Full screen recommended.
2002, "Through the Rainbow"
Beautiful...
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, February 19, 2022
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Some spiral galaxies are seen nearly sideways. Most bright stars in spiral galaxies swirl around the center in a disk, and seen from the side, this disk can appear quite thin. Some spiral galaxies appear even thinner than NGC 3717, which is actually seen tilted just a bit. Spiral galaxies form disks because the original gas collided with itself and cooled as it fell inward. Planets may orbit in disks for similar reasons.
The featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a light-colored central bulge composed of older stars beyond filaments of orbiting dark brown dust. NGC 3717 spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 60 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Snake (Hydra)."
Chet Raymo, “Strange”
“Strange”
by Chet Raymo
“In a review in the “New York Times” Book Review, Daniel Handler writes: “And strange? Well, let’s get this straight: All great books are strange. Every lasting work of literature since the very weird “Beowulf” has been strange, not only because it grapples with the strangeness around us, but also because the effect of originality is startling, making even the oldest books feel like brand new stories.”
Strange: Out-of-the-ordinary, unusual, curious. “The strangeness around us,” says Handler. There is a paradox here. What could be less strange than the world around us? It is the same world that was here yesterday, and the day before that. More to the point: It is a world ruled by law. Inviolable causal bonds. That’s what makes science possible.
And yet, and yet. I walk wary. Strangeness lurks on ever side. Strangeness leaps out of every pebble in the path, every wildflower, every spider web flung between weedy stalks. In the midst of the utterly ordinary the extraordinary abounds. Nothing is so commonplace as to be common. The strangeness of the world, as in literature, has its source in the head, in the convoluted interaction of mind with world. Strange, that we should be here, strangers in a strange land, pilgrims on our own yellow brick roads where nothing is ordinary because everything is perceived through the filter of a unique consciousness.
And strange? Well, let’s get this straight. I hope never to lose the capacity to see the strangeness in the familiar, the curious in the everyday, the exception in the unexceptional.
“I do not expect a miracle,
or an accident,
to set the sight on fire...”
wrote Silvia Plath. Just being here is enough. Just being here is surpassing strange.”
The Poet: Robert Bly, "Things to Think"
"Things to Think"
"Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.
Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.
When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it's been decided that if you lie down no one will die."
- Robert Bly, “Morning Poems”
"The Chief Obstacle..."
"The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race."
- Don Marquis
"The Winter Of Our Discontent: Hubris Is Ascendent"
"The Winter Of Our Discontent: Hubris Is Ascendent"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"We're constantly assured everything's on the mend but this trying-too-hard marketing has the opposite effect: it confirms everything's unraveling. We're told inflation is transitory (you mean like terminal cancer is "transitory"?), the economy is opening up and growing smartly.
None of this is remotely persuasive. OK, we get it: the pandemic shutdown crushed supply chains and demand, and then trillions of dollars, yen, yuan and euros of monetary and fiscal stimulus boosted pent-up demand which then snarled creaky supply chains. Inflation is transitory because the effects of this massive stimulus is temporary and the global supply snarls will all be unkinked shortly.
But this happy story only accounts for a thin wafer of global supply issues. Yes, a few items may be restored to low-cost production and shipping, but all this rah-rah ignores the primary dynamics: all the cheap, easy-to-get resources have been extracted and consumed, and labor costs, crushed for the past 45 years, have reversed: after being stripmined by capital for the past 45 years, labor is now demanding some modest restoration of decades of diminished purchasing power, not just in the U.S. but in China and other production nodes in global supply chains.
Capital's screams of agony are laughable, as the top tier of capital has added trillions in wealth at the expense of the bottom 99.5%. The wealth of the few has metastasized into hyper-wealth - $100 million yachts and villas barely scratch the surface of the billions gained by gaming financialization and the Federal Reserve's financial fentanyl.
Although nobody benefiting from the Fed's financial fentanyl seems to have noticed, hyper-wealth has extinguished democracy and destabilized the economy and society. With trillions gushing into the wealthiest families and corporate insiders, "democracy" has been reduced to an invitation-only auction of political favors.
If you didn't get your desired favors, then increase your bid. Big Pharma, the "defense" (heh) industry, Higher Education, Big Ag, Big Tech, et al. are all willing to pony up millions in bribes--oops, I mean "donations" - to multi-millionaire politicos profiting from insider trading (cough, Pelosi, cough). Revolving doors ensure the right people get fat speaking fees, cushy do-nothing slots in philanthro-capitalist foundations, etc.
The decay caused by hyper-wealth is systemic: the moral decay of a thoroughly corrupted "leadership," a sham facade of "democracy" (vote for whomever you want, the ownership of power doesn't change), an economy dominated by profiteering cartels and quasi-monopolies, a class system in which privilege is hidden in plain sight, a society of haves who have broken the rungs of the social-mobility ladder, leaving the have-nots unaffordable housing, unaffordable higher education, unaffordable healthcare, unaffordable childcare, etc., all to be paid out of wages that have lost purchasing power for decades and continue to lose ground as "transitory" inflation is embedded in essentials and fripperies alike.
Meanwhile, back in the wintry real world, everyone facing a dime in higher costs is jacking up their price by a dollar. "Inflation" is a handy cover for jacking up prices just to see how much the panic-hoarding, desperate consumer will pay: hmm, a used truck costs more than a new truck cost two years ago? I'll take it! A mattress-in-a-box has doubled in price? I'll take it! A fast-food burger is now 50% more? Give me four, and charge it to my credit card.
Oh, but wait - everything is being fixed by speculative bubbles that enrich everyone who bought assets long ago. That's obviously a solution that benefits everyone, right? So the newly enriched can buy overvalued assets from other newly enriched, all funded by the Fed's financial fentanyl.
Yes, it's time to distribute victorious wreaths to the purveyors and profiteers of financial fentanyl. Hubris is ascendent just before the fall."
"Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures."
○
“Now Is The Winter Of Our Discontent”
"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes."
- William Shakespeare, "Richard III"
"It Becomes Sad..."
"Why does truth carry such a dreadful face? Why does subjugation carry
such a happy mask? It becomes sad when people understand that they
can lead a better life as long as they bow their heads, ignoring the truth."
- Lionel Suggs
"Worldwide Economic Chaos - There is Still Time to Prepare Now"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 2/19/22:
"Worldwide Economic Chaos -
There is Still Time to Prepare Now"
"It is time to prepare now for the worldwide Economic chaos. There are all the signs that trouble is coming. Get money and food ready while you can."
"Do You Believe..."
“Do you believe,’ said Candide, ‘that men have always massacred each other as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?"
“Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
- Voltaire
"Trampling the Truckers – The Great Reset Becomes the Great Awakening"
"Trampling the Truckers –
The Great Reset Becomes the Great Awakening"
by Tom Luongo
"There are few words to describe the depth of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s depravity. I’m not going to even try. This is a person, because no real man would ever govern like him, so thoroughly ill-prepared for its job it doesn’t even know how to properly read from the prepared script.
It was all fun and games making Trudeau/Hitler memes until yesterday when Trudeau’s enforcers on horseback trampled an old woman. Because a man with any sense of decency does not send men on horseback into a crowd. The only thing worse than are the people commenting on this saying some variation of ‘well, she deserved it.’
Yes, she could have gone home.
Yes, she could have gotten the clot-shot.
Yes, she could have just complied with whatever Justin Trudeau told her what her morality was.
But Trudeau could have chosen differently as well. As opposed to acting like a scared little boy worried about facing public ridicule, he could have sacked up and met with the protestors. Instead, he did what all boy-emperors have ever done, he chose violence and intimidation.
Those who blame the victims are worse than Justin Trudeau. They will never admit it, even to themselves, but their belief in the state as moral arbiter is shaken to its foundation when things like this happen. So they bluster about playing stupid games, win stupid prizes. Empathy? Who needs that in Davos’ Brave New World. Those against the protests have their reasons, none of them, however, are morally justified. Because if you allow the state, an immoral construction at its core, to define your morality, you will forever hving to justify tyranny to remain on the side of the angels.
Blaming the victim is the easiest thing to do. How many rapists have claimed “she had it coming?” How many abusers every day blame the people they abuse because they are too ashamed to admit they are in the wrong?
We Are All Unclean Now: The part of the Great Reset pertaining to COVID-19 was always about amplifying the divisions between people. To create a new religion around it. Its sacrament is the vaccine. Its Lord’s prayer is demonizing ivermectin and trusting the science. Its vestment is the mask. Its “amen,” is “in the name of public health.”
It has led to such dehumanizing that those who do not comply with the high priests now deserve their fate. Mario Draghi in Italy declared the unvaccinated to no longer be a part of Italian society.
"Are they going to have to sew a yellow
syringe onto their clothes now?"
- Tom Luongo (Mr. Ungovernable) (@TFL1728) February 16, 2022
And, in a way, sadly, Trudeau’s supporters are correct. One always has the choice to accept the abuse if the alternative is death. That woman didn’t go to Parliament Square with that choice in mind because, she, sadly, still believed in the religion of the State as a subordinate partner with the people in shaping society. Those final illusions were trampled fully in the eyes of millions around the world.
Politically, there is no going back for Justin Trudeau. He, along with his supporters, will hide behind their ‘cope’ and refuse to accept the responsibility for their actions. The Ottawa police are doing the same thing, putting out disinformation about trying to trip the horses and harm the policemen. At this point those still on the job in Ottawa made a choice as well, to side with tyrants and embrace their own inner one. Many of them will enjoy finally getting to mete out the violence that festers in their souls, after all, it’s why many of them became cops in the first place. Those who still have their humanity are now deciding whether to go along or walk away. If they go along they will lose what’s left of their humanity just like men did during World War II. And their true face has been revealed.
No Zeal for More Tyranny: Now, as bad as things are in Canada, In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, tried to follow Trudeau’s script to quell protests in Wellington. And from all reports there, her efforts have failed completely. She convened a meeting of essentially the national security council on Thursday. We have no solid reports of what went down. Therefore, the silence about the outcome of that meeting speaks volumes. The military weren’t willing to get involved, just like what happened to Trudeau in Canada.
Moreover, New Zealand’s police commissioner Andrew Coster came out with a public statement saying negotiation was the path forward, something Arden has rejected out of hand, just like Trudeau, both reading from Davos’ script. Coster said negotiations and de-escalation were the only safe ways to resolve the protest and he would continue to talk to the protesters. Police say there are about 800 protesters but numbers could rise over the weekend. Coster said any forceful police action would risk injuries to the public and could turn a largely peaceful protest violent, and could increase the number of protesters.
Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly tried to hold the line against Trudeau’s megalomania earlier this week. That resulted in him resigning, presumably because he wouldn’t give the order to roust up the protestors and beat heads, and a more pliant enforcer put in his place. The result is what we’re witnessing now in Ottawa.
Look at the police drag this guy between the trucks so an officer can knee him as as hard as he can. None of the other cops seem to care about his behavior as he quickly checks to see if any Canadian saw him:
- bu/ac (@buperac) February 19, 2022
The casual obscenity in this clip is the newscasters’ commentary about police restoring order. The reality is that Ardern and Trudeau are both hanging on by a thread because public opinion already turned against them. The only thing propping Trudeau up at this point is the shock at the speed he has escalated events. That shock will wear off very soon. If parliament doesn’t act to limit/censure or simply get rid of this guy, Canadians will have a much bigger problem on their hands. Too many Canadians are still asking, “Is this Canada?” When they should be stating, “This is not Canada.” Stop asking for permission to feel outraged and feel the outrage.
In New Zealand, the veil of authority for Arden is thinner thanks to Trudeau’s mistakes in Ottawa. No doubt they are seeing the same things we are and want no part of it. The knives will come out for Ardern quickly if she doesn’t back down. I say all the time, spooks start civil wars, militaries end them. In Canada, the civil war there is just beginning. What we’ve not seen in New Zealand means it’s likely over before anyone even realized they were in one.
The Great Reset rests on tyrants like Justin Trudeau to win through fear, intimidation and the banal corruption of weak people to support them. With each image of peaceful people being trampled under the bootheel of Canadian stormtroopers, more people awaken from the slumber of the comfortable lie the government protects us from chaos.
That’s what the State is folks, violence. Always has been. This is why Klaus Schwab and his minions like Trudeau, Ardern and others will fail. There is no law these people recognize. There is no restraint on their behavior they feel is justified for their holy cause. The sooner we accept that, like many of the truckers who organized this protest, the sooner we can all begin bridging the divide. I’ll leave the last word for Viva Frei.
"I have spent 12 days live streaming from Ottawa.
I did not see one shred of violence until the police showed up."
- Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) February 18, 2022
○
- Thomas Jefferson
"Banks Prepare For Cyberattacks; Your Money Is At Risk; Stocks Will Crash"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 2/19/22:
"Banks Prepare For Cyberattacks;
Your Money Is At Risk; Stocks Will Crash"
Live: Trucker Freedom Convoy 2022 in Ottawa, Canada, Day 23
Live: Trucker Freedom Convoy 2022 in Ottawa, Canada, Day 23
Full screen recommended.
○
Complete Totalitarianism
○
"You Lost $500,000!"
"You Lost $500,000!"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"The happy story that's been ceaselessly promoted for 45 years is that financialization and globalization have been wunnerful for all of us, boosting wealth and saving a small fortune as the cost of products fell. This is a remarkable distortion of reality. The fact is your household lost $500,000 in earnings and gained essentially nothing in supposed "cost savings." You might want to read that again.
The facts are presented in a study by the RAND Corporation: "Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018." It reveals that $50 trillion in earnings has been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households over the past 45 years.
B-b-but wait, didn't we all save a fortune on cheap jeans and TVs? No, you lost on that, too, as every product was junkified by globalization (more on that in a minute). Let's start by defining financialization and globalization. Financialization is the reaping of profits not by creating value by producing goods and services but by exploiting credit and leverage to reap unearned profits.
Financial Gimmicks: Here are two examples. Borrow $1 billion and then use this to do a leveraged buyout (LBO) of a $10 billion company. Break the company's divisions into separate companies and sell them off or take them public via an IPO (initial public offering). Make $10 billion in pure profit from breaking up a company and selling its pieces, all from $1 billion in borrowed money. Note that this LBO didn't generate any gains in productivity or any new goods and services, nor did it create any new jobs. All it did was greatly enrich a few financiers and Wall Street banks.
Here's another example. Borrow $1 billion and use the money to buy back the shares of the corporation. The market value of the company's shares rise from $10 billion to $15 billion. The top management exercises its immense hoard of stock options and skims billions of dollars in profits. Note also that this stock buyback didn't generate any gains in productivity or any new goods and services, nor did it create any new jobs. All it did was greatly enrich a few at the top of the heap.
This is the financialization of the U.S. economy in a nutshell. Financial games using other people's money and leverage make the big money. Producing goods and services that create jobs is for losers.
Globalization: Globalization is the process of moving production of goods and services overseas to reap the gains of cheap labor, no environmental standards, corrupt politicians and the junkification of goods and services. Globalization is the process of exposing much of America's labor force to one billion new workers who will work for next to nothing since they have no other means of earning cash.
Developing nations have limited means to enforce environmental regulations, so they are the convenient and cheap dumping grounds for global corporations maximizing profits by dumping toxic waste in landfills, rivers, etc. Should there be any spot of bother, comparatively low-cost bribes and payoffs to corrupt leaders insure the labor and land will continue to be exploited without any problems with labor unions, environmental standards, etc.
Globalization also means making the product look nice but strip out all quality as needless expense. Thin the paint so the steel rusts out in months, use the shoddiest materials so the veneer peels off, the screws snap, the commodity chip fails, taking the motherboard and entire appliance down with it, and so on, in an endless and oh-so-profitable parade of junkification. Well-paid shills tally up all the "savings" generated by junkification but they never look at the immense losses in utility and durability.
The Costs of Junkification: An appliance that cost $500 and lasted 20 years without any repair is far less expensive over the 20 year lifespan than a $400 appliance that fails in 4 years and can't be repaired, or the repair costs almost as much as a new appliance. The hapless consumer of junkified goods ends up paying $2,500 over the 20 years for poorly made junk that falls apart in a few years or mysteriously fails as cheap electronic components blink off.
In other words, I was being extremely charitable in granting $137.13 gains to each household in 45 years of globalization. In reality, each household lost thousands of dollars in utility and durability. No wealthy financier funds research into how much each American household lost in utility and durability because the financiers who fund their philanthro-capitalist foundations all made their fortunes by stripmining financialization and/or junkifying goods and services and establishing monopolies and cartels to exterminate any competition. (Cough, Gates Foundation, cough.)
The well-paid shills tout the $100 savings but ignore the $2,000 in costs added by the collapse of quality and durability. Who makes out when consumers have to buy five appliances over 20 years instead of one? The shareholders of the financialized, globalized corporation, that's who. And since the top 10% of households own roughly 90% of all corporate shares and bonds (and the top 0.1% own 40%), the gains are highly concentrated in the top.
$500,000 of Lost Household Income: If the labor force had retained its 1975 share of the economy's income, each household would have $500,000 more in income than they ended up with in the fully financialized, globalized, junkified economy we're stuck with.
Let's do the math: $50 trillion divided by 100 million households (the bottom 90% of households) is $500,000. Divide $500,000 by 45 years and that's $11,110 a year for 45 years. We can quibble about inflation and purchasing power and so on, but however you reckon it, $500,000 stripped from every household is a lot of money when we're talking about 100 million households.
Next time you're on hold with a junkified Corporate America or government service, and the next time your globalized, junkified device fails, ponder all the costs of financialization and globalization that have yet to be tallied.
Ponder what a clawback of the $50 trillion might entail, and the immense benefits of returning to producing quality goods and services by completely unwinding financialization and globalization. We could completely unwind financialization and globalization if we chose to. I explain how in my new book "Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States."
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 2/18/22"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"The Biden/Obama Administration wants more people to be jabbed with a worthless CV19 vax. That was revealed by a Project Veritas hidden camera sting on top FDA official Christopher Cole. Cole admitted that the injections were “a recurring fountain of revenue.” So, it’s not about helping to cure people or science. It’s all about making money, forcing and coercing dangerous crap on the public while enriching drug companies and government hacks. Thanks, Project Veritas, once again.
It’s official, complements of the Durham investigation. The Trump Campaign was spied on just like President Trump has long charged. Hillary, the CIA, FBI, DOJ and many others were involved. This makes the Watergate Break-in look like a squirt gun fight. Leslie Stahl mocked President Trump in a 60 Minutes interview just before the 2020 election. Stahl, her producers and top management at CBS should all be fired for being a propaganda mouthpiece for the Deep State CCP backed Democrat Party. Stahl is a fool and is now in hiding for her awful work. Trump gets the last laugh on the hack Stahl. For a real laugh, listen to the actual audio of the Stahl/Trump exchange about the spying lip-synced by comedian Rachele Maria.
As Rob Kirby recently said, all the global problems are tied to unpayable debt and massive money creation. The Canadian truckers are at the tip of the spear for freedom. There is much more than vax mandates at stake as Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò lays it all out in a 6:50 video. This is Freedom against the New World Order or good vs. evil.
The Fed is trapped. It can do two things and only two. It can keep it all going, print money and embrace the growing inflation or it can raise interest rates, stop the money printing and crash the economy and all the markets. In an election year with a failing Democrat Administration, what do you think they will do? History is the key. Greg Hunter will explain as he goes back to 1979."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 2/18/22:
"Seven Great Truths"
"Seven Great Truths"
by Robert Gore
"Justin Trudeau and his globalist ilk are an unimpressive lot. Trudeau’s interminable Wikipedia profile is over 8000 words and has 324 references. Never has so much been said about so little except, perhaps, in other globalist profiles. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, was, like Trudeau, one of Klaus Schwab’s Young Global Leaders, a finishing school for the Davos set.
Trudeau’s resumé lists bachelors’ degrees in literature and education, and studies but no degrees in engineering and environmental geography. He was a substitute and then a permanent teacher in secondary schools. Wikipedia says he gave his father, Pierre, prime minister from 1980 to 1984, a nice eulogy. He started a winter sports safety fund after his brother was killed in an avalanche, portrayed a distant relative in a CBC miniseries, started the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, fought a zinc mine in the Northwest Territories, and was master of ceremonies at an award show and a political rally. (That comprehensive summation took three sentences and 105 words.)
His featherweight resumé screams politics and government as an ultimate career. He’s a Canadian Barack Obama. See the fawning Wikipedia entry for thousands of words on his ascent up the political ladder. In 2015 he was elected Prime Minister, a position he holds to this day, but perhaps not much longer.
Ottawa, Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels are filled with globalist politicians, functionaries, and toadies who differ from Trudeau only superficially. Power, their “right” to tell and force others how to live, is really a self-bestowed entitlement. They are the insiders, and outsiders are ignored or deplored. Whatever differences they have among themselves, they close ranks when fellow insiders are under attack. The Wikipedia profile mentions several Trudeau scandals, including blackface photos, that might have ended the career of an outsider politician, but from which he survived.
Once in a while something cuts through the muck of modern life with diamond-cutter precision and finality, yielding a moment of clarity. The juxtaposition of two images creates just such a moment. The one: thousands of Canadians braving the the bitter cold to cheer and succor 18-wheelers and their drivers rolling towards Ottawa. The other: the empty chair of an empty-suit prime minister who absented himself rather than face what his arrogant totalitarianism had wrought.
"Revolutions dawn when an appreciable number of
the ruled realize their rulers are intellectual and moral inferiors."
Justin Trudeau has done more to usher in that dawn than any other globalist. His invective and cowardice have rendered him contemptible in the eyes of millions of Canadians and others around the world despite the best efforts of the kept media to protect him. That he and his ilk are intellectual and moral inferiors is the first great truth to emerge from the truckers’ protest.
In a modern economy, goods and people must be transported. Cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes, and the people who operate them, are essential. Southwest Airlines’ pilots brought the company’s operations to a standstill with a few days of sickouts. The truckers established a chokehold on Ottawa and blockades at U.S. border crossings, exacerbating supply chain issues. Canadians will survive just fine without Ottawa, but supply chain issues bite in a hurry. Which prompts the second great truth: Production is the essential primary, everything else depends on it.
Is the political class essential? They’ve mandated useless masks, brutal lockdowns, deadly clot shots and vaccine passports. They’ve closed countless businesses and destroyed countless jobs. There’s more to come: proposed central bank digital funny money and social credit systems. They’ve imposed confiscatory taxes and stultifying laws and regulations. Their rampant cronyism, favoritism, corruption. and hypocrisy elicit widespread disgust. Education has become indoctrination, health care a pharmaceutical cornucopia. Welfare and warfare state insiders thrive, the rest of us get state propaganda and Big Brother. Why do we need this political class? The third great truth: We don’t.
Freedom Convoys are a milestone escalation in a rebellion that’s been gathering steam in Canada and elsewhere since well before Covid-19. Protest until now has been limited to voting, the alternative media, humor, and peaceful demonstrations, which the ruling class has ignored, deplored, censored, or canceled. Thousands of trucks are an order of magnitude greater than a march or rally. Freedom Convoys are coordinated movement and obstruction intended to throw a monkey wrench into society’s intricate workings. The fourth great truth: The battle has been joined, the rebellion has gone kinetic.
Trucking is one of countless choke points upon which modern production, distribution, and commerce depend, and there is no way they can all be defended and protected. The dominant trend of our age - decentralization - puts computers, smart phones, cameras, drones, robots, and weaponry in the hands of anyone who can access and afford them. The electric grid can be short-circuited, computer systems hacked, installations closed, cryptocurrency transactions conducted, demonstrations organized, and the high and mighty mocked in viral memes - the avenues of attack are endless.
Individuals have never had more potential power, and let’s not forget the most important power - brainpower. There are millions of essential jobs requiring high levels of intelligence, skill, and training, like driving an 18-wheeler or piloting a jet. Complicated systems can be brought to a standstill with the malfunction or sabotage of a component or two, or in the case of their human constituents, the refusal to perform essential functions. The fifth great truth: Complex systems are inherently vulnerable from outside and within and there’s little centralized bureaucracies can do to protect either entire systems or their constituent elements from decentralized attack.
Violence is the first refuge of the sub-mediocre. If you have nothing to offer in a free market system - an inability to produce and voluntarily exchange—you promote one that allows sub-mediocrities to kneecap their betters. That’s the point of collectivism: sub-mediocrities using violence or its threat to subjugate and rob the productive, from geniuses to those with few skills nevertheless striving to earn an honest living. Violence is collectivism’s animating principle.
Justin Trudeau is a sub-mediocrity, notwithstanding Wikipedia’s 8000-word tribute. Faced with a demonstration of truth number five, his only response is violence. For a sub-mediocrity there can be no other. He either negotiates with the truckers or clears them out with threats and outright force. The former, an ostensible defeat, would actually be the closest he can come to a victory - the gentle Canadians won’t string him up - while the latter, an ostensible victory, would only sow the seeds of inevitable defeat, after which the Canadians may not be as gentle.
That he has refused to negotiate or even acknowledge the demands of the protestors is an unsurprising indication of the path he’s chosen. Tyrants don’t voluntarily surrender power. He’s compounding his own stupidity.
After he invoked the Emergencies Act he froze some of the demonstrators’ bank accounts. The five major Canadian banks were simultaneously hit with outages Wednesday night. In this day and age there are no around-the-block lines of depositors trying to get their money out of a bank, which used to let everyone know a bank run was in progress. Now, depositors use their computers or bank ATMs and try to withdraw simultaneously. Did Trudeau’s foolish order prompt millions of Canadians to question the security of their bank deposits and hurriedly take action? The possibility can’t be dismissed. The order certainly didn’t increase confidence in the banking system.
In fractional reserve banking, simultaneous withdrawals by enough depositors will collapse the entire system, it’s a mathematical certainty. Governments’ deposit insurance funds have only a pittance of the deposit liabilities they supposedly insure. Once those funds are depleted the government either closes the banks or informs people they’ve lost their deposits. If that happens in Canada, you’ll have a Depositors’ Insurrection joining the Truckers’ Insurrection. (See “Revolution in America,” Robert Gore, SLL, January 7, 2015 for a fuller exploration of bank runs’ revolutionary potential.) An interesting side note: there are probably a lot of Canadian police and members of the armed forces who have bank deposits.
A depositors’ revolt would hasten Trudeau’s discovery of the same truth discovered thirty-one years ago by the Soviet Union’s commissars, the sixth great truth: You can’t run a country by threatening its citizens, stealing their money and property, imprisoning them, torturing them, or executing them.
You can be “they” or “we”—Trudeaus or truckers. There are more of us than them. The former will grow with each new outrage of the latter. They have their violence. We’ll choke the choke points and we have our own responsive violence. They have their command - Obey! We have our rallying cry - Freedom! The one makes cowards cower and compels obedience. The other inspires the many and thrusts greatness on a few. The seventh great truth: We will win."
"Clear Focus Ambient Space Music for Concentration - Isochronic Tones"
Jason Lewis - Mind Amend,
"Clear Focus Ambient Space Music for Concentration - Isochronic Tones"
Headphones are NOT required for this video.
"How should you listen to this? You can listen to this track with your eyes open while studying, reading or doing other activities which require a good level of concentration.
How does it work? This is a brainwave entrainment music track using isochronic tones combined with music. The music has also been embedded with amplitude entrainment effects, where the music is subtly distorted and vibrates in unison with the same frequency of the isochronic tones. This helps to add further strength to the entrainment effect. This brainwave entrainment session cycles through a frequency range of between 10Hz in Alpha, (which can help with memorization and learning), and up to 14Hz in the Beta range, (which will help with increasing focus and concentration).
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Isochronic tones are a fast and effective audio-based way to stimulate your brain. Among many of the benefits, they can help improve focus, relaxation, energy levels, sleep and more, without taking drugs or needing any special equipment. What isochronic tones essentially do, is guide your dominant brainwave activity to a different frequency while you are listening to them, allowing you to influence and change your mental state and how you feel.
How Brainwave Entrainment Works: Your brain continually produces electrical activity, even when you are asleep. Neurologists found that this activity can be recorded in the form of brainwave patterns, also known as ‘brainwaves'. Many scientific studies have shown that the brainwave activity in the brain can be influenced and corrected when it is stimulated with specific beats and tones. This process is known as ‘Brainwave Entrainment', and can be extremely effective when used correctly.
Various forms of brainwave entrainment and synchronization have been used in many different cultures for hundreds of years. Long before scientists were able to measure our brainwave patterns. Lots of historical references show that our ancestors used drums and or chanting, to induce and experience different states of mind. Some cultures still use the same methods today.
A Naturally Occurring Synchronization Phenomena: This synchronization phenomenon is not just confined to our brainwaves; it's universal and appears in chemistry, biology, neurology, pharmacology, medicine, astronomy and more. If you put a number of pendulum clocks on the wall and started them at different times, you will find that within a day or sooner, all of the pendulums will start to synchronize with each other in perfect unison. If you ever listen to an audience clapping, you will notice that if it goes on for a while, people will start to clap in tune with each other, without consciously thinking about it.
Here's a video example of metronomes
completely synchronizing together in under 2 minutes.
Your Different Mental States, Measured By Your Brainwave Frequency: Through the advancement of neurological research, we are now able to accurately identify what frequency ranges our brainwaves are in, during certain mental states. For example:
● Gamma 40+ Hz is experienced during extreme alertness, high energy and times of intense focus.
● Beta' 12hz – 40hz, is the most common mental state for most of us when we are awake during the day.
● The ‘Alpha' range is between 8hz – 12hz, and in this state, we are awake but relaxed, and not processing much information.
● During light sleep or deep relaxation, we are usually in between the 4hz to 8hz range. Also known as ‘Theta'.
● When we are in a deep sleep, our brainwave frequency is usually very low, between 0hz to 4hz which is also referred to as ‘Delta'.
Brainwave Entrainment Methods: With this knowledge and more in-depth research, we are now able to develop audio brainwave entrainment programs, to match the frequency range of our desired mental state, and produce brainwave synchronization. For the brain to be effectively entrained, every tone or beat has to produce an individual electrical imprint on the brain, called a ‘Cortical Evoked Response'. The stronger the beat, the stronger the entrainment effect.
Binaural Beats: The most well-known form of brainwave entrainment uses Binaural Beats. Binaural Beats are created by sending a different tone into each ear. The tones are mixed together ‘inside' your head by your brain, resulting in a pulse also called a ‘beat'. So as an example, you might send a frequency of 200hz into your left ear, and 190hz into the right. This would create a beating tone in your brain at 10hz. The lower of the two tones is called the ‘carrier' and the higher one the ‘offset'. The beat you hear is actually created inside your head, not externally. This is because your brain creates the beat after working out the differences from each ear.
Because of how Binaural Beats work, you always have to listen to them with headphones on, so that each ear can receive a different frequency. If you listen to the same Binaural Beat audio without headphones, in most cases you will hardly be able to detect a beat at all, because your ears will be able to hear both frequencies at once and the effect is lost. This can be a drawback with Binaural Beats because it's not always practical or desired to listen to entrainment with headphones on. How a typical Binaural Beat would look in your brain:
The fluctuation in the wave pattern is what creates the resulting beat.
Isochronic Tones – The Most Powerful Form Of Audio Entrainment: lsochronic tones are created in a completely different way to Binaural Beats. Instead of two different tones being combined together, just a single tone is used. The beat is created by turning the tone on and off at regular intervals. This is also referred to as Amplitude Entrainment. As you can see from the diagram below, Isochronic Tones are significantly more obvious and stronger. The resulting entrainment effect is much more powerful than Binaural Beats.
Mixed With Music: Brainwave entrainment can be mixed with normal music and white noise very effectively, which can really enhance the user experience and make the beats more pleasant and relaxing to to listen to. The image below shows an Isochronic Tone that has been mixed with music. Although the individual pulses are not separated as clearly, the resulting entrainment effect is still very effective on the brain.
Which Parts of Your Life Would You Like to Improve?
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This works, as simple as that. I cannot recommend this highly enough.
- CP
Friday, February 18, 2022
"Supply Chain Crisis Threatens To Trigger Commercial Real Estate Collapse & Bankruptcies"
Full screen recommended.
"Supply Chain Crisis Threatens To Trigger
Commercial Real Estate Collapse & Bankruptcies"
by Epic Economist
"The U.S. commercial real estate collapse is being aggravated by the ongoing supply chain crisis as the national warehouse vacancy rate drops to the lowest level on record, shortages prevent builders from increasing capacity, leading commercial property rents to soar and businesses to take on massive loads of debt to afford for space that hasn’t even been built yet. The global supply chain crisis continues to wreak havoc on every sector of the industry. Now it is impacting commercial real estate construction at a time businesses and ports need it the most, with the worst potentially still to come.
While manufacturers and retailers struggle to restock their inventories, and consumers feel the pain of shipping delays and price increases, commercial real estate builders and landlords are losing a major opportunity to recover financially from the losses suffered over the past few years. That’s happening because most commercial real estate around ports and in metropolitan areas have already been leased and turned into warehouses, leaving vacancy rates at record lows at a time demand for space is soaring, which is pushing commercial rent prices significantly up.
Right now, there are approximately 5.6 million containers sitting at U.S. ports waiting to be picked up by truckers and delivered at warehouses to be distributed to stores all across the country. Construction companies and businesses are taking on massive loans to invest in the creation of more capacity, which includes warehouses and distribution centers, outside major U.S. ports. On a yearly basis, over 1 trillion dollars worth of goods arrives at the U.S. coast to be processed and distributed around the nation until they reach the end consumer. In that sense, it’s understandable why there’s a mad rush to build more facilities to accommodate all of these products.
However, a global shortage of raw materials is causing shortages of key construction supplies, expanding delivery times, and driving prices to unprecedented highs. That’s to say, companies are spending billions of dollars to create warehouse spaces that might take years to be built. By then, consumer demand will likely have shifted, and probably cooled off given that rampant inflation continues to compromise people’s buying power. Monetary tightening also means companies will have to pay higher rates on property loans, but slower consumer spending means that they will have less cash flow on their balance sheets. In essence, private landlords and construction companies are going to be left with a glut of commercial real estate, just as it happened before.
Warehouse vacancy in the country is currently at 3.6%, a record low, according to recent data from CBRE, an American commercial real estate services, and investment firm. "Three-and-a-half percent is effectively zero," explained John Morris, executive managing director lead for CBRE's industrial and logistics business in the Americas. "For the year, we have basically an effective shortage of space of about 300 million square feet."
According to the New York Times, the situation is getting so critical that warehouse space is the latest thing being hoarded by big retailers and corporations, further aggravating the sector’s crunch. But those expecting this new capacity to be a quick end to the supply-chain crisis are going to be bitterly disappointed. The first wave of the crisis was marked by port congestion, labor shortages, factory shutdowns, and shortages of raw materials. But the second wave looming on the horizon is going to be marked by debt. Most of these investments have been made through bank loans. Considering that since the last quarter, corporate earnings have been steadily dropping and a series of interest rate hikes is coming over the next few weeks, the commercial real estate sector is facing mounting risks of cross-debt default.
Over the past twelve months, companies have taken on more risk by pouring giant piles of borrowed money into projects whose profits are not guaranteed. In China, for example, that resulted in the bankruptcy of one of the world’s biggest property developers, triggering a commercial real estate and housing market collapse and depressing both sectors, which together, account for over 25% of the country’s GDP.
In simple words, as private companies’ access to capital goes, so does the resilience of the supply chain. At some point in the not-too-distant future, the mountain of debt made over the past year will need financing or refinancing, and many will be unable to raise liquidity at affordable rates, if at all. Cracks in the credit market are already starting to emerge. And once again, the ones who will suffer the most at the end of the day are going to be the consumers, who will end up having to pay for these companies’ debt through higher prices of goods."
Live: Trucker Freedom Convoy 2022 in Ottawa, Canada, Day 22
Full screen recommended.
Live: Trucker Freedom Convoy 2022 in Ottawa, Canada, Day 22
Where are you, Americans,
as your world comes crashing down all around you?
Gregory Mannarino, "Stock Market: How To Recognize When The Big Crash Will Happen, Before It Does!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 2/18/22:
"Stock Market: How To Recognize When
The Big Crash Will Happen, Before It Does!"
Jim Kunstler, "The Unmasking"
"The Unmasking"
by Jim Kunstler
Stipendium peccati mors est...
"O Canada, the Great White North, hovering ominously above Niagara Falls somewhere, is a winter wonderland, and one of the great pleasures of the season there, apparently, for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is skating on thin ice. Why is that? Perhaps in all the hollering you have forgotten how Mr. T has kicked off a civil war: by forcing government-mandated shots on his country’s working class of an alleged “vaccine” that doesn’t work and harms people, at the dwindling end of a worldwide disease scare that scientists in Canadian labs may have helped to create.
The great truckers’ convoy that converged on Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, has exposed the ugly truth at the heart of this historic moment for Western Civ: that governments have declared war on their own citizens. It happens that PM Trudeau represents his country’s Liberal Party, which is suddenly the party of unchecked government power to interfere in the lives of citizens, the party of speech suppression, news management, forced unsafe vaccinations, and the seizure of citizens’ property outside due process of law.
Under the Emergencies Act, Mr. Trudeau’s police have now arrested the leaders of the trucker’s revolt, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, on charges of “counseling to commit mischief” (O, dear…!), and seized their bank accounts, while also freezing the bank accounts of anyone who donated money to the truckers’ cause. That action led, naturally, to runs on Canada’s major banks, leading to bank shut-downs on Wednesday - d’uh… what do you expect when the authorities send the message: your money is not safe in Canada’s banks, and might not even be your money if we say it’s not?
And now everybody - including alert citizens watching from many other countries - waits to see what the next moves are. Let’s also note that it’s not just the truckers in revolt against insane government mandates; it’s also at least half the population of Canada who stand behind the truckers and against the new fashion for tyranny in what used to be called the Free West. I’d venture to guess that the next move will be a general strike that paralyzes Canada and forces its parliament to overrule the Emergency Act and get rid of PM Trudeau.
Meanwhile, like a coronavirus itself, the trucker protest movement has infected America. A “People’s Convoy” is assembling around Barstow, California (the capital of the Mojave Desert, where there’s plenty of room to assemble), with a launch date of February 23, next Wednesday, destination: Washington DC. Won’t that be… interesting? What will the government of “Joe Biden” do? Likewise invoke some sort of emergency powers? Declare yet another “insurrection” as with January 6, 2021? Mess with the truckers’ bank accounts, and those of the people who support them? Do they want to inspire a run on US banks at a juncture where the extreme fragility of the global banking system threatens to blow up financial markets? Standing by on that.
The US government, like Canada’s, has likewise been at war with its citizens. At least half the country has awakened to this unappetizing reality - even while somewhat less than half the country still catatonically follows whatever idiotic diktat the despotic bureaucracy spews out. Why, for instance, do so many still go about in face masks even where local regulations are lifted? (And especially in light of the overwhelming evidence that masks don’t work?) Answer: to signify that they are still against Trump, the evil leviathan said to be responsible for all the woes and injustices in the world and who threatens their ”safety”- meaning, their status as oppressed victims of “white supremacy,” including the guilty-and-penitent self-oppressed white people of the Left themselves. Yeah, it’s just that simple because we are in an epic episode of human social hysteria.
Except that the hysteria is dissipating for all except the most psychotic or the most politically cornered due to their record of perfidy and bad faith - the David Frums, Max Boots, and Rachel Maddows of our world, the cable news outfits, the Democratic Party hierarchy, the criminally psychopathic swine running the US public health agencies, and the craven doctors who have fecklessly murdered patients at the behest of Dr. Anthony Fauci & Company. Despite the sedulous efforts to suppress the data (O, the sacred data!) about the failure of their “vaccines,” the real news is getting out: the “vaccines” don’t prevent transmission or infection of Covid-19, and they pose lethal side-effects for the vaxxed. There it is, in plain English. And yet, “Joe Biden,” putative president of the US, is still telling the country to “go out and get vaccinated, get boosted” - ???
The companies who produced the “vaccines’ are even on the run. Pfizer withdrew its application for an emergency use authorization in India, where the public health agency insisted on seeing the safety records Pfizer was obliged to furnish - and refused to. India is a big market for pharmaceuticals, some 1.39 billion. Pfizer’s stock has crashed nearly 10 percent the past two weeks. By the way, some of the states of India are notable for having battled Covid-19 with the mass distribution of early treatment kits containing cheap anti-virals such as ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, Vitamin D, etc. The program was famously successful in reducing deaths there.
The CEO of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, has sold off $400-million of his own stock in the company and deleted his Twitter account on rumors that all-causes deaths reported by US life insurance companies show a shocking and mysterious rise in mortality that just may be attributed to the “vaccines” causing strokes, heart attacks, cancer cases, and immune system failures. (Moderna’s stock is also sinking.) Neither the mainstream news media nor the US public health agencies are making any effort to investigate this now well-documented occurrence.
We’re in the midst of a tremendous shift of public opinion. Winter is not over but the truth is budding now in a thousand places. The people are done kneeling docilly to be silenced and killed. They will not let this country, and many other nations in the Western Civ club, be destroyed without a fight. The unmasked are unmasking their masked antagonists. Stand by, now, to find out who has been behind all this deadly mischief. We will rip off their masks and the rule of law will be restored."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Galaxies don't normally look like this. NGC 6745 actually shows the results of two galaxies that have been colliding for only hundreds of millions of years. Just off the above digitally sharpened photograph to the lower right is the smaller galaxy, moving away. The larger galaxy, pictured above, used to be a spiral galaxy but now is damaged and appears peculiar. Gravity has distorted the shapes of the galaxies.
Although it is likely that no stars in the two galaxies directly collided, the gas, dust, and ambient magnetic fields do interact directly. In fact, a knot of gas pulled off the larger galaxy on the lower right has now begun to form stars. NGC 6745 spans about 80 thousand light-years across and is located about 200 million light-years away."
"I Urge All Of You..."
“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special. I just got one last thing... I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have.”
- Jim Valvano
The Poet: Charles Dickens, "Things That Never Die "
"Things That Never Die "
"The pure, the bright, the beautiful
that stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulses to wordless prayer,
The streams of love and truth,
The longing after something lost,
The spirits longing cry,
The striving after better hopes -
These things can never die.
The timid hand stretched forth to aid
A brother in his need;
A kindly word in griefs dark hour
That proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy softly breathed,
When justice threatens high,
The sorrow of a contrite heart -
These things shall never die.
Let nothing pass, for every hand
Must find some work to do,
Lose not a chance to waken love -
Be firm and just and true.
So shall a light that cannot fade
Beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee -
These things shall never die."
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
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