Jeremiah Babe, PM 2/26/22:
“ATMS Run Out Of Money; Bank Runs Begin;
FED Propping Up Markets; Economy On Life Support”
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, February 26, 2022
"Don't Be Brain Dead - In Other Words, Think For Yourself"
"Don't Be Brain Dead -
In Other Words, Think For Yourself"
by Robert W Malone MD, MS
"Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
- Thomas Edison
"The “Gell-Mann Amnesia effect” was coined by Michael Crichton, MD to describe the experience of encountering unreliable information in main stream media and the “approved narrative” in your area of expertise, and knowing by first person experience that this narrative is wrong. And then suspending your own critical thinking skills and trusting these same type of “experts” (legacy/mainstream “approved” media) in another area outside of your expertise.
His point was that one must use critical thinking skill even when outside your core competencies. Crichton writes: “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward - reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
In other words, think for yourself. As we transition into a new era of another war we must think for ourselves. Government(s) will want to control the narrative. They will control how main stream media and big tech respond to this crisis. Do not fall for the dominant paradigm, but instead do your own thinking. Dig deeper. We are so lucky to live in an era of alternative media. As much as the government hates it and those of us who look for “truth,” we still have this ability to think for ourselves and to find information that is not readily available on MSM.
This morning, while I was having breakfast with my wife Jill, we were talking about our personal finances. As I sipped coffee, I said to her “I don’t know enough about economics to make an assessment on crypto currency, how the situation in Ukraine will affect world economies, and the global push to transition from fiat money to digital currency.“ In so many words, she said to me that I had actually spent my whole life studying politics, investing and global economies as a way of living in the world. So why in the world would I now think that I was incapable of making an analysis of the current economic situation? And then the punchline- I needed to get going and do more research into the subject. She is right, I was being intellectually lazy. More than that, I was letting the legacy main stream media and pushed propaganda take my mind. I was giving over my critical thinking skills to MSM.
“Gell-Mann Amnesia” is exactly the trap I had fallen into. It happens all the time. Back in the day of the “founding fathers”, 250+ years ago, people did not have the luxury of being intellectually lazy. You had to think for yourself. That is what is so different about a more rural life. The problems that crop up are constantly changing, and they are very much in the present. You have to solve them yourself. That reality is what gave rise to the United States of America, as a country and as a culture.
The United States must re-create an army of critical thinkers. It is how We the People take back our power. We must find candidates for elected office who think for themselves, and we need to work to elect them. Now is the the time to not accept mediocracy and corruption in our elected officials. And no more WEF-trained hacks that do what they are told by non-US, non-elected third parties.
Elements of the Republican party are revitalizing its core belief system to fight the heavy-handed governmental edicts coming from the globalized public health deep state. They recognize that big pharma and the World Economic Forum acolytes that backs it has infiltrated every level of our government and virtually all “world leaders” from the Western “Democracies”. They recognize that corporatism and totalitarian thinking guided by the WEF has become the norm for many elected officials. That these officials have been trained by the WEF. This must stop. The army of critical thinkers that is emerging with the Great Awakening has to support this effort in every way possible. Why? Because public health is just the “camel’s nose”; the WEF has great plans for us in all aspects of our lives!"
Musical Interlude: Yanni, “Standing in Motion”, Live At The Acropolis, 25th Anniversary!
Full screen recommended.
Yanni, “Standing in Motion”,
Live At The Acropolis, 25th Anniversary!
"A Look to the Heavens"
"To some, it looks like a giant chicken running across the sky. To others, it looks like a gaseous nebula where star formation takes place. Cataloged as IC 2944, the Running Chicken Nebula spans about 100 light years and lies about 6,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Centaur (Centaurus).
The featured image, shown in scientifically assigned colors, was captured recently in a 12-hour exposure. The star cluster Collinder 249 is visible embedded in the nebula's glowing gas. Although difficult to discern here, several dark molecular clouds with distinct shapes can be found inside the nebula."
"As Americans..."
''As Americans, we must ask ourselves: Are we really so different? Must we stereotype those who disagree with us? Do we truly believe that ALL red-state residents are ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying roadkill-eating tobacco juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks; or that ALL blue-state residents are godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts?''
- Dave Barry
"A New Age of Barbarism"
"A New Age of Barbarism"
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
"Political leaders in the US, Canada, Germany, and France – all NATO countries – got back on script yesterday. They could not wait to get to the microphones. They all seemed to have new energy and purpose in life. Politicians are made for this moment! They are vastly more talented at dishing out righteous opprobrium directed at foreign beasts, which make far more compelling enemies, than inveighing against invisible viruses.
As Russian bombs rained down on Ukraine, Western leaders – having spent the better part of two years bullying their citizens and quelling protests – spoke in soaring tones about freedom, democracy, peace, and human rights. They condemned the brutality of Putin and his revanchist vision of Tsarist restoration. They had a new sense of resolve in their moral superiority as leaders of the free and modern republics that do not invade their neighbors.
The part we do not see is that many of these people – together with media organs and administrators of many deep-state bureaucracies – are absolutely thrilled to start a new season. Away with the appalling mismanagement of the pathogen. Away with public anger toward the lockdowns and mandates. Forget the collapse in children’s literacy, the rise in cancer, the waves of depression, the trucker protests, the collapsing polls of many elected leaders, and forget too the inflation, the federal debt, supply-chain snarls and goods shortages. Forget all the astonishing botches of everything.
Life was never as good in living memory as when we had a solid foreign enemy named Russia with a leader with a name and a face. Everything wrong with the world could be personalized, and with storybook thematics: good vs evil, freedom vs despotism, democracy vs dictatorship. This great struggle was so good for both sides that they made it last 40 years. There must be a certain nostalgia for those days alive in the hearts of incumbent political establishments today.
And so, Putin has given Western political elites a wonderful gift. He has created a template that allows them all to say in unison: there is something even worse than us. They can hope for a turnaround in their sagging polling numbers, new respect and appreciation for their strong leadership in a time of crisis, and more reliably depend on a deferential media machine that knows the ways of wartime require parroting whatever powerful foreign-policy experts say in public and private.
There is some powerful symbolism here with Putin’s outright military invasion. He knew that he could count on both India and China to look the other way, even tacitly approve his move. And he knew for sure that NATO countries would bluster and impose sanctions but were not in a position to do anything beyond that. He further knew that Ukraine was an easy win for him personally and politically. He has finally pushed back against NATO expansionism into Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, and caused the opening of a new chapter in world affairs. He has made it clear to the world that the American century is over.
Even more extraordinary, he has a clean path to retaining that power at home. Anti-war protests broke out in many cities in Russia. God bless these protestors, their resolve, their courage, their love of peace. If Putin is looking for a way to deal with them, he need only look at how Justin Trudeau dealt with the protests in Ottawa. Dox them, seize their bank accounts, tow their trucks and cars, and send in heavy armed military-style cops without badges and faces to clear the streets. Use facial recognition technology to follow up with people later, inquiring about their political loyalties.
The “free world” has lost the moral high ground to preach to the “unfree” world about rights, liberties, and democracy. For two years, most every government in the West experimented with new forms of servitude in the name of public health. They showed how emergency powers can be deployed to lock people in their homes, shut businesses, cancel church, close parks, ban travel, censor speech – massive attacks on essential freedoms all justified simply because the people in power said it was justified.
Further, the pandemic response revived the utility of nationalism (with travel bans and even vaccine approvals), class demarcations in policy (essential and nonessential businesses and workers), segregation and discrimination based on biology (vaccine passports), and the unquestioned hegemony of the administrative state over the whole of society. The experience further proved that there need be no limits to state ambition: even the absurd promise to eradicate a respiratory virus can serve as justification for a power grab.
Even the courts went silent, and the media could be relied upon to quell dissident voices and push out propaganda from the bureaucracies. Big Tech, once decried by the establishment for its libertarian ethos, also enlisted on the side of control, censoring and canceling accounts that raised doubts concerning the competence of the managerial elite.
What a lovely example to display to would-be authoritarians the world over! The pandemic response was brutal. It contradicted all law and tradition. It flew in the face of public-health science from the past. It was an enormous flop from a scientific point of view, of course. But the enterprise did create a political precedent that will resonate for decades. It firmly established that states can do what they want, when they want, provided the leadership maintains a posture of infallibility and the population is sufficiently fearful.
This was the West’s gift to Putin. Putin is now returning the favor. He has volunteered for the role of scapegoat for political establishments that are desperate for a change of topic, something that enables them to once again reclaim the vocabulary about freedom, no matter how implausible it might seem at first. Everyone knows that the best environment for controlling public opinion is the fog of war. All the better if it involves a far-away dictator with imperial ambitions.
The last two years have revealed to us what we would rather not have discovered, namely that freedom and rights, along with enlightened ideals and good science, are extraordinarily fragile. They are only guaranteed by a public that believes in them and is willing to stand up for them. When the cultural consensus in favor of liberty decays, terrible beasts are unleashed on the world.
There are two dates in my adult life that truly seemed darkly shattering of every enlightenment ideal. The first was March 12, 2020, when Donald Trump announced, under cover of emergency, the end of travel from Europe, the UK, and Australia, all in the name of virus avoidance. The second was February 24, 2022, when Vladimir Putin took the first major steps in the restoration of the 19th-century Russian empire, thumbing his nose at the once-mighty US empire and its pretensions to rule the world. It’s a new chapter in a story of what could be a very dark age of barbarism – unless and until enlightenment ideals once again ascend to commanding heights."
"Acceptance..."
"Acceptance is a crucial step forward for those who prefer the idea of living this life over simply existing within it. Accept all that you've said and what you've done, because you cannot change your past. Accept the idea of the unknown, because the future is the unknown waiting patiently to reveal itself. Accept the person you have become thus far in your journey, because you are the only person who will be there with you when you finish it. Do all of this so that you may never find yourself having to accept regret that haunts you at two a.m., leaving you sweaty and broken hearted. All you have is this minute; not this hour, or this day, or this year. Live in this minute so that you won't get stuck simply existing with your guilty past, or with nothing but anxiety for the future."
- Margaret E. Rise
"Vladiator Goes to Ukraine"
"Vladiator Goes to Ukraine"
by Joel Bowman
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "When it comes to being into politics, we’re mostly into being out of them. That goes double for international politics, that notorious cesspool of misinformation, propaganda and chest-thumping nationalism. It’s tense enough negotiating the terms of a 7yr old’s birthday party (as we are currently discovering), much less drawing and redrawing political boundaries between nations - and often through communities - half a world away. So we leave that to the pros - the grifters, the contractors, the war hawks and the lobbyists - assuming they will make whatever scenario they encounter that much worse though their efforts.
Geopolitics aside, then, we note in passing that it was a fantastic week not to be a Russian billionaire. From Bloomberg: "Russia's billionaires lost $39 billion in less than 24 hours after the invasion triggered a plunge in equities. The country's benchmark stock index closed 33% lower Thursday, the first time since 1987's Black Monday crash that a decline of that magnitude hit a market worth more than $50 billion. Lukoil CEO Vagit Alekperov saw the sharpest fall, with his net worth slashed by almost a third to $13 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index."
Whoa! That’s a lot of beluga caviar, sable coats and clear platform heels. We imagine the crestfallen oligarchs... the sorry looks on their faces. “Hey!” they must have exclaimed, “What gives? We stole that money fair and square!”
Of course, you didn’t need to be a post-perestroika petro-powerbroker to feel the pain in the markets this week. From Monday through Thursday, the Dow sold off some 2,000 points, wiping out billions of dollars in paper wealth. Then came Friday, when markets turned on rumors the Fed had found a reason to delay cancel its expected rate hikes.
Readers of these pages will recall that the Fed is caught in what Bill Bonner has described as an “inflate or die” trap: “It either lets inflation rip – with more money printing and ultra-low interest rates – or it crashes the economy with higher rates and QT (quantitative tightening).”
Continued Bill, in yesterday’s missive: “Most people – about 90% of the population – gain nothing from inflation. But a few people – the 10% at the top – need more money printing to fund the US budget, Wall Street, the military and their own bubble-era gains. These people, the few, are those who control Congress… and the Fed.” The Fed knows it ought to pull up its britches and hike rates… but it is desperate for an excuse to keep the money flowing. And this week, Mr. Putin handed it that very excuse.
Of course, the Vladiator’s misadventures in Ukraine are bound to put a squeeze on energy supplies, exacerbating already tight markets. And as the Feds continue flooding the world with cheap dollars, one expects “transitory” inflation to stick around for a while yet... Meanwhile, our investment director, Tom Dyson, issued an urgent warning to BPR subscribers earlier in the week. It’s important enough to quote here at length. Writes Tom...
"We are in the final stages of the greatest speculative bubble of all time, in all things. If the price action in the market is any indicator (along with liquidity) this bubble has now popped and evidence is mounting of an impending financial catastrophe, including a deep recession, a bear market in the major stock market averages, and ultimately, a soft default on the global stock of government debt. That’s my working hypothesis, at least. Our investment strategy can be summed up in three words: “maximum safety mode.”
My conclusions are based on an analysis of the debt cycle, crowd psychology and valuations like Warren Buffet’s Market capitalization-to-GDP ratio. That ratio ‘peaked’ in November of last year at over 201% of GDP. The 10% correction in the S&P 500 since then has brought the ratio down to 188%. But the mean value of the ratio, going back to 1971, is 86%. Stocks have already lost $4.6 trillion in value since the Wilshire 5,000 (the broadest measure of US publicly listed stocks) hit $49.1 trillion on January 3rd. I want you to read the next sentence very carefully…
Stocks would lose approximately $23.86 trillion in value if the Wilshire 5,000 were to revert back to its mean average value of 86% of GDP. That’s based on a fourth quarter GDP figure of $23.99 trillion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Is a $20 trillion destruction of market value really possible?
This is what you’d call ‘The Great Revaluation.’ It’s what we’re positioned for with our strategy. And remember, stock markets tend to over-correct. This is why my colleague Bill Bonner thinks stock market losses will be closer to $30 trillion before the market truly bottoms."
○
"Grave Faults..."
“Only the following items should be considered to be grave faults: not respecting another's rights; allowing oneself to be paralyzed by fear; feeling guilty; believing that one does not deserve the good or ill that happens in one's life; being a coward. We will love our enemies, but not make alliances with them. They were placed in our path in order to test our sword, and we should, out of respect for them, struggle against them. We will choose our enemies.”
- Paulo Coelho, "Like the Flowing River"
Free Download: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is, as the title suggests, a simple story of one day in the life of Ivan Shukov Denisovich, a prisoner in a Soviet concentration camp. Shukov, a simple Russian peasant fighting for Stalin in WWII, is imprisoned for treason – a crime he did not commit – and has spent the last 8 years in concentration camps. Shukov’s day begins at 5.00 a.m. with the clang of the reveille – he is, along with the other prisoners, marched out into the bitter cold, stripped and searched for forbidden objects, and then sent to work until sundown, without rest, without a full stomach. In this slim 143 page-novella, we follow Shukov’s grueling routine and see how he struggles to maintain his dignity in small, subtle ways. On this day, he has scored some small triumphs for himself – he has swiped an extra bowl of mush at supper, found a piece of metal that can be used as a knife to mend things, replenished his precious tobacco supplies and also has had a share of a small piece of sausage before lights out. Thus, at the end of the day (and the novel), he thinks to himself that it has been “A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.” He must survive only another 3653 days more.”
Freely download “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”,
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, here:
○
"The Chain Of Obedience"
“The death squads and concentration camps of history were never staffed
by rebels and dissidents. They were run by those who followed the rules.
"What A Privilege!"
“Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment - not discouragement - you will find the strength there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures, followed by wreckage, were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”
~ Joseph Campbell
The Poet: David Wagoner, "Getting There"
"Getting There"
"You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You're there. You've arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.
What did you want to be?
You'll remember soon.
You feel like tinder under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change.
The sky is pulsing against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you've made a lasting impression
On the self you were,
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.
What have you learned so far? You'll find out later,
Telling it haltingly like a dream,
That lost traveler's dream under the last hill
Where through the night you'll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.
You've earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you're standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings."
~ David Wagoner
"The Only Basic Human Duty..."
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you
damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty,
the duty to take the consequences."
- P. J. O'Rourke
"Doug Casey on Whether the US Could Soon Declare a “State of Emergency” Like Canada"
"Doug Casey on Whether the US Could Soon
Declare a “State of Emergency” Like Canada"
by International Man
"International Man: Historically, when a crisis takes shape, politicians declare a “state of emergency,” which allows government to take action in ways it’s normally not allowed to. This tactic has been used over and over again to justify all sorts of government action, removal of individual rights, and more. What’s your take on this? Does it prove that constitutional rights are just imaginary and can be arbitrarily taken away at any moment?
Doug Casey: First, contrary to popular belief, the Constitution doesn’t grant rights. You have rights as a human being regardless of what the Constitution says or doesn’t say. For instance, the Second Amendment of the Constitution has to do with the right to keep and bear arms. Throughout history, one of the things that distinguished a free man from a slave was the fact that a free man didn’t need permission to bear arms. If he couldn’t bear arms, it was because he was a slave. It was one of the major distinctions between a free man and a slave.
The Bill of Rights is an excellent document, but it’s hard to rely on for moral guidance simply because the Constitution is a dead letter as a practical matter. It no longer means what it says or says what it means. The Constitution has been interpreted out of existence. It’s good that rights are spelled out in the Constitution, of course, but rights are much more basic than any Constitution. Constitutions can be changed.
We shouldn’t be dependent upon political laws at all, simply because they blow with the political winds. The US Constitution has had a good run as a philosophical, political statement. In fact, it’s the best that’s ever been put into real-world effect. But the hoi polloi view it as an obsolete product of old, dead, white men - the patriarchy. White men and their artifacts, like Western Civilization itself, are now held in contempt by large sections of society.
Every country in the modern world now has its own Constitution. A lot of them guarantee things that are economically impossible, like the right to medical care, food, housing, and the right to education. However, these aren’t rights at all because they have to be provided at somebody else’s expense. And you don’t have a right to things that somebody else must be coerced to provide for you. Constitutions shouldn’t guarantee the proceeds of theft.
To keep it simple, the only right you really have is to be left alone, which doesn’t cost anybody else anything. The entire subject of constitutional rights has become confused and corrupt.
International Man: For example, after 9/11, the US government declared a state of emergency that over 20 years later is still in place. We are still required to take our shoes off at the airport. Will we see the same thing with Covid?
Doug Casey: The answer is yes. Governments on the road to totalitarianism love emergencies. The US may not implement a “vaccine passport” this time around, but the concept has been planted and widely accepted. It will be easy to implement and enforce with the next medical hysteria—Covid 2.0, Ebola, AIDS 2.0, or what-have-you. And it will become as immovable as Mount Rushmore, like the TSA. The TSA will never be abolished. It’s now a permanent fixture in the governmental firmament with its 70,000 useless and worthless employees degrading travelers.
Checking the safety profile of passengers should have been left entirely up to the individual airlines. But no. Instead, they set up another permanent bureaucracy. The TSA is a perfect template of how power gained is never relinquished voluntarily. As far as vax passports and tests are concerned, they’ll smooth off the really rough edges to let people feel like they’ve won one. It’s wise to grant the serfs a privilege from time to time.
International Man: These “temporary” states of emergency tend to be under the guise of necessity, in which extenuating circumstances require the State to expand its power. How do these become permanent fixtures without question from the public?
Doug Casey: The process has become known as “gaslighting.” It’s actually a form of psychological warfare wherein you cause the adversary to doubt his own sanity or even reality itself. You tell somebody that something exists when it doesn’t exist. Or tell him something doesn’t exist when it clearly does. After a while, people start to believe what they’re told, especially if everyone else seems to believe it. It’s the idea of the Big Lie. “Don’t believe your own eyes. Believe me.”
In today’s world, things have devolved to a state where people hear something authoritative-sounding from the mass media or the government - which amounts to the same thing - people will believe it. They all start talking about it as if it was reality, even though they have zero objective proof that they can verify themselves. Because they’ve been told it was true, and “everybody” seems to believe it, fiction becomes a fact.
When looking at popular memes, the first thing you should do is question authority. Don’t automatically believe anything until you can verify it yourself. However, nobody does that because if you’re skeptical in public, you’re likely to be labeled a conspiracy theorist and duly ostracized.
There’s something strange in the air, similar to what happened in many places in the 1690s, but most famously in Salem, MA, with its infamous witch trials. The same thing happened in Germany in the 1930s and ’40s and China in the 1960s with the Great Cultural Revolution. The Covid hysteria has evolved into mass insanity among large groups of people. Hopefully, it’s now about to burn out, though.
International Man: For the first time in Canada’s history, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau enacted an “Emergencies Act” to clamp down on the truckers protest, which has grown in popularity in the nation’s capital and at border crossings. Trudeau said it was necessary to invoke these “temporary measures” during this time. What’s your take on the unprecedented move to suspend basic civil liberties?
Doug Casey: It’s been said that there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government action. Based on that, I expect the worst. Trudeau is clearly a criminal personality. He likes power, and he is making the most of it, as all politicians do.
There are two types of people. There are people that are interested in controlling the material world and moving atoms around. And then there are people who are mainly interested in controlling other people. Like all the self-anointed elite in the political class, Trudeau thrives on controlling people.
It’s the same all over the world, including the US. The types drawn to politics are almost inevitably sociopaths who like to boss other people. Politics itself is poisonous and brings out the worst in humans. But humanity has been gaslighted throughout history into believing politics are noble and necessary.
The average voter is gullible and trusting. He really wants a father figure to kiss the world and make it better. Combine that with a politician’s love of power, and there’s every reason to be pessimistic. Remember that before World War 1, gold was used as money, there were very few taxes, very little debt, and governments were a relatively minor nuisance. Now we’re on the verge of an international police state; at the same time, the financial, economic, political, and social situation almost everywhere is ticking like a time bomb. As a result, it’s reasonable to expect a real catastrophe.
International Man: What do you think the next phase of this trend toward greater government control through emergency powers will be? Could it happen in the US?
Doug Casey: Germany went from being the most educated, civilized, and cultured country in the world to one where everybody was goose-stepping in a matter of a couple of years. The same thing can happen anywhere. It could very easily happen in the US, which may be close to a real civil war between the Red people, who tend to be rural and produce real things, and the Blue people, who are largely urban, and either shuffle paper or collect welfare. What could act as a catalyst to set off a conflagration?
There are several - let’s call them Gray Swans - circling the landscape. They’re not Nassim Taleb’s famous Black Swans; those are what one famous political criminal called “unknown unknowns” - events that are totally unanticipated. Gray Swans are more like “known unknowns.” These include things like COVID 2.0, global warming/climate change, digital currency, and a social credit system. We know they exist but aren’t sure how bad they are. The problem is that these Grey Swans are the size of Rodan, the mutant pteranodon.
COVID 2.0, with passports and mandates, is probably on the runway. Again, who knows exactly what form it’ll take. But the population has been so indoctrinated to value “safety first” they’re so distant from actual production, and they’re so reliant on bureaucracy to structure the world that I’m confident most Americans will robotically do as they’re told.
Climate change is certainly another Gray Swan, but it’s not only government that’s the danger here. Major corporations have a huge amount of power and are totally hooked up with the government. There’s a revolving door for the nomenklatura employed by government, corporations, academia, and foundations. They all promote the same Orwellian GoodThink. They all promote the meme that “everybody” believes in GoodThink.
Let’s hope that the Canadian truckers at least lit a fuse to turn things around and that the coming convoy to DC by US truckers is a huge success. But throughout history, peasants’ revolts have rarely succeeded. 95% of them are quashed and never heard from again. They’re not often described in the history books because the powers are loathed to memorialize things that may give future serfs unwelcome ideas."
"A Single Lesson..."
"Your thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and worldviews are based on years and years of experience, reading, and rational, objective analysis. Right? Wrong. Your thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and worldviews are based on years and years of paying attention to information that confirmed what you already believed while ignoring information that challenged your preconceived notions. If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so."
– Lev Grossman
"Prices Are Out Of Control At Kroger! Empty Shelves Everywhere!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 2/26/22:
"Prices Are Out Of Control At Kroger! Empty Shelves Everywhere!"
"In today's vlog we visit Kroger and are noticing ridiculously high prices. Prices on groceries continue to rise, as we are also witnessing more empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores are struggling to get in products."
Friday, February 25, 2022
"100 Dirt Cheap Survival Items To Buy At The Dollar Store Before The Imminent Economic Collapse"
Full screen recommended.
"100 Dirt Cheap Survival Items To Buy At
The Dollar Store Before The Imminent Economic Collapse"
by Epic Economist
"As more and more people become aware of the imminent economic collapse, food stockpiling is now on-trend. But with soaring prices, extensive shortages, and the hottest inflation in over four decades, it isn't that easy for the average American to start prepping. The global supply chain crisis is making it increasingly harder for consumers to get the products they need. When shoppers are lucky enough to find the staples they want, prices can be up to 40% higher than they used to be just a couple of years ago. So as people's buying power collapses while their monthly budgets get squeezed, it's very important to stretch each dollar as much as possible.
For you to start stockpiling, you don't need loads of money. You can try to spare a few dollars a month and buy some supplies at the dollar store. The most important thing is knowing what you want, how you're going to use it, and the best way to store it. Prepping is for everyone, not just for the wealthy. That's a misleading perception they want you to have so that you don't even try to get prepared for the challenges ahead. But now more than ever, we should take the opportunity to do so before our supply chains are completely interrupted. We would like to give a special shout-out to Happy Preppers and Urban Survival website for always sharing high-quality prepper content with the public for free. There are many other items you can include in this list. Just make sure to evaluate your priorities and necessities before you go shopping. Dark times are coming, but if you're ready in advance, you'll be able to make it!
In today's video, we gathered 100 survival items that you can find at the dollar store before the imminent economic collapse."
Gregory Mannarino, "You Are Being Lied To And Propagandized! Just To Keep You Distracted!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 2/25/22:
"You Are Being Lied To And Propagandized!
Just To Keep You Distracted!"
Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along The High Ridges"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Along The High Ridges"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Far beyond the local group of galaxies lies NGC 3621, some 22 million light-years away. Found in the multi-headed southern constellation Hydra, the winding spiral arms of this gorgeous island universe are loaded with luminous young star clusters and dark dust lanes. Still, for earthbound astronomers NGC 3621 is not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy. Some of its brighter stars have been used as standard candles to establish important estimates of extragalactic distances and the scale of the Universe.
This beautiful image of NGC 3621 traces the loose spiral arms far from the galaxy's brighter central regions that span some 100,000 light-years. Spiky foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy and even more distant background galaxies are scattered across the colorful skyscape.”
Chet Raymo, “We Are Such Stuff...”
“We Are Such Stuff...”
by Chet Raymo
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again.”
"Caliban is talking to Stephano and Trinculo in Shakespeare's “Tempest”, telling them not to be "afeard" of the mysterious place they find themselves, an island seemingly beset with magic, strangeness, ineffable presences. And you and I, and, yes, all of us, find ourselves inexplicably thrown up on this island that is the world, and we too, if we are attentive, hear the strange music, the sounds and sweet airs, that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere
No, I'm not talking about the usual ubiquitous clamor, the roar of internal combustion, the blare of the television, the beeping of mobile phones. I'm not talking about the Limbaughs and the Becks, the televangelists, the blathering politicians, the twitterers and bloggers (including this one). I'm not even talking about the exquisite music of Mozart, the poetry of Wordsworth, the theories of Einstein.
I'm talking about the sounds we hear in utter silence, in moments of repose, in the heart of darkness, when we are a little bit afraid, disoriented, off kilter. A strange music that comes from beyond our knowing, a felt meaning. You've heard it. I've heard it. You'd have to be deaf not to have heard it.
Where we differ is how we describe it. Mostly, we give its source a name. Angels. Fairies. Gods or demons. Yahweh. Allah. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nixies, E.T.s, shades and shadows. Naiads, dryads, Ariel and Puck. A host of invisible creatures who are, in one way or another, images of ourselves. And, in naming, we are a little less afraid.
And some of us are just content to listen, to take delight. Having woken to the inexplicable mystery of the world- the sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not- we let the music lull us back into a sweet slumber, a kind of dreamless dream, a reverie. Does reverie share a deep root with reverence? I don't know.”
"Still, Sometimes..."
“The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can’t pretend we haven’t been told. We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still, sometimes, we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today’s possibility under tomorrow’s rug, until we can’t anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant: That knowing is better than wondering. That waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of never trying.”
- “Meredith”, “Grey’s Anatomy”
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 2/25/22"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 2/25/22"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"The Biden/Obama Administration said today that “U.S. forces are not going to fight in Ukraine.” Neither are forces from France, UK, Italy or Germany. There are going to be tough sanctions on Russia, and that is probably going to backfire on the west, which already has a tanking economy with mass amounts of unpayable debt. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts said there would be “no shooting war” on USAWatchdog.com this week. The announcement on Thursday says that prediction has already been proven correct. NATO and the U.S are not going to fight, at least not in metal-to-metal contact sense using their militaries. Correct call, Dr. PCR!!
Ukraine and all the other conflicts and problems around the planet are really economic stories. The actions by desperate leaders drowning in debt are only going to make matters worse and at a much faster pace. Sanctions do not help anyone’s economy. They slow it down. This forces more money printing and supply shortages—thus more surging inflation. Europe’s natural gas price just went up 40% in one day. They want to cut off Europe from Russian gas to punish Russia? Inflation and higher prices for everything is coming, and I mean everything. Get ready for extreme financial pain at a much faster pace than before.
The New York Times is out with a story that says the “CDC isn’t publishing large portions of Covid data it collects.” Shocker, right? They also lied, made stuff up and changed the so-called “science” at will. Dr. Robert Malone, a pioneer in mRNA, says what the CDC did was “scientific fraud.” Any scientist or research doctor that would withhold data would be punished severely but not the CDC. They keep withholding information and lying to the public to make money for themselves and big Pharma they are in bed with."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
stories and much more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 2/25/22.
"One Chance..."
“You get that one chance; and damn it, you’ve got to take it! If there’s one lesson I know I will take with me for eternity, its that there are those things that might happen only once, those chances that come walking down the street, strolling out of a café; if you don’t let go and take them, they really could get away! We can get so washed out with a mindset of entitlement – the universe will do everything for us to ensure our happiness – that we forget why we came here! We came here to grab, to take, to give, to have! Not to wait! Nobody came here to wait! So, what makes anyone think that destiny will keep on knocking over and over again? It could, but what if it doesn’t? You go and you take the chance that you get; even if it makes you look stupid, insane, or whorish! Because it just might not come back again. You could wait a lifetime to see if it will… but I don’t think you should.”
- C. JoyBell C.
"The Central Banks Are Celebrating the Turmoil - Birthday Shenanigans"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 2/25/22:
"The Central Banks Are Celebrating the Turmoil -
Birthday Shenanigans"
"You can’t make this up. Central banks are celebrating the work of Russia. This will give them the excuse not to raise interest rates around the globe. They will pump more money into the system until the dollar collapses. Thank you for all the birthday wishes."
Bill Bonner, "Empire of Debt"
(The Arch of Septimus Severus,
located in the Forum Romanum. Source: Getty Images)
"Empire of Debt"
by Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - "Live in harmony; enrich the troops; ignore everyone else." ~ Emperor Septimus Severus, last words to his sons, Geta and Caracalla.
"As you know, the Fed is caught in an “inflate or die” trap. It either lets inflation rip – with more money printing and ultra-low interest rates – or it crashes the economy with higher rates and QT (quantitative tightening). Most people – about 90% of the population – gain nothing from inflation. But a few people – the 10% at the top – need more money printing to fund the US budget, Wall Street, the military and their own bubble-era gains. These people, the few, are those who control Congress… and the Fed.
The Fed knows it ought to tighten up… but it is desperate for an excuse not to. Here, at Markets Insider, is economist Mohamed El-Erian giving them one: "Top economist Mohamed El-Erian said the Federal Reserve won't be able to tighten monetary policy as aggressively now that Russia has invaded Ukraine. Many on Wall Street expected several Fed rate hikes in 2022, starting with an increase of 50 basis points next month. Earlier this week, JPMorgan even predicted nine interest rate hikes this year of 25 basis points each time.
"This takes 50 basis points completely off the table," El-Erian told CNBC Thursday morning. "It takes the 8, 9 hikes a lot of people were talking about for this year off the table, and thankfully so... I didn't think the US economy could accommodate and live with such slamming of the brakes of monetary policy."
Two and a Half Centuries of Invasion: Oh… what a wicked world! Now America’s misbegotten foreign policy is being teed up as a reason not to abandon its misbegotten monetary policy.
Americans ‘march to the sound of cannons;’ they are always ready to join the fight for freedom… for justice… and for the American way. Sometimes we invade foreign nations in order to protect the existing government. Sometimes we invade to change it… often claiming to ‘build democracies.’ Dr. Gideon Polya counted 70 different times the US invaded other nations since 1776 – or about once every 3 or 4 years. So, why get upset with Russia when it invades the Ukraine?
Public policy is always mush. Foreign policy is particularly mushy. How do we know what is going on in Afghanistan or the Ukraine? But in today’s world, America’s foreign policy depends to a large extent on its mush-headed monetary policy.
The advantage of foreign policy over domestic policy is that the damage is mostly inflicted on foreigners. But Americans suffer, too, probably more than they realize. Taken all together, the cost of meddling in other countries’ affairs is headed towards $1 trillion a year – or more than $10,000 per household (by our rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation). If voters were asked to pay for it honestly, they would surely refuse.
In our book (written with Addison Wiggin) ‘The Empire of Debt,” we looked at how the US has never quite gotten the hang of running an empire. It’s supposed to be a paying proposition. You invade, you steal, you enslave… and you end up richer. That was the formula used by the Romans, successfully, for hundreds of years.
But the US invades… and then turns its bombed-out target into a money pit – dumping in billions of dollars to support the local warlords… propping up the economy… and donating billions more to its own military/surveillance industries. Overseas, local hustlers and criminals get rich. And Swiss bank accounts get fatter. And at home, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Boeing executives get rich. Lobbyists get rich. Retired generals who join their boards of directors get rich. And even their shareholders get rich. But who pays for it?
When the Debt Comes Due: Over time, the financing has shifted from taxes, to borrowing to inflation. The Empire of Debt loses money on every intervention… and, while its list of failed wars grows longer and longer, its mountain of debt grows too. Suppressing interest rates becomes a matter of necessity. But this discourages savers from lending their money to the federal government. So, rather than allow interest rates to go up, which would crimp their access to funds, the feds are forced to print money to cover their costs.
This is about what happened to the Romans too. It is a problem of limits… and the cyclical pattern of life itself. Once the surrounding tribes had been subdued, the Roman Empire reached its furthest extent, under Trajan, in about 100 AD. Thereafter, emperors struggled to hold it together. Trajan’s grand-niece married Hadrian, another emperor, who built a wall across Britain, the first landmark of a less aggressive foreign policy.
Without the booty – especially slaves – coming in from new conquests, Rome, too, had to turn to monetary policy. It shaved down the value of the Roman currency – the silver denarius. It was 95% silver when Augustus introduced it. A century later, in the time of Trajan, it was only about 85% silver, and the silver kept disappearing. By the time of Caracalla, who took over a century later, the coin was reduced to only 50% silver. Then, by 268, there was hardly any silver in it at all.
When the money goes, everything goes. The Empire was then beset by corruption and civil war. It limped along for nearly 200 years more… one calamity after another – until it was finally conquered by ‘barbarians.’
Yes, dear reader, El-Erian may be right; US monetary policy may now be hostage to its foreign policy. But its foreign policy also depends on its monetary policy. Without the inflationary new money, the overseas misadventures may have to be curtailed. And without a ‘crisis’ – something going on somewhere that is none of our business and nobody really cares about – the Fed might have no excuse; it might have to cut back on inflation.
More to come… Next week: Are Russian stocks now a ‘buy?’
Enjoy your weekend,"
"The Party of Chaos Blows Its Cover"
"The Party of Chaos Blows Its Cover"
by Jim Kunstler
"It is fair to say that the “Joe Biden” government dearly wanted a Russian invasion of Ukraine in order to divert attention from the “Joe Biden” government’s war on its own people in the United States. The table was nicely laid for it over many years, including, by the way, Mr. Trump’s vaunted gift of weaponry to Ukraine, which enabled and emboldened the Kiev regime to harass the Russian-speaking population of Donbas without relent. And the situation was aggravated by the deliberate negotiation-unworthiness (Russian term) of “Joe Biden” and Company, who refused to discuss the chief issue between the US and Russia, namely, the dishonest effort, in violation of written agreements dating from 1990, to enlist Ukraine in NATO, and thereby to place missiles on Russia’s border. The US disallowed something very similar in 1962, when the old USSR tried to put missiles in Cuba.
You are also seeing payback for the Maidan color revolution of 2014, engineered by John Kerry’s State Department and John Brennan’s CIA. We have been managing Ukraine backstage since then and, alas for that poor country, quite deceitfully. If you bother to read the recent statements of both “Joe Biden” and Mr. Putin, you will see exactly why and how the situation developed. You will also see an appalling difference in the quality of public utterance - as, say, the difference between Zippy the Pinhead and a Metternich.
I’ll get back to all that presently, but first let’s be clear about what “Joe Biden” & Co. seek to divert public attention from: the complete implosion of all the narratives that support the “Joe Biden” regime - and the campaign against Western Civ more generally by the sinister likes of Klaus Schwab and his global gang of Great Re-setters, including Bill Gates, George Soros, and many actors in America’s own Deep State.
The Covid-19 story is blowing up, and in a very ugly way for the American people. The news is finally wriggling free of our combined news media/social media censorship machine and that news is as follows: Covid-19 was a trip laid on the world to get rid of the irascible Mr. Trump and usher-in a system of digital social controls. The mRNA “vaccines” were all patented and ready to go before the virus even took off. The mRNA “vaccines” turned out to be ineffective and arguably more damaging than the Covid-19 virus. That last bit of news is now coming out in reports from the life insurance and funeral industries, which are showing an alarming increase in all-causes death, especially in people under 60 years of age.
It is also coming out that the CDC has wildly and recklessly falsified its own data throughout the Covid crisis, and that the “vaccine” safety trials were a complete fraud - which has led to the prospect of Moderna and Pfizer losing their liability shields, and, recently, the crash of their share prices. The public is also learning that they were cruelly denied early treatments with well-proven off-label drugs that might have saved millions of lives. And yet, knowing all this, “Joe Biden” and his Democratic Party are to this day urging Americans to “go out and get vaccinated, get boosted,” in the words last week of the US president. You can’t be faulted if you suspect that they are deliberately trying to kill a lot of people.
The blow-up of the Covid-19 story will come to horrify even those Americans hypnotically locked into mass formation, and will lead to countless lawsuits and prosecutions. But in the meantime, we will be preoccupied with the blow-up of the financial system and the economy it is supposed to serve. The inflation horses are out of the barn and running wild. The Federal Reserve has finally succeeded in destroying the value of the dollar and, consequently, destroying the little that is left of middle-class life in the USA. At the same time, they have unleashed forces that will also destroy the fortunes of many upper-class people, too, as the stock and bond markets go south. Financial collapse is at hand, and “Joe Biden” doesn’t want you to pay attention to it. The Ukraine melodrama is a compelling distraction.
The John Durham special counsel operation gains more disturbing visibility each week. The public has been informed by his court filings that there is no longer any question as to who set the Russian Collusion game in motion (Hillary Clinton), how the FBI, DOJ, and the news media were enlisted to play their roles in it, and how the whole thing amounted to a seditious conspiracy to overthrow the chief executive. It is extremely serious stuff, the worst scandal and the grossest institutional failure in our history. There will be prosecutions and punishments, and half of America will have to process their own guilt in swallowing the story and going along with it.
Then there is the 2020 election narrative: that it was the fairest and most error-free contest in our history. The evidence that the opposite is true waits in several states, hidden in cardboard boxes, thumb-drives, routers, and stacks of depositions. At this late date, it can’t be corrected, but there is a fair chance that the public will realize it was played on that, too, and if we are very lucky, future elections will be held without dastardly Dominion vote tabulation machines or anything like them.
The Party of Chaos, “Joe Biden’s” Party, doesn’t want you to pay attention to any of that, or to a thousand other political insults they have inflicted on the country from BLM/Antifa riots to their dirty deals with social media, to their perversion of law enforcement, to their surveillance and persecution of loyal citizens as “domestic terrorists,” to the gender disorders in schools and sports… and on and on. And so, they invited with open arms the Russian operation against Ukraine to put an end to reckless provocations emanating from there. “Joe Biden” didn’t have to do anything, really, except pretend in bad faith to take part in a diplomatic solution, and then he stopped doing even that. The sanctions he imposed amount to the flimsiest window-dressing.
And now here is what I think is happening and will happen in Ukraine. The Russian aim is to neutralize Ukraine’s military capability - the means for harassing the eastern provinces known as the Donbas. That has been accomplished. Ukraine no longer has an air force, a navy, or a whole lot of weapons and munitions. It is surely in Russia’s interest to complete this operation in as few days as possible to minimize harm to civilian lives and property. The Ukrainians appear to understand that, too. The politicians and NGO organizations groomed by American sponsorship in Ukraine will be deactivated, relieved of their responsibilities, and put out of business. If Mr. Putin is prudent, he will not murder or persecute them. A regime friendly to Russia will eventually be installed. Keep in mind, Ukraine had been a province of Russia one way or another for more than two hundred years - except for the calamitous past thirty years - and Ukraine doesn’t really represent much more than an administrative and fiscal challenge. Russia’s ultimate interest in this matter is to stabilize its border.
We in the USA perhaps can’t appreciate that because our current government shows no interest in stabilizing our own border. (We will in the future, when the Party of Chaos is swept out of power.) I’ll refrain from speculating much on the broader geopolitical repercussions of Russia’s Ukraine operation, since it’s not over and there is still a chance for much to go awry. The general proposition that it represents a milestone in America’s loss of global power and credibility is probably correct. We have spent the last thirty years since the fall of the USSR invading and harassing one country after another, not always with altogether bad intentions, but always with disastrous results. It looks like we will have to take a break from that activity.
We have too much to look after and clean up with our own act. The Ukraine blow-up is more a humiliation for “Joe Biden” and his faction than for the US per se, for the truth is that we have scant interest in that corner of the world and what goes on there is none of our business, and never was, until we started meddling in it in 2014.
In the awakening underway here and now, Americans will see how so many of the ills and derangements of recent years are products of our own Deep State aligned with a perfidious party of the Left and other global actors. We have harmed ourselves terribly and can’t seem to stop - and we must stop it, beginning with calling off the Covid-19 “vaccine” crusade. That will come any day, I predict, and then the people who brought all of this grief on are going to have to answer for it."