Monday, October 19, 2020

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/17/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/19/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
George Bernard Shaw
Gregory Mannarino,
AM Oct 19, 2020: 
"Important Updates, Debt 'Reset'"
And now. The End game...

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Musical Interlude: Afshin, "Prayer of Change"

  

Afshin, "Prayer of Change"
Full screen mode recommended.

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 10/18/20"

 

by Remy Tumin
10/18/20

"Exhaustion and impatience are creating new risks as coronavirus cases soar in parts of the world. Nearly 40 million people have been infected globally.

The U.S. surpassed eight million known cases this past week, and reported more than 70,000 new infections on Friday, the most in a single day since July. Eighteen states added more new infections during the past week than in any other during the pandemic.

In Europe, cases are rising and hospitalizations are up. Britain is imposing new restrictions, and France has placed cities on “maximum alert.” Germany (Munich, pictured above) and Italy set records for the most new daily cases. This is the state of the virus around the world.

The virus has taken different paths through these countries as leaders have implemented a range of restrictions. But a common sentiment emerged: a public weariness of the coronavirus and a growing tendency to risk its dangers, out of desire or necessity. One New Yorker summed it up: “I am so tired of everything. Is it going to be over? I want it to be over.”

Oct 18, 2020, 2:11 PM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 39,833,800 
people, according to official counts, including 8,173,154 Americans.

      Oct 18, 2020 2:11 PM ET: 
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
Updated 10/18/20, 11:24 AM ET
Click image for larger size.
A highly recommended "must read":

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas. 


Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."

"My Desire..."

 

"Humanity Today..."

"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."
- Edward O. Wilson

Chet Raymo, "Lessons"

"Lessons"
by Chet Raymo

"There is a four-line poem by Yeats, called "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors":

"What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass."

Like so many of the short poems of Yeats, it is hard to know what the poet had in mind, who exactly were the unknown instructors, and if unknown how could they instruct. But as I opened my volume of The Poems this morning, at random, as in the old days people opened the Bible and pointed a finger at a random passage seeking advice or instruction, this is the poem that presented itself. Unsuperstitious person that I am, it seemed somehow apropos, since outside the window, in a thick Irish mist, every blade of grass has its hanging drop.

Those pendant drops, the bejeweled porches of the spider webs, the rose petals cupping their glistening dew - all of that seems terribly important here, now, in the silent mist. There is not much good to say about getting old, but certainly one advantage of the gathering years is the falling away of ego and ambition, the felt need to be always busy, the exhausting practice of accumulation. Who were the instructors who tried to teach me the practice of simplicity when I was young - the poets and the saints, the buddhas who were content to sit beneath the bo tree while the rest of us scurried here and there? I scurried, and I'm not sorry I did, but I must have tucked their lessons into the back of my mind, a cache of wisdom to be opened at my leisure.

Whatever it was they sought to teach has come to pass. All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."

The Daily "Near You?"

Riverton, Wyoming, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Listen..."

 

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: Expect A BIG Week, BE READY!"

Gregory Mannarino,
"Markets, A Look Ahead: Expect A BIG Week, BE READY!" 

"The Great Thing About The Internet..."

"The great thing about the internet is that you get to meet people you
would otherwise only meet if you were committed to the same asylum."
- Robert Brault

"Harper’s Provides a Chilling Account of Secret Presidential Powers"

"Harper’s Provides a Chilling Account of Secret Presidential Powers"
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

"Andrew Cockburn has a stunning report in the November issue of Harper’s Magazine on secret Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs) that “implement extraordinary presidential authority in response to extraordinary situations.” Cockburn notes that these sweeping powers have been “Compiled without any authorization from Congress” and were not on the public’s radar “until Donald Trump started to brag about them.” In March, Trump made this statement:

“Well, we have things that I can do. We have very strong emergency powers under the Stafford Act. And we are - we have it - I mean, I have it memorized, practically, as to the powers in that act. And if I need to do something, I’ll do it. I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about.”

Cockburn walks us through how Presidents throughout history have used (and abused) PEADs and declarations of national emergency. He expresses the hope that the next Congress will “move aggressively to assert the Constitution and close all the secret loopholes.”

If you read nothing else this week, you really need to read this article:

"The Enemies Briefcase:
Secret Powers and the Presidency"
By Andrew Cockburn

"A few hours before the inauguration ceremony, the prospective president receives an elaborate and highly classified briefing on the means and procedures for blowing up the world with a nuclear attack, a rite of passage that a former official described as “a sobering moment.” Secret though it may be, we are at least aware that this introduction to apocalypse takes place. At some point in the first term, however, experts surmise that an even more secret briefing occurs, one that has never been publicly acknowledged. In it, the new president learns how to blow up the Constitution.

The session introduces “presidential emergency action documents,” or PEADs, orders that authorize a broad range of mortal assaults on our civil liberties. In the words of a rare declassified official description, the documents outline how to “implement extraordinary presidential authority in response to extraordinary situations” - by imposing martial law, suspending habeas corpus, seizing control of the internet, imposing censorship, and incarcerating so-called subversives, among other repressive measures. “We know about the nuclear briefcase that carries the launch codes,” Joel McCleary, a White House official in the Carter Administration, told me. “But over at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department there’s a list of all the so-called enemies of the state who would be rounded up in an emergency. I’ve heard it called the ‘enemies briefcase.’”
Please view this complete article here:

"The Illusion Is Failing"

"The Illusion Is Failing"
by Chris Martenson 

"Sometimes the magic fails. The secret to the trick is accidentally revealed. The woman was always in the box. The eye is no longer deceived. And there’s no getting the audience’s sense of awe back. Just like a bungled illusion, once trust is broken, it’s gone.

For many during 2020, the loss of their jobs and businesses - in many cases due to incompetent government management of the pandemic - has been both a blessing and a curse. Of course nobody likes being laid off or losing a business they’d carefully built up over the years. But for a significant number of those people, however, they’ve now been given time (against their will, admittedly) to reflect and realize how much they hated their work in the first place. For them, the illusion has been broken. They won’t go back to pretending their former lives were acceptable or tolerable, and they’re actively looking for employment that better fits their values. Time for something new.

Others have realized how much they really disliked what air travel had devolved into. With its demeaning theater of faux displays of ‘safety’- being groped by TSA agents and having to perform a striptease to get personal items through the security scanners. I’m one of these folks. I’ll be traveling a lot less in the future, no matter what happens with the SARS-2 virus. I’ll be content to stay local and conduct my business via Zoom calls as much as can possibly be done. I won’t miss the pat-downs, delays, crowded seats, and cancelled flights.

Similarly, social media has now been revealed to be run by petulant sociopaths whose goal is for you to see exactly what content they want you to see, because that fits their profit incentive. But they do so under the guise of “protecting” us from uninteresting or inappropriate material. Their contradictions couldn’t be any more gaping. They’re pushing a “diversity” that requires uniformity of thought.

Living on the internet this year while researching and publishing over 100 updates about covid, I’ve seen innumerable examples of this on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube - such as their promotion of the W.H.O.’s inconsistent and blatantly Big Pharma-conflicted messages while suppressing front-line doctors armed with positive real-world results.

The list goes on and on. None of it makes any sense. At least, not once you lift your head up and shake off the consumer lifestyle blinders. The world is literally and figuratively on fire. We are now seeing the most profound ice loss ever in the arctic. We’re seeing more destructive wildfires in the US than ever before. And so many storms in the Atlantic basin that they’ve run blown through “Z” and are now working their way through the Greek alphabet.

Protests. Riots. Political and social divisions so volatile that suddenly you can read credible opinion pieces on how civil war could be ‘a thing’ in our future. But none of this has to be this way.

There’s another path. One that begins by taking stock of the fact that the ways in which we’ve been living and running our society no longer work. The more we continue to pursue the status quo in the hopes that somehow this will all magically turns itself around, the more we waste valuable time and resources.

To change, we must first start by declaring “Not this!” That’s what millions of people are currently doing on some level. Somewhere deep inside, they’re realizing that their old lives aren’t coming back. And good riddance too! The illusion is broken. There’s no more fun in the show. Time to wander out of the theater and find something actually worth our time.

The illusion is broken. Our top health authorities have shown that they care more about creating the next massively profitable drug than they do about actually saving lives. Once you’ve see that, you can’t ‘unsee’ it.

Both major political parties reacted to covid by hastily shoveling trillions of dollars to Wall Street and mega corporations while only giving poorly-delivered scraps to ordinary people. Which is why the current candidates’ campaign promises aren’t believed.

“None of the above” would win in a landslide here in the USA in 2020. The illusion is broken. If the first necessary step is to withdraw our consent, what’s the second step? Become as resilient as you can. Control what you can and let the rest unfold as it will.

Many of our largest systems are in the process of breaking down. Not only is there nothing you can do to stop that, but nothing should be done here. Those unsustainable and deeply unfair systems are failing for a reason. They’re not worth preserving. Any efforts spent trying to prop them up simply delay our opportunity to replace them with better new models. Sometimes it’s just best to admit that a building has lived out its full useful lifespan, tear it down, and build anew. Honor it for how it’s served us, nod once, and tear it down.

Intelligent regenerative action is what the world needs now. And even if they prove to be insufficient, they are inarguably necessary. Some of these efforts, such as planting pear trees, are being planted for whomever comes after us. We do this because it’s the right thing to do. In a world that has gone mad, and lacks a coherent story, the need to make sense and become the author of our own story grows exponentially. If we don’t heed the lessons of the past, and attempt to build on and improve them as best we can, our remaining prosperity will vanish as quickly as the unfortunate illusionist’s act.

So what’s next for you? Where do you go from here?"

“Welcome to Life. There Are Only Hard Facts and Harder Decisions”

“Welcome to Life. 
There Are Only Hard Facts and Harder Decisions”
by Ryan Holiday

“One thing this pandemic has shown is that people have a problem facing facts. I don’t mean facts in the sense of the scientific data, although that’s clearly a problem as well judging by the litany of conspiracy theories that have become acceptable even in polite company. I mean “facts” in the more colloquial sense – of coming to terms with reality and accepting it on reality’s terms. Just look at COVID-19.

We’ve taken a merciless, apolitical, indifferent but pretty well-understood virus, scientifically speaking, and turned it into a divisive, partisan argument. Every molecule seems subject to debate, because we have somehow come to believe that what we think about it, or our own personal needs in relation to it, have some relevance to its airborne spread from person to person, and its ability to kill with ruthlessness and painful efficiency.

Perhaps nothing captures this impotent rage better than a tweet I saw from Laura Ingraham:
OK, Karen, would you like to speak to COVID-19’s manager? 

Back here in reality where the rest of us live, it is an inescapable truth of human existence that there are some crises and problems so bad that they force those affected by them to live with the uncertainty that the crises create. They force us to stop doing things we’d like to do. They cost us things we really can’t afford. But, alas, there is no degree of forcefulness to an opinion nor staggering amount of need that can change those facts.

Imagine someone living in America in 1942. No one could have told them when they’d be able to travel to Europe to see their aging parents again. No one could have told them when the rationing would stop. No one would have been able to say when their son would be released from the Army. No one could promise them that they were safe in their homes and would ultimately survive. The world war was a fact, and everybody had to deal with it. Like it or not.

Life is like this. It’s uncertain. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t really care whether we really want or need something. It doesn’t care about us at all, really, it just is.

Many years ago, I wrote a piece about our tendency to think that we could “vote on reality,” and how the internet was designed to encourage this impulse. From Twitter to Facebook to blogging, the platforms of social media are designed around the insidious idea that your opinion about things changes what they unflinchingly are. I think this is what Foster the People is singing about in their song, “The Truth”:

“Well an absolute measure won’t change with opinion
no matter how hard you try
It’s an immovable thing…”

We are seduced by the idea that not liking some element of reality is powerful enough to will it to be different. That a simple objection is more powerful than objectivity. Of course, the Stoics had no time for this. Facts are facts, they say. Fate or Fortune or death have no care for your opinion. They were like Civil War historian James McPherson who, responding to Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 claim that European allies seemed to care more about tiny Northern defeats than his major victories, said simply: “Unreasonable it may have been, but it was a reality.”

When we talk about facing facts, we are in part talking about making the hard choices that life demands – which usually means doing the harder thing. “At the top,” Secretary of State Dean Acheson once observed about the presidency, “there are no easy choices. All are between evils, the consequences of which are hard to judge.” He meant that all the simple, easy stuff gets handled by people lower down on the chain. The obvious stuff never makes it to the Oval Office. And so it is with life, too – the easy stuff is never much of an issue. There’s never any uncertainty about the things that don’t require any sacrifice and pain.

I think he also means that it’s not the choices that are hard. In fact, the right thing is often obvious. It’s the consequences and the costs of that choice that are hard. It’s the complicated, difficult, unpleasant stuff that we adults end up having to wrestle with on the other side of our decisions that make the decisions seem so difficult.

In reality, when it comes to a pandemic or a bankruptcy or a failing marriage, the choices are easy to the extent that they are simple and clear. It’s this or this. It’s A or B or C. The difficulty comes with the hard facts that must be swallowed as a consequence of picking one of those easy choices. Don’t you dare think that Acheson, when he said the consequences were hard to judge, was excusing leaders who preferred their own fantasies or wishful thinking to the hard realities of geopolitics.

I see this with some of my friends, now considering whether to send their kids back to school. Even though most of the advice is against it; even though they regularly go overboard protecting their families from all sorts of much less dangerous things than a pandemic; even though they are otherwise good people who care about how their actions affect others - here they are saying something to the effect of “Well, it’s just so hard to know what the right thing is.” Or my favorite: “How much longer can this go on?” Truth goes on as long as it’s true!

What we’re saying when we throw up our hands at something like reopening the schools is, “I have a sense that I’m not making the right decision, but if I act bewildered, it excuses me from the consequences.” Or they are saying, “I get that generally this is a really bad idea, but my specific circumstances should be exempt from the otherwise unfavorable facts because it hasn’t been a problem in my town yet and the consequences of the other choice are more difficult than I’m comfortable with.” No!

How has the track record for not listening to expert opinion gone in the United States over the last 10 months? Oh, right, it’s created one of the worst coronavirus breakouts in the world. Over 200,000 dead! 67 9/11s. Four Vietnams. Eight times more than the American Revolution. (And the fact that lots of people also die of heart disease is not a response. They are dying of that too.) The country that, for a century, was called to rescue other countries from natural disasters is now the unlikely recipient of pity from New Zealand, Italy and Denmark. People love to talk about American exceptionalism – well, we are being exceptionally stupid.

I am reminded of a conversation between Col. Harry G. Summers and a North Vietnamese colonel after the Vietnam War. Summers pointed out that the US was never beaten on the battlefield. The man replied, “That is true. It is also irrelevant.”

We need a lot of things. My kids certainly do. But the facts come first, so we’re staying home. Not because we want to, but because, in truth, there is no choice. It’s why my businesses remain closed too.

There is not much upside in a pandemic – not one that has killed over 200,000 Americans and over a million people worldwide. But there is a lesson in it. It’s a lesson that we have done our best not to learn, that we have fought for some time now. That lesson is this: Life is hard. It is filled with hard facts and hard decisions. You cannot flee it. You can only defer the consequences for so long or, perhaps, if you are content to be an assh*le, shirk them onto some other innocent person.

Facts don’t care how hard they are. Just because you can’t bear something doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be borne. Just because you have an opinion – or a need – doesn’t mean it’s relevant. “There is a truth,” it says in the song I mentioned earlier, “I can promise you that.”

It’s time to wake up, put on our big boy pants, and accept that we are living through a period of great discomfort and frightening uncertainty, and what you think or feel about that fact has precisely zero impact on the truth of our new reality We have to face the truth. Do the hard thing.”

“The Stench of Political and Financial Corruption”

“The Stench of Political and Financial Corruption”
By Jesse

“Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid. It was an experience for which the captains of industry were not entirely prepared; they had forgotten the public. It was like some great convulsion of nature, which made mockery of all the powers of men, and left the beholder dazed and terrified. In Wall Street men stood as if in a valley, and saw far above them the starting of an avalanche; they stood fascinated with horror, and watched it gathering headway; saw the clouds of dust rising up, and heard the roar of it swelling, and realized it was only a matter of time before it swept them to their destruction. But it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair, "The Moneychangers"

"You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the eternal God, I will rout you out." - Andrew Jackson

"It was discovered that in all that blizzard of corruption, and the paper that covered it up, that the very basis of the value of things had been 'mislaid.' And then the deluge came. If you listen to the reasoning of 'free market' types, and their paid mouthpieces and demagogues, this kind of thing could not happen, because companies, being rational and focused on the long term, would not allow tainted meat with their name on it to be sold into the markets. 

They would not risk the lawsuits, and damage to their reputations. It is a similar argument that holds that financial markets need only light regulations because people will manage their own behavior for the ultimate good, with almost perfect rational and altruistic self-constraint. 

But alas, we know this is not true, as anyone who ever travels on a major highway can tell you. People and their tendencies to greed and careless stupidity require a certain association of people in a society for their common good, to take on not only large tasks with common and broad benefits to the pubic, but also in order for the majority to protect themselves from criminals, cheats, sociopaths, and plain old ignorant selfishness. This is why we establish police and fire departments, and have health laws, for example.

Government is never perfect. But its occasional flaws and corruption are no reason to do away with it. The power of government must be held in balance, but so must the power of private wickedness.

If you bother to look into the history of certain types of laws, especially those designed to protect the public, and the often long progressive efforts of many dedicated souls to achieve them, from civil rights to basic food safety to voting rights to consumer protections against financial fraud, you can see what they have accomplished, and how their effectiveness must be upheld and occasionally renewed, since the corrupting power of easy money respects few if any boundaries.

Goodness may occasionally falter, but evil never sleeps. And as many are now discovering, telling the truth becomes a subversive act, in times of general deceit. Notice the patterns of smears and dehumanization of certain types of people. This is how it begins.

And so it seems that every other generation forgets the lessons learned by their grandparents, and casts off their protections in fits of foolishness fuelled by the sweet words and slogans of the pampered princes of easy money, and their puppets, who will say and do anything for power and position. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and this is surely the story of the last forty years, especially in the area of financial regulation, and the political standards of oaths and stewardship.”

Saturday, October 17, 2020

“Broke Americans Keep Spending; Real Estate Crash Imminent; Home Equity Loans Buy Time; Debt Kills”

Jeremiah Babe,
“Broke Americans Keep Spending; Real Estate Crash Imminent; 
Home Equity Loans Buy Time; Debt Kills”
Related:
"This is a nightmare. A nightmare on Constitution Avenue."

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Even Now”

2002, “Even Now”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. Centered on NGC 7814, the pretty field of view would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. 

Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive central bulges cut by a thinner disk with dust lanes in silhouette. In fact, NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing to be smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. A very faint dwarf galaxy, potentially a satellite of NGC 7814, is revealed in the deep exposure just below the Little Sombrero.”

"Splendid!"

 

"Good Or Bad..."

"Good or bad, everything we do is our best choice at that moment."
- William Glasser

"I Reveal Myself..."

“At this point I reveal myself in my true colors, as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven’t changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history. History is ourselves.

I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people’s feelings, by satisfying our own egos. And I think we should remember that we are all part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and sisters.”
- Kenneth Clark, “Civilization”

The Daily "Near You?"

 
Warrenton, Virginia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: James Broughton, "Having Come This Far"

"Having Come This Far"

"I've been through what my through was to be,
I did what I could and couldn't.
I was never sure how I would get there.
I nourished an ardor for thresholds,
for stepping stones and for ladders,
I discovered detour and ditch.
I swam in the high tides of greed,
I built sandcastles to house my dreams.
I survived the sunburns of love.

No longer do I hunt for targets.
I've climbed all the summits I need to,
and I've eaten my share of lotus.
Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided,
and for every foolhardy choice.
I cherish my wounds and their cures,
and the sweet enervations of bliss.
My book is an open life.

I wave goodbye to the absolutes,
and send my regards to infinity.
I'd rather be blithe than correct.
Until something transcendent turns up,
I splash in my poetry puddle,
and try to keep God amused."

- James Broughton

"Whatever Your Fate Is..."

“Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment- not discouragement- you will find the strength there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures, followed by wreckage, were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”
~ Joseph Campbell

“Are People Really Stupid?”

“Are People Really Stupid?”
by Fred Russell

“Five percent of the people think; 
ten percent of the people think they think; 
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
- Thomas Edison

“On the face of things – judging from the general level of knowledge and understanding, not to mention the intellectual pursuits, of most of the human race – one is tempted to say that the overwhelming majority of mankind lacks the intellectual capacity, the intelligence, to contribute to human progress. And it is in fact a very small elite that has carried us beyond Neanderthal Man, without whom, if the truth be told, we might still be living in caves. It is, in a word, appalling to contemplate the level at which ordinary people use their minds – what they read, if at all, what they watch on TV, the movies they go out and see, and the ease with which they are seduced and manipulated by the technicians of the psyche, namely, politicians and advertisers. 

The impression one gets when contemplating these tens and hundreds of millions of people glued to their TV screens for the reality shows and sitcoms or fiddling with their smartphones from morning till night is of complete empty-headedness. This is not to say that such people cannot be shrewd, resourceful, or, for that matter, simply decent. It is to say that at the average level of intelligence displayed by the human race, the great intellectual achievements of mankind seem to be beyond the scope of the vast majority of men and women. But are people really stupid? And if they aren’t, who or what has held them back?

Now one may be inclined to place all the blame for our ignorance on the television producers and gadget makers, but the truth is that by the time they get to us the damage has already been done. All they really succeed in doing is dragging us down a little further. The problem starts in childhood. It starts in the schools with all those empty cells waiting to be filled and no one, not entire educational systems, really knowing how to fill them. In fact, the opposite result is achieved. By the time the child finishes elementary school, unless he is destined to join the intellectual or scientific or economic or political elite and is self-motivated, as the saying goes, he will have developed an aversion to the learning process that will persist for the rest of his life.

It is not hard to understand why. School bores him, and oppresses him. Its premise, fostered in the West by the Church – the virtually exclusive supplier of teachers until fairly recent times, historically speaking – is that as a consequence of Original Sin all men are born evil and must therefore be coerced into doing what is good. The result has been rigidly structured frameworks where teachers hammer away at the captive child until his head is ready to explode. Within just a few years, the public school system thus destroys the natural curiosity of the child and dooms him to a life of total ignorance, dependent, for whatever sense of the world he does have, on second-rate journalists, who themselves lack the knowledge, understanding, discipline and integrity to be historians or even novelists and therefore shape his perception like the ignorant clerics of the Middle Ages, raining down on his head a disjointed and superficial body of information presented largely to produce effects, and even this is beyond his capacity to retain. The man in the street may thus be said to have a great many opinions but very little knowledge, mindlessly repeating the half-truths of “experts” and “analysts” who reflect his own biases and constructing out of them a “credo” of dogmatic views that remain embedded in his mind for an entire lifetime like bricks in a brick wall.

Does it matter? After all, we have all the scholars and scientists we need, and besides, a world where everyone became one would be a dull place indeed. It can even be argued that it is better for the race if progress is opposed, since, judging from its products, it mostly expresses itself materially and economically in an unholy alliance of greed and technology. However, progress of this kind cannot be fought if all that people have on their minds is to wire themselves into this technology, and that is what they will be doing until their minds are engaged in less frivolous pursuits. They are thus doubly victimized, first by the schools, whose methods are not attuned to the temperament and capacity of the average child, and then by the economic elites who control the technologies and consequently the flow of information and whose only interest in the man in the street is as a consumer of their products.

Unfortunately, there is very little hope that any of this will change. The wrong people control human society and will continue to do so, because they created the model and are the only ones who know how to operate it. The sad truth is that today’s man in the street is neither wiser nor more knowledgeable than a medieval peasant. Calling ourselves Homo sapiens, or even Homo sapiens sapiens, seemed like a good idea once but very few of us have lived up to the billing.”

"Survival..."

 

"Life Within The Matrix Is Our Future"

"Life Within The Matrix Is Our Future"
by Paul Craig Roberts

"The question each of us needs to ask ourselves, and one another, is why do we get so much misinformation about Covid from public health authorities, political authorities, and press prostitutes? We get a lot of misinformation from health practitioners, because they get the bogus information from health authorities and from researchers associated with Big Pharma. But why do health authorities themselves lie to us?

Take the issue of masks. The masks being worn by the vast majority of the world population, including health care providers, cannot prevent the inhalation and exhalation of bacteria and viruses. If a person wearing one of these masks is sick with a cold, flu, or Covid, the mask can prevent the person from sneezing and coughing on others, countertops, and fresh produce. But the masks cannot prevent the wearer from breathing in and exhaling out Covid, which is airborn and aerosol spread. The only people who should be wearing one of these masks are people who are out in public areas coughing and sneezing among other people. To avoid the spread of the virus, infected people should stay at home.

If the masks people are wearing protected against bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens, there would be no point in N95 and higher rated masks. Medical authorities know this, so why are people told, indeed forced, to wear ineffectual masks?

This is an especially troubling question when experts unaffiliated with Big Pharma tell us that wearing a mask is dangerous as it reduces oxygen intake and increases CO 2 intake. This expert tells us that wearing a mask causes brain damage that cannot be reversed. Why do health authorities want to stunt children’s development and increase dementia among the elderly? This doctor tells us that mask wearing is increasing bacterial pneumonias.

Public health authorities know that the Covid death rate is greatly exaggerated. Hospitals are economically incentivized to report all deaths as Covid deaths. The CDC itself let the cat out of the bag when it reported that among the 200,000 US Covid deaths, only 9,000 were due to Covid alone. All others had in addition to Covid 2.6 fatal comorbidities. Deaths are concentrated in an elderly population with comorbidities, and those infected, if they were and it wasn’t a false positive, could as easily have died from seasonal flu.

Perhaps without meaning to, the World Health Organization (WHO) seems to have confirmed that Covid is no more dangerous than flu. So, why do public health authorities withhold this information from political authorities and the public, and why do reporters not ferret it out? The information exists. It just isn’t reported. Public heath authorities also know that the number of Covid cases is vastly overstated, because the PCR test produces more false positives than correct positives.

An international group of lawyers has concluded based on evidence provided in expert testimony that the Covid Pandemic is an orchestration that has served powerful interests at the expense of the public’s health. The doctors acknowledge that Covid itself is real, but the pandemic that has been built around it is not.

It is possible that the courts are as corrupted as the media and democratic institutions, and that nothing will come of the lawyers’ efforts. Nevertheless, neither Americans nor other peoples need to cling to their gullibility and behave as sheep programmed by “authorities” who are serving every interest but public health.

As I have reported in previous columns, Covid is being used to serve many interests. Among them, Covid is being used to complete the universal Police State by digitizing money. Once electronic money takes the place of currency, checks, and coins, your financial privacy and your control over your money and wealth will disappear. The government will know every payment you make and receive, and your access to your own income and wealth can be curtailed at the whim of the government and those who control the digitized monetary system. There will be no way that you can accumulate cash reserves as protection against your dispossession.

Private cryptocurrencies will be destroyed, and a black market fueled by gold and silver coins can be prevented by seizing gold and silver holdings. The Great Liberal Hero Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to take gold out of Americans’ hands with the technology of the 1930s. Today it would be a cinch.

Authorities have many Americans terrified of Covid infection. People scared out of their minds can’t wait for the unneeded and insufficiently tested vaccine. The HCQ/zinc cure works, but continues to be demonized by public health authorities in order to keep the market primed for a vaccine that contains elements we know not what.

Over the course of our history we Americans have been deceived about many things for the sake of political agendas. The length of the list depends on how far you want to go back. Let’s just start with the 20 years of the 21st century - September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden and the Talliban, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the endless lies about Gadaffi and Libya, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russiagate, Impeachgate, Russian bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers, the lies about China, Somalia, and now the Covid Deception.

Are Americans capable of learning? How many lies do they have to be told before they begin to wonder? It is not entirely their fault. The explanations given them are controlled and aligned with their innate biases. Super patriots, for example, love to have enemies to denounce, and you can hear rightwing talk radio denouncing China, Russia, and Iran daily. The left loves to hear confirmation of their belief in the evil that is America. The left has glorified in the rioting, looting, and destruction that resulted from press prostitutes withholding the fact that George Floyd died from an overdose of fentanyl.

The younger generations have never been taught how to think. Instead, they are taught what to think. You see the result in the majority white presence in Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

Throughout the Western world facts have given way to emotions. The concept of independent truth itself has been lost. Truth is whatever serves the agenda. You can see this in Assange’s trial underway in a British court. The Judge and prosecutor have no interest in any evidence, only in delivering the result demanded by the agenda.

Science itself is imperiled as there are only race and gender truths. Media serves money and ideologies. Universities and public schools are a great danger to the societies that host them.


Truth-tellers, at first ostracized and shoved aside are now being criminalized with the help of the media. The bought-and-paid-for Western media no longer expects to be free and will take no risk in behalf of the First Amendment. The Western media are helping to destroy the last Western journalist - Julian Assange. Without a media there is no accountable government and no democracy. Voting becomes impotent as in Stalinist Russia. Voting is used to give legitimacy to whatever government those who rule have decided upon.

Donald Trump will be the last American president who tried to put the people’s interest above those of the ruling elites. Henceforth, all presidential candidates will understand that their political success depends only on being the best puppet for the Establishment."

"How It Really Is"