So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, October 25, 2024
Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"
"The War Prayer"
By TDB
"My curmudgeonly grandpappy, who reveres Mark Twain and George Carlin and H.L. Mencken and people of that lovable cynic variety – or however you would characterize their philosophical disposition – put me onto "The War Prayer" back in the day. This was in the days of innocence before 9/11 and the subsequent War of Terror, and so whatever lack of an impression it made on me at the time was remedied shortly thereafter by apropos events in the real world.
Twain, in his later years when his family had died and the cynicism became more malignant, would often write fiction in which a cynical protagonist would serve as a proxy for himself. This is one such story; the “aged stranger” is Twain. Via Virginia Commonwealth University:
"It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism… on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun… nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
Sunday morning came - next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams - visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said …
Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work…
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness… he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting.
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside - which the startled minister did - and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said: “I come from the Throne - bearing a message from Almighty God!
God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two - one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this - keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
You have heard your servant’s prayer - the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it - that part which the pastor - and also you in your hearts - fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them - in spirit - we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it - for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."
(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!” It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said."
- Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"
Twain reportedly caved to pressure not to publish the short story, as it was regarded by his family and publisher as too inflammatory for public consumption. Asked if he had plans to publish it, Twain answered: "No, I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead." At any rate, for whatever reason, it remained unpublished until after his death.
War is an ugly business, fraught with moral pitfalls – not to mention existential implications in the nuclear age. It might be necessary at times, but so are limb amputations. Both should be undertaken with all due discretion. I’ll choose my own wars, not the ones the government or MSNBC or the ADL tells me to."
Gregory Mannarino, "Time Is Running Out Before The Selection, And This Is What You Need To Know"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/25/24
"Time Is Running Out Before The Selection,
And This Is What You Need To Know"
Comments here:
"The Middle East: War"
Dialogue Works, 10/25/24
Larry C. Johnson, "Israel Facing Total Collapse:
Crushed by Iran/Hezbollah's Unstoppable Force!"
Comments here:
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Dialogue Works, 10/25/24
Dmitry Orlov, "Israel is Falling Fast - China, Russia,
and Iran Gear Up for a Showdown with the US!"
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "Fever Dream"
"Fever Dream"
by Jim Kunstler
“The American 'Left' is fully exposed now as a demented,
vicious, abusive animal of traumatizing narcissism.”
- Celia Farber
"Do you hear that lonesome whistle blow? Wooooo-wooooo! It’s the last train to Palookaville pulling into the station. At this late hour, two passengers get on: Kamala Harris, mom jeans and blazer, rheumy red eyes, half-gone on chardonnay...and an elderly gentleman with a goatee in a colorful but shabby red-white-and-blue suit, famous long ago as “Uncle Sam.”
There’s an election on, in case you haven’t noticed, imminent even. Kamala, everyone seems to agree, has blown it. Can’t answer simple questions pitched by friendly ringers in the “news” business. Hiding somebody else’s agenda is a tough assignment, you see. All she can really do is cackle or simper and, let’s face it, that gets humiliating fast. Joy has turned to despair. Her punched ticket says “one way.”
Whose idea was it, anyway, over at party HQ, to put her up to this contest? She wishes she knew, as she gazes out the window at the sad lights of the little towns streaking by - East Chugwater, Erehwon, Tanktown, Loserville, onward into the night to the end of the line. How’d they manage to yank her out of the comfort of the Naval Observatory, where she was comfy and cozy watching Netflix rom-coms with Doug, chardonnay refills on-demand, all the Doritos a gal could munch. She was a lover, not a fighter, she repeats to herself, but the self-consolation doesn’t quite avail.
Uncle Sam sits stoically five seats behind her. He is resigned, knowing very well why he is on that train, too. His own country is sending him into exile after swindling him out of his history and his posterity. He doesn’t even recognize the place anymore. What happened to Sandberg’s city of big shoulders? Who turned the fruited plain into a hellscape of muffler shops? How did the heroes of Iwo Jima transition into a legion of TikTok influencers with pierced faces and scrambled brains? When the train gets in, he has no place to go. Perhaps he’ll sleep in a ditch.
You entertain these drear hallucinatory conceits despite the giddiness about Donald Trump’s seeming triumph over adversity - botched assassinations, court cases hatched by malice-crazed ninnies, blob-generated calumnies, conspiracies, ops, and hoaxes galore. And for Halloween, they painted a Hitler mustache on him, just for fun. It remains to be seen what marvels of ballot legerdemain have been concocted by Marc Elias, Esq, lawfare artist supreme, destroyer of the nation’s faith in itself.
But say Mr. Trump overcomes even the planned epic voter fraud to capture the prize. What then? You’re entitled to feel nervous. The army, under Department of Defense directive 5240.01 has just been licensed to gun you down. This is a new thing. Now isn’t is it a queer moment in history for a move like that? What are they expecting, anyway? And, by the way, who exactly is the varlet in the chain-of-command who issued that directive? (Or did it just bubble-up out of the ruling blob like some sulfurous gas from a Yellowstone fumarole?)
People of good faith have reason to believe that the country is about to be blown apart. By another odd coincidence, an outfit called the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International (AFCEA) has scheduled an “exercise simulating a cyber-attack on critical infrastructure” for November 5 in Atlanta, Georgia. That’s election day. In a big swing state. Whose idea was that? Is there already not enough that might go wrong that some treasonous moron had to kick the risk of fiasco up another notch? Or might it be cover for another Three Card Monte caper with the Georgia votes? This is the sort of thing that will dog poor old Uncle Sam’s mind as he tries to fall asleep in that drainage ditch on the ragged edge of Palookaville.
Or perhaps what we’re witnessing is a fabulous bit of what George W. Bush once called “strategery” by the Party of Chaos. Five minutes after Mr. Trump gets elected, a certain unseen hand flips a little toggle somewhere in the banking system that tanks the economy so hard and fast that 2025 will make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a Hamptons clam bake...for the next four years we become a land with no money and no way to generate money...and MAGA/MAHA is left to suck eggs in the cold and dark until 2028 when the Democratic Party returns in full Maoist mode, riding in on a unicorn cavalry to rescue us... Nah...They just blew it.
So, more likely, we’re seeing the suicide of the Democratic Party. Even CNN is starting to back away from them, as from a convocation of lepers. They can smell the odor of necrosis. Plus, their own instinct for survival has kicked in. They have a business to run. They want to be around to cover the treason trial of Alejandro Mayorkas - a sure thing to jack those sagging ratings back up. Maybe even Kamala Harris will be called out of retirement to testify and we’ll find out just what was going on in the White House in the summer of 2024, when “Joe Biden” - remember him? - was rattling around the joint like a BB in a packing crate, howling for his ice cream, and no one was around anymore to hear him."
Thursday, October 24, 2024
"Why Some Are Steering Towards a Third World War - A Narrative on Ukraine"
"Why Some Are Steering Towards a Third World War -
A Narrative on Ukraine"
by Mattias Desmet
"I want to share a few thoughts that are clearly emerging in the early morning air. Why are some people nowadays trying so hard to provoke a third world war? The dark figure of a global nuclear conflict is indeed knocking on our door. The conflict in the Middle East is intensifying, and the conflict in Ukraine threatens to escalate into a third world war. It is mainly about the latter that I want to say something today. The stories about that conflict vary quite a bit.
The story in the media sounds roughly as follows: in the icy Russia, disorganized and divided after the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, a cold dictator, a new Hitler, seized power over the last twenty years. His name is Putin. He first became director of the FSB, the successor of the KGB, the ruthless and horrific secret service of the Soviet Union. That says enough about the type of person we are dealing with.
After that, he crept in a sly and ruthless manner onto the Russian presidential throne. Even that did not satisfy his hunger for power. He wanted to expand his Russian empire without limit and become a sort of new Tsar. In 2014, he slyly conquered Crimea by manipulating the population through propaganda and using a – likely falsified – referendum as a pretext to annex Crimea. In 2022, he took his next step: the military conquest of democratic Ukraine.
But fortunately, there is the noble NATO, which under the leadership of the USA courageously opposes this cold criminal. They are trying to allow Ukraine to join their alliance, just like the other helpless Eastern European countries that have already joined earlier, in order to protect it against the Russian threat. That is one story.
There is also another story, also just a story, but a story that deserves to be heard in these ominous times. It also begins with the end of the Soviet Union in 1989 and goes as follows:
The Soviet Union didn’t really lose the Cold War. A complex interplay of internal and external factors led the Soviets to grow tired of their own totalitarian society and made them decide to dissolve the Warsaw Pact and dismantle the Soviet Union. In a sincere moment of political naivety, top Soviets like Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the young Putin believed that the West would welcome them with open arms; Russia would become their playmate in the great democratic playground of the Free Western Market. They quickly realized that the terms 'democratic' and ‘free’ are highly relative in the West.
What they encountered was a velvet totalitarianism that in some respects was as totalitarian as the Soviet Union they had just dismantled. NATO, supposedly established to counterbalance the Soviet Union, refused to disband when the Soviet Union dissolved. Even more: contrary to all implicit and explicit agreements made with Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, NATO steadily moved its borders eastward, towards Moscow.
The whole idea of NATO's eastward expansion was devised by an American power bloc with one big goal: to create a unipolar world dominated in which one superpower, the United States, controls and contains the global geopolitical situation. The main geostrategist was Zbigniew Brzezinski, a brilliant American professor born in Poland, whose visceral aversion to Bolshevism, ingrained in his blood, brought everything related to Russia to life. That is, of course, human, just as it is human and understandable that the inhabitants of Eastern European countries transform their deeply ingrained fear of Stalin and the Soviets today into a desire to belong to NATO.
Brzezinski was an advisor to several American presidents and chaired various committees set up to execute the NATO plan. From the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, he outlined his strategy in various articles and interviews: Russia must never again become a world power, and to prevent that, we must isolate the country from the Black Sea by expanding NATO to the east. In doing so, he adopted a Russian strategy that European powers had already followed in the nineteenth century.
When the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire began to lose strength in the nineteenth century, Russia prepared to fill the resulting vacuum and expand its sphere of influence through the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. This threatened the economic and territorial interests of the then-superpower Great Britain. In the worst case, the British could even see their access to their colonies in the Middle East and India blocked by the Russians.
It was within this tension that the Crimean War started in 1853, a conflict between Russia on the one hand and a European alliance of the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other. This war is historically significant in many ways, among other things because it was the first industrialized and heavily propagandized war.
The industrialization of the war (use of advanced firearms, supply of war materials via railroads, use of naval mines, etc.) resulted in enormous numbers of casualties, with estimates ranging from 400,000 to over 750,000 deaths in just three years. What determined the course of the war was no longer the military-tactical intelligence of the leading officers or the size and loyalty of the troops, but rather who had the most sophisticated war industry and technology, and, last but not least, who had the most effective propaganda apparatus.
It is that last point that interests us most, the importance of propaganda. After the French Revolution and the replacement of the ancien régime by the modern democracy, propaganda became an obvious instrument of power. The old elite, before the French Revolution, did not really need to manipulate public opinion that much. Public opinion didn’t matter all that much. They had to massage and manipulate the population here and there, but ultimately, the elite could impose its policy without much justification. If the elite wanted to go to war, they would simply inform the people, and they had to accept it. God had willed it so: some were born to command, and others to obey.
In the new, materialistic worldview, there was no God to be found, and leaders could no longer rely on his authority to send people to war. The only option leaders had to get the population excited about war was large-scale manipulation of public opinion through propaganda.
The nineteenth-century Crimean War was the first war in which modern propaganda was of decisive importance. Emerging technology for the first time gave leaders the material means to directly and massively manipulate the population. The invention of the telegraph and the camera, along with the rise of mass media (primarily the widespread distribution of newspapers), allowed European powers to bring vivid and convincing war stories, illustrated with photos, to the home front within just five days. The Allies perfectly understood that such forms of war communication were crucial to creating public support for the war.
The real reasons for the European countries to go to war against Russia were primarily economic in nature. But those reasons alone would not suffice to overcome the population’s fear of the horrors of war, nor would they make people willing to pay the huge sums of taxes needed for the war. Therefore, the European powers decided to portray Russia as a military threat that urgently needed to be stopped. The lie is often more efficient than the truth in making a population eager for war.
The propagandists carefully spread fabricated, ominous information about the Russian enemy among the population. The Russian soldiers were portrayed as outright savages and barbarians, and Russia as a radically expansionist power. Historians agree that this was a propagandistic and false representation of the facts (see here and here). Once the war had started, the propagandists directed triumphant war stories, supplemented with photographs and neatly supervised by a military censorship apparatus: we are winning, the barbaric Russians are being defeated, humanity is triumphing, but not quite yet—keep paying war taxes for a while longer.
Russia, at that time, was inferior in terms of both industrialization and propaganda. They lost the Crimean War in 1856, and that also marked the fall of Russia as a European great power. Russia would only restore its position after the Russian Revolution and the rise of the totalitarian Soviet Union under Lenin and (especially) Stalin. That marked the point where Russia itself began to fully exploit the power advantages of industrialization, technology, and propaganda.
Now, back to the core strategy during the nineteenth-century Crimean War: the goal of the war was to deny Russia access to the Black Sea. Lord Palmerston, the then British Foreign Secretary, was the first to fully grasp the economic and strategic importance of the Black Sea for Russia and developed a military strategy around it: block Russia’s access to the Black Sea, and you block Russia’s only ice-free gateway to the Mediterranean and the rest of the world. In other words, if you can ensure that Russia no longer has access to the Black Sea, Russia will lose its economic and military power within a few decades.
The same motives are currently at play in the lead-up to the war in Ukraine. Reread the paragraphs above: the current narrative regarding the tensions between Russia and NATO is essentially a reflection of the story from the First Crimean War. We will outline a number of facts concerning the buildup to the current war in Ukraine.
A neoconservative power group in the U.S. reverted to Lord Palmerston’s strategy at the end of the twentieth century, attempting to permanently eliminate Russia as a great power: NATO would isolate Russia from the Black Seathrough a gradual expansion to the East. This strategy was developed by Brzezinski in 1989, immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, notably in his book The Grand Chessboard.
Thanks to the archival documents released after the Freedom of Information Act was enacted in the U.S. in 2017, we also know that this strategy was adopted as a strategic guideline by the Clinton administration in 1994. It was essentially followed by all subsequent American presidents, including Trump, and their administrations. Whether Trump will keep his promise to break with this “tradition” if re-elected remains to be seen.
This strategic plan was gradually implemented from the 1990s onward. In 1999, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were added to NATO; in 2004, the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were added; in 2009, Albania and Croatia; in 2017, Montenegro; and in 2020, North Macedonia. These countries were immediately provided with temporary or permanent NATO military bases. The issue is that NATO is not a lion without military teeth. Somewhere along the way, in 1999, NATO also bombed Belgrade to establish a NATO-supervised state of Kosovo and to set up Camp Bondsteel, the largest NATO base in Southern Europe.
The final step was the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO, something that Brzezinski viewed as the crowning achievement of the entire strategy to deliver the final blow to Russia as a great power. Initially, European leaders like Merkel and Sarkozy fiercely resisted because they realized that the annexation of Ukraine made the risk of nuclear war a reality. However, at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, President Bush Jr. made it clear that there was no room for discussion: Ukraine would “have the chance” to join NATO. At that same summit, Putin also made something clear: this would be the step too far in NATO’s advance to the East.
The neoconservative faction in America, backed by the whole dismal CIA regime-change machine, was not deterred by the prospect of a war between powers, each possessing around 6,000 nuclear warheads. They began their démarche with the so-called Maidan revolution in 2014, during which President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from power. Essentially, there is little doubt that this was not so much a popular uprising but rather a NATO-directed overthrow of a previously neutral and democratically elected president (see, among others, this interview with American top diplomat Professor Jeffrey Sachs and the documentary Ukraine on Fire by Oliver Stone). Yanukovych fled to Russia after the Maidan revolution, not because he was a puppet of Putin, but because Russia was about the only place on earth where he could be somewhat safe. After his departure, his government was replaced by a pro-Europe and pro-NATO regime.
As described above, the motives for bringing Ukraine into NATO were perhaps primarily ideological and strategic in nature. However, they intertwined with enormous economic-commercial motives. This becomes clear when considering the fate of Ukraine’s extraordinary natural wealth. Ukrainian agricultural land is among the most fertile in the world, earning Ukraine the nickname "the breadbasket of Europe."
Moreover, enormous quantities of iron ore, coal, and rare and strategically important minerals such as uraninite (the base raw material for uranium), rutile, and ilmenite (the base raw materials for titanium), as well as lithium (crucial for battery production), are also found in Ukrainian soil. According to some estimates, about 5% of the world’s mineral reserves are located in Ukraine. Depending somewhat on market conditions, its value is estimated to be in the tens of trillions of dollars (some say about 19 trillion dollars) (!).
Immediately after the pro-NATO government came to power in 2014, lobbying began to lift the moratorium that stated foreigners could never buy more than two hectares of Ukrainian land. In an April 2021 report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the monetary infrastructure of NATO, explicitly stated that lifting this moratorium was a necessary condition for providing funds to Ukraine. In June 2021, Ukraine capitulated and effectively lifted the moratorium. Subsequently, giant American companies like Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont bought up approximately 170 million hectares, or one-third of Ukraine’s agricultural land, in no time.
Behind these companies are the financial giants of the world: BlackRock, Vanguard, and Blackstone, asset managers of astronomical proportions. Following the rise in agricultural land prices from €2,500 to €10,000 that followed these massive purchases, these giants immediately multiplied their invested capital. That the land has now become too expensive for countless small Ukrainian farmers to earn a living from should not concern someone striving for world dominance.
In the same movement, the economic giants took another step. BlackRock, Vanguard, and Blackstone are heavily entrenched in the American military industry, and since NATO’s actions would almost inevitably lead to war, they could also prepare for a new round of monstrous profits (at the expense of the American people).
Moreover, BlackRock and Vanguard are also significant shareholders in American construction companies Bechtel and AECOM, which signed contracts at the onset of the war for the future reconstruction of Ukraine once it would have been nearly completely leveled by the war.
Adding to this is the fact that BlackRock, McKinsey, and JPMorgan Chase established a reconstruction bank for Ukraine together, leading to the staggering conclusion: the same companies that earn fortunes from buying up Ukrainian agricultural land and its natural resources also profit immensely from supplying the weapons to devastate Ukraine and will ultimately profit from rebuilding it.
The grinding gears of this money machine have meanwhile crushed more than a million young Ukrainian and Russian soldiers’ bodies; the thrum of the money press drowns out the moans of thousands of tortured bodies, the sobbing of thousands of raped women, the cries of a country bleeding from every pore of its fertile land. Trying to make money is undoubtedly human, but at the top, where it is ruthlessly elevated to the highest goal, it takes on diabolical forms.
After the Maidan power takeover in 2014 and the advancing NATO militarization of the entire Black Sea region, Putin anticipated the next step: after Ukraine, NATO would set its sights on Crimea. This meant that Russia would be cut off from its fleet in Sevastopol. Putin did not wait and annexed Crimea via a referendum, increasing Russia's military presence on the peninsula. As a side note, Putin used social media and the internet for this referendum, which would be the reason Google and social media would significantly ramp up censorship thereafter (see this interview with Mike Benz).
With the referendum, Putin scored a significant victory but also suffered an inevitable defeat in terms of image and propaganda. This step was portrayed in the free West as the definitive outbreak of an emerging dictator who was no longer satisfied with tyrannizing his own people but was now embarking on a foreign conquest. The evidence was now provided: Putin is the new Hitler who wants to conquer all of Europe. This image was further reinforced when Putin made the next counter-move on the great global chessboard: invading Ukraine.
Through this propaganda, a psychological support base was created among the European and American populations, impoverished by the corona and other crises, to gradually mobilize for a large-scale conflict with Russia, or in other words, for World War III. That global conflict is now also approaching on another front. In the Middle East, the same Brzezinski-esque geopolitical strategy is now preparing to bring another strategic line to an end, moving towards the endgame of striving for geopolitical hegemony. Everything is being readied there to level Iran.
Thanks to the work of Pulitzer Prize winner and investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, we know that the list of countries to be destroyed in the Middle East was already on paper in 2001 (and perhaps even earlier). The list began with Iraq, included Syria and Libya, and ended with Iran.
We ultimately ask ourselves: what drives NATO, and particularly the American power bloc that calls the shots, to steer towards a third world war? The causes of any war are complex and usually rooted in a blind destructive and self-destructive death drive. However, at a certain level, they are also simple. The USA still has military power, but economically, it is rapidly losing its position. The USA is part of the economic power bloc of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States); it’s economical counterpart are the BRICS countries, including its arch-enemy Russia (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).
To illustrate the decline of the G7 and the rise of the BRICS countries economically: in 1950, the G7 countries accounted for about 70% of global market share, in 1990 this decreased to about 50%, and by 2020, it further dropped to 40%. It is expected to be around 30% by 2040. The BRICS countries are going in the opposite direction. Before 1990, their share was negligible; after 1990, it rose to about 15%, and in 2020 it was approximately 30%. It is expected that by 2030, the BRICS countries could surpass the G7’s share.
The aforementioned American power bloc knows that the loss of economic power inevitably leads to the loss of military power. The only way to maintain power is to use the remaining military superiority to crush the emerging economic power of the BRICS countries and thus restore economic dominance. In other words: to provoke a third world war. The total destruction of humanity and humanity itself does not deter some from relinquishing their grip on power.
To unleash this third world war, the war machinery, again, needs the consent of the populace and must manipulate public opinion. As again: what brings people to war is a highly complex dynamic, yet there are people involved, people who take the lead. This is happening abundantly in light of the war in Ukraine. Thera are people who are blowing up a pipeline or dam here and there, people who produce propaganda in all its diversity. People who are proposing a NATO Secretary-General (the Dutch Mark Rutte) who has already convincingly demonstrated that he is willing to fully escalate the conflict with Russia. The man in question employs a kind of war rhetoric that suggests he is not genuinely inclined to empathize with the hundreds of thousands of war victims that NATO’s strategy in Ukraine has already caused, nor with the billions of potential victims that it could still create. I hope he changes his mind. A human is always a human. It is an ethical duty to assume that he can still turn for the better.
In a sense, all world powers are players on the same ‘Grand Chessboard’ of Brzezinski. The rules of this chess game are set by the symbolic structure within which our global society currently operates: the materialistic-rationalistic worldview. No one escapes the power of this symbolic framework, neither Russia nor America, Europe nor China. They all use propaganda, they all participate in the arms race, and they are all caught in the relentless logic of a market that is only free in appearance.
Ultimately, the enemy is not a Russian or an American or any other person. The enemy lies in an ideology, a way of thinking, in a certain metaphysical force or spirit. The real problem, the actual enemy, is situated in a worldview that reduces the entire world and existence to a material phenomenon, in which human beings are no more than biological machines, biochemical processes devoid of Spirit or Soul. In such a context, biological survival and the pursuit of absolute dominance without any ethical or moral limits easily become the ultimate goal. Within that worldview, this is also perfectly logical: in a purely material world, ethics and morality are nothing more than an illusion arising somewhere in the biochemical machinery of our brains. Why should we allow ourselves to be hindered in the great game of survival of the fittest? Anyone who views life through that lens is already an instrument of destructive drive.
As I type the last letters of this article, I see the sun sending its light through the morning mist, a golden gift at the start of a new day. The trees in the castle park exude a majestic power through the tenderness of their autumn leaves. Their meter-wide trunks fearlessly send their roots into the depths of the dark autumn ground; their branches lift their trembling twigs high above the mists into the sparkling morning light.
I am ready to give a workshop, a workshop in which I will practice the art of sincere speaking with the participants, an art that requires exploring the unfathomably dark depths of the human being, an art that elevates humanity to its highest heights, a strand of words that connects darkness with light, an art that is the opposite of the practice of propaganda. While the thudding of the propaganda drum sets the war machine in motion, I feel people everywhere becoming aware that only the Act of sincere speaking offers a way out of the hopelessness of humanity that has lost itself in appearance and manipulation.
Do not remain silent, stay true to the ethical duty to speak as a human in times when society blindly follows a discourse that leads to ruin. Speak calmly, speak steadily, try not to convince too much, but rather to testify; speak from your belly rather than your head. I hope this article can be a small spark, a small contribution to the rise of a group of people united by the act of sincere speaking, a group where the opinion itself does not take precedence but the right of every person to express their opinion; a group that does not get lost in the narcissism of a collective ideal image and enemy image but cherishes the love for the uniqueness and singularity of each individual; this is the group that can provide a counterweight to the death drive of the propagandized masses."
"The Kazan Catastrophe"
"The Kazan Catastrophe"
by The ZMan
"Back in the ancient times, if you wished to buy product from someone you arrived at their location with money, or they arrived at your location with product. The product was inspected, and the money was inspected. Once both sides were satisfied, the exchange was made, and the deal was done. It did not take long for a class of middlemen to turn up who brokered such deals. They inspected the goods, arranged transportation and safeguarded the product and the money.
World trade has not changed much since the ancient times. Middlemen still facilitate most of the trade. They are called banks, insurance companies, freight brokers, shipping companies and so forth, but they are all part of this vast and essential middleman economy that makes it possible for the local Walmart to have shelves stuffed with goods from Asia. It is what makes it possible for the Chinese company selling dog food to get paid by Walmart.
One thing to note about this setup is the two greatest seafaring nations in the history of the planet, the United States and Britain, do very little shipping. Instead, they control the flow of goods around the world through control of the insurance markets and the financial system used in global trade. If you are involved in global trade, you are certainly using the American financial system and either directly or indirectly the British maritime insurance system.
The dollar being the world’s reserve currency has been to this point the main driver of the explosion in global trade. The buyer in South America can do business with a seller in China, because his bank is connected to the American financial system through his country’s central bank. He does not have to get RMB from his bank to pay the Chinese vendors, because the exchange is done automatically through the dollar dominated global financial system.
This is about to change with the launch of an alternative payment system that was announced at the BRICS summit in Kazan Russia. The Russians and the Chinese have been working on creating an alternative to SWIFT, which stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. It is the platform that networks the world’s banks to facilitate the flow of money around the world. The new system seeks to replace SWIFT for trade among the BRICS countries.
For most people this is an eye-glazing topic, but in the fullness of time it could be an event that generations of historians study as an inflection point. What the BRICS countries are seeking to do is wrest control of the global financial system from the West, specifically the English-speaking countries, at least for the members of BRICS and those countries willing to trade with BRICS. By extension, it is an effort to reduce the power of the dollar and thus the power of the American empire.
What this new system proposes to do is make it easier for participating countries to conduct business in the currency of other participating countries. Instead of China needing dollars to buy oil from the Saudis and therefore preferring dollars from other countries for Chinese goods, the Chinese will be able to buy oil in RMB and the Saudis will be able to buy Chinese goods in whatever currency they possess. The new system would handle the conversion and exchange rates instantly.
As an aside, that last part is interesting. In the United States, a business does not get paid by the credit card company for a few days. Often, the delay is longer. Of course, there are fees for taking credit card payments. In Russia and China, the movement of money is instant. The system is treated as a public utility, so fees are relatively small compared to what we see in the West. This is owing to much better and newer technology and a different attitude toward banking.
That aside, the significance of this proposal is enormous. The BRICS countries represent half the world’s population. The Arab oil countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, are onboard for this new system. The Saudis let expire the fifty-year-old deal with Washington that established the petrodollar. China, India and Russia are the driving force behind this new arrangement and represent three of the most important economic powerhouses in the world at the moment.
What this means for the West is far less influence over the rest of the world through the control of the financial system. The main reason China, Russia and India have pushed for this new system is they have grown weary of Washington abusing its position to bully the rest of the world. The sanctions war unleashed by Washington against Russia in 2022 was the final straw. If Washington would use the dollar to try regime change in Russia, it would do it to anyone, especially China.
What the BRICS summit in Kazan represents is decades of belligerently incompetent foreign policy in Washington. Ten years ago, it was inconceivable that these important countries would come together to create a parallel financial system, as all of them were committed to the dollar and the Western system. They were committed to the “rules-based order” because they assumed it served their interests, but decades of abuse by Washington has convinced them otherwise.
What this means for the West is clear. What we see forming up is a trading and cooperation block that includes all the countries outside the West, representing the bulk of the world’s population and the majority of economic activity. Add in the fact that the West has let its manufacturing base shrivel and seems to be at war with its agricultural base and you can see the problem. Economies based in providing services tied to the financial system are facing a cliff now.
For the United States, this could not come at a worse time. Debt is already at staggering levels and is accelerating. The productive and innovative portion of the population is aging, while the unproductive portion is exploding. Add in decades of infrastructure neglect, the demographic and cultural catastrophes, and now is not a good time for a decline in the dollar. America is an empire that debased its currency via the perfidious subversion of its own rules.
Contrary to some claims, the dollar is not about to collapse, but what Kazan signals is the steady decline in the dollar. As the rest of the world begins to trade outside the dollar, it means dollars and instruments denominated in dollars, like debt, will lose value on the global market. This means the American banking system must slow the creation of dollars to prevent inflation. This means the cost of borrowing dollars must go up and stay up in anticipation of declining dollar demand
The steady decline of the dollar means a steady decline in the American standard of living, baring a revolution in Washington. Being the world’s mint and banker only works if the world accepts what you are minting. A rentier economy reliant on skimming from every transaction is only possible if you control the currency. The parasitism that has become a feature of our economy is going to become more obvious. That will bring political consequences as well."
Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Something Big Is Going Down! US Military Prepares For Civil War! Ukraine Gets $50 Billion!"
Canadian Prepper, 10/24/24
"Alert! Something Big Is Going Down!
US Military Prepares For Civil War! Ukraine Gets $50 Billion!"
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Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Sunny Mornings"
Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation, "Sunny Mornings"
"I am a composer from Norway and I started this channel with a simple vision: to create a place that you can visit whenever you want to sit down and relax. I compose music that can be labeled as for example: sleep music, calm music, yoga music, study music, peaceful music, beautiful music and relaxing music. I love to compose music and I put a lot of work into it.
Thank you very much for listening and for leaving feedback. Every single day I am completely astonished by all your warm support and it really inspires me to work even harder on my music. If you enjoy my work, I would be very happy if you decided to subscribe and join our community. Have a wonderful day or evening!"
- Peder B. Helland, composer for Soothing Relaxation
Absolutely beautiful...
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.
About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous color image combines both narrowband and broadband images recorded using three different telescopes.”
Chet Raymo, “A Sense Of Place”
“A Sense Of Place”
by Chet Raymo
“It would be hard to find two writers more different than Eudora Welty and Edward Abbey. Welty was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of stories and novels who lived all her life in Jackson, Mississippi, in the house in which she was born, the beloved spinster aunt of American letters. Abbey was a hard-drinking, butt-kicking nature writer and conservationist best known for his books on the American Southwest. Both writers are favorites of mine. Both were great champions of place. I always wondered what it would have been like if they got together. As far as I know, that never happened. But let’s imagine a conversation. I have taken extracts from Welty’s essay “Some Notes on River Country” (1944) and from Abbey’s essay “The Great American Desert (1977) and interleaved them.
“This little chain of lost towns between Vicksburg and Natchez.”
“This desert, all deserts, any deserts.”
“On the shady stream banks hang lady’s eardrops, fruits and flowers dangling pale jade. The passionflower puts its tendrils where it can, its strange flowers of lilac rays with their little white towers shining out, or its fruit, the maypop, hanging.”
“Oily growths like the poison ivy – oh yes, indeed – that flourish in sinister profusion on the dank walls above the quicksand down those corridors of gloom and labyrinthine monotony that men call canyons.”
“All creepers with trumpets and panicles of scarlet and yellow cling to the treetops. There is a vine that grows to great heights, with heart-shaped leaves as big and soft as summer hats.”
“Everything in the desert either stings, stabs, stinks, or sticks. You will find the flora here as venomous, hooked, barbed, thorny, prickly, needled, saw-toothed, hairy, stickered, mean, bitter, sharp, wiry and fierce as the animals.”
“Too pretty for any harsh fate, with its great mossy trees and old camellias.”
“Something about the desert inclines all living things to harshness and acerbity.”
“The clatter of hoofs and the bellow of boats have gone. The Old Natchez Trace has sunk out of use. The river has gone away and left the landings. But life does not forsake any place.”
“In the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix will get you if the sun, snakes, bugs, and arthropods don’t. In the Mojave Desert, it’s Las Vegas. Up north in the Great Basin Desert, your heart will break, seeing the strip mines open up and the power plants rise…”
“The Negro Baptist church, weathered black with a snow-white door, has red hens in the yard. The old galleried stores are boarded up. The missing houses were burned – they were empty, and the little row of Negro inhabitants have carried them off for firewood.”
“…the highway builders, land developers, weapons testers, power producers, clear cutters, oil drillers, dam beavers, subdividers.”
“Eventually you see people, of course. Women have little errands, and the old men play checkers at a table in the front of the one open store. And the people’s faces are good.”
“Californicating.”
“To go there, you start west from Port Gibson. Postmen would arrive here blowing their horns like Gabriel, after riding three hundred wilderness miles from Tennessee.”
“Why go into the desert? Really, why do it? That sun, roaring at you all day long. The fetid, tepid, vapid little water holes full of cannibal beetles, spotted toads, horsehair worms, liver flukes. Why go there?”
“I have felt many times there is a sense of place as powerful as if it were visible and walking and could touch me. A place that ever was lived in is like a fire that never goes out. Sometimes it gives out glory, sometimes its little light must be sought out to be seen.”
“Why the desert, when you could be camping by a stream of pure Rocky Mountain spring water. We have centipedes, millipedes, tarantulas, black widows, brown recluses, Gila monsters, the deadly poisonous coral snakes, and the giant hairy desert scorpions. Plus an immense variety of near-infinite number of ants, midges, gnats, bloodsucking flies, and blood-guzzling mosquitoes.”
“Much beauty has gone, many little things of life. To light up the night there are no mansions, no celebrations. Wild birds fly now at the level where people on boat deck once were strolling and talking.”
“In the American Southwest, only the wilderness is worth saving.”
“There is a sense of place there, to keep life from being extinguished, like a cup of the hands to hold a flame.”
“A friend and I took a walk up beyond Coconino County, Arizona. I found an arrow sign, pointed to the north. Nothing of any unusual interest that I could see – only the familiar sun-blasted sandstone, a few scrubby clumps of blackbush and prickly pear, a few acres of nothing where only a lizard could graze. I studied the scene with care. But there was nothing out there. Nothing at all. Nothing but the desert. Nothing but the silent world.”
“Perhaps it is the sense of place that gives us the belief that passionate things, in some essence, endure.”
“In my case, it was love at first sight. The kind of love that makes a man selfish, possessive, irritable…”
“New life will be built upon these things.”
“…an unrequited and excessive love.”
“It is this.”
“That’s why.”
"In Human Society..."
"When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair."
- Nadezhda Mandelstam
“As I’ve Aged”
“As I’ve Aged”
- Author Unknown
“You ask me how it feels to grow older. I’ve learned a few things along the way, which I’ll share with you…
As I’ve aged, I’ve become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I’ve become my own friend. I don’t chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn’t need, but looks so avante-garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.
I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging. Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of many years ago, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love… I will.
I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.
I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things. Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody’s beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.
As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don’t question myself anymore. I’ve even earned the right to be wrong. So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it). May our friendship never come apart especially when it’s straight from the heart!”
Jeremiah Babe, "This Ain't California - Home Shopping In Alabama"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 10/24/24
"This Ain't California - Home Shopping In Alabama"
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Adventures With Danno, "McDonald's E-Coli: This Is About To Get Much Worse"
Adventures With Danno, PM 10/24/24
"McDonald's E-Coli:
This Is About To Get Much Worse"
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Gerald Celente, "Gloom And Boom: It's All Going Down"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 10/24/24
"Gloom And Boom: It's All Going Down"
The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times.
"How It Really Is"
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
- H.L. Mencken, "On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe"
"Every Normal Man..."
"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands,
hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
- H. L. Mencken
"What JP Morgan Bank CEO Jamie Dimon Just Said Is Frightening, And It's The Truth!"
Gregory Mannarino, 10/24/24
"What JP Morgan Bank CEO Jamie Dimon Just
Said Is Frightening, And It's The Truth!"
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"On The Wrong Track: This Is What An Imploding Economy Looks Like"
"On The Wrong Track:
This Is What An Imploding Economy Looks Like"
by Michael Snyder
"One of the main reasons why Americans are in such a foul mood right now is because the economy is in really bad shape and it just keeps getting worse. This is very good news for the Trump campaign, because most Americans don’t want things to remain the same. A desire for change is in the air, but our economy is unraveling so rapidly that it won’t be easy for anyone to turn things around. We have built up a tremendous amount of momentum in the wrong direction, and it appears that the months ahead are not going to be pleasant.
Just look at what is happening to home sales. Last month, sales of previously existing homes fell to the lowest level that we have seen since October 2010. Of course in October 2010 we were dealing with the aftermath of a global financial crisis. Overall, we are on pace “for the worst year since 1995” for sales of previously existing homes…"Sales of existing homes in the U.S. are on track for the worst year since 1995 - for the second year in a row.
Persistently high home prices and elevated mortgage rates are keeping potential home buyers on the sidelines. Sales of previously owned homes in the first nine months of the year were lower than the same period last year, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday. Existing-home sales in September fell 1% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.84 million, NAR said, the lowest monthly rate since October 2010."
Let those numbers sink in for a moment. We haven’t seen anything like this for a long time, and nobody can deny that the market for residential real estate is in a depressed state right now. And it appears that this month could be even worse than last month, because the number of mortgage applications being submitted is absolutely plummeting…"Mortgage applications decreased 17% from one week earlier as mortgage rates surged, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) weekly application survey for the week ending October 11, 2024. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 17% on both a seasonally adjusted and an unadjusted basis from one week earlier."
Meanwhile, our nationwide commercial real estate crisis just continues to intensify. If you can believe it, an office building in Manhattan that sold for 332 million dollars in 2006 just sold for 8.5 million dollars…"The sale of a nearly 1 million-square-foot Manhattan office building listed on the online auction site Ten-X was completed Tuesday for only $8.5 million. That’s 97 percent less than the $332.5 million that the seller, Swiss bank UBS, paid for the Midtown property in 2006. The loss on the building at 135 West 50th Street was minimally offset by a $6 million gain UBS realized by buying and selling the ground beneath it in the interim.
UBS and its brokers at JLL listed the 920,000-square-foot building for sale on the online platform. The two-day auction kicked off July 30 with a starting bid of $7.5 million. The sale ended the next day after Ten-X lowered the reserve price. The winning bidder, whose identity has yet to hit property records, closed about 70 days later." That is insane! Commercial real estate prices have been crashing all over America, and this crisis is not getting the attention that it deserves from the media.
The banking industry is headed for big trouble as well. In fact, the government shut down another bank on Friday…"Friday, The First National Bank of Lindsay was closed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) appointed as receiver. The OCC acted after identifying false and deceptive bank records and other information suggesting fraud that revealed depletion of the bank’s capital. The OCC also found that the bank was in an unsafe or unsound condition to transact business and that the bank’s assets were less than its obligations to its creditors and others."
The OCC is referring the matter to the United States Department of Justice, which has a wide variety of tools to hold individuals accountable for criminal acts and focuses on victims in all of its matters. Some experts are projecting that hundreds of more banks will soon fail. If that actually happens, it will be a complete and utter nightmare.
The “restaurant apocalypse” that I have written about so much also continues to roll on. Sadly, we just learned that Denny’s has decided to shut down 150 locations…"Denny’s is closing 150 restaurants over the next year, and the 71-year-old diner chain is mulling a major change to its 24/7 operating hours. Fifty locations are set to close by the end of 2024, while the remaining 100 will shutter in 2025, Denny’s announced in an earnings call Tuesday. That amounts to a tenth of its restaurants, leaving 1,375 locations once completed. A specific list of closing restaurants weren’t immediately announced."
Needless to say, lots of other chains are slimming down as well. Right now, thousands upon thousands of restaurants are being permanently closed from coast to coast. If the economy was heading in the right direction, this would not be happening. Speaking of closures, another major retailer has announced that it will be closing all stores…
"Buybuy Baby is shuttering all of its stores roughly a year after new owners tried to revive the brand. The company announced on its website that it is transitioning to an online-only model after recognizing the need for a “a strategic reset.” “With this shift, we’ve come to the difficult decision of closing our physical stores by the end of this year,” the company wrote. “We understand this may be disappointing news, and we want all our customers to know this wasn’t a choice we took lightly.” Most retailers that are experiencing difficulties will try to hang on until at least the end of December. But once we get into 2025, expect a huge wave of new store closures.
As I discussed the other day, U.S. consumers are really hurting at the moment. You can’t get blood out of a stone, and a staggering percentage of U.S. cardholders have already maxed out at least one credit card…"Nearly 2 in 5 cardholders (37%) have maxed out a credit card or come close since the Fed started raising interest rates, Bankrate’s Credit Utilization Survey found. That includes 20% who have maxed out a credit card and 17% who have come close to maxing one out."
This is what an imploding economy looks like. Bubbles are bursting all around us, and the outlook for 2025 and beyond is absolutely horrible. Our leaders kept the game going for a long time by injecting trillions of dollars into the system and by going into unprecedented amounts of debt. But despite all of their efforts, the economy is coming apart at the seams anyway, and so I hope that you are prepared for a very hard landing."
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