Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/30/21:
"Critical Must Know Now Updates"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/30/21:
"Must Watch: The Endgame Is Coming,
But For Now You MUST Be In The Right Spots"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, July 30, 2021
The Poet: Ernest Dowson, "Vitae Summa Brevis"
"Vitae Summa Brevis"
"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses;
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream."
- Ernest Dowson
"Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam"
is a quotation from Horace's "First Book of Odes ":
"The shortness of life prevents us from entertaining far-off hopes. "
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Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
"When Society Collapses, Will The United States Be One Of The Best Places To Be Located?"
Click image for larger size.
"When Society Collapses, Will The United States
Be One Of The Best Places To Be Located?"
by Michael Snyder
"On some level, we all know that it is just a matter of time before our society implodes. When that day finally arrives, where will you want to be living? I know that most of you have thought about this at some point. Even if we don’t admit it to others, most of us have spent at least a little bit of time thinking about worst case scenarios. Our world is getting a little bit crazier with each passing day, and that was definitely true today. We are cruising down a highway that doesn’t lead anywhere good, and it won’t be too long before the wheels start coming off. When the music finally stops and everyone is scrambling to find a chair, where will you be located?
Earlier today, I was surprised to learn that a scientific study was recently conducted to determine the best place to live during a global societal collapse. According to that study, the best place to live when our world goes completely haywire will be New Zealand… "New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study."
In recent years, New Zealand has become extremely popular with the elite. Many wealthy individuals have gobbled up properties in prime locations in anticipation of what is coming. I used to recommend New Zealand too, but after what I have witnessed during this pandemic I can no longer do that. The top politicians in New Zealand have shown that they are authoritarian control freaks, and at this point I am urging everyone to avoid the country.
One thing that you will notice about the top five names on the list is that they are all islands. Having the natural protection of the ocean is definitely a desirable thing, but being close to shore also makes you vulnerable to tsunamis and rising sea levels.
Of course no place is perfect. Wherever you live, there are going to be certain risks. The researchers that conducted this study said that a number of different factors were used to come up with the final results… "To assess which nations would be most resilient to such a collapse, countries were ranked according to their ability to grow food for their population, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration, and maintain an electrical grid and some manufacturing ability. Islands in temperate regions and mostly with low population densities came out on top. When they were asked about the United States, the researchers said that the inability of the U.S. to prevent mass migration pushes it just out of the top 5…"
That’s because its giant land borders make it vulnerable to migration from people who would be trying to escape climate disasters in their own countries: Think streams of people pouring over the southern border from Mexico or the northern border from Canada, for instance. Still, the U.S. would have fallen somewhere just out of the Top 5, the researchers at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K. told DailyMail.com.
Unfortunately, I believe that there are other factors which need to be considered which should push the U.S. way down the list. For example, during the riots of 2020 we clearly witnessed the potential for widespread civil unrest in this country. Major cities were burning from coast to coast last summer, and since that time we have been experiencing an unprecedented spike in violent crime. So when things really start falling apart, I would strong recommend avoiding any of our core urban areas.
Another factor to consider is how authorities would react during a major pandemic. This week, the authoritarian side of Joe Biden has come out, and it has been quite frightening to watch. I think that one lesson that we have all learned over the past year is that during a global health crisis you really want to be some place where you can simply be left alone.
The potential for natural disasters is another very important factor that was not mentioned by the researchers that conducted the study. Our world is not a stable place, and we saw another very clear example of this on Thursday. Alaska was hit by a magnitude 8.2 earthquake, and that represented the largest quake to hit the United States in more than 50 years… "The largest Alaska earthquake since 1965 caused a tsunami warning and local evacuations along the southwest Gulf of Alaska coast late Wednesday. After tsunami waves of less than 1 foot arrived onshore, the warning was canceled and coastal residents returned home. Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said he expects any damage from the earthquake may be revealed in the morning."
We are being told that it was the sixth largest earthquake in the recorded history of North America, and it really shook a lot of people up… "In Sand Point, Patrick Mayer, the superintendent of schools for the Aleutians East Borough, was sitting in his kitchen when the shaking started. “It started to go and just didn’t stop,” he said. “It went on for a long time and there were several aftershocks, too. The pantry is empty all over the floor, the fridge is empty all over the floor.”
Sadly, the truth is that this is just the beginning. As I have detailed in “Lost Prophecies” and “7 Year Apocalypse”, I am deeply concerned about the potential for great natural disasters on both coasts and along the New Madrid fault zone in the middle of the country.
War is another factor that the researchers should have considered. It is hard to imagine an entirely peaceful global societal collapse. And when a major war does erupt, it is probably inevitable that the United States will be right in the middle of it. Right now, military experts are telling us that Taiwan is one of the key hotspots that could potentially spark a major war, and we just learned that China recently simulated an invasion of the island… "Fears of World War Three have been sparked after China staged massive military drills “invading Taiwan”. Beijing also boasted about defeating the US and the UK in any conflict – and says it is confident the advantages are on its side.
And I also think that it is very noteworthy that Russia and China are planning to conduct “joint military exercises” next month… "Russia and China will conduct joint military exercises involving 10,000 troops in mid-August, the Interfax news agency cited the Russian defense ministry as saying on Thursday."
So many of the trends that I have been watching for years are now starting to accelerate. The hour is late, and time is running out. But of course any sort of a “global collapse” is simply unimaginable to most Americans, and for now ignorance is bliss."
"Things Get Ripe"
"Things Get Ripe"
by Jim Kunstler
"Besides trying to just live their lives in these days of socioeconomic meltdown, which, Gawd knows, is hard enough, the people can barely sort out the seemingly malevolent intentions of the folks in-charge of the monster that government has become. And so, the question arises: are they actually trying to kill us all, or are they so corrupt and stupid that everything they touch falls apart? In other words, is it mastermindery or clusterf**kery?
On the former side, you have that gallery of international villains out of the James Bond playbook: Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, and George Soros - megalomaniacs armed with mega-money, a sho’nuff recipe for trouble - representing the emergence of a world-saving regime, in concert with lackey national leaderships. Their narrative goes like this: humans have over-replicated, like maggots in a trash can, they’re wrecking the planet and gobbling (our) resources, and we must find a way to get rid of them that looks like a natural catastrophe so the hidden powers-that-be-don’t get blamed for pulling a global Auschwitz. Hence Covid-19 and the sketchy vaccinations. (“The Great Reset.” You will be dead and you will like it!)
I must say, I don’t go for that story, even if that trio have played their parts in some wicked doings du jour. Rather, I subscribe to the latter scenario: the likelihood that we’re in a pile-up of quandaries that we can only pretend to manage, and that all our pretenses of control and management only make things worse, while making a mockery of human ingenuity. This does not rule out an element of personal greed and attempted power-mongering, but look, for instance, at where all that has left the hapless Dr. Tony Fauci.
Not only did he finance the development of the Covid-19 virus so he could heroically bring forth a super-vax to the awe of mankind, and gain a niche in the pantheon of Great Men in History (plus make a buck on his share of the vax patents), but he screwed up the public health messaging so badly that Science itself now looks like a mere evil racket instead of the great achievement it used to be. His reputation is shot and he could end his days in an orange jump suit doing Chinese fire drills up and down the exercise court at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.
Anyway, the Covid-19 story is now utterly unraveling and the official actions around it look desperately idiotic. It’s back to mass mask-ups and maybe even lockdowns. But don’t get the idea that those mRNA vaccines turned out to have a short half-life — though it kind of looks like they did. In which case, why the panicky rush to get absolutely everybody vaxed up? And how’s that working? I’ll tell you how: only with last-ditch attempts at totalitarian intimidation… you will have no rights to earn a living, go out in public, buy anything, or even protest on the street about any of these insults to human dignity.
The world has never seen the launch of such a gigantic lead balloon. All week, the hysteria has been building and now the balloon is falling to earth as the CDC prepares to announce that the vaxes are a bust against the “Delta variant” and it’s back to the drawing board for all the toiling myrmidons of Big Pharma. Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi get some insider info on this, having appointed herself mask-sheriff of the US Capitol Building, threatening now to arrest non-masked members and their staffers. Indeed, even a few fully-vaxed-up congresspeople were moved to shout, “Hey wait a minute.”
Mrs. Pelosi, meanwhile, is busy orchestrating her national sob story to prove that half the country are domestic terrorists for trespassing in her office and need to be cancelled, especially the former president behind that dastardly “insurrection” — against whom criminal referrals will be shortly forthcoming to Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice. As if… one can only think.
As if, that is, the half of America not lost in the transports of Wokery and fantasies of half-assed communism are going to roll over for it. Please, pull the pin on that grenade, Nancy, you demented, deliquescing old jade! America has had enough of you, and your mendacious machinations, and of your sidekick, the sham president “Joe Biden” and his pitiful mummeries in the service of a claque that wants to destroy what little remains of the public interest and our national honor. You have no idea, Nancy, how all this is going to blow up in your face and leave you a figure of historic odium.
Meanwhile, events churn relentlessly in the background… especially the bankruptcy of America (the Western World, really), and the unappetizing effect that will have on our standard-of-living… and the terrifying momentum of election audits that will prompt a national crisis of confidence as summer stumbles into fall… and drought, crop failures, supply-line breaks, and food shortages coming down… and hundreds of thousands of third world mutts jumping the southern border… and the very real possibility that China will just go ahead and snatch Taiwan while our pussified US military hollers “no fair” from a safe distance….
I tell you, this is some ripe moment. We are spinning into pandemonium. The vacuum of leadership is awesome, as if Gawd himself has split the scene in utter disgust and left matters to the ancient furies."
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Related:
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 7/30/21"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 7/30/21"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Looks like VP Joe Biden is taking the gloves off and is now trying to force more people into this experimental gene therapy so-called vaccine. He’s wanting federal employees to get the injection or face mandatory Covid tests. Well, almost all federal employees. The Post Office, who helped Biden cheat his way into office, has been exempted from the executive vax order. This came after the Post Office employees told the White House, in no uncertain terms, there would be no shots for them. Biden is also offering $100 to anyone getting the CV19 shots as an incentive. Wow, what a deal!! $100 to risk death or many other known adverse reactions to the experimental gene therapy drug trial masquerading as some sort of well formulated vaccine. It’s not.
Former Pfizer employee and medical analyst Karen Kingston analyzes complicated medical patents such as the ones for the CV19 vaccines for a living. Kingston came on the Stew Peters Show and said there is a secret ingredient in them all, and it is a known human poison called Graphene Oxide. She contends the injections are “evil” and amount to a “bioweapon.” She warns nobody should be getting these jabs because they are “dangerous.” Related: "2021 - The Year Of The Mass Poisoning" (Excerpt)
The economy is not really recovering, and that is a big worry because of all the money printing doled out to prop up the economy. Now, the Fed is signaling it will not be cutting back on the easy money policies anytime soon because the economy is so weak. Economist John Williams of Shadowstats.com is warning he is seeing big-time systemic risks and liquidity issues."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 7.30.21:
Thursday, July 29, 2021
Gerald Celente, "Will COVID War 2.0 Crash the Economy?"
Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, PM 7/29/21:
"Will COVID War 2.0 Crash the Economy?"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over hype and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in the increasingly turbulent times ahead."
More Banks are Closing Accounts and Limiting Transactions- Are You Ready?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedy, Pm 7/29/21:
"More Banks are Closing Accounts and Limiting
Transactions - Are You Ready?"
"Apps are seizing money and not giving it back."
"Shockingly Bad Home Sales Data Derail The Fed's Tapering Plans"
Full screen recommended.
"Shockingly Bad Home Sales Data
Derail The Fed's Tapering Plans"
by Epic Economist
"Federal Reserve's policy hawks are expecting the central bank to reduce its massive intervention in the mortgage market as conditions in the housing market have started to look increasingly risky while home prices continue to record a relentless rise. The Federal Open Market Committee Meeting is closely watched by the biggest firms in the financial markets, especially at a time when the Fed is expected to provide an update on the progress of taper discussions amid growing imbalances both in the markets and the economy. The general view amongst financial analysts is that the Fed's leadership will send a clearer signal of the likely timeline for an official announcement at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium in August. But in the latest meeting that happened two days ago, this was already a key concern amongst officials and market watchers, who were expecting any hint from Fed Chair Jerome Powell of whether the central bank would taper its purchases of mortgage-backed securities faster than its buying of Treasury debt.
The meeting was essentially an assessment of which scenario the central bank's committee would see as the biggest risk: the recent rise in inflation, or the recent rise in the delta variant. For over a year, the central bank has been suppressing interest rates to near-zero levels, and it also has been buying $80 billion of Treasuries and $40 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) each month as part of the crisis-era bond-buying programs it relaunched last year at the onset of the health crisis. But economists are expecting it to start decreasing the pace of purchases this year or early in 2022. Now, Fed officials have to decide when and how to start doing that, because a single wrong turn could trigger a financial catastrophe in highly-exposed and overly-leveraged markets. They have to evaluate if the bank should taper purchases of Treasuries and MBS at similar rates or if it should prioritize scaling back purchases of MBS considering the growing imbalances of the housing market.
The Fed's record-low mortgage rates, in addition to the unprecedented cash payments issued by the U.S. government to households and a shift in consumer patterns, have all contributed to fuel an epic boom in housing. Home prices have skyrocketed by 20% this month compared to the same period a year ago, recording the fastest pace of increase since 1988. But it doesn't matter which decision the Fed ultimately makes, because it won't probably have enough impact to reverse the enormous increases in housing prices, as explained by Aneta Markowska, the chief economist at Jefferies. With inventories at record lows and builders facing a series of constraints on new construction due to a historic labor shortage and widespread material shortages related to the latest supply chain disruption, demand for housing has already started to go down. “The only way to relieve the pressure is for home builders to just create more supply,” Markowska said. “That’s really not something that the Fed can do a whole lot about".
This week's surprisingly weak home sales data for the month of June showed that due to record-high home prices, home sales tumbled by a whopping 6.6% MoM. With sales of new homes collapsing in June to the lowest level since April 2020, all of these indicators are signaling that the housing boom is effectively ready for a bust, meaning that a housing market crash may be triggered sooner than expected. Even though the Federal Reserve didn't make an explicit mention of tapering anytime soon at this week's FOMC meeting, monetary tightening could begin in stages as early as 2022, according to Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO of Quill Intelligence. But the uncertainty surrounding the motivation behind the tapering still exists. Will the Fed taper its purchases as fears about an inflationary spike in the U.S. economy resurface, triggering the simultaneous crash of stock, bond and housing markets which Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and even Goldman have been warning about, or will it continue to deny to talk about any tapering at least until there is some clarity on the new government infrastructure plan?
In any case, we are not that far from seeing remarkable reductions happening, simply because, as Booth told David Lin, anchor of Kitco News, interest rates would not have to rise to their historic average of 5.7% for debt payments to become unaffordable for the Treasury. The thing is: if the Fed waits too long to start acting, and inflation levels may spiral out of control very rapidly, to the point the central bank would be left with no choice other than aggressively hiking interest rates back to its historic average. And as Booth warned, once interest rates reach this level, it’s game over."
Musical Interlude: Dan Fogelberg, "Nether Lands"
Full screen recommended.
Dan Fogelberg, "Nether Lands"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"This tall telescopic field of view looks out along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the nebula rich constellation Cygnus the Swan. Popularly called the Tulip Nebula, the brightest glowing cloud of interstellar gas and dust above center is also found in the 1959 catalog by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as Sh2-101. Nearly 70 light-years across the complex and beautiful Tulip Nebula blossoms about 8,000 light-years away, shown in a Hubble palette image that maps the glow of the nebula's sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen ions into red, green, and blue colors.
Ultraviolet radiation from young energetic stars at the edge of the Cygnus OB3 association, including O star HDE 227018, ionizes the atoms and powers the emission from the Tulip Nebula. Also in the field of view is microquasar Cygnus X-1, one of the strongest X-ray sources in planet Earth's sky. Driven by powerful jets from a black hole accretion disk, its fainter bluish curved shock front is only just visible though, directly above the cosmic Tulip's petals near the top of the frame."
Free Download: Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"
"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"
"I... don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
- Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”
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"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
An excerpt from “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand.
Full text of “Francisco’s Money Speech” is here:
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Freely download "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, here:
"What Are The Facts?"
“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”
- Robert A. Heinlein
“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.”
- Carl Sagan
And always remember...
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"
Hey, who lied and told you any of this was easy?
"2021 - The Year Of The Mass Poisoning" (Excerpt)
A Comment: The conclusions drawn in this lengthy article will shock, horrify and enrage you, seemingly so mind-numbingly insane that they couldn't be possible. Incredibly, astonishingly, I personally believe this narrative to be the truth. Please research this yourself and draw your own informed opinions as to its validity. - CP
"2021 - The Year Of The Mass Poisoning" (Excerpt)
by Clive Maund
"We have come to the end of a Grand Supercycle that was marked by both debt and population being stretched to their absolute limits. With the debt bubble set to implode after a desperate last gasp run into hyperinflation, the world population which had been enabled to grow to extreme levels by debt expansion, is set to crash and it is clear from their actions of the past couple of years that the ruling elites have decided to take full control of this process and accelerate it dramatically with lockdowns designed to destroy the world economy and a genocidal forced experimental mRNA gene therapy program intended to eliminate a large percentage of the world population.
2021 will go down as one of the darkest, if not THE darkest year in the entire history of the human race for this is the year when the narrow clique of plutocrats who have acquired immense wealth and influence and now control the planet actively implement their long formulated plan to exterminate a large percentage of the population and transform those who survive into compliant transhuman slave bots who can be remotely controlled, with ownership of the assets of the entire population being in due course transferred to the elite ruling class.
Human history and not just human history but the history of the world itself is defined by epochs which are long periods having unique characteristics that don’t change very much, which eventually end by transitioning into another epoch, sometimes suddenly, a simple example being the epoch of the dinosaurs being abruptly ended by the impact of a massive meteor. We have just witnessed the end of such an epoch which ran from the end of the 2nd World War up to the end of 2019 when it was terminated by the activation of the global elites’ Master Plan. This last epoch which ran for almost 75 years was an era of unprecedented freedom peace and prosperity for many, especially across the Western world, that has now ended, and we are now in a cathartic transition phase into a new epoch that many will not live to see.
The precipitating factors leading to this transition are the critical instability resulting from a global economy fuelled by unsustainable debt expansion coupled with massive overpopulation which are both set to implode and collapse. What is happening is that the global ruling class have decided to take control of this implosion and collapse, hence their euphemistic, lofty and endearing term for it “The Great Reset”. What we are now seeing unfold is the collapse of civilization into a barbaric brutal dystopia, with the resurrection of a feudal society which in many respects will be much worse than the Middle Ages because of the level of control available to the ruling class through technology that will allow round the clock non-stop control of the minds and bodies of the surviving peasants. If Kenneth Clarke were still around he could make a sequel to his epic TV series called “Civilization” which would be named “The Collapse of Civilization” although it probably wouldn’t need to run to 13 episodes like the original.
In this article I am going to refrain from adopting the usual “them and us” approach which is the custom of most writers and instead attempt to adopt an impartial objective approach as if we are curious visitors from another planet attempting to figure out what is going on. Thus, we will strive to see things from the perspective of those in control of society and also from the larger perspective of the Earth itself and the future of its plants and animals and general ecosystems. Henceforth we will refer to the elite ruling class of plutocrats as the NWO, short for New World Order both for brevity and because that is what they have long stated that they want to create."
Please view this complete, lengthy, critically important article here:
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Related, essential:
"Life's Funny..."
"Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living."
- Alysha Speer
"The joke was thinking you were ever really in charge of your life. You pressed your oar down into the water to direct the canoe, but it was the current that shot you through the rapids. You just hung on and hoped not to hit a rock or a whirlpool."
- Scott Turow
"Life's funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don't want to throw it away. But you can't really live it at all unless you're willing to give it up for the things you love. If you're not at least willing to die for something - something that really matters - in the end you die for nothing."
- Andrew Klavan
"With Us or Against Us"
"With Us or Against Us"
by Bill Bonner
POITOU, FRANCE – “Je n’embrasse plus,” said an old friend when she came to visit. An exchange of kisses is customary in this part of France. But Chantal is taking no chances. And so, the world changes. Fear… anger… shaming… coercion – sinister emotions slip like snakes under an old door.
Final Truth: We are exploring the Brave New World of a “mission economy.” We fear it is a dark place. A mission economy is one where private needs and desires are subordinated to “public purpose.” Unfortunately, the public purpose is decided, not by the public, but by the same elite schemers, incompetents, and jackasses who control the rest of government.
They give us the War on Drugs… the War on Poverty… the War on Terror – all missions accomplished! And now, it is time to draft us for a war against a virus? We’ve seen that almost all public health measures designed to stop the virus – lockdowns, masks, etc. – have failed. It doesn’t seem to matter what you did… the results are uncorrelated. Now, vaccines are supposed to do the trick. But nobody really knows whether universal vaccination is a good thing or a bad thing.
Statistically, a person under the age of 44 has very little chance of dying from the dreaded disease. He might just as likely die from a traffic accident. Should such low-risk people go about their business and build up a natural “herd” immunity… or should the whole herd, young and old, at risk or not, get a shot in the arm with a drug that didn’t even exist a year ago?
And a report this week from a hospital in Leiden, in the Netherlands, tells us that 85% of its new COVID-19 cases were already vaccinated. Alas, nobody has the Full and Final Truth. At least, we don’t.
Colds and Opinions: Typically, people are allowed their own opinions… and get to decide for themselves what they put into their bodies. They enter shopping malls and restaurants, carrying their colds and opinions with them. The germs spread… some people succumb. But most build up a resistance. And the human race survives. But when a society gets into mission mode, contrary opinion is no longer allowed.
“Vaccinated America Has Had Enough,” writes editor David Frum in The Atlantic magazine, picking up the “anger” theme we explored yesterday. To fully understand where this is coming from, you have to connect the dots. Frum was a speechwriter for George W. Bush. It was he who came up with the preposterous “Axis of Evil” epithet. Back then, his mission was to gin up support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. You were either “with us or against us” said George W., perhaps reading Frum’s words on a teleprompter. Let us back up the tape and take a closer look.
Anti-American:Following the 9/11 attack, Congress rushed to judgement. In a hasty vote on 9/14, the pols gave Bush a blank check to “use all necessary and appropriate force” to bring the “bad guys” to heel. Only a single member of Congress – Barbara Lee from California – had the good sense and cool head to vote no. She pointed out that the resolution gave a “blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events - anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit… “A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed.”
But the nation’s blood was up. Now, it had a mission! Poor Ms. Lee got death threats and was accused of being “anti-American,” even by the normally sober Wall Street Journal. So great was the vitriol that she needed around-the-clock bodyguards to protect her. But she was right. The wars created by the Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney team… and jingoed up by David Frum… were disasters.
Breaking Point: Continuing with his “us vs. them” theme today, Frum divides the country in two. There are the virtuous good citizens in “Biden’s America.” And there are the nay-sayers… the unvaccinated… the unclean… the untouchables in “Trump’s America.” The good ones are running out of patience. Have they reached the “breaking point,” he asks? He thinks it’s time to get tough: "The Biden administration could require proof of vaccination to fly or to travel by interstate, train or bus. It could mandate that federal contractors demonstrate that their workforces are vaccinated. It could condition federal student loans on proof of vaccination…"
They would spread the message about what people ought to do, in the same way that sanctions against drunk driving, cheating on taxes, and unjust discrimination in the workplace do. Then comes the criminal accusation: "In the end, the unvaccinated person himself or herself has decided to inflict a preventable and unjustifiable harm upon family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet."
Yes… Now it’s coming clear… the anti-vaxxers are terrorists! Frum does not suggest it, but shouldn’t they be hunted down… like religious heretics or fanatical bomb throwers? More to come…"
"Have You Seen the Olympics? Probably Not. FYI, It’s Not About Sports Anymore"
"Have You Seen the Olympics? Probably Not.
FYI, It’s Not About Sports Anymore"
by Simon Black
"Late in the evening of October 17, 1534, a small group of protestant activists swept across the five biggest cities in France, posting anti-Catholic propaganda posters all over town in major public squares. The activists even managed to brazenly nail one of their posters to the bedroom door of King Francis I, himself a Catholic. (There were even rumors that the activists slipped their literature into one of the King’s pockets as he slept.)
Francis was furious. He had always been tolerant of protestants in his country and allowed people to worship freely… at a time when religious tolerance was quite rare in Europe. But he felt the activists had gone too far. So he had them all tracked down and burned at the stake.
This was merely an opening salvo in what would eventually become a full blown civil war in France, known as the “Wars of Religion” between Catholics and Protestants. In retrospect this may be one of the most pointless and idiotic civil wars in the history of western civilization. Both sides were French– a kingdom that had existed for centuries and enjoyed a strong national identity since at least the mid 1400s. Both sides spoke the same language, shared similar values. Even religiously, they both worshiped the same God. They both had faith in Jesus Christ. They both believed in heaven and hell.
Their differences were minor. They had different customs and rituals. And they disagreed on small details – like predestination, the infallibility of the pope, or the supreme authority of the bible over the authority of the church. Yet despite standing on the same ground on virtually 95% of everything, their 5% disagreement led to one of the deadliest wars in European history. More than 3 million died as a result of this pointless conflict. And it took decades for the violence to stop and the French economy to finally recover.
I’ve thought about this history quite frequently over the past several months as a historical metaphor for our own time. That’s not because of the level of violence; our own modern social conflict is “mostly peaceful”, after all. But what I find most irritating about the extreme level of tension today is that, like the Catholics and Protestants from French history, people tend to agree on most things.
For example, the vast majority of people in a civilized society today probably agree that racism is stupid and shouldn’t exist. It seems like THAT should be the most important point, and obvious common ground. Yet one side tells the other side, ‘If you’re not 100% on board with everything in our doctrine, then you’re a White Supremacist.’ And then crazy conflict ensues.
School boards try to reinvent the entire education system and indoctrinate children with hardcore, woke literature. Angry digital mobs swarm all over non-believers trying to ruin lives and destroy businesses. And angrier mobs have rampaged through the streets, taken over government buildings, and even declared their own autonomous zones.
This is utterly ridiculous behavior when you consider how closely aligned most people are on the most important points of the issue. Yet that small 5% difference has caused one side to completely spiral out of control and engage in de facto acts of terrorism – stoking fear through violence, threats, and intimidation, in an effort to unilaterally dictate national policy. Compromise is out of the question. Discussion is off the table. The fact that most people agree on probably 95% of the issue is totally irrelevant. Their only tactic is conflict. And every woke fanatic has enlisted as a foot soldier to wage a nonstop campaign of propaganda, fear, and public spectacle. And that includes celebrities, ‘journalists’, and athletes.
Just take a look at the Olympics. No seriously, take a look. Because if you’re like most people, you probably haven’t been watching. TV ratings for the Olympics are at their lowest level in decades… because everyone knows it’s not about sports anymore. If you can manage to stomach the extreme lunacy of Japan’s Covid protocol theater, you then have to put up with a never-ending display of political protests. And if you haven’t vomited all over yourself by then, you’ll then have to suffer the indignity of the NBC broadcast team’s groveling and virtue signaling.
For example, we’ve seen one country’s female (can you still use that word?) gymnastics team change their competition uniform to skin-tight onesies with flesh-colored plunging necklines. To them, this new sultry uniform is a protest against the sexualization of female gymnasts. The media, of course, is eating it up, and praising these gymnasts for their bravery and courage. Seriously? Has the bar for courage been set so low that you get a gold star for putting on a sequined unitard?
Then there were judo competitors from two different countries (Sudan and Algeria) who refused to face an Israeli opponent, citing the Israeli government’s activities in Palestine.(Ironically, this is also the same reason why Ben & Jerry’s wants to stop selling ice cream in Israel. No soup for you!)
But these examples don’t even scratch the surface of the athlete protests. Of course there’s going to be a lot of kneeling during national anthems. That’s so commonplace it’s almost passé now. NFL teams routinely take a knee for the national anthem, if they bother taking the field at all. And even if you try to ignore it, the game announcers keep at-home viewers informed in real time, telling us which players are standing, and which are kneeling.
The NBA is even worse, where athletes flat-out refuse to play as a form of protest. In completely unrelated news, NBA ratings are also at their lowest levels in decades. In fact the most recent NBA finals averaged fewer than 10 million viewers… which is about 30% fewer people as watched a typical episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation back in the 1990s. It’s also a fraction of what the NBA finals viewership used to be even a few years ago.
Major League Baseball refuses to be left out of this terminal decline in viewership. You may recall that the MLB’s recent all-star game was supposed to have been played in Atlanta earlier this month. But the league decided to move the all-star game to Denver in order to protest a voting law passed by the state of Georgia, which had been called ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ by a bunch of people who didn’t bother to actually read the text of the legislation. Had anyone bothered to read the law, they would have seen that it drastically expands voting and makes it much easier for people to cast their ballots.
But that doesn’t matter. Any voting law changes in 2021 are ‘Jim Crow’ and ‘UnAmerican’. So baseball jumped on board the ignorance train and staged its woke protest. Unsurprisingly, viewership of the all-star game plummeted to a record low. And this is good news. These dismal ratings are proof that ultra-woke loudmouths only constitute a tiny minority of the population.
The bad news, however, is that they’ve managed to take over prominent institutions, like education, media, technology, and big corporations. And they refuse to see that the majority of people are good, decent, and level-headed who agree on the most important points of the issue, i.e. racism is stupid and shouldn’t exist. But 95% agreement isn’t good enough for them. So they refuse to compromise. And just like the wars of religion in French history, the inability to compromise could make this ridiculous social conflict last for years… if not decades to come."
Gregory Mannerino, "7/29/21: Updates"
Gregory Mannerino, AM 7/29/21:
"Important Updates"
○
Gregory Mannerino, PM 7/29/21:
"Inflation Continues To SURGE Higher As The Economy Craters"
Wednesday, July 28, 2021
"The Fed Stays the Course as You Get Destroyed - Inflation Ignored"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 7/28/21:
"The Fed Stays the Course as You Get Destroyed - Inflation Ignored"
"The Fed and Jerome Powell stayed its course and did not raise interest rates. This economy is detached from all reality. Inflation is skyrocketing around us and you need to earn money. It’s time to start a side hustle."
"The FED Is Creating A Horrific Economic Crisis; Interest Rates Will Rise; Bank Runs - Fake People"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/28/21:
"The FED Is Creating A Horrific Economic Crisis;
Interest Rates Will Rise; Bank Runs - Fake People"
Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Divenire, Live at Royal Albert Hall, London"
Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi,
"Divenire, Live at Royal Albert Hall, London"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"The rim of the large blue galaxy at the right is an immense ring-like structure 150,000 light years in diameter composed of newly formed, extremely bright, massive stars. AM 0644-741 is known as a ring galaxy and was caused by an immense galaxy collision. When galaxies collide, they pass through each other and their individual stars rarely come into contact. The large galaxy's ring-like shape is the result of the gravitational disruption caused by a small intruder galaxy passing through it. When this happens, interstellar gas and dust become compressed, causing a wave of star formation to move out from the impact point like a ripple across the surface of a pond.
Other galaxies in the field of view are background galaxies, not interacting with AM 0644-741. Foreground spiky stars are within our own Milky Way. But the smaller intruder galaxy is caught above and right, near the top of the frame taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Ring galaxy AM 0644-741 lies about 300 million light years away toward the southern constellation Volans."
"Return of Kabuki – If We Let It"
"Return of Kabuki – If We Let It"
by Eric Peters
"To understand why the Face Diapers are coming back it is necessary to understand why they appeared in the first place. More precisely, why they were forced onto faces. Last year around this time, it was necessary to create the image of a “pandemic” and more than that, the image of near-universal agreement that there was a “pandemic.” Both were achieved by forcing practically everyone to walk around with a thing around their faces formerly seen only on the faces of the mentally ill – outside of surgical suites. It gave the visual of a national Hantavirus ward, sans the Hantavirus.
And of course, sans the bodies stacking up like cordwood. “The cases! The cases!” were stacked up instead.
The problem with that was – and remains – that there are still a lot of people who can distinguish between a “case” and a corpse. These people could see that the bodies weren’t stacking up like cordwood, that hospitals were not overflowing with dying supplicants.
They also knew – as in knowledge, a thing distinct from belief, as in religion – that if they weren’t sick, they couldn’t transmit sickness and that it is sick (in the head) to walk around with a rag over their faces pretending to be sick or pretending to be in dread of sickness or because others are crippled by hypochondria – an obsessive fixation on and fear of getting sick.
They also knew that even if they did get this putative sickness, unless they were over 70 and not in good health, they stood a 99.8 percent chance of not dying.
To live – and look – as if they were over 70 and not in good health made no sense to them. It would be like a not-handicapped person using a cane or a competent driver limiting his driving to no faster than 25 MPH and only down to the corner store and back because some old people can’t see very well anymore and they lack the skills to competently drive 75 on the highway.
In addition, they also knew – once again, as opposed to believing – that wrapping a dirty old bandana around their faces doesn’t impede viral particles any more than a chain link fence thwarts mosquitos – and for that matter, neither does the “mask” that most of the population has been wearing, these things being dust masks of the sort used by people on construction sites and even if of the N95 variety, poorly fitted or fiddled with by fingers all day long – and after all day long suffused with schnott and far more disgusting than palliative.
These people, if given the free choice, would choose not to perform this sick kabuki – it being disgusting and absurd – and by not performing it, the sight of them would have prevented the image of a “pandemic” and the appearance of near-universal belief in the existence of one – each reinforcing the other – from ever having successfully implanted.
Which would have thwarted all of the evil impositions visited upon the people of this country, most especially little kids – who (unlike some adults) are more easily terrorized and traumatized and also much more helpless, in that they have to do what the adults tell them to do. Thus they were denied the usual childhood normalcy of friends and school, “locked down” like lepers and taught by the sick adults around them to regard others as lepers. The damage done in this regard is nothing shy of catastrophic and will take years to undo, if it ever is undone.
Some of the more suggestible would of course have Diapered up, regardless. But the sight of lots of faces – and no bodies stacking up – would have tempered the fear of many of these, who probably would have removed their Diapers, too.
None of that could be tolerated. It is why Diapers were “mandated.” And it is why Diapers are about to be “mandated” again – and already have been, in places like Los Angeles and St. Louis.
This time, because there are lots of people who know that the “vaccines” being pushed on them are – like the Face Diapers – of dubious value (people who have taken them are still getting sick) as well as known to be more dangerous than any other “vaccine” ever allowed into general circulation, having already caused thousands of deaths as well as thousands of serious complications and who knows what else in the months and years to come.
They know the “vaccine” pushers have an enormous profit motive and they know the “vaccine” manufacturers are legally immunized from the consequences of any harms their “vaccines” cause. They are rightly cautious on account of all of that and rightly suspicious of the used car salesman/time-share condo hard-sell. They are also sick of the lip-snarling and threats – increasingly overt – that they’d better roll up their sleeves, or else. It makes a thinking person wonder what these drug pushers are up to.
Thus, millions of prudent, sensible people have not rolled up their sleeves – and so, the Diapers are to be re-imposed. As a punishment – and as a cudgel.
The punishment is obvious. Most people loathe being made to walk around – and go to work – with a disgusting and degrading rag over their faces. The resumed wearing thereof – and accompanying restrictions – will be the “incentive” used to coerce the rolling-up of sleeves. The renewed social pressure of seeing everyone, almost, wearing the disgusting, degrading things will be deployed to demoralize and thus, defeat, the populace by wearing them down. But there is a new element, this time.
The “vaccinated” will also be forced to Diaper Up and this will infuriate them. They will regard – they are being told to regard – those who have not rolled up their sleeves as the source of their woes and of their sickness (it does not occur to them, apparently, to ask why they are still getting sick if the “vaccine” works).
They are being egged-on by the TeeVee and horrid people like the governor of Alabama and the mayor of New York and of course, above them all, the horrible little docktor who stands at the apex of all of this, to loathe and despise the people who have not rolled up their sleeves. The Diapered-vaccinated will demand “action.” And “action” they will get. It is a pogrom in the making.
We are standing precariously on the razor’s edge. Things could go either way. They will go the sane way if enough people simply refuse to kabuki this time. The last time, it was perhaps understandable why they kabuki’d. They didn’t know. They may have been afraid. Many just didn’t want to raise a fuss and figured if they didn’t this would pass.
It will be forever, if they kabuki this time.
It cannot be overstated. Do not put on a Face Diaper this time. Refuse to do it and don’t be ashamed to not do it. Do not give in to the fear – or the pressure. Even at the risk of your job. Your job will not matter if they succeed. Arizona Cardinals receiver DeAndre Hopkins understands this. He has announced his job is not worth his rights – or his life: “Never thought I would say this, but being put in a position to hurt my team because I don’t want to partake in the vaccine is making me question my future in the NFL.”
And if we succeed, there will always be another job – one that doesn’t require abominable obedience rituals as the price of employment.
Not one inch. Give no ground on this. Stop deferring to other people’s hystericized feelings. Refuse to be cowed by their neurotic assertions about the harms not being caused. Insist on your right to not be harmed for the sake of their fears. The time for tolerance is ended. Enough is enough. This madness has got to stop. We have it in our power to stop it. We can have our lives back – if we don’t let them take them away. By refusing, this time, to put the god-damned thing on."
Chet Raymo, “Thinking About Thinking”
“Thinking About Thinking”
by Chet Raymo
“It is not easy to live in that continuous awareness of things which alone is true living," wrote the naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch. And, of course, he was right. Our brains are separated from the world by a permeable membrane. Attention flows outwards. Sense impressions flow inwards. Of this two-way traffic- this awareness- we create a soul.
At this moment, as I sit at my desk on a hillside in the west of Ireland, I try to be aware. Sunlight streams across my computer keyboard; eight minutes ago these photons were on the surface of the sun. A Pholcus phalangioides spider spins its web under the shelf above the desk; I touch the web with a pencil point and the spider does a dervish dance. Outside the window, clouds scud in from the Atlantic; there will be rain in the afternoon.
Continuous awareness: It can be exhausting. Which is why, I suppose, we sometimes wish for the mind to go blank, for the windows of the soul to close, for darkness to fall. Fortunately, the one thing we don't have to attend to is awareness itself. The brain does its thing without the least bit of conscious control on our part. And a good thing, too; if we had to attend to what is going on in the brain when we attend to the world, we'd... We'd go nuts.
Nothing we know about in the universe approaches the complexity of the human brain. What is it? A vast spider web of neurons, cells with a thousand octopuslike arms, called dendrites. The dendrites reach out and make contact at their tips with the dendrites of other cells, at junctions called synapses. A hundred billion neurons in the human brain, with an average of 1,000 dendrites each. A hundred trillion octopus arms touching like fingertips, and each synapse exquisitely controlled by the cells themselves, strengthening or weakening the contact, building webs of interlinked cells that are knowledge, memory, consciousness- self.
A hundred billion neurons. That's more brain cells than there are grains of salt in 1,000 one-pound boxes of salt. A roomful of salt grains, floor to ceiling. Each in contact with hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of others. The contacts flickering with variable strength. Continuously. Unconsciously. Never ceasing. Remembering. Forgetting. Feeling joy. Feeling pain. Thinking. Speaking. Lifting a foot, moving it forward, putting it down again. Flickering. A hundred trillion flickering synapses. Just thinking about it is exhausting.
Neuroscientists are busy trying to figure it all out. Some folks would say that bringing the scrutiny of science to bear upon the human soul is the height of presumption. Others would say that the more we learn about what makes our brains tick, the more we stand in awe at the mystery of soul.
The sheer complexity of the human brain makes any adequate description a daunting task. Which is why some neuroscientists choose to work with simpler organisms- sea snails, for example- to get a grip on the basic structure and chemistry. In recent years, new scanning technologies enable neuroscientists to watch live human brains at work. Active neural regions flicker on the screens of computer monitors as subjects think, speak, recite poems, do math. Continuous awareness, displayed on the screen of a scanning monitor, can look like a grass fire exploding across a prairie.
Still other scientists attempt to model the brain in silicon, building electronic circuits called neural networks that mimic the activity of the brain as it creates constantly changing webs of neurons. So far, no electronic network begins to approach the complexity of the human brain, but the time is not far off when silicon brains will rival brains of flesh and blood. Just trying to make it happen teaches us a lot about how human brains work.
Perhaps the most exciting research is that of the scientists who study the biochemistry of neurons: How do the cells regulate synaptic connections to build new neural webs? One big surprise is just how much of the "thinking" of neurons is done by the dendrites, those hundreds of spidery arms that connect neurons to one another. DNA in a neuron's nucleus sends messenger RNA down along the dendrites to active synapses, where they are translated into proteins that regulate the strength of synaptic connections. Tiny protein factories in the dendrites are apparently key to learning and memory. Once the regulation of these protein factories is understood, drugs that ameliorate some kinds of hereditary mental retardation might be possible. As will drugs that help all of us to learn and remember. Are we ready for "smart" pills? Memory pills?
What all this amounts to is awareness of awareness. For the first time in the history of consciousness, the machinery of awareness has been turned upon itself. As neuroscientists have discovered, thinking about thinking is not easy. Thank goodness we don't have to think about thinking to think.”
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