Marana, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, January 25, 2024
The Poet: May Sarton, "Unison Benediction"
"Unison Benediction"
"Return to the most human,
nothing less will nourish the torn spirit,
the bewildered heart,
the angry mind:
and from the ultimate duress,
pierced with the breath of anguish,
speak of love.
Return, return to the deep sources,
nothing less will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,
to carve into our lives the forms of tenderness
and still that ancient necessary pain preserve.
Return to the most human,
nothing less will teach the angry spirit,
the bewildered heart;
the torn mind,
to accept the whole of its duress,
and pierced with anguish…
at last, act for love."
~ May Sarton
"Reflect On What Happens..."
“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age breakdown. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impassible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a secular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.”
– Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”
"Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/25/24"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/25/24
"Scott Ritter: How Dangerous is
US Support for Israel and Ukraine?"
Comments here:
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, AM 1/25/24
"Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer:
Is US Military Prepared for Middle East War?"
Comments here:
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/25/24
"Col. Lawrence Wilkerson:
How Soon a Wider War in Middle East?"
Comments here:
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/25/24
"Max Blumenthal: Will the Killing Stop?"
Comments here:
"Congress..."
"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were
a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
"All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots,
and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity."
"...the smallest minds and the selfishest souls
"All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots,
and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity."
"...the smallest minds and the selfishest souls
and the cowardliest hearts that God makes."
"The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a
thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether-
well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there."
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly
native American criminal class except Congress."
"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can."
- Mark Twain
"The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a
thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether-
well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there."
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly
native American criminal class except Congress."
"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can."
- Mark Twain
Too bad the jokes on us...
"Texas Gov Defies Biden's Treason As Pro-America States Form Battle Lines To Defend Against Invasion"
"Texas Gov Defies Biden's Treason As Pro-America
States Form Battle Lines To Defend Against Invasion"
by Mike Adams
"The Governor of Texas has defied the lawless, unconstitutional SCOTUS order that demands Texas open its border and allow an unlimited invasion of enemy combatants into the country. Gov. Abbott has invoked the U.S. Constitution to declare that the rights of Texas supersede the federal government's powers. Treasonous democrats are calling for Biden to seize control of the Texas National Guard. But Oklahoma, Virginia, Florida and other states have declared they will stand with Texas.
We are rapidly advancing into a civil war scenario over illegal immigration, and the illegal Biden regime will stop at nothing to see America completely destroyed and all its citizens exterminated. This is a fight for our very survival.
Today's broadcast covers this in great detail, featuring an emergency interview with Michael Yon. Find the Brighteon Broadcast News and Michael Yon interview here:
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Bill Bonner, "Washington D.C. First"
"Washington D.C. First"
The bipartisan pledge to put America's elites before the people.
by Bill Bonner
"Great talker. Great liar."
~ An old proverb
Youghal, Ireland - "In 2021, we saw the tide turn. The Primary Trend had reversed…or so we thought. We guessed that “we will never see these highs (stock prices in real terms) again in our lifetimes.” It is now 3 years later and we still haven’t. The Dow still has 4,000 points between today’s level and a new all-time, inflation-adjusted high. Will it get there?
More about that, tomorrow. The subject today is lies…prevarications…falsehoods and counterfeits. They are such a big part of our lives – and the bulk of our public policies. They affect our livelihoods…and, obviously, our investments. They are responsible, we believe, for today’s high stock prices.
But the lies are so thick on the ground they go unobserved, like an average person in a crowd. A whole montage of fabrications makes most of them invisible. They blend in…they disguise and justify each other. And then, you can’t tell truth from lies. You see movement. You read the news. You hear one falsehood after another. Like a herd of zebras, it’s hard to separate them out.
A Creed of Lies: In the present national election, Donald Trump is supposed to be a ‘conservative.’ Joe Biden is supposed to be a ‘liberal.’ Both are imposters. The Donald is a crackpot strongman. Biden is a hack meddler. Neither has any set of principles or ideological bearings that could be called ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal.’ And for all the lip and calumnies they exchange, they share the same perverse gods. And a creed of lies. In the contest that most matters – the common man against a corrupt elite – they are both on the wrong side.
When Democrats and Republicans, almost unanimously, passed the CARES act in 2020…they gave themselves over to a debauch of fraud. There were 800 pages of it…which scarcely anyone read. There was money flowing almost everywhere, a flash-flood of made-up wealth – $2.2 trillion – that came as if, out of nowhere. Never before had the sluices of federal spending been open so wide…flushing away any residue of prudence and honesty as if they were empty plastic bottles on a rogue wave.
There was money for small businesses…money for big businesses…money for people with no business at all…people who had lost their jobs and people who never had them. There was some $25,000 worth of giveaways per family of four.
This cornucopia of pork and grift was Donald Trump’s handiwork, aided and abetted by a Democrat-controlled Congress. The theory of it was simple enough. The feds treated the Covid epidemic as if it were a natural disaster, like a fire that had swept over the nation, causing trillions in damages. (They did not mention that they had lit the flame themselves, with their State of Emergency declaration on March 13, 2020.) Then, with the generous sans souci of a bankrupt madman, they handed out money so the carpets could be replaced, the factories would be rebuilt, and people could stay home, sifting through the charred wreckage of their lives.
Faux Funds: But where would the money come from? The feds had saved nothing. The funds would have to be ‘printed up’ especially, for the occasion. Any dope could see that this was a scam. You can’t replace real wealth with pieces of paper. One is real; the other is fake. Real wealth is irreplaceable; when a house burns down, you cannot resurrect the house out of the ashes. You have to build a new one. That takes labor, skill, resources…and most important, time. Burn a house down in 2020 and you can rebuild it in 2021; but not without retarding the output slated for 2021 until 2022. Then, the work that would have been done in 2022 must be made up in 2023. Real losses are forever.
Trillions in new money was provided, but it couldn’t replace the goods, services, and incomes that lockdowns had destroyed. The result was predictable. More money. Fewer goods and services. Consumer prices would go up.
This preposterous mismanagement then created what Mr. Trump called ‘the greatest economy ever’ – which was another big lie. But by then, the elites had confected a fabulous, fatuous tower of fraud. People were so addled that they couldn’t tell fact from fiction.
There was no point in trying to ‘save money,’ said the politicians. Everybody knew the money was fake. Nor was there any point to balancing the budget, they added; federal spending exceeded federal tax receipts (not counting social security) every year since the Carter administration; this was no time to begin worrying about it.
This was another major lie. Between Trump’s CARES act, the follow-up Covid Relief Act, and Biden’s American Rescue Act, the Republic/Democratic duo added $6.5 trillion in new spending and $14 trillion to the nation’s debt during the course of their 8 years in office; it could have been stopped.
The Illusion of Choice - The feds also insisted that the money had to go out fast…even to people who really didn’t need it. This was an ‘emergency,’ they said. So, billionaires got PPP loans (which they didn’t have to pay back.) Ordinary employees earned twice as much from the feds’ supplemental unemployment payments as they had on the job.
But there was no real emergency. The Covid virus worked its way through the population, just as viruses always do. Government efforts had no measurable, unambiguous effect on the outcome. But wait, the extra spending would ‘stimulate’ the economy! That was bogus too. After so many years of deficits – each one intended to provide the ‘stimulus’ that the last one didn’t – the lie had been repeated so often it was taken as fact.
Lie after lie…fraud upon fraud…jackassery on top of jacked-up half-truths…. By then too, one of the biggest lies in the Land of the Free was that the two parties gave Americans a choice…that democracy allowed the ‘will of the people’ to prevail…and the wisdom of the masses – often late, but never wrong – would set things right. This was one of the biggest lies of all. By 1999, Republicans and Democrats had come to share a single bipartisan vision for the future of the country: Washington First!"
Dan, I Allegedly, "People Are Out Of Gas"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 1/25/24
"People Are Out Of Gas"
"You know that people have no money when Las Vegas steps forward and says it’s not worth giving away the incentives to get the low end gamblers. Restaurants are also saying it’s not worth having discounted meals because nobody is spending money on anything else. What is next?"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "'One Dollar' Food Items Everyone Should Be Buying At Kroger Right Now!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 1/25/24
"'One Dollar' Food Items Everyone
Should Be Buying At Kroger Right Now!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing a massive amount of food items on sale for one dollar. With grocery prices being the highest they have ever been, you don't want to miss this epic sale! Get your notepad pad ready as I take you shopping with me to show off these amazing deals!"
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Meanwhile, elsewhere...
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 1/25/24
"Russian Typical Supermarket Tour:
Where Do I Shop?"
"Take a walk around a typical supermarket in a regional part of Moscow. How does it compare with a supermarket in other parts of the world?"
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Canadian Prepper, "Alert: UK Mobilizing 'Citizen Army'; Russia Ground Nuclear Detonation Training; Bank Runs; WW3 Tunnels"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 1/25/24
"Alert: UK Mobilizing 'Citizen Army'; Russia Ground
Nuclear Detonation Training; Bank Runs; WW3 Tunnels"
Comments here:
"Iran-Turkey Team Up Against Israel; Raisi Tells Arab Nations To 'Cut Vital Arteries' Of Tel Aviv"
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 1/25/24
"Iran-Turkey Team Up Against Israel;
Raisi Tells Arab Nations To 'Cut Vital Arteries' Of Tel Aviv"
"Iranian President gave out a war cry against Israel during his meeting with Turkish president in Ankara. Raisi urged all nations to cut trade ties with Israel, saying "cutting the vital arteries of the Zionist regime, and political and economic relations can be effective in forcing the Zionist regime to end all these atrocities." Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that both the leaders discussed the need for an immediate end to Israel's "inhumane" attacks on Gaza. He also reiterated Turkey's support for the "just cause of Palestine."
Comments here:
Comments: Some valid factual Middle East contextual observations:
• Gaza: 28,000 innocent men, women, old people and 12,000 children have been killed by the IDF dropping over 29,000 bombs including 6,000 2,000 lb. bombs supplied by the United States. The entire 2 billion Muslim world is absolutely and rightfully enraged.
• Turkey has a 2 million man totally modern and equipped professional military, whom Scott Ritter describes as "ferocious fighters" which includes a powerful air force and navy, and huge missile stockpiles. They could very rapidly eliminate the IDF.
• Syria can and will retake the occupied Golan Heights. The IDF has neither the troops or the resources to stop this.
• Hezzbollah has 100,000 very well trained and equipped professional soldiers, battle hardened by 10 years of involvement in the Syrian civil war. Doug Macgregor states they have 140,000 missiles which can reach anywhere in Israel.
• Hamas in Gaza has fought the IDF to a standstill and withdraw while only using a fraction of their reported 40,000 fighters.
• The entry of Iran into a wider regional war is a distinct probability, adding it's huge military and 10's of thousands of missiles stockpiles to the mix.
• The Yemeni Houthis, whom Ritter describes as the honey badgers of the Middle East, absolutely fearless and ferocious, have closed the Red Sea to all shipping causing enormous financial losses not only to Israel but the global economy. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates dare not attempt to intervene under threat of Houthis completely destroying their petroleum facilities.
• The Egyptian government, while reluctant, may be forced into the conflict by the political pressure of their absolutely enraged population which is demanding action.
• Israel's only ally is the United States, which is totally impotent to assist them, lacking the troops and ability to intervene. The US Navy fleet are useless sitting ducks, targets for precise missile strikes, and would very rapidly be destroyed, including the aircraft carriers.
Stipendium peccati mors est, Israel...
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Epic Economist, "Prepare For Starvation: The Mortgage Crisis is Getting Worse"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 1/24/24
"Prepare For Starvation:
The Mortgage Crisis is Getting Worse"
"Navigate the turbulent waters of the housing market crisis. With skyrocketing mortgage rates, dwindling affordability, and a severe shortage of homes, the 2024 real estate landscape is filled with economic tension. Explore the complexities, from the impact of rising interest rates to the struggle for housing supply. Uncover predictions, potential market corrections, and the delicate balance between high mortgage rates and strong demand. Join the conversation and share your insights on the challenges faced by both buyers and sellers in this unsettling housing market scenario."
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "Job Loss Apocalypse Has Begun; Disturbing Signs Americans Can't Afford A Small Emergency"
Jeremiah Babe, 1/24/24
"Job Loss Apocalypse Has Begun;
Disturbing Signs Americans Can't Afford A Small Emergency"
Comments here:
Fred Reed, "Here We Go Again in the Holy Land"
"Here We Go Again in the Holy Land"
by Fred Reed
"‘Nuther day, ‘nuther few morgue loads in Gaza. It has become almost boring, 28,000 dead, including 12,000 children, 29,000 bombs dropped including over 6,000 2000 lb. bombs and counting. Should we go for a record? But questions do arise to reinvigorate flagging interest. What kind of human will intentionally bomb a hospital? Or a refugee camp? Is there nothing so foul that an Israeli pilot will not do it? What could be more cowardly? What would it take to get you, the reader, to bomb a hospital?
Of course it is not only the scale of what Israel is doing, but the dogged, unrelenting cold-bloodedness of it, its shamelessness. It would never occur to a military man, Israeli or otherwise, to say, “No, I won’t do that.” In my decades of covering the armed forces I found officers often to be long on physical courage but almost always to lack moral courage. Soldiers pride themselves on following orders and if the orders are to bomb a refugee camp, well, the pilot was just following orders. This is what Eichmann said, though he wasn’t a soldier. The cult of obedience removes all moral responsibility. (The psychopathically degenerate monsters ordering and committing this genocide, these war crimes and crimes against humanity, should remember the fate of Adolph Eichmann. They'll be reminded of that after they lose this war, and they will. Israel will cease to exist, and so will they... - CP)
Note that Washington is as culpable as Israel for the slaughter in Gaza. Israel depends utterly for its survival on American support. If Washington told the Israelis to stand on their heads buck naked and sing Yankee Doodle in three-part harmony, or lose all American support, in two minutes they would be upside down and wailing. The killing continues because Washington wants it to continue.
The historically literate will note that the mass deliberate bombing of civilians is not particularly Israeli, but an invention largely made and certainly perfected by the United States. The British-American air war against Germany targeted civilians. Everyone knows about the firestorms in Hamburg and Dresden, and for that matter Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though countless other German cities were so targeted, with Tokyo being firebombed to burn thousands to death. Germans who lived through this tell of exactly the results seen in Gaza, rubble, fire, dead and dying children. Plus ca change, plus ca doesn’t.
The eternal cry of the Jew: “The whole world hates me. What’s wrong with the whole world?” Well, here is an answer that will serve for a few decades. Before Gaza, there was around the web the usual low-key hostility to Jews, like the 4K background radiation. Now nice liberals make venomous comments about how Hitler should have finished, etc. For all I know, ninety percent of American Jews may oppose the killing, and certainly many do, but this doesn’t seem to matter. Selling the Holocaust will be harder for a few years. It will make no practical difference.
It is easy to see why. A friend, conservative, by no means a milquetoast, for a while watched video from Gaza. He saw a little girl, horribly hurt, legs gone but still alive, with adults, apparently her family, going stark bugf*ck crazy. The child would not live for more than a minute or two, massive femoral bleeding being of short duration. My friend began sobbing, not his style. Never an antiSemite, he is now.
This is what America supports, does, is. Tell me why it isn’t so. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Ukraine, now Gaza, Yemen, shortly China.
The truculent buffoon in the White House and his ventriloquists speak of “American values.” But America, as distinct from Americans, has no values other than money, power, and empire. This is not dorm-room cynicism. It is fact. Individual Americans may believe in kindness, truth, human rights, and peace but to Washington these words are empty bottles to be filled with whatever meaning will best serve to shoo the sheep in the desired direction. And anyway Americans have no influence over what their country does.
In geopolitics, only the enforceable matters. Endless talk of violation of international law is merely tedious. Law is pointless if not enforced. It isn’t. Repetitive mooing about human rights equally is meaningless. Any attempt to impose such rights would mean war with both Israel and the United States. Do you see any takers?
The “law of war” is equally a silly notion. No warring party will put itself at a disadvantage by declining to use some prohibited weapon, such as white phosphorous, or doing something disapproved, such as bombing civilians. The United States has never paid attention to the law of war. Neither has Israel. Or, probably, anybody else. When I was in Marine infantry training at Camp Lejeune during Vietnam, we learned to use grenades of white-phosphorous, known colloquially as Willy Peter.
The United Nations has all the import of a high-school debate club in Arkansas but less backbone, producing much noise but no results. It is an obstacle to the most important things it is supposed to promote, and should be disbanded. It serves chiefly as a means of imposing American hegemony. For example, the entire planet except the US and Israel votes to end a pointless blockade of Cuba. Washington vetoed this. Most of the world wants a ceasefire in Gaza. America vetoes it. Instead of being a forum in which the nations of the world can decide on joint policies, it serves to prevent precisely this.
Perhaps history does repeat, like a slowly executing do-loop. In 1099, the First Crusade took Jerusalem, establishing a Christian beachhead on the fringe of a sprawling Moslem world that hated them. The Christians depended crucially on Europe for men and support, and were finally vomited out after many years. Now Israel has established a Jewish beachhead on the fringes of a sprawling Moslem world that hates them, and depends crucially on the United States for support. After the current killings, the Moslem world will hate the Jews for a very long time. They will not make a nice distinction between Zionists and Jews.
Perhaps the Jews will fare better than the Christians. It is not easy to see how. Israel’s population will always be minuscule in comparison with that of the Moslem world, or even of the nearby Moslem countries. The current Israeli pogrom will provide Moslems with the equivalent of the Holocaust, a multigenerational repository of hatred. This too will make no difference as long as the US supports Israel and, Congress being a subcommittee of the Knesset, this support is not in immediate danger.
But the Empire declines and Asia rises. In two decades the world will be a different place. And should local Moslem nations get the Bomb, whether by purchase or development, Israel’s options, as we say, will be limited. The two-state solution, now apparently forever impossible, may one day seem to have been a good idea.
The Israeli approach to geopolitics has been to do anything it wants, brazen it out, and rely on America for protection. The American approach is to do anything it wants and dare anyone to do anything about it. But America is now like the aging tough in a mountain bar who once said, “I can lick any man in this bar”. Now, getting on in years and putting on weight, he says, “I can lick everybody in the bar at once.” Iraq, Iran, Russia, China, Yemen, Syria. Maybe this will have a happy ending, but outside the bar, a cold wind is blowing."
Judge Napolitano, "Colonel Macgregor on US Military Overreach"
Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/24/24
"Colonel Macgregor on US Military Overreach"
Comments here:
"Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"
Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas. Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula, pictured below, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer.
The active star forming region spans 100 about light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon. The Wizard Nebula can be can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus) Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun.”
"For Nothing Is Fixed..."
"For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
- James Baldwin
Bill Bonner, "Liar, Liar"
"Liar, liar, pants on fire..."
"Liar, Liar"
An inquiry into the nature of untruths, brave and cowardly alike...
by Bill Bonner
“When plunder [and dispossession] becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” ~ Frédéric Bastiat
Youghal, Ireland - "Lies. Lies. Lies. “My husband is still the handsome stud I married 40 years ago. “ What a joy to have a liar for a wife! Besides, it’s the thought that counts.
We humans are bred to lie. Untruths are the pleasant fodder of everyday life. They are also the stuff of history. In private, we are moved by intimate prevarications. In public, we are gulled by grand frauds. Pharaoh is divine. Free the holy land. The dictatorship of the proletariat. The rights of man. Make America Great Again.
We are surrounded by lies. Frauds fill the media. Jackassery and jacked-up half-truths govern our lives. There are little white lies: “My phone must have died.” There are noble lies: All men are created equal.
And there are courageous lies: “Are you hiding any [Catholics, Jews, Armenians, heretics, Bourgeois elements, gypsies, gays, Irish, Cathars, etc],’ asks the Inquisitor? He is backed by the legitimate government. And by the law. The majority of the population is with him, eager to exterminate the vermin that plagues its society. His cause is just, they believe. His power is incontestable. ‘No’ says the brave liar.
Ignoble Lies: In this year’s presidential contest, one candidate claims to be ‘protecting our democracy.’ The other one is on trial for trying to overthrow it. Who’s the bigger liar?
The charge of insurrection against Donald Trump is particularly instructive. But it is more than just funny; not-too-well hidden in the absurdity is a conscious, calculated lie. If they can tag him for sedition, voters may not get the chance to vote for him. That’s how you protect democracy.
But if the foot-soldiers, now being jailed for insurrection, were really out to seize control of our government, illegally…they were the dumbest putschists in history. They had no plan; they seized no TV stations; they arrested no newspaper editors; they put no tanks on the street…and had no air cover, nor any speech ready to give to the multitudes once the prize was in their hands. No black-clad militia broke down doors in the DC area, taking opponents in for questioning. No generals announced that they had gone over to their cause. There was no shooting in the streets, no summary executions, no mass murders, no leaflets dropped from the air, no armbands prepared for those who joined the coup.
Not a single Democrat was hung. No wokester either. No gay. No whimpering leftist begged for mercy…and almost miraculously, no quartermaster was present, bringing a cache of rifles, bazookas, anti-tank guns, artillery, tear gas, handguns, or any other kind of weapon. Who holds a coup without weapons?
A Handicapped Coup: Except for the danger posed by the police themselves, the Capitol, during the “insurrection,” was probably the safest place in the nation. There are said to be some 466 million firearms in the US. Statistically, everyone present should have had at least a rifle and a handgun. But there were none there. So, in order to call it an armed insurrection, prosecutors show fat, middle aged maga revolutionaries wielding “flag poles, fire-extinguishers, hockey sticks, skateboards”…and get this… “crutches.” Just for amusement, try to imagine the man who needed the crutch using it as an “assault weapon.” This mob was clearly out for blood! They brought their crutches and skateboards!
And on the basis of these charges, with no verdict, both Maine and Colorado try to exclude Donald Trump from the ballot. And now, Hawaii is on the case. Newsweek: "Democrats in the state have introduced legislation to ban insurrectionists from running for public office, as per the 14th Amendment. While he is not named in the bill, Trump therefore may not be eligible if this bill passes, as he has been labeled an insurrectionist because of his actions during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, in which his supporters stormed the building to contest the result of the 2020 presidential election and try to block certification of Joe Biden's victory."
Another Brick in the Wall: Donald Trump may be a moron for goading these half-wits into action; he is, in our opinion, unfit to be president. But to speak of him as ‘leading’ an insurrection in these circumstances is to suppose the group had ‘leadership,’ which it clearly lacked. The charge is a lie. But the fraud runs much deeper. Over time, the system itself becomes a kind of compound lie, with one falsity stacked upon another, like bricks in a prison wall.
The 2% inflation target. The (fake) dollar…and the Fed’s fake interest rates. Making the world safe for democracy, at home and abroad. The ‘indispensable nation.’ The Patriot Act. The Inflation Reduction Act. Jeffrey Epstein. Hunter Biden. Russian election interference. The CARES act. The American Rescue Act. Lockdowns and stimmie checks. Three percent unemployment. The wall gets higher and higher; then, you can’t see out. Stay tuned…"
The Atlantis Report, "Banks Will Close Millions Of Accounts, With NO Warning"
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 1/24/24
"Banks Will Close Millions Of Accounts,
With NO Warning"
"Imagine waking up one day and finding out that your bank account has been closed, and you cannot access your money, bills, or transactions. This is the reality for millions of Americans who are losing their bank accounts without warning or explanation."
Comments here:
"Why You Can Do Anything You Want… And Why You Can’t"
"Why You Can Do Anything You Want…
And Why You Can’t"
by Paul Rosenberg
"People frequently tell children “You can do anything you want.” And this causes a lot of confusion, because in the real world, they can’t. And after their first clash with the aforesaid real world, the child is left wondering all sorts of unpleasant things:
Did mom and dad lie to me?
Are they just ignorant?
Am I defective?
Should I find someone to blame?
The worst thing about this, however, is that the child is likely to have their opinion of themselves reduced. And that’s tragic. As I’ve noted many times, we are magical creatures. Humans, alone in the known universe, are able to create willfully… are able to reverse entropy willingly. The child should think of his and her self as magical… because they really are! So, let’s make some sense of this problem.
Why You Can: Humans are radically amazing. Sure, we’ve been long trained to consider each other to be sacks of crap – a belief that’s essential to rulership – but it simply isn’t true. We are stunningly capable beings, and we generally behave pretty well, even under the reign of self-debasement.
Take a look around you. Wherever you live, you’re surrounded by buildings, roads, and cars. All of them exist only because of human virtues. Without human creativity, they could not exist. Without human cooperation, they could not exist. And they are everywhere. We’ve filled the Earth with hospitals and airplanes and food and computers and medicine. And the list could go on almost indefinitely.
More than that, we’ve learned how to cooperate very well. Forget wars; they’re run by competing states and will exist as long as states do. Instead, look at your local soccer league, little league, church choir, and family gathering.
And remember that we’ve been trained to see one flaw in a cooperative group and condemn the whole from it. (And to hypnotically accept any and every flaw of the state.) A few flaws are meaningless compared to modes of cooperation that thrive over decades, centuries, and millennia. Does being less than perfect make us monsters? Does anything less than 100% equal zero?
So, we are wonderful creatures. And how much better might we be if we dared consider that possibility? Here’s a quote from G.K. Chesterton that I’d like you to read: "There runs a strange law through the length of human history – that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility."
Can we dare imagine that Chesterton was right? And if not, why not? That kind of imagination is what the child needs, and it is that kind of imagination that results in human thriving, as noted by Leon Battista Alberti, the epitome of the Renaissance Man: "A man can do all things if he will."
Yes, that’s a bit overstated, but we have the essential ability to do amazing things, and if we thought and acted like it – thought and acted like Leon Battista Alberti – we’d do a lot more amazing things.
Why You Can’t: There are two reasons you can’t do anything at all. The first is simple: Nature stands in your way. No matter how much we imagine we can do something, if nature doesn’t agree, we can’t do it. We can work with nature to do “impossible” things (building flying machines for example), but we can’t simply violate it.
The second reason is also simple: Other human wills oppose us and stand ready to use violence against us. This second reason is habitually cloaked in confusing and deceptive terminology of course, but the truth is that adversarial wills and their violence oppose us all.
What we lack is what we can call “a life affording scope.” Limitations of our scope – weaponized wills set against us – have been colorfully covered by Reason magazine’s “Brickbats” section for decades, but the problem goes much farther than that. I’ll give you a few thoughts on that, then bring this column to a close:
• Regulation forbids adaptation.
• Obligation supplants compassion.
• Only violent and corrupt human wills deserve restriction.
And one more, the "14 words" we used in a previous article: "We are a beautiful species, living in a beautiful world, ruled by abusive systems." This is why I’ve been drawn to the cryptosphere. Our scope of life within that realm is not obstructed by weaponized wills. It’s a special place."
"‘Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.’ The Story of Oppenheimer’s Infamous Quote"
"‘Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.’
The Story of Oppenheimer’s Infamous Quote"
By James Temperton
"As he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, a piece of Hindu scripture ran through the mind of J. Robert Oppenheimer: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” It is, perhaps, the most well-known line from the Bhagavad Gita, but also the most misunderstood.
Oppenheimer, the subject of a new film from director Christopher Nolan, died at the age of 62 in Princeton, New Jersey, on February 18, 1967. As wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, the birthplace of the Manhattan Project, he is rightly seen as the “father” of the atomic bomb. “We knew the world would not be the same,” he later recalled. “A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.”
Oppenheimer, watching the fireball of the Trinity nuclear test, turned to Hinduism. While he never became a Hindu in the devotional sense, Oppenheimer found it a useful philosophy to structure his life around. “He was obviously very attracted to this philosophy,” says Stephen Thompson, who has spent more than 30 years studying and teaching Sanskrit. Oppenheimer’s interest in Hinduism was about more than a sound bite, Thompson argues. It was a way of making sense of his actions.
The Bhagavad Gita is 700-verse Hindu scripture, written in Sanskrit, that centers on a dialog between a great warrior prince named Arjuna and his charioteer Lord Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu. Facing an opposing army containing his friends and relatives, Arjuna is torn. But Krishna teaches him about a higher philosophy that will enable him to carry out his duties as a warrior irrespective of his personal concerns. This is known as the dharma, or holy duty. It is one of the four key lessons of the Bhagavad Gita, on desire or lust; wealth; the desire for righteousness, or dharma; and the final state of total liberation, moksha.
Seeking his counsel, Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal his universal form. Krishna obliges, and in verse 12 of the Gita he manifests as a sublime, terrifying being of many mouths and eyes. It is this moment that entered Oppenheimer’s mind in July 1945. “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one,” was Oppenheimer’s translation of that moment in the desert of New Mexico.
In Hinduism, which has a non-linear concept of time, the great god is involved in not only the creation, but also the dissolution. In verse 32, Krishna says the famous line. In it “death” literally translates as “world-destroying time,” says Thompson, adding that Oppenheimer’s Sanskrit teacher chose to translate “world-destroying time” as “death,” a common interpretation. Its meaning is simple: Irrespective of what Arjuna does, everything is in the hands of the divine.
"Arjuna is a soldier, he has a duty to fight. Krishna, not Arjuna, will determine who lives and who dies and Arjuna should neither mourn nor rejoice over what fate has in store, but should be sublimely unattached to such results,” says Thompson. “And ultimately the most important thing is he should be devoted to Krishna. His faith will save Arjuna’s soul." But Oppenheimer, seemingly, was never able to achieve this peace. “In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatements can quite extinguish,” he said, two years after the Trinity explosion, “the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”
“He doesn’t seem to believe that the soul is eternal, whereas Arjuna does,” says Thompson. “The fourth argument in the Gita is really that death is an illusion, that we’re not born and we don’t die. That’s the philosophy, really. That there’s only one consciousness and that the whole of creation is a wonderful play.” Oppenheimer, perhaps, never believed that the people killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not suffer. While he carried out his work dutifully, he could never accept that this could liberate him from the cycle of life and death. In stark contrast, Arjuna realizes his error and decides to join the battle.
“Krishna is saying you have to simply do your duty as a warrior,” says Thompson. “If you were a priest you wouldn’t have to do this, but you are a warrior and you have to perform it. In the larger scheme of things, presumably, the bomb represented the path of the battle against the forces of evil, which were epitomized by the forces of fascism.”
For Arjuna, it may have been comparatively easy to be indifferent to war because he believed the souls of his opponents would live on regardless. But Oppenheimer felt the consequences of the atomic bomb acutely. “He hadn’t got that confidence that the destruction, ultimately, was an illusion,” says Thompson. Oppenheimer’s apparent inability to accept the idea of an immortal soul would always weigh heavy on his mind."
o
Freely download the "Bhagavad Gita" here:
"If We Have No Idea..."
“If we have no idea what we believe in, we’ll go along with anything. Truth takes courage. Courage to stand up for what we believe in. Not necessarily in a confrontational way, but in a gentle yet firm way. Like an oak tree, able to sway gently in the wind, but strongly rooted to the ground.” - A.C. Ping
"How the Middle East’s Poorest Country Confounds Its Adversaries"
"How the Middle East’s Poorest Country
Confounds Its Adversaries"
by International Man
"International Man: Yemen has sometimes been called “the Afghanistan of the Middle East” because it is an impoverished tribal society that is well-armed, situated on mountainous terrain, and generally inhospitable to foreign invaders and a central government. What are your impressions of this country?
Doug Casey: Regrettably, I haven’t been to Yemen and have no plans on going - partly because I’ve seen enough similar flyblown Islamic hellholes. But it’s well known that the country is extremely primitive, poor, tribal, and very religious.
Yemenis take their Mohammedanism quite seriously. No offense to believers, but the more primitive, poorer, and more tribal a place is, the greater the tendency for their lives to revolve around religion. It binds them together and gives their lives meaning. It is not a good place for foreigners of a different race, religion, or culture to invade. This begs the question, why would anybody want to invade it? There’s nothing there of any real value. Maybe there are some undeveloped resources, but the natural resource business is high risk/high cost under even the best circumstances. You certainly don’t want to invest in a place with unfriendly natives. So, it’s entirely insane for outsiders to care about Yemen.
It has been said that war is nature’s way of teaching Americans geography. That’s true. Not one American in a thousand even knew the place existed until a few weeks ago; now, they all have opinions on what “we” should do, even if they still can’t find it on a map. But fear not. Even as we speak, plenty of reasons why we should care about Yemen are being fabricated in DC.
International Man: Yemen has long been a difficult place for foreign invaders. Most recently, the Houthis, an Iran-backed group that controls most of Yemen, frustrated the military coalition of Saudi Arabia and its allies. Though most people are unaware of this war or its details, it is remarkable that the Saudis, who are among the wealthiest in the Middle East and backed by the military and political support of the US, could not defeat the Middle East’s most impoverished people in Yemen. What is your take on the Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict and its implications?
Doug Casey: I doubt if one American out of 10,000, or even 100,000, had even heard the word Houthi before last year, but now it’s everywhere in the news. And for some reason, they’ve become our problem.
There used to be two Yemens - North Yemen and South Yemen - that were quite different politically and sociologically. They fought each other, then united in 1990. Now, the Houthis, who are Shia (hence the relations with Iran), are fighting a civil war with other locals. But it doesn’t seem to me Yemen is or has ever been a real nation-state. It’s impoverished, with no industry to speak of or the prospect of getting any. The income it has is from some oil production, and it all goes to corruption and paying the army. It has a large foreign trade deficit and debt. And the population is very young and exploding in numbers. It is, by any and every measure, one of the very most dysfunctional and essentially worthless places in the world.
It’s almost always a mistake for foreigners to get involved in another country’s civil war, especially when it has religious overtones. It doesn’t matter which side you back; the people that you’re backing are not your friends, and the people on the other side will really hate you. It’s a no-win situation for the US. None of our business, with no upside. Except for US Government operatives who get to play bigshot.
International Man: Yemen sits at the gateway of the Bab-el-Mandeb, a strategic maritime choke point that gives the Houthis the ability to disrupt global shipping. The Houthis have targeted Israeli-linked ships in the region in support of the Palestinians in Gaza. A US-led military coalition has started bombing targets in Yemen in response. What do you think of the US intervention in Yemen and its direction?
Doug Casey: It’s absolutely insane, pointless, and almost certain to escalate. Why, you might ask, is the US government bombing a primitive country on the other side of the world that has never done anything to us and poses zero threat? The US is committing a giant war crime. Attacking a foreign country without provocation is a war crime. Furthermore, this adventure will fail for the same reason that the US lost in Afghanistan.
It’s uneconomic to fight primitive people with modern weapons. Our million-dollar missiles blow up huts in the sand. At some point, some of their $10,000 missiles are going to get through and destroy a billion-dollar warship. The situation resembles what happened with Rome and the barbarians. The barbarians were a danger, but the more time that the Romans spent warring against them, the more technologies, strategies, and tactics the barbarians picked up from the Romans. There was nothing that the Romans could get from the barbarians. Except for the glory of killing lots of savages, it was a losing deal. But they had no choice. The enemy was at the gates, and they had to fight the invasion.
The US, however, is not being invaded, at least not formally. And certainly not by Houthis or other Yemenis. What’s happening with the millions of aliens being subsidized to cross its southern border is a different question for another time.
The point is that it’s foolish for the US to engage with these primitive countries not just because the pointless war adds to our bankruptcy bill while making millions of new enemies. But because we wind up either putting them on welfare, like the Ukraine, or involuntarily bequeathing them scores of billions of dollars of weapons, as the US did in Afghanistan.
The gateway to the Red Sea is a maritime choke point. It’s important for the Egyptians, the Israelis, some Europeans, and the Chinese. If anybody is going to waste blood and capital while making enemies, it should be those people, not the US, which has absolutely no interest in the area. It’s essentially between the Houthis and Israel. It’s certainly not our problem.
International Man: What geopolitical trends do you see shaping the Middle East and beyond in the months ahead?
Doug Casey: The Middle East will definitely be reshaped, but it’s not ours to reshape. Every country in the Middle East is an artificial construct, the same as every country in Africa. They were assembled arbitrarily in the drawing rooms of Europe in the last century. There was no thought about the language, culture, ethnicity, or political allegiances of the people in the area. These countries will all disintegrate.
“Syria,” for instance, is no longer a country; it’s only a region. It’s become at least three or four different countries since the US fomented the civil war in 2011.
The same is true of “Libya,” which is now two separate countries, although nobody mentions that. There’s no reason why they should reunite.
Lebanon seems like one country, but Hezbollah runs substantial parts of the country, and the official government runs others. Not to mention numerous religious and ethnic groups that are all at each other’s throats. It’s not a real country anymore, although, at one time, it was the only Christian country in the Middle East. That’s changed - permanently.
You can be certain that Iraq is going to break up into at least three countries - a Shiite, a Sunni, and a Kurdish part. “Iraq” didn’t exist before 1920.
People in that part of the world take the religion of The Prophet (peace be upon him, as they say) very seriously. And they don’t appreciate Christian soldiers running around trying to rearrange things any more than we would appreciate Mohammedan soldiers in the US or Europe.
The US government is overextending itself by interfering in every corner of the globe. It’s all financed by massive amounts of money printing. However, the next financial crisis could end the whole charade soon. The truth is, we’re on the cusp of a global economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming."
o
Full screen recommended.
"Yemen Ready For War?
Houthis Order American, British UN Staff To Exit Country"
"What Are We All?"
"What can we know? What are we all?
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Dan, I Allegedly, "I Hope You Didn't Buy a Car Here"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 1/24/24
"I Hope You Didn't Buy a Car Here"
"Once again, we are told how great the economy is and now another discount car retailer goes down for the count. People are going to get stuck with DMV problems, service problems, and no roadside assistance. This is absolutely tragic."
Comments here:
"It Is Our Fate..."
"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person, one cannot exist in full consciousness, without having to have a showdown with one's self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one's mind what matters and what does not matter."
- Dorothy Thompson
Jeremiah Babe, "Sorry, Cash Not Accepted; America Is For Sale To The Highest Bidder"
Jeremiah Babe, 1/23/24
"Sorry, Cash Not Accepted;
America Is For Sale To The Highest Bidder"
Comments here:
"The 2024 Debt Spiral: How $1 Trillion in Interest Is Breaking the Federal Budget"
"The 2024 Debt Spiral: How $1 Trillion
in Interest Is Breaking the Federal Budget"
by Nick Giambruno
"Contrary to conventional wisdom, higher interest rates mean more inflation in the environment today. That’s because the federal interest expense increases as interest rates rise. As the federal interest expense rises, so does the budget deficit. As the budget deficit increases, so does the currency debasement needed to finance it.
Skyrocketing interest expense will have an enormous impact on the US budget. Even according to the US government’s rosy projections, the interest expense on the federal debt will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in 2024… and it shows no sign of slowing down. On the contrary, it’s growing exponentially. First, it’s essential to understand the basics of the US federal budget. Let’s zoom out and look at the largest components of the US federal budget from the latest available data in the chart below. (Click image to enlarge.)
The biggest expenditures for the US government are so-called entitlements. It’s not likely any politician will cut these. On the contrary, I expect them to continue to grow. With the most precarious geopolitical situation since World War 2, so-called "National Defense" seems unlikely to be cut. Instead, military spending is all but certain to increase.
Income Security is a catch-all category for different types of welfare. That’s unlikely to be cut too. Unless it becomes politically acceptable to cut things like Social Security, military spending, and welfare, efforts to make a dent in expenditures won’t be meaningful. Further, interest expense (Net Interest above) is set to explode higher.
The US government projects that the federal interest expense will exceed $1 trillion in 2024 for the first time. That means the interest expense will exceed defense and everything else in the budget except for Social Security, which it will also likely exceed soon.
As the cost of debt service is taking up a larger portion of the budget, there is less for other expenditures. That means the government has to borrow increasingly larger amounts to maintain basic functions. However, it’s worse than issuing more debt to cover Social Security and the military. The US government is now borrowing money to pay interest on the federal debt, which has a compounding effect as the federal debt and interest expense grow exponentially. I suspect we are close to the inflection point where it gets out of control. 2024 could be the year that it becomes evident the US is trapped in a debt spiral.
Here’s the bottom line with the budget. The most significant expenditures have nowhere to go but up. But don’t count on increased revenue to offset these increases. Even if tax rates went to 100%, it would not be enough to stop the deficits - and the debt needed to finance them - from growing. The US government is out of options. Therefore, the question is not whether it will default but how.
When faced with a choice, politicians always choose the most expedient option. In this case, that means issuing more debt rather than making tough budget decisions or explicitly defaulting. There is a big problem with that, though. As the amount of debt skyrockets, the interest rate rises to entice buyers and holders. Allowing interest rates to rise high enough to entice natural buyers would bankrupt the US government because of the higher interest costs, which are set to become the largest item in the budget.
So, I would not expect the Fed to raise interest rates much more. In fact, they have already paused the rate hikes and are signaling a pivot to easing again, likely for this exact reason. That means the Fed has effectively given up on bringing price inflation down even though the year-over-year change in the CPI remains above 4%, more than double the Fed’s target of 2%. In other words, even with their own crooked statistics and rigged game, the Fed has failed even to come close to their inflation target. It’s a massive failure. Bloomberg is already hailing it "The Great Monetary Pivot of 2024."
It’s crucial to understand that by surrendering to inflation, the Fed is returning to the same policies that caused prices to rise in the first place. So, if higher interest rates are off the table and cannot entice more natural buyers, who will finance these growing multi-trillion dollar budget deficits? The only entity capable is the Federal Reserve, which buys Treasuries with dollars it creates out of thin air. That’s why I am convinced extreme currency debasement is the inevitable outcome. All the rest is noise.
The US government’s only practical option is ever-increasing currency debasement… and it could devastate most people. I suspect it will all go down soon… and it won’t be pretty. It will result in an enormous wealth transfer from savers and regular people to the parasitic class -politicians, central bankers, and those connected to them. Countless millions throughout history were wiped out financially - or worse - because they failed to see the correct Big Picture as their governments went bankrupt."
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