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Sunday, October 8, 2023

"Alert! Russian Cyberattack On Israel; US Sends Aircraft Carrier For War With Iran/Russia"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/8/23
"Alert! Russian Cyberattack On Israel; 
US Sends Aircraft Carrier For War With Iran/Russia"
Comments here:
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"Iran Helped Hamas 'Plot Israel Attack Over Several Weeks',
 Gave Green Light, WSJ Reports"
"Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions, and gave the green light for the assault last MondayA direct Iranian role would take Tehran’s long-running conflict with Israel out of the shadows, raising the risk of broader conflict in the Middle East. Senior Israeli security officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis. The IRGC’s broader plan is to create a multi-front threat that can strangle Israel from all sides - Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official."

Remember Hezbollah has 150,000 missiles...and if Israel strikes Tehran they have 3,000 long range ballistic missiles and tens of thousands of shorter range missiles to retaliate with, and Hezbollah will instantly launch them all onto Israel. What then? Remember Israel's Samson Option...

Jeremiah Babe, "Warning! Red Dawn Events, All Hell Is Breaking Loose"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 10/8/23
"Warning! Red Dawn Events, All Hell Is Breaking Loose"
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Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Atmospheres"

"Relax, find yourself in enchanted and blissful serenity..."
Deuter, "Atmospheres"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust.
 
Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”

Free Download: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers From Prison”

“The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. “

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Feb. 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945) was a Protestant Lutheran Pastor, theologian, and active in the German resistance to the policies of Hitler and Nazism. Due to his opposition to the Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed at the Flossian concentration camp, during the last month of the war.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers From Prison”

Freely download “Letters and Papers From Prison”, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"I Pity You, Too..."

“Said a philosopher to a street sweeper, “I pity you. Yours is a hard and dirty task.” And the street sweeper said, “Thank you, sir. But tell me, what is your task?” And the philosopher answered saying, “I study man’s mind, his deeds and his desires.” Then the street sweeper went on with his sweeping and said with a smile, “I pity you, too.”
- Kahlil Gibran

"We Are All Like Elephants"

"We Are All Like Elephants"
by Marc Chernoff

"In many ways, our past experiences have conditioned us to believe that we are less capable than we are. All too often we let the rejections of our past dictate every move we make. We literally do not know ourselves to be any better than what some opinionated person or narrow circumstance once told us was true. Of course, an old rejection doesn't mean we aren't good enough; it just means some person or circumstance from our past failed to align with what we had to offer at the time. But somehow we don't see it that way - we hit a mental barricade that stops us in our tracks.

This is one of the most common and damaging thought patterns we as human beings succumb to. Even though we intellectually know that we're gradually growing stronger than we were in the past, our subconscious mind often forgets that our capabilities have grown. Let me give you a quick metaphorical example.

Zookeepers typically strap a thin metal chain to a grown elephants leg and then attach the other end to a small wooden peg that's hammered into the ground. The 10-foot tall, 10,000-pound elephant could easily snap the chain, uproot the wooden peg and escape to freedom with minimal effort. But it doesn't. In fact the elephant never even tries. The worlds most powerful land animal, which can uproot a big tree as easily as you could break a toothpick, remains defeated by a small wooden peg and a flimsy chain.

Why? Because when the elephant was a baby, its trainers used the exact same methods to domesticate it. A thin chain was strapped around its leg and the other end of the chain was tied to a wooden peg in the ground. At the time, the chain and peg were strong enough to restrain the baby elephant. When it tried to break away, the metal chain would pull it back. Sometimes, tempted by the world it could see in the distance, the elephant would pull harder. But the chain would not budge, and soon the baby elephant realized trying to escape was not possible. So it stopped trying.

And now that the elephant is all grown up, it sees the chain and the peg and it remembers what it learned as a baby - the chain and peg are impossible to escape. Of course this is no longer true, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that the 200-pound baby is now a 10,000-pound powerhouse. The elephants self-limiting thoughts and beliefs prevail.

If you think about it, we are all like elephants. We all have incredible power inside us. And certainly, we have our own chains and pegs - the self-limiting thoughts and beliefs that hold us back. Sometimes it's a childhood experience or an old failure. Sometimes it's something we were told when we were a little younger. The key thing to realize here is this: We need to learn from the past, but be ready to update what we learned based on how our circumstances have changed (as they constantly do)." 

The Daily "Near You?"

Mira Loma, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

'We Don't Have A Clue..."

“We don’t have a clue what’s really going down, we just kid ourselves that we’re in control of our lives while a paper’s thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they’re tired, or bored.”
- Neil Gaiman

"Perfect Storm Hit Banks And The Collapse Nobody Thinks Possible Is Already Upon Us"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist 10/8/23
"Perfect Storm Hit Banks And The Collapse
Nobody Thinks Possible Is Already Upon Us"

"A perfect storm is now hitting U.S. banks. New data reveals that the same distortions that preceded the Lehman collapse in 2008 and the failures of four major U.S. banks earlier this year are currently affecting hundreds of institutions, and creating a crisis that will impact our personal finances, thousands of U.S. businesses, and put the economy and financial markets at serious risk.

Current problems in the banking system are reviving uncomfortable memories of the global financial crisis, and the risks of widespread bank failures are higher than at any other period. That’s why Wall Street analysts are pointing the finger of blame to regulators once again. In a recent analysis published on Parade.com, financial experts Pam and Russ Martens exposed that U.S. regulators and the central bank are withholding important information about the real financial condition of several large financial institutions for over a year and a half not to alarm the public, and spark more bank runs and failures.

They discovered that on March 30, 2022, the Fed reported that unrealized losses on available-for-sale securities at the 25 largest U.S. banks were approaching the levels they had reached during the financial crisis in 2008. On that same day, the central bank stopped reporting data about the bank’s unrealized gains and losses on securities. It can’t be just a coincidence that this data series was halted right after the Fed started raising rates on March 17, 2022.

That made things exponentially worse for U.S. banks because they had loaded up on low-interest-rate Treasury securities and federal agency Mortgage-Backed Securities. They did so because their deposit balances had swollen to a historic level as a result of the trillions in stimulus payments that the federal government directly deposited into depositor accounts at banks during the health crisis. Back then, the pandemic led to mass business closings which negatively impacted business loan demand and made banks turn to government-backed bonds as a safe place to park the trillions of dollars in extra deposits. But these lost a good deal of value as interest rates were increased. Lenders ended up with paper losses, leaving investors unimpressed.

At this moment, nearly 200 banks are in danger of suffering the same woes as Silicon Valley Bank. If just 10 small and mid-sized banks fail in the months ahead, that could trigger a cascade of failures and that would bring down larger banks as well. In turn, a major credit crunch would make it impossible for businesses and consumers to access credit. In fact, a credit crisis is already in motion. Last week, bank credit fell further on a year-over-year basis. Meanwhile, corporate and personal bankruptcies are already spiking, and so are consumer debt delinquencies.

Many Americans already report that their access to credit has deteriorated in 2023, and they shouldn’t expect a reversal any time soon. On top of all that, more bank failures would certainly cause more bank runs on these vulnerable financial institutions, damaging confidence in the banking system and causing a broader panic. Ultimately, when lending dries up, that will weigh on the value of stocks, real estate, and other assets, and crimp overall demand - a recipe for a disastrous recession and the worst financial crisis in our lifetimes, just as the experts have been warning all along."
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"How It Really Is"

"What Genius Thinks of Education"

"What Genius Thinks of Education"
By Paul Rosenberg

"As I compiled the thoughts from geniuses last week, one group of thoughts that I left out – simply because there were so many of them – were the thoughts of geniuses on the subject of regimented education. Thus, today’s list. The brightest men and women reach a surprisingly consistent set of conclusions on education, and a very interesting set of conclusions. And so I’ll share a number of them with you, beginning with Albert Einstein:

Albert Einstein: "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like sergeants. I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam… I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement. I learned mostly at home, first from my uncle and then from a student who came to eat with us once a week. He would give me books on physics and astronomy. Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."

Thomas Sowell: "Back when I taught at UCLA, I was constantly amazed at how little so many students knew. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself from asking a student the question that had long puzzled me: ''What were you doing for the last 12 years before you got here?'' "The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."

Baruch Spinoza: "Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them."

Marshall McLuhan: "Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either."

Ivan Illich: "School is the advertising agency which makes you believe you need the society as it is."

Bertrand Russell: "Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."

Mary Wollstonecraft: "There is not, perhaps, in the kingdom, a more dogmatical, or luxurious set of men, than the pedantic tyrants who reside in colleges and preside at public schools."

Agatha Christie: "I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side. A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form."

Celia Green: "Education by the State is a contradiction in terms. Intellectual development is only possible to those who have seen through society. It is easier to make people appear equally stupid than to make them equally clever, so teaching methods are adopted which make it practically impossible for anyone to learn anything."

John Stuart Mill: "A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another: and the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."

Ludwig von Mises: "Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought. The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned or, at least, adds something new to it."

H.L. Mencken: "The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda – a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make ‘good’ citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens."

Sigrid Undset: "I hated school so intensely. It interfered with my freedom. I avoided the discipline by an elaborate technique of being absent-minded during classes."

Abraham Maslow: "We know that children are capable of peak experiences and that they happen frequently during childhood. We also know that the present school system is an extremely effective instrument for crushing peak experiences and forbidding their possibility. The natural child-respecting teacher who is not frightened by the sight of children enjoying themselves is a rare sight in classrooms."

Isaac Asimov: "Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is."

Boris Sidis: "Our young generation is trained by fear into discipline and obedience. We thus suppress the natural genius and originality of the child, we favor and raise mediocrity, and cultivate the philistine, the product of education, ruled by rod, not by thought. It is time that the medical and teaching profession should realize that functional neurosis is not congenital, not inborn, not hereditary, but is the result of a defective, fear-inspiring education in early child life."

Aldous Huxley: "Children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements. Why is this so? Because their elders, even in the democratic countries, do not want them to be given this kind of education."

Buckminster Fuller: "Education by choice, with its marvelous motivating psychology of desire for truth and the exercise of this desire for truth, will make life ever cleaner and happier, more rhythmical and artistic. Our greatest vulnerability lies in the amount of misinformation and misconditioning of humanity. I’ve found the education systems are full of it."

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing."

Buddha: "Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
o
"According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, 57% of Americans have a reading grade below 9th level, and 13% have a reading grade below 5th level. Only 13% can understand the Declaration or Patrick Henry’s speech, and virtually none can understand the Constitution. And that includes all Americans. Among Generation Z, it’s far worse. They are the least literate generation in American history.

Spend a few minutes on YouTube watching our young people be interviewed on the most basic matters of our history and values. They do not know anything of the good, the true, and the beautiful; and even if they wanted to, they could not learn it because the texts are inaccessible to them. Far too many have been cognitively crippled."

"Mass Formation Psychosis, Or... Mass Hypnosis - The Madness Of Crowds"

"Mass Formation Psychosis,
Or... Mass Hypnosis - The Madness Of Crowds"
by Robert W Malone MD, MS

"As many of you know, I have spent time researching and speaking about mass psychosis theory. Most of what I have learned has come from Dr. Mattias Desmet, who realized that this form of mass hypnosis, of the madness of crowds, can account for the strange phenomenon of about 20-30% of the population in the western world becoming entranced with the Noble Lies and dominant narrative concerning the safety and effectiveness of the genetic vaccines, and both propagated and enforced by politicians, science bureaucrats, pharmaceutical companies and legacy media.

What one observes with the mass hypnosis is that a large fraction of the population is completely unable to process new scientific data and facts demonstrating that they have been misled about the effectiveness and adverse impacts of mandatory mask use, lockdowns, and genetic vaccines that cause people’s bodies to make large amounts of biologically active coronavirus Spike protein.

These hypnotized by this process are unable to recognize the lies and misrepresentations they are being bombarded with on a daily basis, and actively attack anyone who has the temerity to share information with them which contradicts the propaganda that they have come to embrace. And for those whose families and social networks have been torn apart by this process, and who find that close relatives and friends have ghosted them because they question the officially endorsed “truth” and are actually following the scientific literature, this can be a source of deep anguish, sorrow and psychological pain.

It is with those souls in mind that I included a discussion of the mass formation theory of Dr. Mattias Desmet during a recent talk I gave in Tampa, Florida to an audience of about 2,000. As I looked out into the audience and spoke, I could see relief on many faces, and even tears running from the eyes of stoic men.
"What Is Mass Formation Psychosis?"
An overview of Mass Formation, which was developed by Dr. Mattias Desmet. He is a psychologist and a statistician. He is at the University of Ghent in Belgium. I think Dr. Mattias is onto something about what is happening and he calls this phenomena:

Mass Formation Psychosis: So, when he says “mass” formation, you can think of this as equivalent to “crowd” formation. One can think of this as: crowd psychosis. The conditions to set up mass formation psychosis include lack of social connectedness and sensemaking as well as large amounts of latent anxiety and passive aggression. When people are inundated with a narrative that presents a plausible "object of anxiety" and strategy for coping with it, then many individuals group together to battle the object with a collective singlemindedness. This allows people to stop focusing on their own problems, avoiding personal mental anguish. Instead, they focus all their thought and energy on this new object.

As mass formation progresses, the group becomes increasingly bonded and connected. Their field of attention is narrowed and they become unable to consider alternative points of view. Leaders of the movement are revered, unable to do no wrong.

Left unabated, a society under the spell of mass formation will support a totalitarian governance structure capable of otherwise unthinkable atrocities in order to maintain compliance. A note: mass formation is different from group think. There are easy ways to fix group think by just bringing in dissenting voices and making sure you give them platforms. It isn’t so easy with mass formation. Even when the narrative falls apart, cracks in the strategy clearly aren’t solving the issue, the hypnotized crowd can’t break free of the narrative. This is what appears to be happening now with COVID-19. The solution for those in control of the narrative is to produce bigger and bigger lies to prop up the solution. Those being controlled by mass formation no longer are able to use reason to break free of the group narrative.

Of course, the obvious example of mass formation is Germany in the 1930s and 40s. How could the German people who were highly educated, very liberal in the classic sense; western thinking people… how could they go so crazy and do what they did to the Jews? How could this happen? To a civilized people? A leader of a mass formation movement will use the platform to continue to pump the group with new information to focus on. In the case of COVID-19, I like to use the term “fear porn.” Leaders, through main stream media and government channels continuously feed the “beast” with more messaging that focus and further hypnotize their adherents. We're seeing the exact same process with Ukraine now.

Studies suggest that mass formation follows a general distribution:
● 30% are brainwashed, hypnotized, indoctrinated by the group narrative.
● 40% in the middle are persuadable and may follow if no worthy alternative is perceived.
● 30% fight against the narrative.

Those that rebel and fight against the narrative, become the enemy of the brainwashed and a primary target of aggression. One of the the best ways to counter mass formation is for those against the narrative to continue to speak out against it, which serves to help break the hypnosis of some in the brainwashed group as well as persuade the persuadable middle to choose reason over mindlessness.

Dr. Desmet suggests that for something as big as COVID-19, the only way to break the mass formation psychosis is to give the crowd something bigger to focus on. He believes that totalitarianism may be that bigger issue. Of course, after COVID-19, global totalitarianism may be the biggest issue of our time."
Related:
False Flag Weekly News

“My Dinner with Andre”

“My Dinner with Andre” 
by Robert W. Malone, MD, MS

"The movie “My Dinner with Andre” (1981) is over forty years old… Jill and I first watched this film when we were in our early 20s. It may be one key reason why we have spent our entire adult lives unwilling to buy into “the system”, and why I took to Mattias Desmet’s “Mass Formation” hypothesis like a duck to water.

Transcript:
Wally: Well, why...why do you think that is? I mean, why is that, I mean, is it just because people are...are lazy today, or they're bored? I mean, are we just like bored, spoiled children who've just been lying in the bathtub all day just playing with their plastic duck, and now they're just thinking, "Well, what can I do?"

Okay. Yes. We're bored. We're all bored now. But has it every occurred to you, Wally, that the process that creates this boredom that we see in the world now may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money? And that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks. And it's not just a question of individual survival, Wally, but that somebody who's bored is asleep? And somebody who's asleep will not say "no"?

See, I keep meeting these people, I mean, uh, just a few days ago I met this man whom I greatly admire, he's a Swedish physicist, Gustav Björnstrand, and he told me that he no longer watches television, he doesn't read newspapers, and he doesn't read magazines. He's completely cut them out of his life because he really does feel that we're living in some kind of Orwellian nightmare now, and that everything that you hear now contributes to turning you into a robot.

And when I was at Findhorn, I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted his life to saving trees. Just got back from Washington, lobbying to save the redwoods, he's 84 years old, and he always travels with a backpack cause he never knows where he's gonna be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn, he said to me, "Where are you from?" and I said, "New York." He said, "Ah, New York. Yes, that's a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?" And I said, "Oh, yes." And he said, "Why do you think they don't leave?" I gave him different banal theories. He said, "Oh, I don't think it's that way at all."

He said, "I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they've built. They've built their own prison. And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners, and as a result, they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they've made or to even see it as a prison." And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree and he said, "This is a pine tree." He put it in my hand and he said, "Escape before it's too late."

See, actually, for two or three years now, Chiquita and I have had this very unpleasant feeling that we really should get out. That we really should feel like Jews in Germany in the late thirties. Get out of here. Of course, the problem is where to go, cause it seems quite obvious that the whole world is going in the same direction. See, I think it's quite possible that the 1960s represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future now, and that, from now on there'll simply be all these robots walking around, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. And there'll be nobody left almost to remind them that there once was a species called a human being, with feelings and thoughts, and that history and memory are right now being erased, and soon nobody will really remember that life existed on the planet."

"How It Really Is"

 

Yeah, there is. Look around, what do you think is happening?
And this is just the beginning...

Adventures With Danno, "Food Shortage Report! This Is Getting Bad!"

Adventures With Danno, AM 10/8/23
"Food Shortage Report! This Is Getting Bad!"
"We are covering the food shortage report for Fall and Winter of 2023 and 2024. It's worse than we thought it would be as food shortages are popping up everywhere. We expose the truth as thousands of our viewers have commented on what is coming up missing in their grocery stores!"
Comments here:

"Target Is Getting Wiped Out, The Biggest Retail Chains Prepare To Follow Suit"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, AM 10/8/23
"Target Is Getting Wiped Out, 
The Biggest Retail Chains Prepare To Follow Suit"
"Target, once the darling of the retail industry, is witnessing a notable decline this year. This retail giant, known for its commitment to quality, style, and affordability, has faced various challenges that have impacted its market position. Their financial performance has taken a nosedive, with profits dropping dramatically over the past year. Recently, its management has decided that the best way to stay afloat is to downsize by closing some select stores. However, its woes began a long time ago. A quick look into history reminds us of the retailer facing a sort of identity crisis as far back as 2014."
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Dan, I Allegedly, "You Can Move To The Moon"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 10/8/23
"You Can Move To The Moon"
"Relocating has been getting more and more difficult. Lately, there’s a company that wants to offer homes built on the moon. Just think. You won’t have any problems with neighbors and it will be brand new."
Comments here:

Must View! Canadian Prepper, "WW3 Emergency Update: Total Chaos Is Erupting"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/8/23
"WW3 Emergency Update: Total Chaos Is Erupting;
 Lebanon, Iran, Russia; Insider Info 'Stand Down'"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
"Israel's Nearly Impenetrable Iron Dome 
Struggles To Stop Hamas' 5,000 Rockets"
"On the morning of October 7th, Israelis woke up to a war. Air raid sirens blared as Hamas fired over 5,000 rockets in merely 20 minutes from the Gaza strip. This act jeopardized Israel's nearly impenetrable Iron Dome air defense system. Watch how a Palestinian militant group outfoxed one of the most powerful weapons in the world."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Al Jazeera English, 10/8/23
"Gaza-Israel war: 
Israel and Hezbollah Rocket Attacks at Border"
"The number of Israelis killed has shot up to 600 since Hamas launched its biggest attack on Israel by land, air and sea early on Saturday. Dozens of bodies were found in an area called Reim bordering the Gaza. A number of burnt cars were along a road in the region. Israel launched strikes on Gaza early dawn on Sunday. Many buildings were damaged. More than 300 Palestinians have been killed so far. Israeli has also deployed troops along the Lebanon border after Hezbollah shelled areas under its occupation. Israel retaliated with artillery fire after 3 posts were hit in the Shebaa Farms areas. Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds reports from in Southern Israel, near the border with Gaza."
Comments here:
o
One should remember that Lebanon-based Hezbollah
 has 150,000 missiles and shares a border with Israel...
o
Should Iran be involved know that Iran possesses “over 3,000” long
 range ballistic missiles, and tens of thousands of shorter range missiles."

"Assessing the Islamic Republic of
Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program"

o

Saturday, October 7, 2023

Jeremiah Babe, "When The Credit Cards Run Out It's Game Over"

Jeremiah Babe, 10/7/23
"When The Credit Cards Run Out It's Game Over, 
Wake Up Time Is Running Out"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Oltremare"

Ludovico Einaudi, "Oltremare"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"How do clusters of galaxies form and evolve? To help find out, astronomers continue to study the second closest cluster of galaxies to Earth: the Fornax cluster, named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found. Although almost 20 times more distant than our neighboring Andromeda galaxy, Fornax is only about 10 percent further that the better known and more populated Virgo cluster of galaxies.
Fornax has a well-defined central region that contains many galaxies, but is still evolving. It has other galaxy groupings that appear distinct and have yet to merge. Seen here, almost every yellowish splotch on the image is an elliptical galaxy in the Fornax cluster. The picturesque barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 visible on the lower right is also a prominent Fornax cluster member."

"If You Caught A Glimpse..."

"If you caught a glimpse of your own death,
would that knowledge change the way you live the rest of your life?"
- Paco Ahlgren, "Discipline"

Free Download: Richard Bach: "Illusions"

"We Are All. Free. To Do. Whatever. We Want. To Do.”
by Richard Bach

“We are all free to do whatever we want to do,” he said that night. “Isn’t that simple and clean and clear? Isn’t that a great way to run a universe?” “Almost. You forgot a pretty important part,” I said. “Oh?” “We are all free to do what we want to do, as long as we don’t hurt somebody else,” I chided. “I know you meant that, but you ought to say what you mean.”

There was a sudden shambling sound in the dark, and I looked at him quickly. “Did you hear that?” “Yeah. Sounds like there’s somebody…” He got up, walked into the dark. He laughed suddenly, said a name I couldn’t catch. “It’s OK,” I heard him say. “No, we’d be glad to have you… no need you standing around… come on, you’re welcome, really…”

The voice was heavily accented, not quite Russian, nor Czech, more Transylvanian. “Thank you. I do not wish to impose myself upon your evening…” The man he brought with him to the firelight was, well, he was unusual to find in a midwest night. A small lean wolflike fellow, frightening to the eye, dressed in evening clothes, a black cape lined in red satin, he was uncomfortable in the light.

“I was passing by,” he said. “The field is a shortcut to my house…” “Is it?” Shimoda did not believe the man, knew he was lying, and at the same time did all he could to keep from laughing out loud. I hoped to understand before long.

“Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “Can we help you at all?” I really didn’t feel that helpful, but he was so shrinking, I did want him to be at ease, if he could. He looked on me with a desperate smile that turned me to ice. “Yes, you can help me. I need this very much or I would not ask. May I drink your blood? Just some? It is my food, I need human blood…”

Maybe it was the accent, he didn’t know English that well or I didn’t understand his words, but I was on my feet quicker than I had been in many a month, hay flying into the fire from my quickness. The man stepped back. I am generally harmless, but I am not a small person and I could have looked threatening. He turned his head away. “Sir, I am sorry! I am sorry! Please forget that I said anything about blood! But you see…”

“What are you saying?” I was the more fierce because I was scared. “What in the hell are you saying, mister? I don’t know what you are, are you some kind of VAM-?” Shimoda cut me off before I could say the word. “Richard, our guest was talking, and you interrupted. Please go ahead, sir; my friend is a little hasty.” “Donald,” I said, “this guy…” “Be quiet!” That surprised me so much that I was quiet, and looked a sort of terrified question at the man, caught from his native darkness into our firelight.

“Please to understand. I did not choose to be born vampire. Is unfortunate. I do not have many friends. But I must have a certain small amount of fresh blood every night or I writhe in terrible pain, longer than that without it and I cannot live! Please, I will be deeply hurt – I will die – if you do not allow me to suck your blood… just a small amount, more than a pint I do not need.” He advanced a step toward me, licking his lips, thinking that Shimoda somehow controlled me and would make me submit.

“One more step and there will be blood, all right. Mister, you touch me and you die…” I wouldn’t have killed him, but I did want to tie him up, at least, before we talked much more. He must have believed me, for he stopped and sighed. He turned to Shimoda. “You have made your point?” “I think so. Thank you.”

The vampire looked up at me and smiled, completely at ease, enjoying himself hugely, an actor on stage when the show is over. “I won’t drink your blood, Richard,” he said in perfect friendly English, no accent at all. As I watched he faded as though he was turning out his own light… in five seconds he had disappeared.

Shimoda sat down again by the fire. “Am I ever glad you don’t mean what you say!” I was still trembling with adrenalin, ready for my fight with a monster. “Don, I’m not sure I’m built for this. Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on. Like, for instance, what… was that?”

“Dot was a wompire from Tronsylwania,” he said in words thicker than the creature’s own. “Or to be more precise, dot was a thought-form of a wompire from Tronsylwania. If you ever want to make a point, you think somebody isn’t listening, whip ‘em up a little thought-form to demonstrate what you mean. Do you think I overdid him, with the cape and the fangs and the accent like that? Was he too scary for you?”

“The cape was first class, Don. But that was the most stereotyped, outlandish… I wasn’t scared at all.” He sighed. “Oh well. But you got the point, at least, and that’s what matters.”

“What point?” “Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt somebody else. He even told you he’d be hurt if…”

“He was going to suck my blood!” “Which is what we do to anyone when we say we’ll be hurt if they don’t live our way.”

I was quiet for a long time, thinking about that. I had always believed that we are free to do as we please only if we don’t hurt another, and this didn’t fit. There was something missing.

“The thing that puzzles you,” he said, “is an accepted saying that happens to be impossible. The phrase is hurt somebody else. We choose, ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides. Nobody else. My vampire told you he’d be hurt if you didn’t let him? That’s his decision to be hurt, that’s his choice. What you do about it is your decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake of holly through his heart. If he doesn’t want the holly stake, he’s free to resist, in whatever way he wants. It goes on and on, choices, choices.”

“When you look at it that way…”

“Listen,” he said, “it’s important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.“
“Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”
by Richard Bach

“Born in 1936, Richard Bach is an American author who has written many excellent books. His quotes are inspirational and motivational. “Jonathan Livingston Seagull;” “Illusions;” “The Bridge Across Forever;” to name only a few of his books.

Notice: This electronic version of the book has been released for educational purposes only. You may not sell or make any profit from this book. And if you like this book, buy a paper copy and give it to someone who does not have a computer, if that is possible for you.
FREELY download “Illusions”, in PDF format, is here:

"We Have Reached The Terminal Phase Of The Greatest Debt Spiral In The History Of The Human Race"

"We Have Reached The Terminal Phase Of
 The Greatest Debt Spiral In The History Of The Human Race"
by Michael Snyder

"If you are going to go out, you might as well do it with a bang. At the beginning of June, our national debt was sitting at $31,467,639,287,894.39. Today, it has risen to $33,442,148,619,617.43. That means that we have added almost two trillion dollars to the national debt in just three months. It is the largest single debt in the entire history of our planet, and it will never be paid off. Our debt spiral has reached a terminal phase, and all we can do now is prolong the agony. If we keep taking on more debt at an exponential rate, we may be able to extend our seemingly endless party for a little while longer. As for the bright future that our children and grandchildren were supposed to have, we destroyed that a long time ago, and so it doesn’t really matter what we do now.

What our politicians are doing to us is truly a crime against humanity. And I am not just talking about the United States. All over the world, politicians have been on the greatest debt binge in the history of the human race, and for quite a few years it seemed like they were getting away with it. But now interest rates are rising and there is great turmoil in the bond markets. The following comes from CNN

"A slump in government bonds around the world has pushed up the cost of some nations’ debt to levels not seen in more than a decade. That’s bad news for governments in the red but also for the wallets of millions of mortgage borrowers, stock investors and businesses. The sell-off has been fueled by expectations among investors that the world’s major central banks will keep interest rates “higher for longer” to bring inflation down to their targets.

It works like this: Governments looking to raise cash for public services and investments issue bonds. A bond provides a way to borrow money from investors for a set length of time, with the obligation to make regular interest payments. In recent weeks, bond yields have reached very alarming levels.

If this continues, governments all over the world will soon be facing enormous problems: When official interest rates rise, so do investors’ expectations for returns on bonds, known as yields. This creates an incentive for investors to sell the bonds they currently hold and buy newly issued ones that offer higher interest payments. Selling bonds reduces prices. So, in short, when yields rise, bond prices fall.

And yields have most definitely been rising: The yield on 30-year US government bonds, also known as Treasuries, hit 5% on Tuesday for the first time since 2007. In the United Kingdom, the yield on 30-year bonds also reached 5% this week, the highest level in more than two decades. Yields on German long-dated bonds are back to levels last seen on the eve of the eurozone debt crisis in 2011. Yields on Italy’s 10-year bonds hit 5% on Wednesday, the highest level since 2012, when that crisis was in full swing.

There is no way out of this mess now. If we would have acted responsibly all along, we would have gotten a much different outcome. But at this point our fate is pretty much sealed.Of course our politicians never intended to change course. In fact, they continue to spend money like drunken sailors.

As Zero Hedge has aptly noted, the U.S. government recently added 275 billion dollars to the national debt in a single day…The US added – checks notes – $275 billion in debt in, uh, ONE DAY. Total US debt is now $33.442 trillion, hit $33 trillion just 2 weeks ago, and on pace to rise by $1 trillion in 1 month.

What makes all of this even more frustrating is that they aren’t even spending the money efficiently. And in many instances, it is being wasted on extremely frivolous things…Federal officials have been criticized after splashing $3.3 billion on swanky new office furniture during the pandemic, when almost all staff worked from home. The egregious spending habits of the US government included almost $250,000 on solar-powered picnic tables for the CDC, and $120,000 on plush Ethan Allen leather chairs.

We are borrowing and spending money at an exponential pace, and we all know how this is going to end. It is going to end with the U.S. dollar becoming worth little more than toilet paper. This is a point that author Robert Kiyosaki made very eloquently during a recent interview

"Robert Kiyosaki, renowned author of the phenomenal personal finance book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” shared a piece of his mind on how to decentralize from the fiat currency in these scary times of a broken banking system. According to him, the dollar has been losing its purchasing power and not long from now, it would just be worth less than “toilet paper.”

During his appearance on the recent episode “Decentralize.TV” hosted by Mike Adams and Todd Pitner, Kiyosaki pointed out how the lack of financial education in the United States blinds the people and even President Joe Biden’s administration in tackling the current economic downturn. “Just recently they raised the debt ceiling again…and because our schools have no financial education, no idea of credit rating, our debt increased by $1.8 trillion. The United States via Fitch Rating services downgraded the U.S. debt from AAA to AA-plus. We are on a collision course for disaster.”

It is true. We really are on a “collision course” with disaster, but most Americans don’t realize what is happening. Most Americans seem to believe that there will never be any serious consequences for all the borrowing and spending that we have been doing. And that is because most Americans don’t understand basic economics.

When your debt rises much faster than your income does for an extended period of time, it is always going to result in pain. Every single time. If you have ever found yourself drowning in debt, you know exactly what I am talking about. Well, now our entire country is drowning in debt, and our politicians are adding hundreds of billions more to that debt every single month.

This is not going to end well, and that should be obvious to everyone. For the moment, our politicians are doing their best to keep the debt spiral humming, but the clock is ticking and time is quickly running out…"

"We Are Witnessing One Of The Greatest Financial Market Crashes In History Right Now"

"We Are Witnessing One Of The Greatest
 Financial Market Crashes In History Right Now"
By Michael Snyder

"History is starting to repeat itself. In 2008, bond prices crashed before stock prices did. Here in 2023, bond prices are crashing again. In fact, we are currently witnessing one of the greatest financial crashes in U.S. history at this moment. Of course most Americans have absolutely no idea that this is happening. Most Americans don’t know anything about the bond crash that is causing a tremendous amount of fear in the financial community right now, and that is because the big news networks aren’t talking about it too much. But it is serious. Since the peak of the market, 10 year bonds are down 46 percent and 30 year bonds are down 53 percent

"Losses on longer-dated Treasuries are beginning to rival some of the most notorious market meltdowns in US history. Bonds maturing in 10 years or more have slumped 46% since peaking in March 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s just shy of the 49% plunge in US stocks in the aftermath of the dot-com bust at the turn of the century. The rout in 30-year bonds has been even worse, tumbling 53%, nearing the 57% slump in equities during the depths of the financial crisis."

We haven’t seen anything like this in many years. As bond yields go up, bond prices go down. And the last time the yield on 10 year bonds rose to this level was “just before the 2008 financial crisis”…"At the center of the storm is the 10-year Treasury yield, one of the most influential numbers in finance. The yield, which represents borrowing costs for issuers of bonds, has climbed steadily in recent weeks and reached 4.8% on Tuesday, a level last seen just before the 2008 financial crisis."

We are witnessing the exact same pattern that we witnessed in 2008 and during other financial panics. Bonds crash first, and then stocks crash later. I have warned over and over again that high interest rates were going to have an absolutely devastating impact on our system, and now it is staring to happen. Our banks are going to be in so much trouble. They were already sitting on hundreds of billons of dollars in unrealized losses, and the spike in bond yields in recent weeks has pushed that number even higher.

Meanwhile, mortgage rates continue to soar…"Freddie Mac’s latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey released Thursday shows the average rate for the benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped to 7.49%, up from 7.31% last week and from 6.66% a year ago. The rate for a 15-year mortgage also climbed, averaging 6.78% after coming in last week at 6.72%. One year ago, the rate on a 15-year fixed note averaged 5.9%."

These high rates are absolutely paralyzing the housing market. Millions of potential buyers have been forced to the sidelines, because high rates have made housing “unaffordable” in 99 percent of all U.S. counties…"Housing prices are growing more unaffordable even with the astronomical rise in mortgage rates, putting ownership out of reach for millions of Americans. That’s according to a new report published by real estate data provider ATTOM, which examined 572 U.S. counties and determined that median home prices in 99% of those areas are out of reach for the average income earner, who makes about $71,214 annually. “The latest trend continues a two-year pattern of homeownership getting more and more difficult for average U.S. wage earners,” the report said."

The home prices that we are seeing today are absolutely insane. Recently, a 565 square foot house in West Hollywood “sold for a whopping $1.1 million”…"A miniature home in Los Angeles’ West Hollywood neighborhood recently sold for a whopping $1.1 million despite only offering 565 square feet inside. The 1924 Craftsman-bungalow – settled on a 2.240 square foot lot – is tucked away behind a row of hedges and located just across the street from a fire station."

I couldn’t imagine paying that much for a glorified closet. But apparently someone out there had money to burn. Of course most homes are not selling at this point. In fact, sales of existing homes have fallen by about a third over the past year. So something has got to give.

Either the Federal Reserve has got to dramatically reduce interest rates or home prices have got to fall. And the Federal Reserve is not planning to reduce interest rates any time soon. Unfortunately, Fed officials keep talking about the possibility of raising them even higher.

So a lot more pain is coming, and the American people are getting restless. If you can believe it, a recent Rasmussen survey discovered that more than half of all U.S. adults believe that we will experience “another Great Depression” within the next few years…"Despite claims by President Joe Biden about the strength of America’s economy, most Americans still think we’re headed toward another Great Depression.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 52% of American Adults believe it is likely that, over the next few years, the United States will enter a 1930s-like depression, including 21% who say a major depression is Very Likely. Thirty-six percent (36%) don’t think another Great Depression is likely over the next few years, including 11% who say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 11% are not sure."

Even though they may not understand the specifics, most Americans can feel that something has gone horribly wrong. But things didn’t have to turn out this way. You see, the truth is that we didn’t learn our lessons from the last financial crisis Instead of fixing the system, we created bubbles that were even bigger. Now that bonds have crashed, it is just a matter of time before stocks crash too. And we are headed for an economic meltdown of epic proportions. The months and years ahead are going to be incredibly challenging. So I hope that you have been preparing for difficult times, because the nightmare that many of us have been warning about has already begun."

The Daily "Near You?"

Steuben, Maine, USA. Thanks for stopping by!