issue.
But also, the Bush administration was coming from a point of strength.
I mean, maybe the United States was never as strong as it was during the global war on terror period in the beginning.
And I think in some ways the United States is weaker today relative to the rise of other countries.
And so maybe part of its confidence, the other part is just it's a much more challenging environment.
We're going up against nation states who have multi-year, multi-decade strategic plans that they are sticking to.
And those plans include undermining and eventually toppling the United States as the world's dominant power.
it's they've moved from checkers to chess here.
I think.
And how big of a factor do you think is the concern about munitions, the U.S. munitions stockpile being deployed in Ukraine and not being able to be quickly replaced?
In other words, years of manufacturing to replace things like artillery rounds and so on.
I think the thinking in the D.C. defense establishment is that they have years, several years at least, before any kind of conflict with China.
And I think that's what they're anticipating.
And so I think they have been relatively comfortable providing arms and munitions to Ukraine on the expectation that, oh, the U.S. industrial complex, military industrial complex and defense contractors are going to be able to churn out military industrial complex and defense contractors are going to be able to churn out more munitions before we
Due to inflation and supply chain problems, we know defense contractors, they've told Congress directly, this is a multi-year problem, and our costs are increasing.
The production is going to take a lot longer than you think.
And so I think that's been part of the problem here, is the anticipation that China won't do anything until 2025 or 27, and we've got time.
That may not be the case.
Well, and I'm thinking as you're saying that, specifically for munitions manufacturing in the United States, you've got at least three major problems.
One is, of course, the microchip supply out of Taiwan.
The second problem is the labor shortage in America, that is the lack of Americans willing to work in a munitions factory.
And then thirdly, you have the commodities supply chain shortage, which was caused in part by, frankly, Western nations cutting off Russia from the SWIFT system, and transactional, global transactions for commodities such as aluminum, copper, zinc, global transactions for commodities such as aluminum, copper, zinc, iron, or as well the deindustrialization of Europe due to the shutdown of energy supply and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline.
You have a shutdown of 70 to 80 percent of the metals smelting operations across Europe.
So aren't all those major factors that would affect munitions manufacturing in the United States?
Yes, and also rare earth minerals, or now they're called rare earth materials.
And, you know, the United States has just been handcuffed on energy and on rare earths, on smelting, on all the domestic production that, and I'm not a cheerleader here for the military industrial complex, but they really have been handcuffed on the production side, and now we're just facing the reality here.
When you say handcuffed, you mean what?
Through economic policies.
Oh, okay.
Regulation, yeah.
Yeah, right.
And I think some of this, you know, mining, for example, is critical for the rare earths.
And I remember under the Trump administration, there was an effort to try to create more nationalistic independence for many of those elements.
That was only partially achieved, however, right?
And China still provides the bulk of rare earths Yeah,
Yeah, we've also seen a lot of protectionism from a lot of these minerals as well as countries realize, hey, if we're going to have any hope for any kind of industrial manufacturing base, Yeah.
That's right, yeah.
We've seen a lot of announcements of other countries exactly saying we're going to limit exports, including food exports or fertilizer exports.
I've seen that quite a bit around the world.
Yeah, Mexico nationalized their lithium production as well, state-controlled, and we've seen a lot of that.
Hey, Mike, how come we don't have...
All electric tanks, I ask on behalf of Greta Thunberg, who may be listening.
Yeah, well, I don't think there's batteries large enough to power these tanks for any period of time.
Well, that does seem to be an issue.
The snowplows also in New York that were electric snowplows that didn't last more than a few hours in the snow.
So there you go.
That's why we don't have electric tractors and electric fighter jets either, it seems.
So the military needs diesel.
Needs rubber, needs combustion engines, needs commodities.
And it seems to me that all of these things are kind of on the attack list, the target list of, you know, the climate people.
So don't politics inevitably kind of get intermixed into military readiness?
Yeah, I mean, Clausewitz said that war is just an extension of politics.
And I think a really good example, and you know, I mean, people have been talking about this for years, but Russia pushing green energy in Europe to make that entire continent energy dependent on Russia.
And so it's, you know, it's an indirect method of conflict here, you know.
Really asymmetric.
And yeah, you don't have to be so much worried about killing the other side's troops if they can't get bullets or they can't get fuel for their tanks or they can't get the materials needed to actually fight a war.
So, by the way, I'm glad you brought that up.
In what ways did Russia help push a green energy transition in Europe?
Well, through information operations, I think, I'm not an expert on this, but my understanding is they supported green environmental groups.
And, you know, they're responsible, I think, partially for shutting down European nuclear power plants.
And, you know, there are a bunch of new construction was blocked as a result of environmental policies.
So, yeah, I'm not a European oil and energy guy, but that's my understanding is that Russian information operations help to achieve that state, which is to Russia's great benefit.
Well, since you brought that up, let me bring in something perhaps even more controversial and, you know, feel free to...
Answer it in whatever way you wish.
But my understanding also is that China has been, through apps like TikTok, has been pushing a lot of the transgenderism agenda in the United States, or at least amplifying that message.
And that this kind of the LGBT programming, if you will, or building acceptance among the younger population Has resulted in a kind of feminization of men who would otherwise normally have been perhaps more amenable to military recruitment and that this may be feeding into the difficulty of reaching military recruitment goals in the United States while at the same time China has been banning feminization or
depictions of feminized men in Chinese culture.
Does that make sense or am I talking crazy there?
Yeah, I mean, you're on track.
Yuri Bezmenov warned about this back in the 70s or 80s, how specifically Soviet, but Eastern campaigns, information operations to target and destroy the morale of the West.
And you do that by attacking the culture.
And this is the asymmetric, indirect method.
Hey, they don't have to go out and kill U.S. troops if the young people are no longer joining the military.
Right, right.
Because it's kind of like what you said.
If Russia is sort of pushing Europe to transition to green energy and move away from fossil fuels, and we saw the Netherlands just announced that they are shutting down the largest natural gas field in Europe, the largest one, which seems crazy to me, given that Nord Stream isn't working currently.
But Then in the US, cultural attacks or cultural changes, it's more than just the anti-war movement.
It's kind of like the anti-men movement.
It's an anti-masculine kind of movement.
And then on top of that, restriction of rare earth minerals access.
So you kind of you if you're China or Russia, you're kind of hitting the enemy, which would be the West, through so many fronts that there are challenges to get anything done from a military point of view, it seems.
Yeah, the yeah, the.
You know, China, this it kind of just goes back to China being at war with the United States now for decades, and we're slowly coming around to that.
And China practices something called elite capture.
They do this all over the world in the United States as well.
They're doing it in Taiwan right now.
And that's where they pay off key influencers in foreign countries, key politicians and other personnel.
And they say, hey, don't say anything bad about China.
We will keep paying you, but you have to stop.
You have to oppose certain anti-Chinese policies.
And they use corruption.
So this is not just like, hey, we'll – there's just so much Chinese money flowing in through foreign direct investments, through critical infrastructure funding.
And they always find ways to make sure the right people get paid.
And so this elite capture is part of the Chinese war kind of against the world, but specifically against the United States.
I shudder to think how many key decision makers and government officials are on some form of Chinese payroll.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and we saw that it has infested the states through governorships.
Quite a lot of the governors are, in one way or another, tied to Chinese money and also, of course, through academia.
But thank you for pointing that out.
I want to get back to China and Taiwan with you here in a second, but one more question about escalation in Ukraine.
So we've seen the U.S. now announce that they're going to send Abrams' main battle tanks to Ukraine, and then I think Germany has just essentially announced that they will approve the transfer of Leopard 2 tanks.
Is it Poland that's going to send those?
I think it's all over now.
Oh, okay.
I mean, I think Finland, Spain, maybe other countries, Germany...
Right, right.
So Ukraine's going to end up with, let's say, by the time this is all, you know, all of the countries pony up some tanks, they're going to end up between the US and Europe, let's say 100 main battle tanks, something like that.
What are the implications of this in terms of the war with Russia or escalation or changing the course of the war?
We've heard promises from former U.S. officials, senior ranking U.S. officials like Ben Hodges.
He's a former, he's a U.S. Army Europe commander that said Ukraine is going to capture Crimea by August.
I believe that's what he said.
And we've heard from Zelensky and a number of other officials that that is their goal, to reclaim every square inch of Ukraine that currently belongs to Russia.
And I have no doubt.
First it was the Bradleys, and then it was the Strikers.
But the thing is, it's not like we made this a big prediction, but several weeks ago when this Bradley story broke that the United States is going to provide these Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, we pointed out that traditional U.S. military doctrine, you don't put these Bradleys on the field by themselves.
They were accompanied by armor.
You know, Bradley Battalion or Brigade is going to have an armor element to it.
And so tanks was...
This is just the next logical conclusion here.
And then it's F-16s or, you know, whatever they're talking about after that.
And so really, I mean, I think this is escalatory.
I think it's, you know...
Another problem for Ukraine is not only do they have to get these tanks over there, which is going to take time, but then you have to go out and train Ukrainians on how to run these tanks.
That was my next question.
Okay.
And then maintenance and logistics.
I was going to ask you that, too, because the supply lines are hell.
I mean, everything breaks.
Yeah, so yeah, this is not a...
I would be very interested to see after even, you know, three months of operations, how many of these are either going to be mobility killed or destroyed by the Russians, and then how many are just going to break down and not be fixed, unless there are some U.S. personnel, field service representatives, some...
Some tracked vehicle mechanics over there, tank crews rebuilding these things and putting them back out on the battlefield.
Right, exactly.
But even that requires rather complex logistics and also very specific hardware.
For example, mobile cranes that can lift engines out of vehicles to work on them or can pull heavy tanks out of ditches and so on and lift half of them to put new tracks on one side or whatever is required.
You have to have this whole chain of other equipment to service the frontline equipment.
And I don't see that that's going to be an instant plug-and-play thing.
Well, it's not.
And the thing is, some people in the United States and the West, I guess, they just expect these tanks are going to be delivered there and then they're going to stop the Russians.
Well, the Russians have at least 30 days, maybe 60 to 90 days before these things are even operational once you get the crews trained and then you actually transport the tanks to the actual battlefield.
And so if you're Russia, you've got an open window here and we've already been They've already been preparing and we've already been talking about for a long time, this Russian winter offensive, which should kick off any day now.
And, you know, for Russia, you're gunning here.
You want to gain as much ground before you have to face those tanks, as much ground as possible.
But I'll also say this.
Russian anti-armor is modern, and I think they're going to be able to blow up a lot of these tanks we're sending over there.
Yeah, I... I would tend to agree with that assessment.
And plus, it's easier for Russia to resupply because it's in their own backyard and they've got the railways that go right there.
And, you know, they've got factories and they've got steel and they're producing domestically munitions, not waiting for years to do that.
But, you know, another question I have, though, is even if you train the Ukrainian crews, let's say you give them a crash course in how to run an Abrams tank.
Okay, but what about the training of how a tank crew works with an artillery crew and works with another commander, works with men on the ground, works with drones?
You know what I mean?
Don't you have to have this combined arms, like this theater view, to work effectively?
But go ahead.
Yeah, that's true.
That's what the U.S. Army is training Ukrainian Army personnel to do in Germany right now.
Yeah, is that combined arms?
How do you take multiple classes of combat arms and get them to work together in unison?
I don't follow the tactical day-to-day developments in Ukraine.
There's not enough hours in the day.
But this is something that's built into Russian doctrine.
The Ukrainians, I think, are probably behind the curve compared to the Russians on combined arms doctrine and warfare.
Okay, and you think F-16s will probably be part of the mix here soon, and then what happens when those get shot down?
Does the U.S. say, here, have a bunch of F-35s?
Yeah, it's tough to say, but the problem is, everyone's realizing that Russia views Ukraine as existential, and NATO now views Ukraine as existential.
If you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound.
What is going to happen to the quote-unquote rules-based international order?
If Russia is not defeated in Ukraine and Russia defeats NATO, because basically both sides are now openly saying, yeah, we're at war against each other.
And so, you know, now we're talking about, oh, the use of tactical nuclear weapons, escalation, more troops, NATO boots on the ground.
Like, when does this thing stop?
Right.
And if I could ask another question, an extension of that from Russia's point of view, You know, their memory of losing 20 million citizens in World War II against the fascist and German Third Reich, that memory is not that stale.
You know, it's pretty fresh in some living people and the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of veterans of World War II, right?
And so wouldn't Russia at this point be thinking now that Germany has decided, well, we're going to send main battle tanks to Russia?
Wouldn't Russia, from their point of view, rationally be thinking, well, we're going to have to exterminate Germany this time and never let them come back and threaten us again?
I'm not saying that I agree with that statement, but from their point of view, wouldn't it be reasonable to think that that's what they're thinking?
Or what's your take?
I think Ukraine is one part of a much broader conflict against the West and against the United States.
You can look at the agreements between Russia and China and this thing they call the No Limits Alliance.
And this is an existential fight, I think, for China and Russia.
They say, well, one side is going to come out on the other side of this with global power, and the other side is not.
And, you know, if you're China especially, I question at what point China may get more involved if Russian defeat is threatened or is a risk in Ukraine.
I don't think China can, on a geostrategic level, I don't think China can lose Russia as an ally.
And I know a number of Western defense analysts say Putin's done if he loses Crimea.
Or if he loses in Ukraine, I don't think the Chinese want that level of instability.
So I just see a lot of ways this could escalate.
And again, I just ask, when and how does it stop?
I don't know.
Well, let's talk about China then.
And thank you for bringing that up.
But wouldn't China at one point?
Perhaps soon realize that the best way for them to strategically weaken the United States and NATO forces would be to wait for Russia to really launch its anticipated offensive and then for China to move in whatever way it can Perhaps against Taiwan,
perhaps a naval embargo, air embargo, or an economic embargo, perhaps blocking exports to the United States or carrying out acts of fiscal or currency warfare, dumping U.S. treasuries, announcing a gold-backed digital yuan, things like that.
I mean, wouldn't China realize that this is the vulnerable time to try to stretch U.S. resources thin and force the U.S. into a two-front war?
Yes, I think that would be a good course of action from the Chinese perspective.
I'm not positive that China's there yet, but we at Ford Observer don't have a crystal ball, but we think China's up against the clock.
The longer they wait to move on Taiwan, whether that's a military blockade or just coercion, political decapitation, Installing the Kuomintang, which is more or less a pro-China political party in Taiwan.
They're up against the clock because every day, week, and month that goes on, global NATO is expanding.
And the Quad, United States, India, Japan, and Australia have more time to coordinate.
They're talking now about South Korea joining the Quad.
So it's going to be, I don't know, whatever comes after the Quad.
And there's a lot of coordination going on.
And if you're China, you look at that and I think you see an hourglass and every grain of sand is maybe a little bit of increased risk that you may not be able to win against all those countries.
But if you go now or if you go soon...
I.e.
being coincided with a Russian winter offensive, then you do pose a, not just a tactical, but a strategic dilemma to the West.
It's, hey, you're in for a penny, in for a pound, or in for a ton in Ukraine, or you're going to stop Ukraine and go defend Taiwan.
And I think China knows the answer.
It's going to be Ukraine.
Well, that's really interesting.
And let me bring this in.
I used to live in Taiwan, so I have a lot of contacts there.
And as you know, the pro-Taiwan independence part of the DPP was resoundingly defeated by the Kuomintang, the KMT, as you mentioned, which is pro-China reunification.
And from what I'm hearing from Taiwan, the younger generation in Taiwan is very strongly pro-reunification with China.
So it's as if China realizes the longer they wait, the less resistance there is in Taiwan to reunification.
Whereas if they attack Taiwan, they might create more resistance than would otherwise exist if they just wait Yeah, she's not going to wait that long.
Yeah, yeah, right.
So yeah, your thoughts on all that?
Well, I think, you know, as we've, in December 2021, we released a special report on our expectations.
And we said an amphibious invasion of conventional military warfare against Taiwan was less likely.
And what was probably more likely is just a blockade.
And, you know, looking, there's a couple of things that come into play kind of on a tactical and operational level.
And one of those things is weather.
And the Taiwan Strait is pretty treacherous for ships and submarines as well, just due to the current and strong currents.
And so really, if China were to do this, they may be looking at just maybe two separate operational windows throughout the year.
And so this...
October to December is generally clear because you have visibility issues, right?
I mean, if you're going to send planes and ships into the Taiwan Strait, you have to be able to see.
And so with better visibility, two points during the year.
This other one is about to open up.
I think it's like March to May or somewhere right around there.
Then, yeah, I mean, a potential blockade looks...
I would say a blockade is potential here over the next 30 days or so.
And that's just one option for the Chinese.
And should that occur, the U.S. naval presence in that area, is it strong enough to reasonably break that blockade, allow some ships in and out?
I think U.S. Navy commanders have said previously that they are confident that they could break a blockade.
But if you're China, you want to do this beneath the threshold of conventional war.
You don't want to give any kind of casus belli to the United States.
To make this a conventional war.
China does not want to fight a conventional war.
Their demographics are lopsided.
They cannot lose a massive amount of young troops in a conflict, especially not with the U.S. If they use primarily civilian ships or civilian aircraft to...
To conduct this blockade, then it is well below the threshold of conventional war.
But to answer your question, no, we don't think the United States has enough assets in the region to stop trying to Mainly because it would happen so quickly.
Taiwan's 100 miles from the coast of China.
In just a few days, they could surround Taiwan, and I don't even know that we'd be able to get a carrier strike group out of port before China completely blockades Taiwan.
That's interesting, though, that you said perhaps with civilian ships.
I mean, I hadn't thought of that.
What would that look like, just...
Just floating every available ship in China.
Just go out there and build a perimeter around Taiwan.
That seems...
Yeah, China has, well, really they're used all over the world, but commercial shipping vessels called ROROs roll on, roll off.
And you literally just roll on cargo and then you get to the destination and you roll it off.
And the Chinese PLA have been practicing transporting equipment with these roll on, roll off ships.
And they've also, you know, they have weaponized containers that they could put on fishing boats, that they could put on container ships, tankers, you know, commercial shipping vessels that could be used militarily but do not appear to be military in nature.
I see.
And, you know, and the other thing, too, I mean, you're not going to fool anybody with satellite imagery.
We can tell, despite what they're...
You know, they're playing all these games with the transponders.
They're spoofing their location.
They're turning their transponders off when they leave port.
And then they're turning it back on again once they get to their destination.
So you can fool the technical data on these commercial terminals.
You're not fooling the satellites.
So I think there would be a warning period before China did this where U.S. leaders would be alerted.
But...
Again, you're looking at maybe a few days before this operation is complete.
And then you just choke Taiwan off.
I mean, Taiwan maybe has a month, maybe a little bit more worth of natural gas and gasoline fuel.
They have a couple months worth of coal.
So I think China is...
I think their most likely course of action is you blockade Taiwan, you let them run out of everything, and then you push for a political solution and you never have to fire a shot.
That is the most preferable course of action for China.
And then domestically in Taiwan, you would have all the KMT people protesting in favor of peace, they would call it.
Let's reunify, let's have peace, let's get our industry going again.
And then you would have the DPP people.
I could see a lot, almost a civil war in Taiwan during that blockade.
So it would cause a lot of political strife there.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know enough about the domestic situation in Taiwan to discuss a potential civil war, but if you're...
The problem...
One thing...
I'm just going to go on a diversion real quick.
One thing we learned in Afghanistan is good Afghans trying to do the right thing are just their nails sticking up that get hammered down.
And so if you're...
Pro-independence, if you're anti-renification, part of the DPP, and you think that China is just going to gain control anyway, you are a nail that's sticking up.
And maybe there's a possibility that those figures, some of them just try to leave because they are not going to want to be left behind under China's thumb when China knows exactly who they are and what they believe.
And that they were pursuing an independence movement.
The Chinese foreign ministry, it's like every day now.
They come out and they just rail against the Taiwanese independence movement.
And they've got a real hankering, I think, to punish those people.
Absolutely.
By the way, a lot of the domestic media in Taiwan has been infiltrated by the CCP. Taiwan's mainstream media is all pro-reunification, pro-China.
I think that's what's impacting a lot of young people.
I don't know why people aren't looking at Hong Kong as the example of how China does not keep its promises.
You will not be independent.
You will be taken over.
And if you resist it, you will be shot or imprisoned, which is pretty much what you were just talking about.
Yeah, you know, it's amazing information as a weapon.
The West has been very slow.
Even with our emphasis on information operations and various...
I mean, this goes back to World War II, propaganda and information operations.
But as much as we deploy that tactically on the battlefield, we are just not very good at defending against it domestically.
Yeah.
Well, that's part of the vulnerability or the cost of having...
You know, free speech opportunities that can be exploited by enemies of the country.
But speaking of America, though, I want to ask you about the power grid sabotage.
You know, it's been a really small scale, but it's gotten a lot of press.
Somebody taking shots at substations and so on.
And from time to time, a few thousand people without power for 30 minutes.
It's kind of overblown, in my opinion.
But do you think this is an indication of something bigger?
And who do you think's behind the attacks we've seen so far?
Well, I hate to say this, but anytime you hear about a terror attack in the United States, the first thing I think of is, okay, what is the link?
Who is whispering in these people's ears from the federal government?
And I hate to say that, but I'm an intelligence analyst.
I look for patterns.
So does everyone else.
And so who is behind it?
I don't know.
But I do question at what level there is federal involvement, seeing as how when you create a problem, you get to propose a solution.
Right.
There are a number of actors.
I think this range is on the low end from, I don't know, people who are drunk or it's some 17-year-old kid that says, oh, hey, I'm going to cut the power to the area by taking pot shots at the local power substation.
Kind of on the low end, all the way up to Either domestic terror groups, people who are trying to accelerate a conflict or accelerate the collapse of the United States.
And then there's nation-state-backed groups as well.
We're getting into a potentially precarious scenario here domestically because a lot of our critical infrastructure is just not protected.
And in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, The leaders came out and said, the United States is no longer a safe, or excuse me, the homeland is no longer a sanctuary, i.e., foreign actors can reach out and touch us here.
And then in December 2020, the Army came out with a facility security report, and they said explicitly foreign countries or adversaries are going to use conventional and unconventional means to target a number of things.
One of those is critical infrastructure.
And so we're getting into a situation where when we move from competition to To crisis and conflict, I think the risk of these domestic attacks goes up.
If you're China, and let's just say, I don't think we're going to war with China over Taiwan.
We might do it over some Japanese islands.
We might do it when China tries to break into the second island chain against the Philippines or someone else.
But when that happens, and if you are China and you want to disrupt U.S. military mobilization, what do you do?
The grid, communications, and, you know, those are your strategic and symbolic targets as well.
And so, you know, just to be more direct with who's doing this.
I have no idea, but I'll tell you, China and Russia have demonstrated the capability to be able to do that, not by taking potshots at a transformer, but through cyber warfare and other forms of sabotage.
I was going to mention that too, cyber warfare attacks, especially on banking infrastructure, because if you impair the financial transaction backbone, then obviously nobody can buy fuel and transport anything or meet payroll.
I mean, even the military manufacturers can't function if you don't have financial transactions.
It's going to be an interesting year, that's for sure.
We're out of time for today, but this has been really fascinating, Mike, and I want to thank you for taking the time here.
Let me just give you an opportunity to give out how people can find you and how they can follow your work.
Yeah, well, thank you for the opportunity.
It was a great conversation.
And you can find, we have a YouTube channel.
We post videos every day.
It's just Forward Observer on YouTube.
And then I'm on social media if you want to look for me.
It's just Grey Zone Warlord.
Grey with an A. Grey Zone Warlord.
Okay.
And are you, in addition to YouTube, are you posting on other video platforms like Rumble?
No, but we need to.
Well, you have a welcome here at Brighteon.
I'm the founder of brighteon.com, and I encourage you to use Rumble, use BitChute, use Brighteon, set up your channels there, and I think you get a lot of additional play.
Thank you.
We'll take you up on that.
Thank you, Mike.
Yeah, absolutely.
In fact, if you need any assistance getting that set up, I can put my top support team in touch with your guys or gals, and we can get you set up there and get that going.
In the meantime, I want to thank you for taking the time and for entertaining my direct questions.
I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything, but you're open to my questions.
I really appreciate that, so thank you so much.
Yeah, I love doing this.
Thank you for the platform.
Absolutely.
Folks, thank you for listening.
I hope you found this valuable.
Definitely get prepared.
We are in for some interesting times and stay alert, stay informed.
And forwardobserver.com is one of the ways that you can do that.
Of course, continue to monitor interviews like this on brighteon.com.
As always, feel free to repost this interview on your own channels or other platforms as well.
You have my permission.
And if you would, please, in the description, just give credit to forwardobserver.com so people know where to go.
So thank you so much.
I'm Mike Adams again, the founder of brighteon.com.
Everybody stay safe, take care, and God bless America.
Talk to you next time.
All right.
I hope you enjoyed that interview.
I found that quite fascinating.
Obviously, Mike Shelby and his team have a lot of good sources of information.
I appreciate his perspective on things and his data, his analysis.
And I think that Forward Observer is a website that's worth paying attention to.
And I welcome Mr.
Shelby back on anytime he'd like to join us again.
or if he's got big warnings or alerts of things that are going to happen, we would welcome him back on.
And the situation with China and Taiwan does look pretty severe, but the situation with Ukraine and Russia is far worse and happening now.
So as promised, I'd like to segue into then a special report that I recorded earlier today about the main battle tanks being approved by, well, Berlin with the Leopard 2 tanks, and then by the United States, the M1 Abrams tanks, and other countries and then by the United States, the M1 Abrams tanks, and other countries Seems like Ukraine is going to get quite a contingent of battle tanks, and Russia is not happy about this, as you might expect.
Not happy at all.
And in particular, it looks like Germany has now violated the terms of the post-World War II Potsdam Agreement, which basically describes the dismantling of Germany's war infrastructure, demilitarization and reparations and things like that.
Apparently, Germany is deciding that, you know, screw all that, we're just going to attack Russia again.
And remember what happened in Europe the last time Germany went to war with Russia?
Things didn't go well.
They did not go well for most of Europe, nor the Germans in particular.
So I have a feeling that things are not looking good.
I do want to play one little video for you here of one of the German ministers actually declaring war or saying that they're at war with Germany.
I want you to hear this clip because this is real.
This is really happening.
Check this out.
And therefore, I've said already in the last days, yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine.
Yes, we have to do more also on tanks.
But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Minister.
All right, so there we go.
A German foreign minister essentially declaring war on Russia, although it's not an official Berlin, you know, it's not the whole government of Germany officially declaring war on Russia.
But this is a representative of the German government stating in plain language, in plain English in this case, you don't even have to trust the translation, that they are at war.
So this is Germany's total violation of what it agreed to after World War II. And as you recall, Russia already had to defeat Germany once, as did the US and Russia were allies, obviously, in World War II. The Russians or the Soviets at the time lost 20 million soldiers.
due to the Germans.
And as I ask in my special report now, does this mean that in the minds of today's Russians, that they need to, again, in their point of view, not my point of view, but their point of view, do they need to now eliminate Germany from do they need to now eliminate Germany from planet Earth, and the German culture, the fascist leadership, or whatever, so that they don't have to keep fighting the same enemy over and over and over again as the fascists and the so that they don't have to keep fighting the same enemy over and over
Because yes, just as Germany was led by fascist Nazis in World War II through the 1930s and early 40s, the same thing is true today, but it's even worse, because Germany is run by fascist Nazis right now today, and so is the United States. because Germany is run by fascist Nazis right now today, and so is the UK, and frankly, a whole bunch of other...
I mean, so is Canada, for that matter, and New Zealand, and so on.
So the Nazis are in charge of the West...
And Russia fully realizes it, and Russia is facing an existential threat, which means that Russia is almost certainly considering global nuclear war to eliminate the Nazis once and for all.
They must be considering that.
Now, just for the record, I don't want, obviously, to see that happen.
I want peace, not war.
But these insane, criminal, fascist governments...
And the illegitimate leaders and the rigged elections and all of it, they have led us to this place where it looks like global nuclear destruction is now very high risk.
All right, so let's go to that special report.
And that'll be the wrap-up for today.
I know it's a long podcast for you today.
And I just want you to know this report, this is my own opinion, my own analysis, and it's pretty uncensored, okay?
It's kind of like what I just said, but more.
So prepare yourself and also prepare for nuclear war.
Okay?
So I'll talk to you after this report.
That'll be the end of today's podcast and I'll be back with you again tomorrow with whatever additional craziness happens between now and then.
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Here's a special report on the main battle tanks, Ukraine and Russia.
Okay, folks, the future just changed in a very bad way.
And you know how they talk about possible parallel futures, like in one version.
The future is good, and then another branch of the future, it's horrible.
And that we, as humans, you know, we get to choose, at least as a society, we get to choose our future, right, based on our actions.
Well, sadly, a really bad future was just chosen for us by the fascist leaders of Germany and the fascist leaders of the United States.
And in a world where fascism was once defeated in World War II, Defeated by the Russians and the allies, you know, the U.S., the French, the Brits, and so on.
Now that fascism has risen again.
And the pivot point was just announced by both German leaders and the United States.
At least, I should say, the illegitimate occupying enemy forces of the United States, i.e.
the Biden regime and so on.
They just announced they're going to send main battle tanks to Ukraine.
In order to engage Russia with these tanks.
Now, something like 30 plus M1 Abrams tanks from the United States and something like 14 Leopard tanks from Germany, but that's just the beginning.
There are going to be a lot more tanks that join that.
And when you combine that with the armored vehicles and the artillery, You realize that not only is the West essentially providing the entire military hardware to Ukraine in order to engage Russia, but that this is a Pandora's box.
Before long, of course, Zelensky of Ukraine is going to request a bunch of F-16 fighters, if he hasn't already.
And then those are going to get shot down, and then the West is going to say, well, we need to provide F-35 fighters.
And then when these tanks get destroyed, which they will, then the West is going to say, well, we need to send 100 tanks and 200 tanks.
And this is clearly putting us on a path to nuclear war.
Specifically, nuclear strikes on Western nations by Russia.
And that's the dark future that we need to realize is now emerging as the most likely outcome.
So Russia, if you think historically, Russia lost something like 20 million people.
In World War II. And that was at a time when the entire nation of Russia didn't have that many tens of millions of people.
I don't know what the population was then, but that was a massive, significant loss of the population, especially of men at that time.
And the Russians, of course, will never forget that.
They lost so much more than what allies lost.
As they defeated Germany, which was, you know, the fascist Germans were driving east at that time through, you know, Stalingrad and other cities.
And the Russians defeated them at great cost to Russia.
Or the Soviet Union at the time.
They will never forget that.
And they now see that the agreements that Germany and the Allies made after World War II, when the Germans officially surrendered, and they reached these agreements that said that Germany has to dismantle its war machine infrastructure.
So this included the dismantling of the factories that made the tanks and the And the ports, the harbors that could house German ships, you know, battleships and wartime ships and so on.
And it also demanded the complete dismantling of any ability of Germany to wage wars of aggression against its neighbors, such as Poland, which, of course, was devastated in World War II and France and so on.
Well, now, today...
They've broken those agreements by announcing the sending of these main battle tanks into Ukraine.
So Germany has proven once again, and I don't mean the German people, I mean the fascist German leaders, but these fascists, these modern day Nazis have proven yet again that They cannot be trusted.
They will not keep their word.
That they will always be aggressors.
They will always use their industrial might to try to kill Russians.
And that, by the way, in this case, the United States and Great Britain and the French to some extent and many other countries, Poland even, have joined with the Nazis of World War II now in World War III.
So the Nazis have won, sadly.
They have taken over the West.
The fascist Nazis now run all of these Western nations.
And what's going through the mind of Putin and other Russian leaders right now is something that should concern each and every one of us who live in Western nations.
Yes, we live under fascism.
We live under illegitimate criminal regimes.
But what has changed now is that our cities are now nuclear targets by Russia.
Russia will not nuke Kiev.
Russia doesn't want to nuke Ukraine because Russia wants to take Ukraine, wants to kind of reintegrate Ukraine back into the old Soviet empire.
And Ukraine has enormous natural resources and, of course, massive farm fields, the ability to grow an enormous amount of food.
Ukraine has, you know, harbor access, the ability to export food.
Ukraine has railways and nuclear power plants and very talented people, too.
By the way, Russia doesn't want to destroy Ukraine.
Ukraine won't be nuked.
What looks increasingly likely to be nuked is Berlin and Washington, D.C. My point is, you would be safer now, after this decision, you would be safer to live in Ukraine, in Kiev, Or Lviv.
Or other Ukrainian cities.
You're safer there than you are living in Berlin or London or Washington, D.C. or New York City or, frankly, Warsaw or any military base, NATO base that is positioned in any Western European country because those are going to be the targets.
Because what's going through the minds of the Russian leaders right now, and the way I know this is because some of their, quote, propagandists are speaking out about this in the Russian media.
You can see many examples of this, and I'm paraphrasing, of course, but what they are saying is that in their minds, they realize they're going to have to fight the Germans again.
And this time, in their minds again, I'm not calling for this, but in the minds of the Russian leaders, they are saying and they are calling for the annihilation of the fascist German state once and for all, realizing that if they don't wipe Germany off the map...
That the German fascists will rise again a few generations later and will threaten Mother Russia, so to speak, yet again.
And the question in the minds of the Russian people is, how many times do we, the Russian people, have to sacrifice tens of millions of lives to the massive killing machine, which is fascist Germany, and now again expanded into fascist NATO and the fascist West?
How many times?
Must the Soviet people, the Russian people, have to sacrifice their lives against this?
And I think because there is still a relatively fresh memory, there are still Russians living who fought in World War II, and there are certainly many descendants of those World War II veterans who know full well what World War II was about and the sacrifice that was made by the Soviet Union.
They know.
They remember.
It hasn't been enough time or generations in order for the people to forget what Germany did to them.
So they know that they are fighting an existential war against fascist Germany and now the fascist West.
And so we've now crossed that threshold.
By sending these main battle tanks in, which, by the way, will not change the course of the war, but by sending them in, Germany and the United States have signaled that they are going to escalate this to whatever degree it takes to try to destroy Russia and wipe Russia off the map.
And as you recall, Putin relatively recently said that he's not going to use nuclear weapons as acts of aggression in initial strikes, but he will use nuclear weapons if Russia is threatened with its very existence.
So, in other words, if there's an existential threat against Russia, that that would be one of the cases under which current Russian nuclear engagement doctrine justifies the use of those nuclear weapons.
Well, the West just handed that to Russia.
The West just said, we're going to escalate this with more hardware and And of course, the tanks aren't the end of it.
They're going to be eventually F-35s handed over to Ukraine, whatever it takes.
And they're going to try to destroy Russia.
So we are now at the point where Russia is internally triggering that existential threat protocol.
So you can bet that Russia is now arming up The nuclear weapons, I mean, not that they're disarmed before, but I should say readying the nuclear weapons, double-checking targets, perhaps choosing new targets, drilling, making sure that all of their military personnel know how to launch and how to determine launch times and responses against the West and so on.
Basically, we are one second to midnight.
In World War III right now, and again, the targets will not be in Ukraine.
The targets will be in the United States and Germany and the UK and so on.
Now also, just last night, a German minister, I forgot her name, she said in English in a speech that Germany is now at war with Russia, that they're fighting the war with Russia and they need to destroy Russia.
I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but that is very close to what she said.
So they're not even pretending.
They're not even pretending that it's just Russia and Ukraine.
They are now all on board with this concept of Germany fighting war with Russia.
So the fascists are in full force again.
Adolf Hitler has been resurrected, at least the dark spirit of Adolf Hitler, resurrected in modern-day Berlin.
And if you recall how that ended last time, it ended with Russian tanks in Berlin.
And the suicide of Adolf Hitler, at least reportedly.
And the war crimes tribunals, Nuremberg, the breakup of German industry, even IG Farben and so on.
And, by the way, the mass murder of six million Jews.
That's what happened in World War II, or some of it.
And by the way, also the destruction of certain parts of London and the destruction of parts of Paris and, you know, mass murder in Poland and just on and on.
And here's the question.
Knowing that history, is Russia going to stand by and allow that history to bleed out yet again?
And I believe, I believe the answer is no.
And that's just my analysis.
You may disagree and it's fine, but in my analysis, Russia is not going to stand by And just allow the West to carry out another World War II with advanced weapons.
You know, the rise of the fascist Nazis yet again.
In fact, more Nazis, more countries filled with Nazis.
I don't think Russia is going to stand by and allow that.
And when you think about Russia's options in responding to that, if you agree that that's the decision or the realization they've come to, It doesn't make any strategic sense for Russia to have a middle-of-the-road type of response, i.e.
kinetic strategic weapon strikes against just military bases.
What actually makes sense from Russia's point of view in order to preserve the existence of Russia...
It's to carry out nuclear strikes against the cities of infrastructure of the West so that those nations cannot provide more weapons to fight Russia.
And what that means is that Russia would be, at least in this thought experiment, Russia would be planning to nuke Washington, D.C. and to nuke New York City and to nuke the L.A. port, for example.
To nuke Houston, Texas, because of the oil refineries and the energy infrastructure.
And also, of course, to nuke various cities in Germany and in the UK and so on.
And importantly, there's nothing that America can do to stop those Russian ICBMs.
Absolutely nothing.
We do not have an anti-ballistic missile defense system that is functional, at least against Russia's advanced reentry vehicles.
This is nothing America can do.
Would Russia then be struck by nuclear weapons in return?
Possibly so.
But Russia has the ability to stop some of those because they have the world's most effective anti-air and anti-ballistic missile defense systems.
And in addition...
Russia has a lot of bomb shelters, underground bunkers.
They can protect a large contingent of their own people.
Whereas in the West, most Western countries don't have that at all.
Or very, very few people have that.
So there's no middle ground here in my analysis.
And the West has just pushed Russia into a very narrow set of available options.
And these options, well, the most obvious option includes first strikes, nuclear strikes against Western cities, like I just mentioned.
It could also include thermobaric bombs, i.e.
fuel air explosives against certain cities or military bases run by NATO. But I think this is trending very aggressively towards nuclear strikes on the cities of the West.
And then that would be combined with China's attacks on the financial infrastructure of America, the rolling out of a new global reserve currency, an international transaction system, a stablecoin backed by gold, which is why China keeps buying gold.
And then you would see also the collapse of the dollar.
The Saudis would go in with China and Iran.
The rest of the world would continue to function without the United States and without Western Europe.
Western Europe would be essentially, it would plunge into ruin.
It's already on that course.
The United States would lose Washington, D.C. There would be a vacuum of power.
We would see a rapid decentralization of the United States and the rapid formation of sovereign regional state nations, such as Texas and perhaps surrounding states and others.
There would be new local currencies created.
There would be massive radiation poisoning and radiation contamination of the croplands.
Many tens of millions of people would starve, perhaps over 100 million.
There would be massive radiation fallout, chaos, lawlessness, and all of that.
Basically, the United States would be done as a nation.
It would no longer exist.
And that could happen with just a few key ICBM strikes on American cities, which I pray doesn't happen, obviously, because I live here.
And I don't want to see that happen to my fellow Americans.
But we are run by illegitimate, criminal, fascist, lunatic, freakazoid, you know, quote, leaders.
And what they are doing is putting us on this course where we are about to be nuked.
So if your preparedness plans do not include getting very serious about this scenario of receiving nuclear strikes on U.S. cities, the time has arrived to double and triple down on those plans.
If you're not ready, I mean, this is worse than the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This is the highest risk of a nuclear strike of any time in the history of nuclear weapons.
This is it right now.
And it's probably going to get worse.
And I would not be surprised to wake up next week and find that Washington, D.C. has been hit with a nuclear weapon.
It would not surprise me one bit because we are being forced into that.
The world, I should say, is being forced into that exchange.
And of course, the reason is because the enemy occupying forces of America right now are anti-America.
They want to see America destroyed.
And they want it to be done by Russia because, of course, the globalists hate America.
They hate our Constitution.
They hate our Second Amendment and our First Amendment.
And thus, the globalists have put people in power like Joe Biden, who are literally scheming, plotting in a traitorous, treasonous fashion to see the United States of America destroyed by Russia.
And this is exactly how it is now likely to occur.
Be nuked by Russia.
Blamed on Russia, but the escalation was intentionally carried out by the United States, you know, while the illegitimate leaders.
So that's where we are, folks, and you need to understand that that's where we are.
You need to, I think, prepare accordingly, be ready for all of this, because we are being ruled by idiots, morons, woke idiots.
And people who are suicidal.
So, again, plan accordingly.
I'm Mike Adams.
Thank you for listening.
Check out my website, of course, naturalnews.com and also more podcasts at brighteon.com.
Take care.
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