Jeremiah Babe, 11/13/24
"Prepare For Internet Crash;
Washington D.C. In Full Blown Panic"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Dance of Life"
Full screen a must for this beautiful video!
Peder B. Helland,
"Dance of Life •
Relaxing Fantasy Music for Relaxation & Meditation"
Musical Interlude: The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil"
Full screen recommended!
The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"What created Devils Tower? The origin of this extraordinary rock monolith in Wyoming, USA is still debated, with a leading hypothesis holding that it is a hardened lava plume that never reached the surface to become a volcano. In this theory, the lighter rock that once surrounded the dense volcanic neck has now eroded away, leaving the dramatic tower.
Click image for larger size.
Known by Native Americans by names including Bear's Lodge and Great Gray Horn, the dense rock includes the longest hexagonal columns known, some over 180-meters tall. High above, the central band of the Milky Way galaxy arches across the sky. Many notable sky objects are visible, including dark strands of the Pipe Nebula and the reddish Lagoon Nebula to the tower's right. Green grass and trees line the foreground, while clouds appear near the horizon to the tower's left. Unlike many other international landmarks, mountaineers are permitted to climb Devils Tower."
Chet Raymo, "The Ring of Truth"
"The Ring of Truth"
by Chet Raymo
"In Salley Vickers' novel, "Where Three Roads Meet," the shade of Tiresias, the blind seer of the Oedipus myth, visits Sigmund Freud in London during the psychoanalyst's final terrible illness. In a series of conversations, Tiresias retells the story of Oedipus- he who was fated to kill his father and sleep with his mother- a story at the heart of Freud's own theory of the human psyche. At one point in the conversations, as Tiresias and Freud discuss the extent to which our lives are fated, the question of immortality arises. Freud says of Oedipus that "he made his story into an immortal one, so far as any story is." And Tiresias replies, "But, Dr. Freud, stories are all we humans have to make us immortal."
Oedipus lives on, whether he lived or not in actuality. Sophocles lives in our consciousness as vigorously as ever he did in life. They live because their stories touch something resonant and unchanging in human nature. Vickers suggests that what makes the Oedipal story immortal is not any necessary tendency of humans to act out the Oedipal myth, a la Freud, but rather Oedipus's rage to know the truth- or become conscious of a truth he has known all along and suppressed - even though the truth will be his undoing.
The poet Muriel Rukesyser got it exactly right when she said: "The universe is made of stories, not atoms." Even atoms are stories we tell about the world, having first paid close attention to how the world works. The plays of Sophocles and the other Greek dramatists live on not because their authors were immortal, but because nature endures and their stories tell us something that rings true about enduring nature. And, like Oedipus, we have a rage to know, even if knowledge will unseat some of our more comfortable illusions.
"We've All Heard..."
"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”
"If You Caught A Glimpse..."
"If you caught a glimpse of your own death,
would that knowledge change the way you live the rest of your life?"
- Paco Ahlgren, "Discipline"
"Of Two Minds"
"Of Two Minds"
by The ZMan
"Everyone in every time has thought that his time was crazier and less predictable than the times that came before him. Much of this is due to recency bias, but another cause is the sense that things were better in the past. This sense that the past was better is a part of the human makeup. There is not only a nostalgia for the our own past, but for the past we never experienced. That is because the past seems more certain than our present age and the near future.
People who lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War looked back at those days with fondness. These were people enjoying 1950’s America reminiscing about one of the worst times in American history. Many even lost family members in the war, but those war years felt like the best of times. Our minds seem to have evolved in such a way that we cannot remember pain. That means what we can recall about our past is only the good feelings we experienced.
It also depends upon who you are at the time as well. If you were a black person in the 1950’s then it was a wild time to be alive. The civil right revolution was getting going and the role blacks were given was to riot in the streets. The typical white guy living in California was just enjoying his time. On the other hand, the war years were a good time to be black in America as the war economy needed labor. Millions of black people found lucrative work in northern cities.
That is something to keep in mind while watching present events. It certainly seems like it is a crazy time to be alive. The whole Trump thing is wild, just from the perspective of American politics. People also seem nuttier. This was evident during the Covid panic when millions of otherwise normal looking people revealed themselves to be bitter paranoid cranks. Now the anti-Trump loons are going into hiding, by which they mean the latest alternative to Twitter.
It is not just the usual suspects losing their minds over the election. The British tabloid The Guardian has announced on Twitter, oddly enough, that it is stomping off in a huff, presumably to set up shop on the alternative to Twitter. They claim it is because of the “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.” That means a publication that traffics in conspiracy theories about the imaginary far-right and racism is abandoning the one place they are sure such things exist.
Even putting aside the natural bias described at the start, this is crazy behavior that did not exist just ten years ago. The crazy times ten years ago were both sides meeting in the streets to point fingers and maybe scuffle a bit. More important, the people we call the left had institutional support, so they controlled the battlefield. This fact has been true for as long as anyone has been alive, so seeing them abandon the battlefield and go into hiding qualifies this as a crazy time to be alive.
Of course, the reason this is happening is the big election victory of Donald Trump and the temporary ascendency of his party. It was not just a big win for Trump on Tuesday, but also a big win for the movement that made him possible. The reason that movement exists is the growing insanity of the people we call the left. In other words, we probably do live in a crazy age, even when people have the ability to step back and look at it from a distance. This really is a crazy age.
The thing about this crazy age is that not much is happening. The exciting times a century ago revolved around the Great War. The mobilization of America for war in Europe was unprecedented. The war itself was unprecedented, and its aftermath was also unprecedented. Enormously important things were happening. In this present age, everything happens on the internet and slightly affects events outside the digital space, but only in superficial ways.
Put another way, we live in a crazy time because this new virtual reality we created called the internet has sucked into it many of our least stable people, empowering them to unleash their craziness in this virtual realm. Imagine a version of the past twenty years in which the crazy people were denied access to the internet. Imagine if all the foreign policy debates since the Cold War had been conducted online by people like John Mearsheimer rather than crazies from the Kagan cult.
What makes this a crazy time is we are living in a unique period and what makes it unique is this virtual realm we call the internet. Everyone is forced to one degree or another to live with two minds. There is the mind that exists in the virtual realm and then there is the mind that exists in the physical realm. Note that you rarely discuss with people in the physical realm your life in the virtual realm. These are two distinct worlds that require two distinct minds.
On the other hand, the growth of this new virtual world has had the effect of collapsing the two minds for some people. The crazies online are made crazy, in part, by the invasion of the private space by the public space. Prior to the internet, these people could only do politics by participating in it publicly. Most just avoided politics and remained privately nuts, but free of public politics. Plugged into the internet, the public rushes into the private and the private becomes public.
This may explain the phenomenon of the seemingly stable person heading off into crazy land as they get increasingly online. People like James Lindsay or Keith Olbermann are good examples of people who started out a bit odd, but not so odd that you questioned their sanity. They steadily evolved into crazy people online. When there was separation between their public and private mind, we did not see the madness, because it existed outside of public view.
In the fullness of time, people may look at this time and think it was the calm waters before the terrible rapids. Maybe they look at this is as a gentle adjustment period between the Cold War and whatever comes next. it is also possible that it is the crazy time when people had to adjust to the two-mind problem. The growth of the virtual realm created a need for an entirely novel mode of thought, the mind you activate when inside the internet, along with a way of isolating it from the other mind.
It may be that we arrive at a new way of judging people. At the top of the hierarchy are those who master both minds, deftly balancing them to be high status in both the material world and the virtual world. At the bottom are the people who allow the virtual realm to take over their mind entirely, making it seem that they are as crazy in real life as they seem online. In the middle are the vast majority who struggle to balance their internet mind with their material mind."
o
Interested in the virtual world? I highly recommend Second Life, and
I've have been an active resident there for 12 years. This is NOT a game...
- CP
"Second Life"
"Second Life is a multiplayer virtual world that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multi-user online environment. Developed for personal computers and owned by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab, it launched on June 23, 2003 and saw rapid growth for some years; in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users. Growth eventually stabilized, and by the end of 2017, the active user count had fallen to "between 800,000 and 900,000". In many ways, Second Life is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing video games; nevertheless, Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game: "There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective."
The virtual world can be accessed freely via Linden Lab's own client software or via alternative third-party viewers. Second Life users, also called 'residents', create virtual representations of themselves, called avatars, and are able to interact with places, objects and other avatars. They can explore the world (known as the grid), meet other residents, socialize, participate in both individual and group activities, build, create, shop, and trade virtual property and services with one another.
The platform principally features 3D-based user-generated content. Second Life also has its own virtual currency, the Linden Dollar (L$), which is exchangeable with real world currency. Second Life is intended for people ages 16 and over, with the exception of 13–15-year-old users, who are restricted to the Second Life region of a sponsoring institution (e.g., a school)."
Join here, it's free: - https://secondlife.com/
"Consumers Are Drowning In Debt As Hordes Of Businesses Fail All Over The U.S."
"Consumers Are Drowning In Debt As
Hordes Of Businesses Fail All Over The U.S."
by Michael Snyder
"U.S. consumers have piled up the largest mountain of household debt in the history of the world. If the federal government was not almost 36 trillion dollars in debt, the fact that U.S. households are nearly 18 trillion dollars in debt would be making a lot more headlines. Sadly, our entire society is absolutely saturated with debt at this point. Government debt on all levels is spiraling out of control, corporate debt has ballooned to absurd levels, and consumers have been gorging on debt as if there will never be any consequences. Unfortunately, a time of reckoning has arrived, and it is going to be incredibly painful.
On Wednesday, we learned that total credit card debt has surged to a brand new record high of 1.17 trillion dollars…"Collectively, Americans now owe a record $1.17 trillion on their credit cards, according to a new report on household debt from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Credit card balances rose by $24 billion in the third quarter of 2024 and are 8.1% higher than a year ago." Needless to say, incomes have not increased by 8.1 percent over the past year. So our credit card balances are growing faster than our paychecks are, and that is a problem.
Meanwhile, total student loan debt has reached a brand new record high of 1.61 trillion dollars. If you can believe it, a whopping 30 percent of all student loan borrowers have “gone without food or medicine due to their monthly bills”…"Thirty percent of federal student loan borrowers say they’ve gone without food or medicine due to their monthly bills, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds.
In addition to skipping necessities, 38% of people with federal student loans said they carried credit card debt that they wouldn’t have otherwise, the bureau found. Around 44% of borrowers said their education debt delayed when they could by a home, and 26% said the debt pushed back when they’d start a family. If you are a young person that is considering going to college, please try to avoid piling up student loan debt. It can haunt you for decades.
Overall, total household debt in the United States has skyrocketed to a brand new record high of 17.94 trillion dollars…"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data today issued its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. The report shows total household debt increased by $147 billion (0.8%) in Q3 2024, to $17.94 trillion."
What a nightmare. How did we ever allow ourselves to pile up nearly 18 trillion dollars in household debt? That is insane! Our wild spending fueled solid economic growth for a long time, but now most consumers are just barely scraping by from month to month and businesses all over the country are deeply struggling as a result.
For example, U.S. retailers have announced the closing of 6,481 stores so far in 2024…"U.S. retail closures have reached the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to recent estimates. As of Nov. 8, retailers have announced 6,481 store closures, an increase of 336 closures in just the past week, according to the latest data from Coresight Research. The majority of these closures were driven by American Freight, which is shutting all 329 of its locations as part of its parent company’s bankruptcy proceedings."
Meanwhile, the auto industry is having a very tough time adjusting to lower consumer demand. Last week, we learned that Nissan will be eliminating “9,000 jobs and a fifth of its manufacturing capacity”…"Nissan Motor shares slumped 6% in Tokyo trade Friday, a day after the Japanese automaker said it would cut 9,000 jobs and a fifth of its manufacturing capacity as it struggles with sales in China and the United States. On Thursday, Japan’s third-biggest automaker slashed its forecast for full-year operating profit by 70%. It said restructuring would cut costs by 400 billion yen ($2.61 billion) in the financial year to the end of March."
Ouch. Stellantis is another automaker that has decided it is time to reduce production and lay off workers…"Stellantis is indefinitely laying off more than 1,000 employees at its Jeep assembly plant in Ohio as the automaker significantly reduces its inventory levels to match demand. Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram, issued Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices to the respective state and local governments as well as the United Auto Workers union. The 1,100 layoffs at the Toledo South Assembly Plant will be effective as early as Jan. 5."
Sadly, I think that this is just the beginning of very tough times for the auto industry. The tech industry is facing enormous challenges too. In fact, chipmaker AMD just announced that it will be reducing the number of workers that it employs globally by about 4 percent…″As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%,” an AMD representative said in a statement. “We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition.”
At least AMD is still treading water.
There are countless other firms that are falling apart right in front of our eyes. Spirit Airlines is one of the latest victims. Spirit’s share price suddenly crashed when it announced that it will be filing for bankruptcy…"Spirit Airlines is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection, it emerged last night – sparking fears among flyers about mass cancelations.
After news broke about the bankruptcy emerged on Tuesday evening, Spirit’s share price plummeted 45 percent in just seconds – erasing hundreds of millions in market value from the carrier. By Wednesday morning, it was down by 70 percent. The Florida-based low-cost airline is in final negotiations with bondholders on a restructuring plan to secure the support of key creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported this evening. It owes more than $3 billion."
This is what happens when a debt bubble bursts. At this stage, things are so bad that even CNN is getting ready to conduct some very harsh layoffs…"CNN is planning to wield the axe on some of its high-paid staff after dismal election ratings that cap off a disastrous period for the cable news network. According to an explosive new report from Puck, network executives will unleash sweeping lay-offs in a bid to save the network’s flailing reputation. It comes after the departure of stalwart Chris Wallace, and amid reports senior stars like Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper have both been denied raises."
Of course the carnage is not just limited to large businesses. The percentage of small businesses that cannot pay their rent has reached the highest level since the peak of the pandemic, and that should deeply alarm all of us…"Close to half of small business owners couldn’t pay their rent in September, marking a new three-year high. According to business networking platform Alignable’s September Revenue & Rent Report, 48% of small business renters could not make their rent payments. That was up from 41% in July and August. And it was the highest it has been since the Covid recovery era in March 2021, when 49% of small business owners were delinquent."
So what is the bottom line? For years, we were able to enjoy a ridiculously inflated standard of living by piling up staggering amounts of debt. But now that debt bubble has started to implode, and a tremendous amount of pain is on the horizon. Going into massive amounts of debt may be enjoyable for a while, but it always catches up with you in the end. Those that are telling you that there is an easy way out of this mess are not being honest, and we only have ourselves to blame for what is about to happen."
"Netanyahu Knew About Impending Oct.7 Attack And Did Nothing"
Mahmood OD, 11/13/24
"Netanyahu Knew About Impending Oct. 7 Attack And Did Nothing;
War Between Israeli PM and His Army"
Comments here:
o
Related:
Full screen recommended.
Danny Haiphong, 11/13/24
"Scott Ritter: Putin & Iran Destroy Israel with This Move,
Hezbollah Hits IDF Hard as Trump Returns"
Comments here:
o
Dialogue Works, 11/13/24
"Prof. Mohammad Marandi: Iran & Hezbollah
Gear Up to Devastate Israel's Offensives!"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "It is a Bad Economy - The Truth Comes Out"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 11/13/24
"It is a Bad Economy - The Truth Comes Out"
"In today's video, we uncover shocking truths about the economy with insights from money manager Ed Dowd. From sham numbers to the crumbling middle class, we're pulling back the curtain on issues like unemployment and GDP discrepancies. Join me as I explore the impact on industries, from insurance to aviation, and discuss wild stories like a Florida engineer signing off on buildings posthumously."
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "A Tidal Wave of Debt"
"A Tidal Wave of Debt"
Now that the markets have got a good look at the approaching tsunami,
they may figure that it’s time to head to higher ground.
The feds need to refinance $16 trillion in the next four years.
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "When Mr. Trump spoke of a Golden Age in his victory speech, we immediately thought of the Golden Age of Greece... when Pericles delivered his famous funeral oration. Athens was at war, and many people thought they should give it up, sue for peace... and get back to work. Not Pericles. He saw an opportunity to Make Athens Great Again.
Pericles was a ‘war hawk’... and no slouch as an orator. The Athenians rallied around him, put on their panoplies — sword and shield — and the war cries resounded through the city as the menfolk, young and old, marched out to combat. Uh oh... the result was a crushing defeat in which the Athenian empire was destroyed, the city itself conquered, occupied by foreign troops... and its population sold into slavery.Not a good example for the uplifting spirit we’re looking for today...
So, we turn back to Donald J. Trump. And one of our Dearest Readers writes: "Yes, there's an entire mountain range of debt, but what if Trump's policies actually do make things better? What if manufacturing does return to the US in a huge way? (Does America have any choice other than to incentivize it?) What if energy prices do drop 30-50%? What if regulations and federal government employment are meaningfully cut? What if the economy does start growing at 4-6%?
Scott Bessent, BSD on Wall Street, and mentioned as a possibility for Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, had this to add. In the Wall Street Journal: "The failure of Bidenomics is clear. But Mr. Trump has turned around the economy before, and he is ready to do so again. [Nobel winning economists] may not understand this, but the financial markets have clearly spoken." And not since Herbert Hoover’s election in 1929 have they shouted out so loudly. Bitcoin traded over $89,000 this morning. The Dow was falling, but still near a record high.
Mr. Bessent at least nods in the direction of the tidal wave of debt soon to wash over the new administration. “Mr. Trump must also address government borrowing,” he says. But he thinks the problem is that it is ‘expensive shorter-term debt’ that must be ‘deftly handled.’ Well... good luck with that! The problem is not the term, but the amount. Mr. Bessent needs to listen to the market more carefully. It’s saying that interest rates will have to go higher to cover it. MarketWatch: "10-year Treasury yield breaks through key resistance levels on way to 5%."
Since mid-September, the widely followed yield has risen past one resistance level after another, starting with 4.21% and 4.3%, the latter of which is described as a proverbial line in the sand that has begun to cause problems for the stock market over the past year... The rate has jumped about 80 basis points from its 52-week low of 3.62% reached on Sept. 16. Already, the feds paid $1.13 trillion in interest on the US debt over the last twelve months. It’s unlikely that that amount will go down - not with rates rising and debt increasing by $3 billion per day.
And now that the markets have got a good look at the approaching tsunami, they may figure that it’s time to head to higher ground. As reported in this space, the feds need to refinance $16 trillion in the next four years. Add to that amount deficits that are expected to come in at $2 trillion per year.
Investors might also recall that The Donald added $8 trillion to US debt during his first term. So, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine a total of nearly $44 trillion by the end of this term, with much of it sporting a 5% yield. That would mean interest payments of over $2 trillion per year. How are the feds going to handle that, investors will want to know? With more printing press money?
To make matters worse, only days after the election, Trump is already bringing in his hawks - war hawks, trade hawks, China hawks. Notably absent, so far, are the budget hawks - people who want to reduce federal deficits by cutting spending or raising taxes. They are probably absent because they don’t exist. Members of Congress, political hacks, lobbyists and ‘influencers’ of all types earn their money and power by spending the public’s money, not by saving it. And like a Freudian nightmare, in the absence of serious budget cutting, the ‘Golden Age’…turns into the something much less appealing. More to come..."
Adventures With Danno, "I Don't Know How To Explain This, It's Getting Ugly"
Adventures With Danno, AM 11/13/24
"I Don't Know How To Explain This, It's Getting Ugly"
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "America's Mental Illness Crisis Is Out Of Control; Trump Inheriting A Garbage Economy"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/12/24
"America's Mental Illness Crisis Is Out Of Control;
Trump Inheriting A Garbage Economy"
Comments here:
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Gerald Celente, "Plantation Workers Of Slavelandia: We're Broke"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 11/12/24
"Plantation Workers Of Slavelandia: We're Broke,
Biden Busted US, In Trump We Trust"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
"Walmart And Other Major Retailers Canceling Billions In Orders Amid Fears Of A Dark Winter Ahead"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 11/12/24
"Walmart And Other Major Retailers Canceling
Billions In Orders Amid Fears Of A Dark Winter Ahead"
"A troubling trend is brewing in the U.S. retail sector. Big names like Walmart, Dollar General, Home Depot, Kohl’s and other retailers are canceling billions of dollars in orders for this holiday season. The last time this happened was in 2022, right after interest rates started to rise. Now, a much deeper issue is forcing major corporations to cut back on imports even as we approach the busiest shopping season of the year. This begs the question: What do these companies know about the direction the U.S. economy is headed that the rest of us don't?
It seems that things have been turned upside down in the retail industry over the past couple of years. Not long ago, companies were reporting record profits, and they were rushing to stock up enough goods to meet consumer demand. But in 2024, retailers have been reporting sluggish sales and weaker-than-expected financial performance. Now, they are calling off a massive number of orders, leaving experts and economists alike worried about the reason behind such extreme decisions.
The holiday season is the time when consumer demand typically peaks. Under normal circumstances, this move wouldn’t make any sense. But it's safe to say that current economic conditions are far from normal. At the moment, Americans are struggling with the highest cost of consumables and basic services in recent history. Pretty much everything has gone up in price over the past few years, but people’s incomes didn't rise accordingly."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Typically when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides.
Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. Recent predictions hold that our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.”
The Poet: Robert Frost, “Acceptance”
“Acceptance”
“When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened.
Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, ‘safe!’
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.”
- Robert Frost
"All We Really Need..."
"Causes do matter. And the world is changed by people who care deeply about causes,about things that matter. We don't have to be particularly smart or talented. We don't need a lot of money or education. All we really need is to be passionate about something important; something bigger than ourselves. And it's that commitment to a worthwhile cause that changes the world." - Steve Goodier
"Find the things that matter, and hold on to them,
and fight for them, and refuse to let them go."
- Lauren Oliver
"What Happened?"
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○
Marvin Gaye, "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)"
Listen to the words, is that not our life today?
"Makes me wanna holler, throw up both my hands..."
And Sometimes..."
And sometimes, all you can think is...
“My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and
dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit.
I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.”
- Christopher Hitchens
"Wars And Rumors Of War: The Middle East"
Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano, 11/12/24
"Scott Ritter & Larry Johnson: Nukes Will Be Used!
Iran Promises Bloodshed - Israel's Unimaginable Defeat"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 11/12/24
"Prof. Mohammad Marandi,
Israeli Military Coup? Current Events"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 11/12/24
"Hezbollah Army Ready To Invade Israel?
Chilling ‘No-Limits’ War Threat As IDF Pulls Lebanon Troops"
Hezbollah Chief Naim Qassem announced on Nov 6 that tens of thousands of fighters are ready for battle. Qassem reportedly stated, 'nowhere in Israel is off-limits to attacks'. He also emphasised that the U.S. election would not impact Lebanon's ongoing battle."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 11/11/24
"'45 Days, Not Even 1 Village':
New Hezbollah Spokesperson Mocks IDF's Lebanon Incursion"
"New Hezbollah spokesperson Mohammed Afif mocked Israel Army's ground incursion of Lebanon. He claimed that despite 45 days of bloody fighting, the IDF had failed to capture even a single Lebanese village. He even denied Israel's claim that Hezbollah's missile stockpile was running low and that it had forwarded a ceasefire proposal to the Iran-backed group. Watch for more details."
Comments here:
"I Don't Believe..."
"I don’t believe in ‘original sin.’ I don’t believe in ‘guilt.’ I don’t believe in villains or heroes – only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents. This is so simple I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m sure it’s true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that’s why I don’t understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.”
- Tennessee Williams
Dan, I Allegedly, "Don't Ignore This - America's Financial Meltdown"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 11/12/24
"Don't Ignore This - America's Financial Meltdown"
"In today's video, we cover the looming financial storm in "Banks in Crisis: The $10B Danger Zone". As banks grapple with skyrocketing bad loans, the potential collapse of institutions with under $10B in assets is a growing threat. We're diving into the unsettling reality of the commercial real estate crash and its ripple effect on the economy. Plus, Spirit Airlines' shocking flight cuts and the chaos in the auto industry with massive recalls. Don't miss insights on Elon Musk's bold claims about trimming the federal budget and the latest retail woes."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Millions Wake Up Without Internet"
Adventures With Danno, AM 11/12/24
"Millions Wake Up Without Internet"
Comments here:
"Things We Don't Want to Do: Outside the Comfort Zone"
"Things We Don't Want to Do:
Outside the Comfort Zone"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM
"Doing things we don't want to do, or that scare us, creates flow in our lives and allows us to grow. Most of us have had the experience of tackling some dreaded task only to come out the other side feeling invigorated, filled with a new sense of confidence and strength. The funny thing is, most of the time when we do them, we come out on the other side changed and often wondering what we were so worried about or why it took us so long. We may even begin to look for other tasks we've been avoiding so that we can feel that same heady mix of excitement and completion.
Whether we avoid something because it scares us or bores us, or because we think it will force a change we're not ready for, putting it off only creates obstacles for us. On the other hand, facing the task at hand, no matter how onerous, creates flow in our lives and allows us to grow. The relief is palpable when we stand on the other side knowing that we did something even though it was hard or we didn't want to do it. On the other hand, when we cling to our comfort zone, never addressing the things we don't want to face, we cut ourselves off from flow and growth.
We all have at least one thing in our life that never seems to get done. Bringing that task to the top of the list and promising ourselves that we will do it as soon as possible is an act that could liberate a tremendous amount of energy in our lives. Whatever it is, we can allow ourselves to be fueled by the promise of the feelings of exhilaration and confidence that will be the natural result of doing it.”
"Things You Don't Want To Do..."
Strong language alert!
"In life you have to do a lot of things you don't ****ing want to do.
Many times, that's what the **** life is... one vile ****ing task after another.
But don't get aggravated, then the enemy has you by the short hair."
- “Al Swearengen”, Ian McShane’s character on “Deadwood”
○
Strong language alert!
"Pain or damage don't end the world, or despair or f***ing beatings.
The world ends when you’re dead. Until then you got more punishment
in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back.”
- “Al Swearengen”, Ian McShane’s character on “Deadwood”
"How Rights Destroy Us"
"How Rights Destroy Us"
by Paul Rosenberg
"The thought that something like “the right to a secure retirement” could destroy us seems a little crazy at first. Who, after all, opposes old people living comfortably? Nonetheless, many rights do destroy, and it recently struck me that I had never seen a clear and dispassionate explanation of why. And so I’ll rectify that.
The Two Rights: This will be brief, so please follow me. When we say “rights,” we are making “should” statements, like “old people should spend their final years comfortably.” At first that sounds okay, but right is even stronger than should, and implies a demand… a must. That can be problematic because there are two types of these must statements:
You must do something.
You must not do something.
Must not statements are like those in the US Bill of Rights, telling the government that it may not impinge upon free speech, the practice of religion, peaceful assembly and so on. “Congress shall make no law.” These statements aren’t usually a problem. The must statements, however, are a problem, because they make a universal demand. When you say, “we have a right to a secure retirement,” you are also saying that someone, somewhere, must make it happen.
Gods And Rulers: Demands that a right be satisfied are made to unspecified providers. Thus they accrue to gods and rulers. And with gods no longer in style, they go directly to rulers, who are expected to satisfy the demands. To make secure retirement happen, however, the ruler must provide goods and/or money to old people. And those have to come from somewhere: roof repairs and microwave ovens don’t come from magic incantations, after all; someone must work to provide them.
So, since the ruler won’t personally work for the goods, he or she must take them from other people. Thus the seemingly benevolent “right to a secure retirement” leads directly to the forcible taking of personal property and the labor that produced it. That’s not seriously arguable.
Damage And Destruction: As every adult knows, claims of rights are more or less endless these days: The right to a roof over our heads, the right to health care, the right to employment, the right to clean water, and so on. All of these things are being demanded; that’s what a claim to a right is, a demand. So, whether people admit it or not – whether they understand it or not – to claim such a right is equally to demand that other people give it to you.
In actual practice it’s working people who are expected to pay for all these demands. Money is coercively taken (by threat or worse) from the electrician, the farmer, the nurse and so on. Expressed in any honest vocabulary this is “damage.” And enough damage qualifies as destruction. Clearly, the obligation to satisfy all the claims of the modern era is impossible. Everyone from the indigent to the cross-dresser are claiming new rights while the electrician, farmer and nurse are being drained beyond endurance.
Making things worse, if a “right” – a must statement – isn’t satisfied, people take it as evidence of a crime… a wicked violation of their rights. In the end, all these universal demands – all these must statements – come crashing down on the working man and woman, not only dragging money out of them, but calling them criminals for not having provided the impossible. And so, yes, these rights are destroying us. I hope I’ve made that clear."
Bill Bonner, "The Hoover Boom"
"The Hoover Boom"
These absurdities attached themselves to Ms. Harris like ticks to a dog.
She represented the ‘system’ that had saddled the nation with
$36 trillion in debt, and made America’s rich richer than ever.
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron." - H.L. Mencken
A week has passed since Donald J. Trump was re-elected president. The stock market has celebrated with the most impressive run-up since Herbert Hoover was elected. Hoover was a take-charge kind of guy too. “For six years, that man has been giving me unsolicited advice,” remarked out-going president Calvin Coolidge, “all of it bad.” But Hoover was elected in 1928. Thereafter, stocks rose a spectacular 40%, before crashing in 1929.
Since the election results were announced last week, one third of the country has been overjoyed, whooping and hollering, sure that happy days are here again. Another third acts as if it were looking at the Reichstag Fire. And the final third gets out the hotdogs and marshmallows.
The poor Democrats have gnashed so many teeth, it is amazing they have any left. This time, they lost by such a big margin the familiar excuses - Russian interference, misinformation, bad luck - just don’t seem to be enough. This time, the Trump victory tells us “who we really are,” says a recent New York Times headline.
Yes, we are a nation of dumbbells and dreamers... neither always good, nor always bad... but always subject to influence. And when ‘the plain folks’ speak, they don’t necessarily say what the elites want to hear. But here at BPR, we emphasize the positive. It is a shame Americans elected Donald Trump. But it’s a good thing they didn’t elect Kamala Harris. And some other good things have come out of the experience.
For one, the benevolent expertise of the elites as channeled by their propaganda media has been thoroughly discredited. The Wall Street Journal: "Trump’s Win Cemented It: New Media Is Leaving the Old Guard Behind."
The old media - TV, newspapers, magazines - were overwhelmingly behind Ms. Harris. She had the support of the whole Elite Establishment - the press, the universities, Hollywood and the DC establishment. One study showed that 80% of the news coverage on Trump was negative. And yet, the public seemed to pay no attention. The legacy media also clung to themes that favored Harris over Trump. One was the idea that ‘our democracy is in danger.’ Donald Trump was supposed to be a ‘fascist’ and should he win, or so went the line of argument, it might be the last election in America.
They held steadfast to the idea of the January 6th ‘insurrection,’ too, when any fool could see that the middle-aged dopes milling around the Capitol building were no threat to the police power of the empire. They insisted that the Covid was an ‘existential threat,’ and not just another flu. Again, the evidence told a different story. And they even wanted to change the English language to accommodate their woke-ish fads; the ‘him’ or the ‘her’ was replaced by the fake gender-neutral plural, ‘them.’
And while they were adamant about not offending someone’s tender sensibilities by using the wrong pronoun, they were nevertheless eager to send US-made bombs overseas... so the killing of the hes, shes, and thems could continue apace.
These absurdities attached themselves to Ms. Harris like ticks to a dog. She represented the Powers-That-Be….the ‘system’ that had saddled the nation with $36 trillion in debt, and made America’s rich richer than ever…but not given the working class a real raise in half a century. It was this ‘system’ that ‘the plain folks’ despised. And what could Ms. Harris say, but ‘vote for me; I’ll give you more of it.’
So, it turned out that the real threat to democracy was not the MAGA crowd. It was democracy itself. The ancient Greeks warned us about it. Allowing the masses to choose a leader is always a threat to the health of the nation. And in the election of 2024, it gave us the choice between cholera and the plague, Trump or Harris. Voters washed their hands and tried their best to avoid getting sick. But most felt a patriotic duty to run a fever... for one or the other. And since they couldn’t stomach any more-of-the-same from Kamala, they crossed themselves and pulled the lever for Trump."
"Gaza Tells Us Who We Are"
SOTN Editor’s Note: "Truly, there is no bigger and badder stain on the soul of America than the Gaza Genocide…and now the rapidly intensifying Lebanese Holocaust. You read that headline above right - “Easily 200,000 Deaths in Gaza.” And that article was written well over 5 months ago.
That the American people would allow their tax dollars to be used to fund Israel’s highly organized and long planned genocide of the Palestinians is perhaps the most highly consequential karmic event of the Third Millennium. That many tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children, elderly and infirm have been, and are being, systematically slaughtered by the IDF - both Christians and Muslims - is so far beyond the pale, we fear greatly for the future of the USA.
The entire world has watched the IDF deliberately bomb apartment buildings and stores, hospitals and schools, mosques and churches, refugee camps and aid sites, journalist tents and UN Interim Force locations, etc. in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon without any meaningful and righteous response.
Now the real problem for Americans regarding these horrific situations is that the US Military Industrial Complex is supplying virtually all of the bombs and bullets, missiles and mines for Israel to carry out this historic mass murder of innocents. Israeli warplanes and armaments of every sort and kind are being given to the Zionist state to execute completely powerless and defenseless populations in the name of the American people. And no one stateside is doing a thing to stop this wholesale carnage, even as it plays out during prime time and in glowing color in the mainstream media every single day.
As we have apprehensively intimated, this ongoing human slaughterhouse will come back to bite the United States of America when it’s least expected. For no one - no person or institution, no nation or corporation - ever escapes the jaws of karma. And when that happens, karma’s gonna be a real bitch, America. For there is now a terrible stain on the soul of America. Have we become soulless?"
"Gaza Tells Us Who We Are"
by Caitlin Johnstone
"Some days it’s hard to say which is more horrific: the Gaza genocide itself, or the moral decay throughout our society which makes it possible. I mean, the atrocities in Gaza have a couple million victims. If you add up the populations of the US, Europe, Canada and Australia, you’ve got around a billion people living in a dystopia whose collective conscience is so warped and twisted that they’d allow their governments to support a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world. A billion people who are so morally bankrupt that they find it tolerable for such a nightmare to be inflicted upon their fellow human beings right in front of them.
This has been especially pronounced during the heat of a US presidential race, with tens of millions of voters falling all over themselves to cognitively sweep Gaza under the carpet so they can throw their support behind one of the two mainstream candidates who’ve both pledged to support the Zionist state which is perpetrating this genocide. At best they see Israel’s crimes as an annoying side issue which the left keeps disrupting their Kamala parties about, and at worst they support Israel’s actions entirely.
What a pointless, meaningless, soulless way to live. What a betrayal of truth, and of our own humanity. How could anyone possibly find satisfaction in that kind of zombie-like existence?Mindlessly shuffling along to the beat of the status quo, devouring human flesh because it’s more comfortable than the cognitive dissonance which would come with divorcing the power-serving worldview you’ve been indoctrinated from birth into espousing.
I was listening to an interview with a doctor who worked in Gaza during the genocide and he discussed the time many months ago when the IDF forced the evacuation of a hospital and left four premature babies to die in their incubators after assuring the staff they’d be taken care of. Their tiny bodies were found decomposing weeks later after Israeli forces cleared out of the area.
How did that one incident, just by itself, not stop the world? How did it not stop us all in our tracks and force us to re-evaluate everything that led to this point? It wasn’t a secret that those four babies died; it was in the mainstream news. It was right there, right in front of us, and we did nothing. Such atrocities have been happening on a daily basis for thirteen months now, and still nothing.
We’ve got to live like this. We’ve got to live in this genocidal dystopia, surrounded by shambling sleepwalkers covered in human blood. Our lives here in the west are far, far more comfortable than the lives of people in Gaza, but they are also far less truthful, and far less capable of nourishing the human spirit.
We marinate in lies and psychopathy, watch lies and psychopathy, eat drink sleep and breathe lies and psychopathy. Our minds are full of garbage and our hearts are full of shit, and we are wading around up to our ankles in the blood, sweat and tears of the global south. This festering sore of a civilization is the only soil in which the western-backed genocide in Gaza could take root.
The people in Gaza have to suffer the consequences of who we are and what we have become, but we have to live with who we are and what we have become. We’re killing their babies and leaving them to rot, but we’re the ones who have to live with the corpses of rotting babies in our souls.
One way or another the killing in Gaza will end one day. But the forces within us which gave rise to that butchery will live on long after the sounds of the drones and explosions have ceased. We will have to live like that. We will have to live knowing that this is who we are."
o
Americans! Read it, God damn you, you paid for it all,
allow and support this horror!
Hang your heads in eternal shame and disgrace!