“They've surrendered their sovereignty to the people in Brussels, and the people in Brussels are leading us into a global catastrophe,” says war correspondent Michael Yon.
Yon has been traveling throughout Europe, investigating and reporting on an alarming pattern of events. According to Yon, the farming crisis in the Netherlands is a microcosm of a post-pandemic world, from Europe to Asia to the Americas, in which draconian government policies have resulted in food shortages, an energy crisis, massive price inflation, and war.
“The pipeline is now draining out. Fertilizer is not being produced. As you know, China and other countries like India, Malaysia, Indonesia are hoarding food,” says Yon. “Putin had threatened that he would shut off Nord Stream 1 and put it down to zero. And sure enough, he shut it off.”
The ability to move around faster than ever enables people to travel long distances in a short amount of time, adding to an unprecedented wave of mass migration from Central America to the United States, with millions of people from far-flung countries ending up at America’s doorstep, Yon argues. The coming famine will exacerbate this crisis, Yon says.
“The next thing you know, this permanently changes the demographics of countries,” explains Yon. “These famines that are clearly building are biblical. At this rate, the Bible is going to need a new chapter.”
Jan Jekielek:
Michael Yon, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Michael Yon:
Jan, it's great to be back. I've been wanting to come back to your show for a long time. You've left me out in Siberia.
Mr. Jekielek:
Actually, you have been all over the place. It's been difficult to get a hold of you. You've been traveling to Morocco, the Darién Gap, and now you're in the Netherlands. Let’s start there. Of course, we met in Hong Kong. Let me remind our viewers that you showed me the ropes of what was happening in the protests, and how not to get in serious trouble in the middle of it. You've been doing a lot of traveling.
Your focus has been on global security, and trying to understand what is happening in the world. There does seem to be a very significant shift recently, especially with the pandemic. We are now seeing food security become a very serious issue. You are in the Netherlands right now, so what are you seeing?
Mr. Yon:
Right now, the Netherlands is about to go into winter. Their energy prices are going through the roof, and most of the people don't see the famine coming. Some do. We can see Germany is about to collapse under the burden of lack of energy, and not just energy prices. Farmers are being destroyed and the Netherlands is being brought to heel under the globalists. Some here are resisting.
Mr. Jekielek:
Basically, you're saying that the Dutch government has a globalist bent.
Mr. Yon:
Big time. I wouldn't say they just have a globalist bent. They are globalist.
Mr. Jekielek:
Are you saying that the Netherlands government agrees ideologically with the World Economic Forum? Is that how it works?
Mr. Yon:
Absolutely. They call it WEF here; the World Economic Forum. You can see Klaus Schwab saying, "Where could we ever find a prime minister like Mark Rutte?" It's probably making Trudeau quite jealous. The World Economic Forum has nurtured this country. Of course, Brussels in Belgium is right next door. The EU is completely captured by the WEF, and so things here are really governed here by unnamed bureaucrats. We don't even know who they are.
They're probably down in Davos, Switzerland, as we speak. It's clear that the World Economic Forum has massive influence in Canada, the United States, and all over the world, including Japan, and especially here in Belgium and in Luxembourg. They have taken over Luxembourg. Luxembourg is gone with the wind. It’s a nice banking place to have as well.
The farmers own about 62 per cent of the land in the Netherlands. They are the second largest food exporter in the world despite there being less than 18 million people. These farmers are extraordinary. They're using the excuse of what they call “stikstof” here, which is that nitrogen is causing pollution.
Right next door in Germany, which is right over the border, they don't ever bring up nitrogen. Over there they blame it on CO2. Just across the border, it's because of CO2. Here, it's because of nitrogen. The globalists just tailor-make their talking points to resonate with people. The bottom line is they're trying to run the farmers out of business by saying that they're polluting the environment. Of course, that means who's going to grow the food?
When you take the most efficient farmers in the world and you put them out of business because they're polluting, who is going to do the farming? The Indians? The Chinese? I don't know. The bottom line is we can see that we're going into an energy crisis that is quite severe. An energy crisis, of course, leads to a food crisis as well. As you know, I spend a lot of time down in the Darién Gap between Columbia and Panama.
I spent a great deal of time with those native people deep in the jungle. I have taken two congressmen down there. Congressman Tom Tiffany from Wisconsin very courageously went probably 25 miles out into the jungle with me. You can see our borders just being overwhelmed. The same is happening here in Europe. I was just over in Luxembourg, a tiny country, and about 50 per cent of the country is now recent migrants.
Luxembourg is not anything like it was the last time I was there. In general, Europe is not the same. I have lived six years in Europe, mostly in Germany and Poland. You can see that Germany is really going downhill fast. They have an energy crisis that is quite severe, and it's been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Of course, you've got Nord Stream 1 and North Stream 2. For people that don't know what that means, these are two natural gas pipelines.
Nord Stream means North Stream, because the pipeline goes through the Baltic Sea and comes down to Germany. Nord Stream 2 has never been opened, because Germany won't certify it. Nord Stream 1 had been open and was running at a hundred percent until recently, when the war came. I'm here in farmland. Nord Stream 2 has never been opened. Nord Stream 1 is very vital for Germany and Europe, because that's where a huge amount of the natural gas comes to Germany and other parts of Europe.
Since the war started, Nord Stream 1 was flowing at 100 per cent, and then Putin decreased the flow. I'll skip some of the details, but he has had it down to about a 22 per cent flow for quite a while now. I've been looking at it every few days. There is an online website where you can see the flow yourself. Weeks ago, Putin threatened that he would shut off Nord Stream 1 and put it down to zero, which he just did. I was up after midnight watching the flows, and sure enough he shut it off.
Now this is a big deal. At the current burn rate when Nord Stream 1 was running at 22 per cent, that meant that Germany was probably going to run out of energy or of natural gas in about January or February, at the height of the winter. Germany is quite cold as you know. Now, this has other huge effects besides just freezing to death.
Right now Germany is setting up warming stations in school gymnasiums, so that come wintertime, people will be able to warm up in the gymnasiums. That means the German tribes will be able to meet with the new Somali tribes who have come in. It will be quite interesting and have a huge impact. Let’s get back to food as it relates to natural gas. As you know, natural gas is used to make nitrogen-based fertilizers using the Haber-Bosch process.
The Haber-Bosch process takes natural gas and atmospheric air and combines them to make ammonia, urea, or ammonium nitrate. This is vital. This process is absolutely vital for the lives of billions of people on earth. The Haber-Bosch process has only been around for roughly 110 years, and it is one of the things that has allowed the human population to just explode.
On my Locals channel, I have published a map of the fertilizer plants that have either shut down the production of nitrogen-based fertilizers or have greatly reduced the amount. Now the flash to bang on the food issue is quite long, because we're living off of last year's bounty right now. There was already a lot of fertilizer and food in the pipeline, which is now draining down just like Nord Stream 1 just did. So, the pipeline is now draining out. Fertilizer is not being produced anywhere close to what it used to be.
As you know, China and other countries like India, Malaysia, Indonesia, are hoarding food, which is quite smart, from their perspective. Today, they may be having food riots in Chengdu, China. It is unconfirmed, but it looks like it, and we'll see. And I would not doubt it if you have Germans knocking on doors this year because they're freezing. Actually, there is plenty of natural gas, Russia obviously has plenty.
In the Netherlands where I'm sitting right now, there's a place called Groningen which is not very far from me, about an hour away. They've got all the natural gas they need for the Netherlands, and they could send quite a lot to Germany. Also, over in the UK they've got a lot of natural gas that's not being used. It's not being used because it's sitting in the ground due to information campaigns by the Greens, and the people who sponsor the Greens.
It's very clear that people are going to freeze to death this winter. Next year we're going to start to see profound food shortages, and this will drive that trend. Right now, going through South America, through Columbia, up through the Darién Gap where I spend so much time, the migration flows are increasing dramatically . As you know, I was down in Darién Gap a few months ago. Darién Gap is that jungle gap between Columbia and Panama.
It's very rugged, and very dangerous. The migrants go through that Darién Gap and many drown, or fall off what they call the Montaña de la Muerte, the “mountain of death,” or they just get lost out there. But now they're coming up in massive numbers, both Africans and Asians. I see people from Pakistan every day. Remember, I'm talking about Panama, in Central America. The migration flow is increasing dramatically as we see various economies collapse.
Last year I didn't see many Pakistanis, just a sprinkling. Last year I didn't see any Chinese, but I had heard about the Chinese coming. This year I have seen mainland Chinese every day. Mainland Chinese go to Ecuador, go up to Columbia, go through the Darién Gap and then go north. They end up all around the United States. It’s the same with Indians, Bangladeshis, Somalis, and Yemenis. They are coming from over 140 countries.
This human osmotic pressure that will be created by these food shortages that are coming in a huge way next year sets up South America as a funnel right through to Panama. I'm a war correspondent. I'm down there investigating, because that is a corridor north. Recently when I was down there, U. S. Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas came in and landed with his Black Hawk helicopter. He came in with three Black Hawks. He's doubling the size of the camps, and that is increasing the flow.
Our government is increasing the migration flow by opening the arteries. In the past, most of the flows were coming from what we call the Northern Triangle like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico. But now there are huge numbers coming from Cuba, and huge numbers coming from Haiti. Haiti's just dumping them out through there. In Venezuela the Left wing has collapsed. Columbia has just gone Left wing, so now I'm seeing Colombians go through there all the time, every day.
There are Peruvians, and last year I wasn't seeing any Peruvians. This year I'm seeing Peruvians down at the Darién Gap. I just spent two weeks in Mexico at the Rio Grande on the Mexican side, and then a couple weeks on the Texas side. I saw Peruvians every day. Why are Peruvians coming now? Food. They have problems with food. Their economy is collapsing.
As economies collapse and as the food pressures increase, you'll see Africa and Asia start coming, and maybe even parts of Europe dumping out into South America, and then going through the Darién Gap. After you've passed through the Darién Gap and you're on the Panama side, last year it could take you two weeks to get to Costa Rica. Now you can be up there in 24 hours easily. You will be unlucky if it takes you more than three days, because they have increased the flow, and it's much smoother now.
It's just like a pipeline, almost like South Stream. This is a big deal. We're being completely invaded on the southern border. Everybody in Texas and Arizona and New Mexico knows this. Right now here in the Netherlands, it's a very similar situation. It's just that on a numbers scale it looks different, because they're a smaller country.
Mr. Jekielek:
Michael, you're painting a very broad picture of different parts of the world, and of different phenomena happening in concert.
Mr. Yon:
With the way the energy situation is going, it's clear that Germany is in grave danger of collapsing in 2023.
On this current trajectory, it's actually difficult to imagine that they won't, unless something changes. There are 27 countries in the European Union, and if Germany collapses, the European Union is certainly going to fall apart. Keep in mind that Putin also just cut natural gas to France. The situation is quite dire. But some countries saw this coming. Poland saw it coming, and made adjustments way in advance. They started getting more of their energy from Norway, for example.
The Polish are hardcore. I lived in Poland for two years. I love Poland. They are still real men there. They're not going to just roll over for the weaklings in the EU who demand that you open your borders, and that you give your energy security over to Russia. Poland has had a long, acute experience with Russia. They also have a long experience with the Germans. Poland has been caught right in the middle. So, the survivors in Poland, the remnants, are hard people.
As the European Union tried to push Poland into energy dependence, Poland said, "No can do. We're getting our energy elsewhere." Poland has their energy tanks topped off. They might be at 99 or 100 per cent right now. They have enough for the winter. But apparently, we still have Polish people lined up for days to get coal. I need to just go back over to Poland to check it out.
Poland's got a lot of coal. But their forests are being cut down and shipped over to Germany. The Germans are raiding their forests. They're hiring private security to guard their forests, because everybody's cutting trees down and getting all the wood they can out of the forest. I was just over in Germany checking out their equivalent of Home Depot, called OBI. I went straight to the lumber section and they said, "Ah, we can't get any wood. You have to get it right when it comes in. We don't know when we're going to get any more."
They have to limit the amounts. Many of the Germans heat their homes with natural gas. Remember, most Germans don't have fireplaces. They live in cities. Many of them live in apartment buildings. This is a very serious situation coming. The trees are being cut down and the coal's being fired up again to keep people warm.
Mr. Jekielek:
How important is natural gas flow to Europe?
Mr. Yon:
Natural gas flow to Europe means life or death. It provides the energy for lighting and heating and running the factories. Industry in Europe is mostly dependent on natural gas. Germany is shutting off their nuclear power plants. You have to have that natural gas to do the bulk of the production of nitrogen-based fertilizers. This is clearly setting the table for famine.
Mr. Jekielek:
There is a huge focus right now on the Russia-Ukraine war, perhaps not surprisingly. As arguably the most embedded war correspondent in U.S. history, you are not over there. Why not?
Mr. Yon:
That's a minor battlefield compared to the food and the migration issues. Obviously, it's a major battlefield if it affects world energy and it affects the food. If I were going to design a war that would exacerbate the food and energy problems, it would be the Russia-Ukraine war. There are always wars around the world. One of the things I learned doing so much combat coverage was to never chase battles.
To me that's battle-chasing. At this point, the coming famines are the big human story. These famines that are clearly building are biblical. I don't use that word lightly. At this rate, the Bible's going to need a new chapter. It is really that serious. I cannot convey clearly enough how serious this is.
Mr. Jekielek:
Ukraine is also one of these agricultural powerhouse countries, and obviously their agricultural production is dramatically reduced at the moment, isn't it?
Mr. Yon:
Absolutely. Ukraine has had numerous famines. In studying famine I have learned that living in the middle of farmland will not save you. In fact, it doesn't even seem to be related to whether or not you're going to end up having food. The political situation is often more related.
For instance, during Mao's great famine, Henan province was one of the breadbaskets of China and ended up with some of the worst famine. As you know, Ukraine is a massive producer of food, and yet they've had numerous famines just in the last century. And they could go into another one very shortly.
Mr. Jekielek:
Essentially, you’re arguing that none of this really had to happen, and that this is all basically created by humans.
Mr. Yon:
Those who know how to create it, can create it. They know how to knock out the gas, and knock out the energy. If you knock out the energy leg, then agriculture's going to go, and you're going to go into famine. But they're hitting all legs at once and more. Yes, this is clearly contrived and this isn't a conspiracy theory. The World Economic Forum is very open about it. They say it with very clear words.
Mr. Jekielek:
What are they saying in clear words?
Mr. Yon:
They are talking about the Great Reset, and about reducing the population on earth. When you go into a famine, malnutrition leads to population-wide AIDS. Most people in a famine don't actually die from hunger. They die from disease because they become weakened, and they're eating things they don't normally eat, and traveling to places where they get disease.
Historically, the communists have used the Greens quite a lot as well. Most of us actually do want the environment to be nice. It's not like we're anti-environment. I spend so much time in the jungles and the deserts and the woods. I love to have clean places out there. But the menu is tailor-made. For instance, here they talk about nitrogen, stikstof, and in Germany it's carbon dioxide.
Germany is just right over the border. Yes, the Greens have been used as a tool, but this is clearly a hostile takeover. The World Economic Forum doesn't even hide that that’s what they're doing.
Mr. Jekielek:
Michael, there is a lot of policy that is being implemented right now that seems very strange. In the midst of what we're talking about, Germany is potentially shutting down its last nuclear plants. That seems like a crazy idea given the energy reality that you just described. That's just one example. In a situation where there's a potential food shortage, why would you have a policy that would make it even harder for the farmers, and potentially drive them out of their ability to grow food?
You're arguing that this is a result of deliberate policy by the globalists or the World Economic Forum. In fact, a lot of famine comes from policy. The reality is it could be avoided. But somehow humans are creating something that will perpetuate the food shortages and famine. Please explain how this all works.
Mr. Yon:
Right. Most famines actually do have a significant human component. There are some famines that only result from a big drought, especially if you're on some little island somewhere and you're cut off from the world. But mostly famines don't happen on little islands anymore, because we can help them. These days, almost all famines have some sort of war component, even the potato famine in Ireland. There's a good book on that called Black Potatoes, which I read, and I read a couple more on that Irish famine.
The English were shutting down their ports. The United States was sending food to the Irish, but the English didn't want it to go through. In the Netherlands, there was the 1944/45 Hunger Winter, which they call the Hongerwinter, when the Nazis were destroying the ability to transport food to the hungry Dutch.
We were trying to parachute food in, and succeeded at times, but some of our airplanes were shot down. We were feeding some people but not enough. The Swedish were trying to feed the Dutch as well. Then finally about six months later we did Operation Market Garden, we invaded, kicked the Nazis out, and were able to feed the Dutch directly. I found an Encyclopedia Britannica set from 1910/1911. I went right to the F volume and looked up famine, and it was a couple of pages long.
They say the big famines in the world are probably coming to an end, because usually there's always enough food. The food just happens to be over here, and we need to get it over there. They make a very sensible argument that now we have faster ships, we have bigger and faster trains, and we have better roads and a better ability to get stuff from here to there. By the way, that was even before the Haber-Bosch process was invented.
We're talking 1910/1911. The Haber-Bosch process really didn’t kick off in a big way until about 1915 or so at BASF chemical company in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The authors of that very well-written piece in the Britannica in 1910/1911 thought that the big famines were probably over. They made a good, sound argument that now we can get the food from here to there. They did not take the human component into account.
One thing about farmers is that they are wed to the land. They are the backbone of a culture. Farmers and religion are intertwined, and they are the backbone of a culture. If you're trying to brainwash people and break them and divorce them from the land, you have to break the farmers' back. They're trying to do that right here. Many of the farmers here in the Netherlands have been here for seven generations. One was talking to me about he may be the one that has to give up the farm.
All they know in farming. They're very serious Dutch. They reclaimed this land from the sea and then made farms out of it. This is an extraordinary country. That's what happened with Stalin in the Ukraine. In the early 1930s, when Stalin did his policy in Holodomor, he tried to replace those farmers with Russian farmers. It was a replacement strategy. Mao did that in China, he destroyed the farmers and replaced them.
A lot of people think you can just take somebody else and put them on that farm and they'll do great with it. But no, it's an art and a science. Also, farmers do best on the land that their families have passed down to them, because they know where the crickets live. They know exactly how to farm that land. Stalin came in, replaced a lot of the Ukrainian farmers with Russians, and they didn't do well, and the famine got even worse.
He used the famine to break the farmers' back, and then it got out of his control, like fires do. Wars and famines and pandemics, they just always get out of hand. Pandemics have a life of their own. But when people induce famine, it's like starting a fire. All right, you've started a famine. Now, how do you turn it off? Because famine creates famine, pandemic creates pandemic, and war creates war.
That's why once you get into one of these legs of PanFaWar; pandemic, famine, and war together, once you get it going, you can't turn it off. Any monkey can start a fire, but it takes Mother Nature to help you put it out.
Mr. Jekielek:
Explain to me how this triangle works: the pandemic, war, and famine triangle.
Mr. Yon:
In 1793, there was a yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia. Yellow fever is a man-size pandemic that's up there with tuberculosis and smallpox. Yellow fever was causing the farmers to leave their farms. Everybody was dying. They were getting bitten by mosquitoes. They had no idea that mosquitoes were causing it. They left their farms, and so they stopped farming. That's one way.
In the cholera outbreak in London in 1854, people were dying from cholera, and people started abandoning areas of the city. It caused the economy to collapse. Food shortages can create famine, which is common sense, but it's not always necessarily the cause of famine. A personal food shortage might be because you don't have enough money to buy food.
There might be plenty of food, but because of hyperinflation or unemployment people don't have the money to buy food, and so people start stealing. They're hungry. They start robbing stores, warehouses, trucks, ships, and trains. When you start robbing warehouses and stores, they stop refilling them. You will create these food deserts, and then people will start robbing the farmers.
That can actually cause you to go into famine, because people are robbing the farmers, so the farmers go bankrupt or they stop farming. If you get into a war, like in Ukraine right now, a famine can be created. First of all, the transport ships can't leave the way they normally do. As you know, with those trains from Ukraine over to Poland, they change the gauge on the border at Białystok. They go to those narrow Russian gauges.
The reason they have different widths is because the Russians hate to be invaded by train. They want you to stop and transload at places like Białystok. So, you can't just load all that grain up and ship it over by train. You can't get it on the trucks like you can on a ship. You have this war going on and it interrupts the actual transport of the food. That's how war can lead to famine.
Also, now your army is out there fighting all the time. Often what determines whether or not a country wins or loses a war is who's got the most food? Whose army is the best fed? That's why your enemy will often attack your food supplies, which has obviously happened. So famine and war and pandemic and that human osmotic pressure, they're all woven together. You get one— you're going to get the others.
You have that triangle of death, and then you have that center pole that’s like a pyramid. That is your human osmotic pressure that causes people to leave. The next thing is this often permanently changes the demographics of countries. Let's go back to the pandemic. The reason that the United States even had so many African slaves is because the yellow fever was killing the Irish who were used as indentured servants, and who were essentially slaves.
Because yellow fever was killing the Irish in large numbers, and it wasn't killing the Africans, they started bringing over more African slaves. A huge reason that we got the Louisiana Purchase from the French at such a good price is because the French were having problems at home. They were having problems with yellow fever in Haiti and other places.
The yellow fever was really hurting their ability to keep their economy and their wars going, so we got a good deal on the Louisiana Purchase. That is also why the French left Haiti. As somebody who has read 60 books on pandemics, I would argue that U.S. history has been more shaped by pandemic and various disease than by war itself. But we always focus on the Civil War and the Revolutionary War.
When you read Ulysses S. Grant's autobiography written in conjunction with Samuel Clemens, in the first part of the book, in every two or three pages he says, "We were going into Mexico and then we hit the cholera, and then we hit the yellow fever, and then we got some other weird fever that we could not identify."
I remember he talked about going into one town in Mexico and he said all the streets were empty. There was a fever going around, so nobody wanted to come out of their house. He said there was one shootout in the street, and that's the only sound he heard. Every step of the way they were hitting something taking out a big part of their military, but we don't hear about that.
We just hear about the Mexican-American War. We hear about the Civil War. We don't realize that, historically, disease has killed more U.S. soldiers than even artillery.
Mr. Jekielek:
You have spoken with a number of Dutch farmers. What do they say about the current situation?
Mr. Yon:
They are caught in a conundrum, because most of them have taken subsidies, and now you see the subsidy trap. Most of them actually realize that the World Economic Forum and the globalists are trying to take their land, and why they're trying to do it. We've got printable meats here. I went to a restaurant about a month ago where they print the meat. You can actually get it in some of the restaurants here. It's just amazing.
They are talking about making food from crickets and all sorts of insects. If you take out the farmers, the globalists are putting themselves into a position where they can control food production and distribution. We are not even going to know what's going into our bodies. By the way, Bill and Melinda Gates have put $600 million into something called Picnic, a food distribution network here in the Netherlands.
Three of their warehouses have burned down since I've arrived here, and nobody knows why they're burning down. Some people think it's an insider, but I don't know. I have no idea, but it's quite strange that three of them have suddenly burned down right when the farmers are becoming more and more angry, and the general population is becoming so angry that the farmers are being knocked out of the saddle. They are angry that the food production is being taken away, and the land is being taken away.
Then there is another whole aspect of this called Tri-State city, but we should probably save that for another time. That's a huge subject as well.
Mr. Jekielek:
Let's just use the Netherlands as a microcosm. That's where you are now, and obviously that's where you think the action is at. You have this situation where the nitrogen isn't being turned into fertilizer, so we can't be growing as much as we would normally. That's one. Number two, there's price inflation, so things are getting more expensive.
Number three, there's going to be huge limits on the energy available to do anything, like run your tractor, for example. In what scenario can these farmers actually win and continue with farming?
Mr. Yon:
As a war correspondent, I would say overthrow the government, because that's the only obvious way that I can see. Now, of course, if this program airs while I'm still in the EU, who knows what'll happen to me. I don't see how they're going to win with this current government in power. Look at what just happened in Sri Lanka. The last time I was in Sri Lanka, there was plenty of food. There was food galore. There was food everywhere at a nice cheap price.
Sri Lanka went down the same route and the rest is history. We saw the mob swimming in the president's swimming pool and literally sleeping in his bed.
Mr. Jekielek:
What exactly happened in Sri Lanka?
Mr. Yon:
The government took the bait and made radical changes to the way that agriculture was done in Sri Lanka by going green and going organic, which just doesn't work. That is about to happen to the entire world by the way. When the nitrogen fertilizers aren't there, we're just going to see crop yields go down, and that's exactly what happened.
I also went to Bangladesh a few years ago. I took a look around, and I spent quite a bit of time running around there. It's a very densely-populated country. Of course, Sri Lanka is an island off the southern tip of India. Bangladesh is to the northeast of India, and they border each other. Bangladesh is collapsing as we speak.
Let's go to the other side of India. Pakistan on the western border is collapsing, if not totally collapsed at this point. We could safely say it has collapsed. They've had terrible floods. Essentially, given the global context and that nobody can come to the rescue at this point—China is hoarding food and seems to be having food riots now—nobody's going to come to the rescue of Pakistan.
Right next door is Afghanistan, where I spent two years. They always have problems with food. I spent a year up in Nepal, which is to the north of India. They also have problems. I spent a year running around India. With all of its neighbors either already collapsed or collapsing. I'm not sure how India's going to be able to continue to stand. There are many cultures in India, so I’m at peril to make any broad strokes there.
But as a broad stroke, Indians do tend to store food. They do tend to be preppers which is a cultural trait. So are the Chinese, certainly the more historical-type Chinese that listen to their grandparents. When you talk to the Chinese, they have always been concerned about running out of food, because famines happen a lot over in Asia. So we could be looking at a massive famine in India and China. Imagine the human osmotic pressure. It would be enormous.
Today we have roads and railroads and ships and the ability to move around faster than we've ever had before. People can go a very long distance these days in a very short amount of time. I've been warning Thailand. If Bangladesh collapses, Bangladeshis can go to Chiang Mai, Thailand, and they can go to Bangkok. I've been through Bangladesh checking it out just for this very reason. I have also checked out Burma, which borders Thailand. They have perfect roads.
If there is famine in India and Bangladesh, it will certainly collapse into Myanmar right through to Thailand. This is also how a pandemic spreads. You have a bunch of Indians coming over with their own diseases and dragging it through Myanmar, over to Thailand. Most people don't die from starvation. When their immune systems are compromised, they will start dying from diseases. They'll die of the famine fevers, that is what they're called—the famine fevers.
The famine fevers usually take a few months after serious malnutrition kicks in. People start dying from typhus. They start dying from relapsing fevers. You'll also get other non-famine fevers. Cholera always breaks out during famines. You always get cholera because the sanitation is bad. When there are famines, the electricity certainly will go out, and the water will stop flowing.
Mr. Jekielek:
Michael, everything you are describing reminds me of the impact of pandemic policy. Let me just explain briefly. Pandemic policy resulted in the biggest wealth transfer from the poor and middle classes to the elites in the history of the world. It's an unbelievable effect, which more and more people are realizing.
A lot of small businesses just basically disappeared. People couldn't keep them going, because of these very strict shelter-in-place policies in many countries, including the U.S.. Everything you're describing is in the context of a couple of years of extremely restrictive, economically-destructive policy that the world is still reeling from. And this doesn’t include everything that you are seeing right now.
Mr. Yon:
Right. I'll tell you what, just pick five random books on famine. I keep telling people, just so that I'm not the only one loading the deck, just pick five random books and you'll see how famine basically irradiates an economy. It really kills an economy as completely as war does, if not even more completely. We've seen children in the United States that have missed a great deal of education in the last couple of years. Their chain of education has been disrupted.
It's even far more so when you get into a famine and people are disrupted. They have to leave and they're moving, because you have to go where the food is. Most famines don't last more than about two years, but many do last a lot longer. They'll reach some magical point, they'll reach a peak, and then they'll finally subside. In the interim, economies are completely destroyed. Years of education are lost and demographics are never the same.
Famines cause massive wealth redistribution. This pandemic was used in such a weaponized way that clearly we're going straight into famine now.
Mr. Jekielek:
One solution is simply to restart energy production in all these places where it's possible to do so. But it's not being done. Do you agree?
Mr. Yon:
Absolutely. The natural gas has to flow. We've got to get these fertilizer plants going again. But even if suddenly we're all flowing, we've already lost a huge amount of production. There's been a flash, and we're about to hear it. It's not just a bang, it's going to be a boom. Actually, when will the crop reports in the United States be out? They’ll be out in a couple of weeks, and that may have a dramatic effect on our food prices, when people realize how short we are on food.
There are serious droughts in parts of the United States and Northern Mexico. The breweries in northern Mexico just closed. I was just near the Corona brewery about two months ago, because I was tracking migrants. They happened to walk by the big brewery in northern Mexico. Mexico exports about $5 billion worth of beer every year, but due to water shortages, they are closing those breweries.
The people that are nimble and able to move quickly tend to make fortunes. For instance, in the Holodomor, Ukraine famine, you would have people buying entire grand pianos with just a few potatoes. When people say, "Oh, that's just small potatoes," that echoes back to potatoes being gold in places like the Holodomor in Ukraine, or over in Ireland where they had terrible famines. Their population has never recovered, and that was 170 years ago.
First of all, it caused a lot of Irish to migrate to the United States. We said, "Welcome to the United States. Here's your rifle and go fight the Confederates, please." The Irish had a hard time here. People were really looking down on the Irish, of course. The famines had ravaged them, not to mention other things.
Mr. Jekielek:
All of this basically spells a really, really difficult time that's almost unavoidable. Is that what you're saying?
Mr. Yon:
I would say unavoidable. It dawned on me in February of 2020 that the life we knew was probably over and would never return. At that time, I had the advantage of having already read about 40 books on pandemic as a war correspondent, an almost autistic-like study. I track pandemics.
Every morning when I wake up I check what's going on in the world? I ask, "What's going on with H5N1? What's going on with typhus? I've read the answers to the test. It's all already written. It's already happened over and over and over.
Mr. Jekielek:
Based on the research that I've seen at this point, the policy implemented to deal with the pandemic had a much greater cost than if the pandemic had just been allowed to run its normal course. Of course, that would have been an insane thing to suggest back at the beginning of 2020.
People that were suggesting that were vilified in terrible ways. In hindsight, the policy was incredibly destructive. That is different from past pandemics. By your definition, was this really a pandemic?
Mr. Yon:
I have read 60 books on pandemic. Let me put this in perspective. Compared to yellow fever, this pandemic was tiny. Yellow fever has been a huge factor in human history, and almost nobody seems to know that now. There are mass graves all over the United States for yellow fever. Does anybody even know that?
Look up mass graves for yellow fever. If you're in Tennessee, you'll find there was a huge outbreak of yellow fever in Memphis. It was all over Texas. There are mass graves in Florida. I happen to be from Florida. If you ask Floridians about it they will say, "What are you even talking about? What is yellow fever?" Yellow fever is the thing that probably shaped the United States more than the Civil War. But on the larger scale of things, I would put this pandemic at a one out of ten.
Let's say one would be, “Is there really something going on without someone having to tell me?” Yellow fever would be like an eight. Let's say ten would be like a Stephen King novel, when almost everyone on earth is dead. Our reaction to this fake fire was that we got stuck in the doorway and trampled on each other. Look at Trudeau. Look at Biden, or Rutte here in the Netherlands, or so many others. They're all just actors.
I watched Biden’s recent speech and all of his efforts against MAGA and the Republicans. He did not mention anything about China, the energy crisis, the fertilizer problem, or the coming food shortages. I've written six books, and three of those books are in Japanese only. They're only available in Japan. They're about information warfare. I have studied information warfare extensively.
The highest form of warfare is information warfare. Why did The Epoch Times just come out of the blue and suddenly become so massive? Because the public is thirsty for accurate information. We are dying for it. What do you do when you get cholera? You get dehydrated. Then what do you do? Do you need more water? You go right back to the source where you got that water from, the same source that gave you cholera. John Snow, the father of epidemiology, made a map of where all the cholera cases were happening.
This is like a map of the media today. Why is the public dying for information? He went to every single place and he finally found out, “Hey, they're all getting water from that pump." Back then everybody thought the diseases were coming from miasma, the terrible air. When you go to India, you'll understand what miasma is. We used to think malaria came from miasma. That's the origin of the word malaria, it comes from the Latin for, “bad air.”
They all thought it was from miasma. Snow said, "No, it's coming from that water pump." It's the same with the media. You read all these terrible news sources, and then you go right back to that same source, or you go back to sources that are providing that same polluted water. You're never going to get clean water from that source. Just stop paying attention to it.
Mr. Jekielek:
It seems like we've crossed a Rubicon here. Is it ever possible to go back to how things looked pre-pandemic?
Mr. Yon:
No. We're going into a totally different state now, and there's no turning back. Look at Sri Lanka. They're resisting now, but it’s a little too late, especially after having gone into famine. There's only a certain amount of time that you have while your energy is still high and you're not malnourished yet, when you can actually resist. At some point, you're just too weak and they've beaten you.
Mr. Jekielek:
What do you think is the best case scenario right now for society at large?
Mr. Yon:
Firstly, detach ourselves from the globalists and the World Economic Forum and their influence. That includes the UN and World Health Organization. Greatly reduce the size of the U.S. government and the bureaucracy, and become nationalist. I never realized I was a nationalist until people actually kept accusing me of it. Then finally I said, "Actually, you're right. I am a nationalist, and that's what I need to be. I am American."
Japanese need to be Japanese. Polish need to be Polish or they'll just be giving up their sovereignty. That is why Europe is collapsing. They've surrendered their sovereignty to the people in Brussels. The people in Brussels, wherever they're coming from on this planet, and however they got their views, are leading us into a global catastrophe.
Mr. Jekielek:
Any final thoughts as we finish up?
Mr. Yon:
All of our family lines have been through pandemics, famines, wars, and migrations. We all came from somewhere else, and we've all got these kinds of stories. And we're still here. We are survivors. So prepare by quickly reading five books on famine. Just pick five random books. I will suggest one, “Red Famine.” Then pick four more at random.
Then, you'll understand more of what you need to prepare for this. You can get through it, no problem, if you know what challenges you're going to face. It has all been written down. Our ancestors wrote it all down. They didn't write it down for fun. They wrote it down so that we would read it.
Mr. Jekielek:
Michael Yon, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show again.
Mr. Yon:
Thanks, Jan. It's a very big pleasure to come on.
Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Michael Yon and I on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.
Comments